The vicar was coming back up the stairs, surprisingly, taking them two at a time.

“Sit back, dear lady, and close your eyes,” he said in a soothing voice I hadn’t heard before.

“Miss Keats says Miss Wyvern is indisposed,” I told him, as he applied the compress to her brow. “So perhaps we’d better not mention—”

“Of course. Of course,” the vicar said.

I would invent some harmless excuse later.

A voice behind me said, “Bun? What on earth …?”

I spun round.

Phyllis Wyvern, dressed in an orchid-colored lounging outfit and looking as fit as all the fiddles in the London Philharmonic, was wafting along the corridor towards us.

“She’s suffering a migraine, Miss Wyvern,” the vicar said. “I’ve just fetched a compress …”

“Bun? Oh, my poor Bun!”

Bun gave a little moan.

Phyllis Wyvern snatched the compress away from the vicar and reapplied it with her own hands to Bun’s temples.

“Oh, my poor, dearest Bun. Tell Philly where it hurts.”

Bun rolled her eyes.

“Marion!” Phyllis Wyvern called, snapping her fingers, and a tall, striking woman in horn-rimmed glasses, who must once have been a great beauty, appeared as if from nowhere.

“Take Bun to her room. Tell Dogger to summon a doctor at once.”

As Bun Keats was led away, Phyllis Wyvern stuck out her hand.

“I’m Phyllis Wyvern, Vicar,” she said, clasping his hand in both of hers and giving it a little caress. “Thank you for your prompt attention. This has been a trying day all round: first poor Patrick McNulty, and now my dearest Bun. It’s most distressing—we’re all such a large, happy family, you know.”

I had a quick flash of déjà vu: Somewhere I’d seen this moment before.

Of course I had! It could have been a scene from any one of Phyllis Wyvern’s films.