Antonia said she didn’t think Melisande Chevret was desperate. ‘It’s her birthday.’

‘For some people that’s cause for desperation. How old is she? Seventy-eight? Eighty-three?’

‘I don’t think she is eighty-three. Don’t be silly.’

‘Sixty-six? The number of the beast.’

‘I don’t think anyone is meant to know her age. I suspect she is a little older than me, though of course she looks younger than me. I am not sure we should mention the word “birthday” at all. It is a cocktail party we’ve been invited to, don’t forget.’

‘I’ve never been to a birthday party masquerading as a cocktail party before. Did you say she had an older sister? So these are the people who bought Kinderhook. Two sisters. Chekhovian, almost.’

‘Melisande pointed out that she and I were the only celebrities in the area. I am not really a celebrity, am I?’

Payne said that Antonia was what was known as a ‘minor celebrity’. ‘You have written five detective novels. There are a number of blogs devoted to you. You were on the box last Friday. That was quite a performance,’ he went on reminiscently. ‘You tore strips off that play.’

Antonia had appeared on Friday Review.

‘I don’t think I was particularly horrid, was I?’

‘You used phrases like a “masterclass in pure theatrical torpor”. You said there was an almost epic scale to the play’s dullness. You said the sets were so horribly huge that even Fritz Lang would have considered them somewhat de trop. You were devastatingly witty. You made everybody laugh. If I were the playwright,’ said Payne, ‘I’d shoot myself with my old army revolver.’

‘Oh nonsense, Hugh. It’s a well-known fact that playwrights thrive on controversy, infamy, censorship and disgrace. As it happens, that particular playwright is already dead – has been dead for more than three hundred years. We are talking about Thomas Middleton.’