‘It’s not a question——’ Mrs Pinkerton was beginning. ‘Come in!’ she cried in an exasperated voice.

Lurgan the maid put her long wedge of a face round the door. ‘I beg your pardon, Madame, I’m sure,’ she said, ‘but I put the Shetlands to air an hour ago and now I cannot get into the bathroom …’

Three or four minutes after this announcement Tessa, thoughtfully taking her hair down with Baudouin propped up before her, was surprised by the entrance of Sydney, unusually animated.

‘Mrs Pinkerton and Rosina,’ said Sydney, ‘cannot get into their bathroom. They simply can’t. I’ve been watching. Both their doors are open and they take it in turns to come and rattle incredulously at the bathroom door. It is really funny; I wish you would peep out and look. That determined little rat of a maid of theirs is being the man of the party; she heaved her shoulder against the door just now as though she were going to force it, and Rosina cried, “No, don’t, I forbid you – there may be somebody there!”’

‘Oh, poor things,’ said Tessa, ‘how awkward for them! Do you think they will send for the manager?’

Tessa, with her fluffy hair falling down round the innocent, interrogatory O of her face looked younger, looked really rather – there was no other word for it – sweet. She wrapped her kimono closer round her and followed Sydney into the dusk of their end of the corridor, from whence they expected to watch unobserved. But a moment later Miss Pinkerton, down at the other end, turned in their direction a wild face of appeal. She hesitated, then something in the essential Tessa brought her towards them. She ignored Tessa’s deshabille. ‘Oh, Mrs Bellamy,’ she began, ‘I wonder if you … It is rather embarrassing …’

‘I know. I am so sorry. Have you any idea?’

‘We cannot understand,’ said Miss Pinkerton. ‘We cannot believe——’

‘It can’t be deliberate,’ said Tessa consolingly.

‘Why don’t you ring for the manager?’ asked Sydney, anxious to precipitate a crisis.

‘I think it would be better for us, under the circumstances, to send for Madame.’

‘But it may be a man.’

‘It cannot be a gentleman …’

Mrs Pinkerton appeared at the door of her bedroom. She looked expressionlessly out from under an Olympic cloud of hair and seemed immense. She said: ‘My sister may have told you of our own difficulty?’

‘You’ve no idea?’ Tessa said again hopefully.