‘Are they?’ Antonia frowned. Hugh did talk awful rot sometimes. ‘Do you mean gentlewomen of a certain age keep secret lovers or that they have a predilection for madmen?’ She was amazed to see Lady Grylls nod.

‘Apparently madmen make jolly good lovers. No inhibitions and oodles of untapped energy.’ Lady Grylls held her cigarette at what in her youth must have been considered a modish angle. ‘I did read about it somewhere.’

‘Might be a madwoman,’ Antonia said. ‘I mean the person behind the death threats.’ Madwomen were always greater fun than madmen – in books and films at least. More terrifying, for some reason… A Single White Male wouldn’t be quite the same thing as A Single White Female. The madwoman in the attic… The female of the species deadlier than the male -

‘More tea?’ Lady Grylls said and she rang for Provost.

Provost was a faded, sandy-haired man in his mid-forties. In the normal course of things he appeared wearing a comfortable cardigan but, presumably on account of Mr Jonson’s visit, he had changed into a black alpaca coat, stiff shirt, winged collar, black tie and striped trousers and looked every inch the stage butler. He was rather a gloomy individual; however, his face lit up the moment Lady Grylls spoke to him. A look of complicity passed between them. She murmured something that to Antonia’s ears sounded like, ‘On with the show!’ – causing Provost actually to smile. It was clear he adored her. Who said the feudal spirit was dead?

‘The Prince of Wales has Debo Devonshire. Provost has me. I am his confidante,’ Lady Grylls declared after he left the room. ‘He says only I understand him. Something in that.’

The tea was brought by Provost’s son Nicholas, a deadly pale, truculent-looking boy of sixteen, with spiked-up hair and a ‘sleeper’ in his right ear. He had left school the year before and come to live with his father. He had been caught sniffing glue and, apparently, was interested in magic. ’Pull up your trousers, Nicholas,’ Lady Grylls ordered in a stentorian voice. ‘Not at half mast when I am around, I’ve told you hundreds of times… How’s the invisible hat doing?’