‘Is that to be blamed on the curse as well?’ Lady Grylls appeared amused. ‘You don’t have to speak of the Royal Family in such hushed tones, Provost. Ridiculous. I don’t suppose you still pray for the Royal Family, do you? You do? Goodness. Remnant parties were the stuff of legend. One had to be terribly amusing or good-looking or fascinating or outrageous to get an invitation to a Remnant party. Not any longer, it seems. Still, they appear to have been getting up to all sorts of silly things. The latest craze – there was something about it in the Mail. What was it? Miltonesque litanies?’

‘Shakespearean capers, my lady.’

‘Sounds like the kind of thing that would drive me mad. Who was the ugly character in Shakespeare who lived on an island?’

‘Caliban, m’lady.’

‘Are you sure, Provost? I thought the Caliban was a somewhat extreme Afghan nationalist movement.’

‘That’s the Taliban, m’lady.’

‘I wonder if the stepson will be at the funeral. The stepson is subject to sudden and intense disorientation, or so they say. His head, apparently, poses great problems for the medical brains of Harley Street. They keep sending him to some terribly expensive place, but then he comes back and the whole thing starts all over again. He hates his stepfather. Hated, one should say. I understand he threatened to kill him on a great number of occasions.’

2

Conversation Piece

‘Do correct me if I am wrong, my dear, but you seem to be enhaloing the name La Sorcière with a whole new morbid aura,’ said the former Gerard Fenwick, now the thirteenth Earl Remnant.

‘I am certain they are all involved in some way, the whole Sorcière set. Clarissa and Glover and Miss Tilling and Dr Sylvester-Sale,’ Felicity Fenwick said. ‘And the Hunters. The Sorcière Six, as the press may well dub them one day. On the analogy of the Tapas Seven.’