‘Well,’ Troy said, ‘there’s no denying he really is a complete old phoney. Do you know he once commissioned a pupil of mine to do a painting from some print he’d picked up, of a Georgian guardee making faces at a thunderstorm. He said it was one of his ancestors and so it may have been, but after a lot of beating about the bush he made it quite clear that he wanted this job faked to look like an eighteenth-century portrait. My pupil was practically on the breadline at the time and I’m afraid the thing was done.’

‘Oh, dear!’ Nicola sighed. ‘I know. It’s there, in the library, I think. He’s like that but he’s rather an old sweetie-pie, all the same. Isn’t he, Andrew?’

‘Nicola,’ said Andrew, ‘I dare say he is. But he’s a terrible old donkey. And yet – I don’t know. Is P.P. just plain silly? I doubt it. I rather think there’s an element of low cunning.’

‘Childish, not low,’ Nicola insisted, but Andrew was looking at her with such a degree of affectionate attention that she was extremely flustered.

‘Well,’ Andrew said. ‘Never mind, anyway, about P.P.’

‘I can’t help it. He was so miserable all the afternoon. You know: trying to forge ahead with his tips on U-necessities, as he inevitably calls them, and then falling into wretched little trances. He really was in a bad state. Everything seemed to upset him.’

‘What sorts of things?’ Troy asked. ‘Have some more lager?’

‘No, thank you. Well, he kept singing in an extremely dismal manner. And then he would stop and turn sheet white. He muttered something about: “No, no, I mustn’t. Better forget it,” and looked absolutely terrified.’

‘How very odd,’ Andrew said. ‘What was his song?’

‘I don’t remember – yes, I do!’ Nicola ejaculated. ‘Of course, I do! Because he’d done the same sort of thing yesterday, after lunch: hummed it and then been cross with himself. But it was different today. He seemed quite shattered.’

‘And the song?’

‘It was the pop-song that ghastly Leonard kept whistling through his teeth at luncheon. He even sang a bit of it when they were looking at the cigarette-case: ‘If you mean what I think you mean: it’s okay by me. Things aren’t always what they seem. It’s okay by me.’’

‘Not exactly a “Period Piece”.’

‘It was all very rum.’

‘Did you happen to mention it to Rory?’ Troy asked.

‘No. I haven’t seen him since it happened. And anyway, why should I?’

‘No reason at all, I dare say.’

‘Look,’ Nicola said quickly, ‘however foolish he may be, Mr Period is quite incapable of the smallest degree of hanky-panky –’ She stopped short and the now familiar jolt of indefinable panic revisited her. ‘Serious hanky-panky, I mean,’ she amended.

‘Good lord, no!’ Andrew said. ‘Of course he is. Incapable, I mean.’