Belinda was just the sort of person I needed at this moment. I set off for her little mews cottage at top speed, uttering a silent prayer that she would be home. I was quite out of breath and feeling horribly hot in my tweed suit by the time I got there, the day having turned out warmer than I had expected. (Of course I could never admit that I was hot. Another thing that my governess used to say was that the words “hot,” “lot,” and “got” were not part of a lady’s vocabulary.) I rapped on the door, which was opened by her maid.

“Miss Belinda is resting and not to be disturbed,” she said.

“It’s an emergency,” I said. “I simply have to talk to your mistress right away. Please go and wake her.”

“I can’t do that, miss,” the maid said, looking as imperturbable as that wretched hall porter at Brooks’s. “She gave strict instructions that she was not to be disturbed come hell or high water.”

I had had enough of being rebuffed by loyal retainers for one afternoon.

“This is both hell and high water,” I said. “A matter of life and death, in fact. If you don’t go and wake her, I shall do so myself. Kindly tell her that Lady Georgiana is here on a matter of great urgency.”

The girl looked frightened, although whether it was of me or of waking her mistress, I wasn’t sure. “Very good, miss, I mean your ladyship,” she stammered. “Although she’s going to be awful cross, because she didn’t get ’ome until three this morning and she’s due out again tonight.”

She turned reluctantly from the front door and dragged her feet toward the staircase. But at that moment a dramatic figure appeared at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a scarlet Japanese kimono and a mask, pushed up just above her eyes, and she stood in dramatic film star pose, one wrist raised to her temple.

“What is all this racket, Florrie?” she asked. “Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t to be disturbed?”

“It’s me, Belinda,” I said. “I have to speak to you.”

She raised the mask a little higher. Bleary eyes focused on me.

“Georgie,” she said.

“I’m sorry to wake you but it’s a real crisis and I couldn’t think of anyone else I could turn to.” To my horror my voice trembled at the end of this sentence.

Belinda started to grope her way down the stairs in a good imitation of Lady Macbeth in her sleepwalking scene. “Make us some tea, please, Florrie,” she said. “I suppose you’d better sit down, Georgie.” She collapsed onto the sofa. “God, I feel like hell,” she muttered. “Those cocktails must have been lethal and I did have an awful lot of them.”

“I’m sorry to be disturbing you like this,” I repeated. “I really am. I wouldn’t have come if I could have thought of anywhere else to go.”

“Sit down and tell Aunt Belinda everything.” She patted the sofa beside her.