“Lots of people stand on their heads,” I said. “And it is well known that all aristocrats are eccentric.”

“I’m not eccentric,” Binky said hotly.

“Binky, you go around the estate talking to the trees. I’ve heard you.”

“Well, that’s just common sense. Things grow better when you talk to them.”

“I rest my case,” I said. “And you’d have to prove that Father was practically foaming at the mouth before the court would say he was too incompetent to sign that document.”

“He did foam at the mouth once,” Binky said hopefully.

“When he swallowed that piece of soap on a bet.”

Binky sighed.

He was normally such a cheery soul and I hated to see him like this, but I couldn’t think of anything I could do. It even crossed my mind that I might borrow a vampish dress from Belinda and try to seduce de Mauxville, thus obtaining the document from him in the heat of passion. But frankly I didn’t think I’d be very good at it.

Friday morning I set out for Eaton Place, my black servant’s uniform disguised under my cashmere coat, my cap tucked into my pocket to be put on at the last minute. I scurried down into the tradesmen’s entrance and put on my cap before I turned the key I had been given and let myself in.

I stood in a cavernous entry hall, decorated with the heads of hunted African beasts and the odd ceremonial spear. Once inside, my enthusiasm waned. The house was even bigger than our London place and it was full of objects brought back from generations of army postings around the world. I’m sure some of them were valuable and even attractive in their own way, but they were on every surface—curved daggers, ebony masks, statues, jade elephants, carved ivory goddesses—all highly breakable, by the look of them. There were walls full of paintings, mostly of great battles. There were regimental flags, glass-topped tables full of medals, and swords of all kinds of shapes hanging everywhere. The Featherstonehaughs had clearly been a military family of distinction for generations—which explained why Whiffy was in the Guards. There was enough to keep me dusting all day. I went from room to room, wondering if they needed all the large formal rooms on the ground floor opened up, or whether the pretty little drawing room on the first floor would do just as well for a short visit.

There was a vast fireplace at the far end of a ballroom-sized main reception room and I said a silent prayer of thanks that they hadn’t wanted that one laid. On every wall there were crossed swords, shields, even suits of armor. It seemed that the Featherstonehaughs had been killing people successfully for quite a few generations.

I went upstairs and was relieved to find the bedrooms were not equally full of artifacts, in fact were rather austere. I was about to start on the bedrooms when I heard a tap dripping in a bathroom. I looked inside and was not thrilled with what I saw. The bathtub had a disgusting black line around it. There were several towels dropped in a heap on the floor and the loo was also not the cleanest. That dripping tap in the basin had left a trail of lime. If this is how they leave their house, I thought, then they don’t deserve a good cleaning. Then it occurred to me that someone might actually have been living in the house, and that someone might be Whiffy. I crept from room to room until I was satisfied I was in the house alone.