‘It is a good vintage, your Ladyship. A very adequate vintage. I selected it myself. You will, I know, appreciate it fully. It is not poisoned, my dear women. Gertrude, though she has poisoned your lives, has not, as it so happens, poisoned this particular bottle of wine. May I pour you out a glassful each, and we will drink a toast to the business of the day?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Cora. ‘Do it now.’

Steerpike filled their glasses.

‘Stand up,’ he said.

The purple twins arose together, and as Steerpike was about to propose the toast, his right hand holding the glass on the level of his chin and his left hand in his pocket, Cora’s flat voice broke in:

‘Let’s drink it on our Tree,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely outside. On our Tree.’

Clarice turned to her sister with her mouth open. Her eyes were as expressionless as mushrooms.

‘That’s what we’ll do,’ she said.

Steerpike, instead of being annoyed, was amused at the idea. After all, this was an important day for him. He had worked hard to get all in readiness and he knew that his future hung upon the smooth working of his plan, and although he would not congratulate himself until the library was in ashes, he felt that it was up to him and the aunts to relax for a few minutes before the work that lay ahead.

To drink a toast to the Day upon the boughs of the dead Tree appealed to his sense of the dramatic, the appropriate and the ridiculous.

A few minutes later the three of them had passed through the Room of Roots, filed along the horizontal stem and sat down at the table.

As they sat, Steerpike in the middle and the twins at either side, the evening air was motionless beneath them and around. The aunts had apparently no fear of the dizzy drop. They never thought of it. Steerpike, although he was enjoying the situation to the full, nevertheless averted his eyes as far as possible from the sickening space below him. He decided to deal gently with the bottle. On the wooden table their three glasses glowed in the warm light. Thirty feet away the sunny south wall towered above and fell below them featureless from its base to its summit save for the lateral offshoot of this dead tree, halfway up its surface, on which they sat, and the exquisitely pencilled shadows of its branches.

‘Firstly, dear Ladyships,’ said Steerpike, rising to his feet and fixing his eyes upon the shadow of a coiling bough, ‘firstly I propose a health to you. To your steadfast purpose and the faith you have in your own destinies. To your courage. Your intelligence. Your beauty.’ He raised his glass. ‘I drink,’ he said, and took a sip.

Clarice began to drink at the same moment, but Cora nudged her elbow. ‘Not yet,’ she said.