Mrs Pinkerton shook her head. ‘One doesn’t like to be seen standing here,’ she said, and, an invitation seeming to be explicit, they followed her back into her room. They must have been the first in the Hotel to cross that threshold; it was a tribute to the humanity of Tessa. Keeping the door a little open, they listened and heard the uninterrupted crash of water from two taps turned full on. Sydney covertly pulled the Tatler towards her and glanced at its pages, but the stricken air of the two ladies pervaded the room and began to oppress her. She realized that this must be something worse for them than not, simply, getting what they paid for. It went deeper than that. They were stupid but not, she felt, vulgar; all this lace and leather, monograms everywhere and massive encrustations of silver meant less to them, probably, than to herself, to whom wealth and position would have been conveniences to be made use of. They were part of the immense assumption on which the Pinkertons based their lives. The Pinkertons imposed themselves on the world by conviction. The damage at which they now stood aghast was not a personal affront, and they were ennobled by the absence of personal resentment. The poor old things had, after all, ventured out into the world along a kind of promontory.

Lurgan came in and stood by the door. ‘You would ’ave thought,’ said she, ‘that ’e would at least ’ave noticed Madame’s Shetlands, ’anging by the radiator.’

‘I don’t see why you should assume that it’s——’

‘Ark!’ said Lurgan, putting up a hand peremptorily.

The taps had been turned off and a fine baritone voice rose clear at the cessation of the water. ‘Hail, gladdening Light …’ he sang: it was an evening hymn.

‘Singing!’ said Lurgan. It was inexpressible.

‘It’s a lovely hymn,’ Tessa said, propitiatory. Her face lighted up; she looked round at them. ‘I expect,’ she said, ‘it’s the clergyman. There was that Mr Milton.’

‘One would have expected greater delicacy,’ said Mrs Pinkerton, and indeed on that score Tessa did feel Milton to be indefensible. The testimony of the radiator … She looked helplessly at Sydney who, overcome at the moment by a simultaneous desire to yawn and to laugh, suggested that they should go back to their rooms – since there seemed nothing at all to be done – and leave the Pinkertons and Lurgan to their vigil.

‘One could take steps …’ Mrs Pinkerton was saying, frozen into an attitude of reflection.

‘Or would you wait till tomorrow to do so, and just let him finish his hymn now and come out?’