I couldn’t help myself: I laughed aloud.

And then she stood up.

At that very instant, as if in a scene from one of those two-act comedies the St. Tancred’s Amateur Dramatic Society put on at the parish hall, a loud voice in the outer room said, “What in blue blazes do you think you’re doing?”

It was Feely.

She came storming—there’s no other way to express it—storming into the room.

“You know as well as I do, you, you filthy little swine, that no one is allowed—”

Naked, except for a few soap bubbles, Phyllis Wyvern stood staring at Feely through the swirling steam.

Time, for an instant, was frozen.

I was seized by the mad thought that I’d been suddenly thrust into Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus, but I quickly rejected it: Even though Feely’s expression was rather like the “I’ll-huff-and-I’ll-puff” look on the face of the wind god, Zephyrus, Phyllis Wyvern was no Venus—not by a long chalk.

Feely’s face was turning the color of water in which beets have been boiled.

“I … I …

“I beg your pardon,” she said, and I could have cheered! Even in the rush of that bizarre moment, I couldn’t help thinking that it was the first time in Feely’s life she had ever uttered those words.

Like a courtier withdrawing from the Royal Presence, she backed slowly out of the room.

“Hand me my towel,” commanded the bare-naked queen, and stepped out of the bath.

“Oh, here you are,” Bun Keats said behind me. “The door was open, so I—”

She caught sight of me and shut her mouth abruptly.

“Well, well, well,” said Phyllis Wyvern. “The delinquent Bun condescends at last to grace us with her presence.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Wyvern. I’ve been seeing to the unpacking.”

“ ‘I’m sorry, Miss Wyvern. I’ve been seeing to the unpacking.’ God help us.”

She mimicked her assistant’s voice in the same cruel and cutting way that Daffy had mimicked mine, but in this case, though, the imitation was brilliant. Professional.