No sooner had she disappeared than Prince Siegfried arrived in a silk dressing gown with a black sleeping mask pushed up on his forehead, wanting to know what all the infernal row was about when he was trying to take forty winks. Fig and I were the only ones staying calm and sensible. Fig had always boasted about her Girl Guide training and I must say her first aid badge came in rather useful. She was down on her knees among the muck, feeling for a pulse. She looked up eventually and nodded.

“She’s still alive. Get towels to mop up this mess and blankets to put around her. We shouldn’t move her until a doctor examines her. She could have a fractured skull.”

I attempted to move the pieces of shattered lavatory tank from her.

“It must have toppled onto her when she pulled the chain,” I said.

“How extraordinary. I’ve never heard of that happening in my life,” Fig said. “She must have pulled the chain jolly hard.”

“You’ve no business having guests to stay in a house that is falling to pieces,” Earl said angrily. “This place is a positive death trap. I said so to Babe only this morning.”

“What an extraordinary day,” Fig muttered as we moved out of the way to make room for the maids who had arrived with piles of towels and blankets, and had begun to mop up the floor. “First you fall off a mountain and nearly kill yourself, and now this. Anyone would think there was a curse on the castle or something. You’ve never heard of any curses on the Rannoch family, have you?”

“There was that witch who was thrown into the lake,” I suggested. “But she’s had six centuries to curse us so I expect she would have done it by now.”

Fig sighed. “I don’t suppose we’ll hear the last of it. That man Earl will want to sue us or something. That’s what they do in America, isn’t it? We’ll be bankrupted. Destitute. We’ll have to go and live in one of the cottages. . . .”

“Don’t you start getting hysterical,” I said, putting a calming hand on her shoulder. “Remember, a Rannoch never loses his nerve.”

“Blast the stupid Rannochs,” she said. “This place has brought me nothing but grief. I should have married the nice young vicar at St. Stephen’s in our village, but I wanted to be a duchess.” She really was closer to hysterics than I had ever seen her.