The door opened and Steerpike entered, an elegant stick with a shiny metal handle under his arm. Now that he had renovated and polished the pilfered swordstick to his satisfaction, he carried it about with him wherever he went. He was dressed in his habitual black and had acquired a gold chain which he wore about his neck. His meagre quota of sandy-coloured hair was darkened with grease, and had been brushed down over his pale forehead in a wide curve.

When he had closed the door behind him he tucked his stick smartly under his arm and bowed.

‘Your Ladyships,’ he said, ‘my unwarranted intrusion upon your privacy, with but the summary knock at the panels of your door as my mediator, must be considered the acme of impertinence were it not that I come upon a serious errand.’

‘Who’s died?’ said Cora.

‘Is it Gertrude?’ echoed Clarice.

‘No one has died,’ said Steerpike, approaching them. ‘I will tell you the facts in a few minutes; but first, my dear Ladyships, I would be most honoured if I were permitted to appreciate your embroideries. Will you allow me to see them?’ He looked at them both in turn inquiringly.

‘He said something about them before; at the Prunesquallors’ it was,’ whispered Clarice to her sister. ‘He said he wanted to see them before. Our embroideries.’

Clarice had a firm belief that as long as she whispered, no matter how loudly, no one would hear a word of what she said, except her sister.

‘I heard him,’ said her sister. ‘I’m not blind, am I?’

‘Which do you want to see first?’ said Clarice. ‘Our needlework or the Room of Roots or the Tree?’

‘If I am not mistaken’, said Steerpike by way of an answer, ‘the creations of your needle are upon the walls around us, and having seen them, as it were, in a flash, I have no choice but to say that I would first of all prefer to examine them more closely, and then if I may, I would be delighted to visit your Room of Roots.’

‘“Creations of our needle”, he said,’ whispered Clarice in her loud, flat manner that filled the room.

‘Naturally,’ said her sister, and shrugged her shoulders again, and turning her face to Steerpike gave to the right-hand corner of her inexpressive mouth a slight twitch upwards, which although it was as mirthless as the curve between the lips of a dead haddock, was taken by Steerpike to imply that she and he were above making such obvious comments.