“You won’t see a sign of Aunt V.,” said Frid, and Charlot added: “And you really ought to see the house, Robin. I can’t tell you what it is like. All Victorian gloom and glaring stuffed animals. Too perfect.”

“I don’t see why Robin should go,” said Henry.

“Robin says she doesn’t mind,” Frid pointed out. “And if Nanny goes she’ll feel as safe as a Crown jewel. Isn’t Robin sweet, Mummy?”

“She’s very kind indeed,” said Charlot. “Honestly, Robin darling, are you sure?”

“I’m quite sure if you think I’ll do.”

“It’s just for somebody to be there with the nurses. If Violet should by any chance make some sort of scene you can ring us up. But I’m sure she won’t. She needn’t even know you are there.”

And so it was arranged. P. C. Martin, no longer in his armchair, stared fixedly at a portrait of a Victorian Lamprey. Lord Charles went off for his interview with Alleyn. Frid did her face; the twins looked gloomily at old Punches ; Charlot, having refused to go to bed until the interviews were over, put her feet up and closed her eyes.

“Every moment,” said Henry, “this room grows more like a dental waiting parlour. Here is a particularly old Tatler, Robin. Will you look at it and complete the picture?”

“Thank you, Henry. What are you reading?”

“The Bard. I am reading ‘Macbeth.’ He has a number of very meaty things to say about murder.”

“Do you like the Bard?”

“I suppose I must, as quite often I find myself reading him.”

“On this occasion,” Stephen said. “I call it bad form t-to read ‘Macbeth.’ ”

“ ‘Night thickens,’ ” said Frid in a professionally deep voice.

And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood:

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,

While night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

“You would,” said Colin bitterly.

Roberta turned over the pages of the Tatler, unsolaced by studio portraits of ladies looking faintly nauseated and by snapshots of the same or closely similar ladies, looking either partially concussed or madly hilarious. She would have liked to put down the Tatler but was prevented from doing so by the circumstance of finding, whenever she looked up, that Henry’s eye was upon her. Strange thoughts visited Roberta. She supposed that many of the ladies in the Tatler were personally known to Henry. Perhaps the mysterious Mary was one of them. Perhaps she was long-limbed, with that smooth, expensive look so far beyond the reach of a small, whey-faced colonial. So why, thought Roberta, with murder in the house and nobody being anything but vaguely kind, and with smooth ladies everywhere for Henry, should she be feeling happy? And before she could stop herself she had pictured the smooth ladies gliding away from Henry because he was mixed up in murder while she, Roberta Grey, dawned upon him in her full worth. With these and similar fancies her mind was so busily occupied that she did not notice the passing of the minutes, and when Lord Charles and Nigel Bathgate returned she thought that Alleyn must have kept them a very short time in the dining-room. She roused herself to notice that Lord Charles looked remarkably blank and Mr. Bathgate remarkably uneasy.