Today, however, the few regulars who called at the Palladio for an afternoon’s tea and chatter found the usual pavement stall locked up inside the shop, and the shop itself deserted, with a neatly written note sellotaped to the inside of the glass door: Apologies, friends, but Palladio closes early today. Business as usual tomorrow.

They’d never heard the like: Mr Vitalis shutting up shop early? Perhaps there was a woman behind it. After all, he was a man of the world. They were sure there would be some story in it, and surer still that Mr Vitalis would be telling the story tomorrow afternoon over tea.

Not many would have looked for Mr Vitalis in the back of a black cab, for he was known to abhor the things, always choosing to travel by Tube or bus or foot.

‘I’m a social animal at heart, you see,’ he would explain.

And while he was considered something of an aesthete, his tastes could not be said to be expensive in most areas, so some might have been more surprised still to see the taxi drop him outside a Park Lane hotel called the Achilles, where, having paid the driver, he talked animatedly for several minutes with the uniformed doorman. He then entered the hotel lobby, while the doorman stared evenly at the traffic roaring past the entrance.

Mr Vitalis looked as though such hotels were part of his everyday existence, walking up to the reception desk with a polite smile on his face and his eyes as dark as the shiniest black olives.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘I’m expecting a friend. I wonder, has he arrived yet? His name is Mr Devereux, an American.’

The clerk checked the register, then remembered.

‘Oh yes, sir,’ he said. ‘No, Mr Devereux hasn’t arrived yet. We have some mail waiting for him. That’s why I recall the name.’

Mr Vitalis looked surprised.

‘But I am right, am I not? I mean, he is due today?’

The clerk flipped over a page of the register. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘We have Mr Devereux’s name in for tomorrow.’

‘Ah.’ Mr Vitalis nodded. ‘I must have a crossed line then. Well, tomorrow it is. Thank you.’

And with that he turned and walked back through the lobby, pushing his way out of the main door, which he held open courteously for an elderly lady and the fruits of her shopping trip. On the hotel steps, he paused again to exchange some words with the doorman. Not many words this time, but they seemed to leave their impression, for the doorman’s cheeks were crimson with shame as Mr Vitalis walked towards the taxi rank, where he opened the door of a waiting cab, heaved himself in and slammed it shut behind him.

9