The physical pain, which she was convinced was an arthritic flare-up, did her practising no good. ‘It’s fine,’ she said to her concerned sister, trying to hide her winces when she attempted to play. She didn’t want Adila to know how frightened she was. That anxiety compounded the emotional muddle, which seemed to drag her lower with every article, every letter, and soon every glance of a stranger in the street. Elisabeth’s new missive, and her own, were noted; but the ‘spook-haters’, as Alec called them, promptly decided they were a fiction devised to throw everyone off the scent of a conspiracy. These people remained convinced that Jelly was inventing the entire saga of the spirit messages in order to grab publicity, promote herself and take the concerto away from everyone else. Apparently this was so outrageous that it had to be of immense importance to the British public, even when they should be more concerned with whether Chamberlain could fend off the very real possibility of war. ‘If we were not foreign, and middle-aged women, and partly Jewish,’ Jelly mused, ‘I wonder if they would still be so angry?’

‘We’re lucky,’ her sister snapped. ‘A few centuries ago they’d have had us burned at the stake.’

As Adila had pointed out at the beginning, they were never going to listen. The fact that a Schumann concerto had been lying embargoed in a library, unheard for over 80 years, was the real scandal. Why didn’t people notice that?

Tovey, appealed to, agreed to telephone Adolf Busch and tracked him down to a hotel in the Netherlands. The violinist let off a tirade in Tovey’s ear and declared he was going to write to Eugenie Schumann. She in turn promptly told Busch that she would write a substantial letter to The Times herself, making a plain statement to insist the concerto should not be played, and that furthermore she was consulting her lawyers. A few days after what should have been Jelly’s performance, in its second potential incarnation, Busch was interviewed in a Dutch newspaper: he denied ever having performed the Schumann concerto, although he had apparently seen and assessed the music before deciding to let well alone. Then they’d asked Eugenie for her view, and printed the response: ‘No. Never have I given my agreement to the publication of the Violin Concerto, the last work of my father.’

‘She’s determined to stop the performances,’ Tovey told Jelly. ‘Legal advice and all.’

‘Would she win?’ said Jelly, horrified.

‘I doubt it. The German state, apparently, holds the copyright – or has decided it does – because the manuscript was in the State Library, and if those officials are intent upon doing something, there’s no law on earth they’ll allow to stop them. Anyway, I think they’ll tactfully explain that the concerto would certainly be published after she is no longer with us, so ultimately it’s out of her control.’