I realized at once that a great actress can never be greater than when she’s starring in her own life.

Tears sprang to Bun Keats’s eyes, but she bent over and began picking up soggy towels.

“I don’t think these rooms are part of the agreement, Miss Wyvern,” she said. “I’d already laid out your bath in the north wing.”

“Mop up this mess,” Phyllis Wyvern said, ignoring her. “Use the towels. There’s nothing worse than a wet floor. Someone could slip and break their neck.”

I took the opportunity to make myself scarce.

Outside, the weather had worsened. I watched from the drawing room window as the snow, driven by a merciless north wind, blurred the outlines of the vans and lorries. By late afternoon, the wind had lessened a little and the stuff was now coming straight down in the gathering dark.

I turned from the window to Daffy, who was sunk deep into an armchair, her legs dangling over the arms. She was reading Bleak House again.

“I love books where it’s always raining,” she had once told me. “So much like real life.” I wasn’t sure if this was one of her clever insults, so I did not reply.

“It’s snowing like stink outside,” I said.

“It always snows outside. Never inside,” she said without looking up from her book. “And don’t say ‘stink.’ It’s common.”

“Do you think Father will make it home from London?”

Daffy shrugged. “If he does, he does. If he doesn’t, he can bunk over the night at Aunt Felicity’s. She doesn’t usually charge him more than a couple of quid for bed and breakfast.”

She reversed herself in the chair, making it clear that the conversation was at an end.

“I met Phyllis Wyvern this morning,” I said.

Daffy did not reply, but I saw that her eyes had stopped moving across the page. At least I had her attention.