“Love for Three Oranges,” she repeated. “That’s Russian, isn’t it? Prokofiev? Oh, it just happens to be something I’ve heard Geoffrey talk about. He works in Kellett’s,” she explained, “the gramophone shop, you know. He quite often has lunch with me.”

“Does he work in the front of the shop, selling?”

“Yes.”

“In his middle twenties, one eye blue and the other brown?”

Stephanie stared. “How did you guess?”

“He looks like a Geoffrey.” It was a name Brett particularly disliked. He recalled the young man as a supercilious weed with a wrung-out voice.

“Oh,” said Stephanie, rather uncertainly. “Of course, he knows everything there is to know about music. He’s rather a bore, actually. Not because of what he talks about,” she added quickly, “but because of the way he says it. All the time I feel he’s preaching—no, not that exactly. Thinking he’s awfully good to teach me.”

“Patronising,” suggested Brett, guiltily recollecting his own attitude to her probable knowledge of Love for Three Oranges. “Condescending.”

“Yes,” she said, “I can never think of the right word. Of course, he’s not too bad. Anyway it’s awfully hard to avoid talking to people once they’ve actually sat down beside you and said hullo.”

“Try going somewhere else for lunch!” said Brett.

“What, and waste my luncheon vouchers? I shouldn’t have much left after I’d paid my fares.”

Brett nodded. A certain edge to her lively voice reminded him of Beddoes; and there was a similarity of accent; no doubt, a coincidence, although Beddoes lived not far from Sanderstead.

“You like working at Majendie’s?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s all right. Rather boring—at least, for me. Tidying the office cupboards, typing address labels—two fingers, I can’t really type—just doing any odd thing that nobody else can be bothered with. I wouldn’t mind if I could have more to do with the things in the shop. They’re lovely, some of them. But the only time I get a look is when I have to help the packers or dust the cases. Or get something out of the window for Mr Lowrie, he’s so fat.”

“I don’t see what more you could have to do with them,” said Brett, “short of selling them to other people, in which case you wouldn’t see them for long. After all, I doubt whether even Mr. Majendie sits in front of a piece of porcelain in rapt contemplation.”

“He does, you know,” said Stephanie. “I’ve seen him in his little office, when the door’s been open, sitting staring at something on his desk—not porcelain, usually jewellery. You can see he’s quite gone. I don’t know how he can bear to part with—all that.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t,” said Brett. “I suppose it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to hang on to something he particularly fancied.” He reflected that Majendie’s house, though far from sparsely furnished, had not struck him as being overstocked with obvious collector’s pieces. But if, in his own words, and as Stephanie confirmed, jewellery was his great love, he could have a massive collection that was not displayed.