Troy waited for her and she pulled up. ‘I’m going to the village,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come? Do, like a sweet, because I’ve got to go to the chemist, and this brute might walk away if nobody watched it.’

Troy got in. ‘Can you drive?’ said Miss Orrincourt. ‘Do, like a ducks. I hate it.’ She handed the reins to Troy and at once groped among her magnificent furs for her cigarette case. ‘I got the willies up there,’ she continued. ‘They’ve all gone out to dinner at the next-door morgue. Well, next door! It’s God knows how far away. Cedric and Paul and old Pauline. What a bunch! With their tails well down, dear. Well, I mean to say, you saw how upset I was, didn’t you? So did Noddy.’ She giggled. ‘Look, dear, you should have seen him. With that tin toque on his head and everything. Made the big entrance into the library and called them for everything. “This lady,” he says, “is my guest and you’ll be good enough to remember it.” And quite a lot more. Was I tickled! Pauline and Milly looking blue murder and poor little Cedric bleating and waving his hands. He made them apologize. Oh, well,’ she said, with a sigh, ‘it was something happening anyway. That’s the worst of life in this dump. Nothing ever happens. Nothing to do and all day to do it in. God, what a flop! If anybody’d told me a month ago I’d be that fed up I’d get round to crawling about the place in a prehistoric prop like this I’d have thought they’d gone hay-wire. Oh, well, I suppose it’d have been worse in the army.’

‘Were you ever in the army?’

‘I’m delicate,’ said Miss Orrincourt with an air of satisfaction. ‘Bronchial asthma. I was fixed up with ENSA but my chest began a rival show. The boys in the orchestra said they couldn’t hear themselves play. So I got out. I got an under-study at the Unicorn. It was that West End you barked your shins on the ice. Then,’ said Miss Orrincourt simply, ‘Noddy noticed me.’

‘Was that an improvement?’ asked Troy.

‘Wouldn’t you have thought so? I mean, ask yourself. Well, you know. A man in his position. Top of the tree. Mind, I think he’s sweet. I’m crazy about him, in a way. But I’ve got to look after myself, haven’t I? If you don’t look after yourself in this old world nobody’s going to look after you. Well, between you and I, Mrs Alleyn, things were a bit tricky. Till yesterday. Look, a girl doesn’t stick it out in an atmosphere like this, unless there’s a future in it, does she? Not if she’s still conscious, she doesn’t.’