She drew her breath in sharply. “And spare poor Mark those heavy-footed jokes about his car. And try to be nice to Sybil.”

“Yes, dear. Sorry, dear. Just as you say, dear,” I said, parodying meekness.

I pressed the doorbell. Harriet, the Browns’ resident treasure, let us in. As usual, her greeting was appreciably warmer for Susan than for me; she had worked for the Browns for twenty years and was as much their creation as the house. But I liked the look of the house, even if people like Larry Silvington did call it pure Wimbledon Jacobean; and I even liked the feel of it and would always, before I entered it, surreptitiously stroke its closely textured stone. I didn’t like Harriet: she had a very large and, for some­one who couldn’t be much more than forty, curi­ously withered face. The face never smiled for me; but I always fancied that if it did it would be a smile of derision. Harriet, Mrs. Brown frequently said, was a real snob, with her own ideas about what constituted a gentleman.

The drawing-room smelled of flowers and cigar smoke. It hadn’t altered in appearance since I first visited the house ten years ago; the Browns bought only the best, only what was made to last. Mrs. Brown had good taste, or at least talked a great deal about good taste, and was a regular habitué of sales rooms and antique shops; but none of her acquisitions ever seemed to make their presence felt. It wasn’t the Hepplewhite love-seat or the Sheraton china cabinet that one noticed, but the thick­ness of the dark green fitted carpet, the depth of the armchairs, the profusion of flowers and silver boxes and cups and statuettes; and when you looked at the walls you didn’t see the two eighteenth-century hanging cupboards or the very pleasant set of sporting prints which was about all that had been salvaged from the St. Clair family fortunes, but only the heavy embossed wallpaper. It was, I reflected, for what must have been the seventieth time, the drawing-room of a public man; it would have made an admirable hotel lounge or Lord Mayor’s parlour.

Rose, the junior Treasure, came to me with a tray of drinks. I didn’t dislike her quite so much as I did Harriet, but she’d only been with the Browns for ten years. She’d learn; this morning I had the impression that she was observing my movements with special attention. I looked away from Norah, whom I’d just seen in the far corner of the room, and asked her how her niece was. She smiled, her square red face almost pretty for a moment. “She’s grand now, thank you sir.”

The niece, Mrs. Brown had once told Susan, was actually Rose’s daughter. The old bitch had her good points. But they didn’t make me dislike her any the less.