Cuckoo got to her feet slowly, still with surprise. ‘What is it? Where from?’

‘That dummy-thing. In my office.’ Archie nodded his head once or twice. ‘I was taking the damned thing down before the Italian fellow arrives. Looks a bit, well, silly stuck there. You know.’

‘What’s under your arm?’ said Cuckoo.

‘Oh. Yes. This. Its head,’ said Archie, lifting it by the jointed neck.

‘You make a great Salome, Charles dear,’ said Minerva.

‘Well, they rather caught me at it. I was tidying up. All this wicked girl’s fault really. She dared him to try it on. Didn’t you? Fits too; astonishingly. It looks quite indecent without boots.’

‘But he looks very fine, doesn’t he?’ Leni stroked a sleeve. ‘I wish that he could wear it always.’

‘Too damned tight,’ said Marcus. ‘And hot, the collar’s choking me.’ He turned slowly, admiring himself in the long gilt mirror between the windows. Leni removed a jar of flowers from the console table so that he might see better. ‘It is pretty good, isn’t it? I mean, quite glamorous. Not bad, not bad at all … cuffs a bit short. But did he actually wear this?’

‘Not that. Not that very one,’ said Archie, placing the head carefully in the seat of a chair. ‘It’s a copy … Gieves did it. Cost a fortune, but that’s what he wore. The White Uniform. A Lieutenant-Colonel, Duke of Nassau’s 29th Infantry Brigade. His greatest joy, poor fellow.’

‘Was there a hat … a helmet?’

‘Yes. Exactly like his father’s … sort of fore and aft. Not very becoming.’

‘And he fought in this outfit?’

Archie shook his head sadly. ‘No. No, never fought. He was too fragile, and too dangerous politically; he was, I fear, only a Toy Soldier, you see.’

‘What are these, so pretty,’ said Leni touching the tarnished stars on the jacket.

‘The Order of St Stephen, and that one is the Parmesan Order of St George. I say, you’d better got out of it all, I could talk all night, you know. But I must get it packed away, and I still have half the script-thing to finish before tomorrow.’

‘How do you find it, or shouldn’t I ask?’ said Minerva sitting on the arm of the settee.

Archie looked across at her as he retrieved the head from the chair, smoothed its hair. ‘Interesting. Very condensed, of course. I suppose you have to. One or two things I’m not very happy about, sort them out perhaps. Come along, let’s get you out of that.’

Marcus turned away from his mirror, faced the two women, hand on hip, one arm raised in a salute. ‘Exit the Toy Soldier. Do you fancy me then?’ He was grinning.