‘Hardly know we had more than fifty pairs of feet tramping all over the place. It’s all very neat and tidy down there … they’ve been frightfully good, the staff … worked like Trojans. They really do deserve a bit of a rest, don’t you think?’ He turned back; she was still sitting at her desk. ‘We all do in my candid opinion, all go back to normal, what do you think, ummm?’

She looked up at him and smiled suddenly. ‘What do you call normal?’

‘Well … you know, the place to ourselves for a bit … just for a time. Minna is rather exhausting after a while; that voice. Fearfully monotonous. Americans have no kind of nuance, do they? No cadence. A flat nasal drone or else machine-gun bursts, rat-a-tat-tat. Minna does that. It’s not that I feel I am a target particularly, but it’s just the way she sort of sprays round the room, wildly at all and sundry. One can’t duck.’

Cuckoo stacked the unopened letters in a neat pile with a listless hand. ‘Poor Minna. I do love her, you know. Anyway, I expect now that you have shown Count Grottorosso the way out, as it were, she’ll be off pretty soon. I rather think it’s St Tropez next stop. All right? We can’t push her, can we?’

‘Good gracious, no. Not push her.’ He picked up a small silver object. ‘I say, this is awfully jolly, I don’t remember it, do I?’

‘Had it ages, a sugar vase, Hester Bateman. I keep odd buttons in it.’

‘Ah yes, so I see. And the children, young Marcus and Leni?’

‘What about them?’ She turned to face him directly.

‘Well: almost three weeks now, you know? Don’t you think, perhaps a gentle hint?’ ‘Hint?’

‘Of course, one is extremely grateful for all he did that day … that goes without saying, naturally. But don’t you think that, well …’ He braced himself and thrust hands into his blazer pockets. Took a firm stand. ‘Paid our dues handsomely, settled the debt?’

‘I really don’t consider their presence here as part of a debt, Archie. I love having them there, but if they are getting in your way, I mean fussing you …’

‘Good gracious, no! Don’t blame it on me, my dear … they don’t fuss me. I keep out of the way. I was thinking, as a matter of fact, about you.’

‘Well, I’m absolutely fine, they don’t worry me a scrap. And in any case, they’ll have to go back shortly; he’s got a living to earn. I just want to be perfectly sure that he doesn’t get mixed up with the Italians … that’s all. It wouldn’t be fair.’

‘How could he get mixed up? With Grottorosso, you mean?’ From somewhere at the back of his head he heard Minerva’s voice. ‘There’s been some kind of an accident .. Wolf Hagel, the blond boy.’

He tapped his pocket and took out his cigarette case.