“He made a stone hang in mid-air above his hand. And he took a turban from the head of one of the audience and cut it in half, then restored it.” From her tone of voice, Faith assumed these were tricks, although she couldn’t have said how. The maharaja, however, took them at face value.

“This magician, he is in the town?”

“He was yesterday.”

Abruptly, he stood up, his chair saved from crashing to the floor by the servant at his back. “We will go to see this man.”

“What, now?” Faith said.

“Why not? Gay, Thomas, you come with us.”

“May I come, too?” Sunny asked. “I adore magicians.”

“But of course,” the maharaja declared, and swept out of the room, servants and guests alike scurrying to catch him up. The rest of us stood or sat where we had been abandoned, looking at one another quizzically. Mrs Goodheart was the first to move, folding her table napkin and rising ponderously to declare, “I believe I’ve had enough dinner. I’ll wish you all good night.”

The spell broken, men hastily swallowed the contents of their glasses and rose to allow the ladies to depart. Most of them would make for the billiards room, along with a number of the women, but I followed Mrs Goodheart up the stairs. My light went out early, and silence fell.

I did not hear when the servant came, turning his key in the well-oiled lock and padding on bare feet across stone and carpet to glance briefly through the bedroom door at my sleeping figure, then padding back out to the corridor to sabotage my door lock and make my rooms a prison. I did not hear the maharaja and his gold-plated Hispano-Suiza filled with high-spirited guests drive back through the gates, bashing the stones of the narrow opening and spewing gravel across the carefully swept lawn. I did not hear the maharaja ask his servant if the deed had been done, nor did I see the two of them go to make ready quarters for me in a quieter portion of The Forts.

I did, on the other hand, hear the motorcar fly past me on its passage back from town, when the violent drop of one fast-spinning tyre into a pot-hole resulted in shouts and shrieks of laughter.