Rose recognized Cyril immediately. She waited for him to settle down so that she could get a chance to talk to him about Dolly. But she had to wait quite a time. The duties of a gentleman at five-o’clock tea were onerous. He had to carry teacups about, hand sugar, cream, cakes or muffins, all the time keeping up a flow of small talk. He had to rise every time a lady entered or left the room.

At last he found a chair beside Rose and settled himself with a sigh. ‘Thought I was never going to get anything to eat.’

‘There is plenty left,’ said Rose. ‘Ladies do not eat, you know.’

‘Except for your companion.’

Rose looked to where Daisy was ruining her gloves by putting a muffin dripping with butter into her mouth.

‘You must be as distressed as I am about the death of poor Miss Tremaine,’ began Rose.

‘Oh, that? Beastly business. I was grilled at Scotland Yard. Can you believe it?’

‘How too frightful for you,’ said Rose, smiling into his eyes.

‘I say, that fiancé of yours was there! Aren’t you ashamed of him being in trade?’

This was insolence, but Rose chose to ignore it. ‘His work certainly takes him away from me a lot.’

‘If I were your fiancé,’ said Cyril, ‘I would stick by your side the whole time.’

Rose rapped his arm with her fan and giggled, ‘Oh, sir, you flatter me.’

Cyril’s eyes brightened. Rose was a considerable heiress and rumour had it that her engagement was shortly about to he broken. She was hardly ever seen out in society with her fiancé, and the gossips had said that he had never even visited her when she was in the country.

‘I do miss Dolly,’ said Rose, looking suddenly sad. ‘I wonder why she was running away?’

‘I think I can tell you that,’ said Cyril. ‘I think she was one of Sappho’s sisters.’

Rose stared at him, puzzled. What had Dolly to do with Greece, and why was Cyril leering at her in that odd way? She remembered the lines of a Lord Byron poem: ‘What men call gallantry, and gods adultery/Is much more common where the climate’s sultry.’ He was always writing about Greece and he did have some poem about Sappho. Had there been some scandal? Had Dolly been in love with a married man? Her thoughts raced round and round at the same busy rate that had once animated the dead squirrels of Daisy’s coat.

‘I do not understand you, sir.’

‘Oh, never mind,’ said Cyril hurriedly, realizing that if Rose did actually understand him, she might think he was calling her a lesbian as well. He fetched up a sigh. ‘Deuced pretty girl, what?’

‘Yes, indeed and so sad. Did she ever say anything to you about being threatened by anyone?’

‘No, on the contrary, my friend Berrow was about to make her an offer.’

‘Lord Berrow is quite old, is he not?’