‘Little daubs of my own,’ she said, most anxious that this should be known. ‘I should sink into the ground with shame, dear Mr Pillson, if you looked at them, for I know what a great artist you are yourself. And Withers has brought us our tea… You like the one of my little giardino segreto? (I must remember that beautiful phrase.) How kind of you to say so! Perhaps it isn’t quite so bad as the others, for the subject inspired me, and it’s so important, isn’t it, to love your subject? Major Benjy likes it too. Cream, Mrs Lucas? I see Withers has picked some strawberries for us from my little plot. Such a year for strawberries! And Major Benjy was chatting with friends I’ll be bound, when you passed him.’

‘Yes, a clergyman,’ said Lucia, ‘who kindly directed us to your house. In fact he seemed to know we were going there before I said so, didn’t he, Georgie? A broad Scotch accent.’

‘Dear Padre!’ said Miss Mapp. ‘It’s one of his little ways to talk Scotch, though he came from Birmingham. A very good bridge-player when he can spare time as he usually can. Reverend Kenneth Bartlett. Was there a teeny little thin woman with him like a mouse? It would be his wife.’

‘No, not thin, at all,’ said Lucia thoroughly interested. ‘Quite the other way round: in fact round. A purple coat and a skirt covered with pink roses that looked as if they were made of chintz.’

Miss Mapp nearly choked over her first sip of tea, but just saved herself.

‘I declare I’m quite frightened of you, Mrs Lucas,’ she said. ‘What an eye you’ve got. Dear Diva Plaistow, whom we’re all devoted to. Christened Godiva! Such a handicap! And they were chintz roses, which she cut out of an old pair of curtains and tacked them on. She’s full of absurd delicious fancies like that. Keeps us all in fits of laughter. Anyone else?’

‘Yes, a girl with no hat and an Eton crop. She was dressed in a fisherman’s jersey and knickerbockers.’

Miss Mapp looked pensive.

‘Quaint Irene,’ she said. ‘Irene Coles. Just a touch of unconventionality, which sometimes is very refreshing, but can be rather embarrassing. Devoted to her art. She paints strange pictures, men and women with no clothes on. One has to be careful to knock when one goes to see quaint Irene in her studio. But a great original.’

‘And then when we turned up out of the High Street,’ said Georgie eagerly, ‘we met another Rolls-Royce. I was afraid we shouldn’t be able to pass it.’

‘So was I,’ said Miss Mapp, unintentionally betraying the fact that she had been watching from the garden-room. ‘That car is always up and down this street here.’

‘A large woman in it,’ said Lucia. ‘Wrapped in sables on this broiling day. A little man beside her.’