“No, Mark, darling! No… please…”

His hand closed momentarily over hers. Then he was on his feet and had taken up the basket of roses. “Good evening, Mrs. Cartarette,” he said. “We’re robbing your garden for my grandmother. You’re very much ahead of us at Hammer with your roses.”

Kitty Cartarette had turned in by the green archway and was looking thoughtfully at them.

The second Mrs. Cartarette did not match her Edwardian name. She did not look like a Kitty. She was so fair that without her make-up she would have seemed bleached. Her figure was well disciplined and her face had been skilfully drawn up into a beautifully cared-for mask. Her greatest asset was her acquired inscrutability. This, of itself, made a femme fatale of Kitty Cartarette. She had, as it were, been manipulated into a menace. She was dressed with some elaboration and, presumably because she was in the garden, she wore gloves.

“How nice to see you, Mark,” she said. “I thought I heard your voices. Is this a professional call?”

Mark said, “Partly so at least. I ran down with a message for Colonel Cartarette, and I had a look at your gardener’s small girl.”

“How too kind,” she said, glancing from Mark to her stepdaughter. She moved up to him and with her gloved hand took a dark rose from the basket and held it against her mouth.

“What a smell!” she said. “Almost improper, it’s so strong. Maurice is not in, he won’t be long. Shall we go up?”

She led the way to the house. Exotic wafts of something that was not roses drifted in her wake. She kept her torso rigid as she walked and slightly swayed her hips. “Very expensive,” Mark Lacklander thought, “but not entirely exclusive. Why on earth did he marry her?”

Mrs. Cartarette’s pin heels tapped along the flagstone path to a group of garden furniture heaped with cushions. A tray with a decanter and brandy glasses was set out on a white iron table. She let herself down on a swinging seat, put up her feet, and arranged herself for Mark to look at.