Said it would be bad for her career, the wrong kind of publicity, couldn’t I see? I don’t know what to make of it.’ Lady Grylls shook her head. ‘It’s so unreal, if you know what I mean. First Corinne’s call from Paris. Out of the blue. Her first call in years, saying someone wants to kill her! I had to pinch myself. Then, only a couple of minutes later, another phone call, would you believe it? This time from some private detective agency acting on Corinne’s behalf.’

‘French detectives?’

‘English. The call came from London. Corinne hadn’t so much as mentioned them! An elderly duffer’s voice. A Mr Jonson. Droning away. Mademoiselle Coreille had employed their services before. Mademoiselle Coreille was a highly valued client. By that,’ Lady Grylls added with a sardonic curl of her lip, ‘he must mean that the silly gel paid him a fortune in fees.’

How many people still said ‘gel’ instead of ‘girl’? Antonia wondered about the vagaries of upper-class pronunciation. ‘Could the whole thing be some elaborate hoax?’ she suggested. ‘Today is 1st April after all.’

‘April Fool, eh? Of course it is. That’s the kind of thing Peverel would do.’ Peverel was Lady Grylls’s other nephew, the one, she had told Antonia, of whom she was not fond. ‘Oh well, I’d be only too glad if it turned out to be a hoax. But somehow I don’t think it was. The poor gel sounded genuinely frightened.’

‘Hardly a gel,’ Major Payne said. ‘She is fifty-five. I am only two and a half years younger than her. Am I a boy to you?’

‘Of course you are, darling. You’ll always be a boy to me. Though I must admit it is easier with Corinne. You do look grown-up, you see, while she – I mean, look at her.’ Lady Grylls waved her hand towards the mantelpiece. ‘In one of those photos she is twenty-five, in the other forty-six. Can you tell which is which? I can’t. Not without looking at the dates on the back.’