‘My dear, not worth while. You’ll make quantities of others. All so trivial, Georgie, not worth noticing. Beneath you.’

Lucia leaned forward with her elbows on the table, quite in the old braced way, instead of drooping.

‘But we’ve got far more important things to talk about than Daisy’s little pilferings,’ she said. ‘Where shall I begin?’

‘From the beginning,’ said Georgie greedily. He had not felt so keen about the affairs of daily life since Lucia had buried herself in her bereavement.

‘Well, the real beginning was this morning,’ she said, ‘when I saw something in The Times.’

‘More than I did,’ said Georgie. ‘Was it about Riseholme or the fête? Daisy said she was going to write a letter to The Times about it.’

‘I must have missed that,’ said Lucia, ‘unless by any chance they didn’t put it in. No, not about the fête, nor about Riseholme. Very much not about Riseholme. Georgie, do you remember a woman who stayed at the Ambermere Arms one summer called Miss Mapp?’

Georgie concentrated.

‘I remember the name, because she was rather globular, like a map of the world,’ he said. ‘Oh, wait a moment: something’s coming back to me. Large, with a great smile. Teeth.’

‘Yes, that’s the one,’ cried Lucia. ‘There’s telepathy going on, Georgie. We’re suggesting to each other… Rather like a hyena, a handsome hyena. Not hungry now but might be.’

‘Yes. And talked about a place called Tilling, where she had a Queen Anne house. We rather despised her for that. Oh, yes, and she came to a garden party of mine. And I know when it was too. It was that summer when you invented saying “Au reservoir” instead of “Au revoir”. We all said it for about a week and then got tired of it. Miss Mapp came here just about then, because she picked it up at my garden party. She stopped quite to the end, eating quantities of red-currant fool, and saying that she had inherited a recipe from her grandmother which she would send me. She did, too, and my cook said it was rubbish. Yes: it was the au reservoir year, because she said au reservoir to everyone as they left, and told me she would take it back to Tilling. That’s the one. Why?’

‘Georgie, your memory’s marvellous,’ said Lucia. ‘Now about the advertisement I saw in The Times. Miss Mapp is letting her Queen Anne house called Mallards, h. & c. and old-world garden, for August and September. I want you to drive over with me tomorrow and see it. I think that very likely, if it’s at all what I hope, I shall take it.’