Gertrude groaned. “Kate won’t be interested in that.”

I assured her that I would love to see the sinking of a pit shaft.

Benjie perked up. “A photograph in a magazine, or in newspapers, would let people know we are open to investment.” He looked at Raynor, once more pouring wine. “Good idea, don’t you think?”

“I do, sir.”

Gertrude signalled, no more wine for her.

Later, Mrs. Dell, Gertrude and I withdrew and left the men to talk. The drawing room smelled of lavender polish. Daffodils and tulips filled a cut glass vase on the occasional table.

Gertrude and I sat on opposite sofas near the hearth. Mrs. Dell had gone to powder her nose.

Since our being in this room earlier, for cocktails, something had appeared on the low table between the sofas. It was a prospectus for a new mine, the kind of document that is circulated when the owners are drumming up investment.

I picked it up.

“It would be an excellent investment, Kate. It’s to have all the latest equipment.”

Is that why I had been welcomed here so quickly? The widow of independent means. Last year, Gertrude discovered that I own a Rolls-Royce that I never drive. Perhaps that promoted me from Girlhood Friend to Potential Investor.

“Eliot’s on the board. He has a good head on his shoulders.”

I glanced at the names. Mr. B Brockman, Mrs. B Brockman, Mr. E Dell.

Not old Mrs. Dell, then.

“What do you think of Eliot?” Gertrude asked.

“I did meet him before, you remember.”

“Yes, before his wife died.”

“He seems a perfectly nice man, and fond of his mother.”

“Oh he is.” She confided in me that he was naturally concerned about his mother, especially after what happened to his wife.

I did not know the circumstances of her death, and enquired what had happened.

“Well you see, Kate, she was a hypochondriac.” She glanced at the door, but there was no sign of old Mrs. Dell. “It’s a horrible story. One night, Phyllis complained of being in an agony of pain. She always complained and usually recovered after brandy and sympathy. It was decided not to bother the doctor until morning. By morning her appendix had burst and it was too late.”

I said how dreadful that must make Eliot feel.

“It was shocking. It’s such a horrible story, like a real-life version of the boy who cries wolf. I told him, and Benjie told him, he and his mother are not to blame.”

“What was his wife like?”

Gertrude thought for a moment. “One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, and I don’t, and wouldn’t. But she thought herself a cut above. She was a cluster of anxieties. She didn’t ride for fear of being thrown. Always had an opinion on things that didn’t really concern her.”

“What sort of things?”

“Oh, poor people, the downtrodden, the sort of people who wouldn’t help themselves if they could. It wasn’t that Phyllis was a lady bountiful, we all have to do that occasionally. Where she’d got it from I don’t know, but she had this obsession about justice and making the world a better place. It was all talk, all an act.”