Just what I was thinking," agreed Timothy. "So what's the tie-up?"

"Why should there be a tie-up?"

"Because, my sweet, feather-headed nit-wit though she may be, and indeed is, the Lady Nest doesn't make a bosom-friend of a brassy-haired widow on the up-and-up without having some strong inducement so to do."

"And they say women are spiteful!" exclaimed Beulah scornfully. "Do you also imagine there's a tie-up between her and Dan Seaton-Carew? She's a friend of his as well."

"Good God!" said Timothy. "I wonder if there's any insanity in the Ellerbecks?"

"Seaton-Carew is considered to be rather an attractive type."

"What does he attract? Pond-life?"

"Apparently, Lady Nest Poulton - if you call her a form of pond-life."

"No, but an unsteady type. Sort of woman who used to go to Limehouse for a thrill in the wicked twenties. That may be it, of course - though I should rather describe your Charles Street set-up as a menagerie."

"Really, Timothy!" she expostulated. "Lots of perfectly respectable people come to the house!"

"I will grant you a sprinkling of fairly harmless types, who probably feel that if Lady Nest knows Mrs. Haddington she must be all right -"

"You don't suppose that Colonel Cartmel or Sir Roderick Vickerstown would be influenced by that, do you?"

"No, my love, I don't. It is well-known that both these aged crocodiles will lend the cachet of their presence to almost any house where the food and the wines are firstclass. Does your respected employer buy exclusively on the black market?"

"If I knew I shouldn't tell you. After all, she does employ me!"

"So she does. What, by the way, is your precise status in the house? Yes, I know she calls you her secretary, but you appear to me to spend half your time chasing round London with a shopping-list."