“Don’t you have lunch?”

“Well, I do as a rule, but I hadn’t time today because she showed me the advertisement and I rushed straight round to the address, which was Claridge’s-and when I got there, there were about six other girls waiting there too, and no one very pleased about it, if you know what I mean. So I thought, ‘Well, if this has been going on all day, I haven’t got an earthly.’ ”

“And had it?”

“Well, I think it had, because I was the last to go up, and Mrs. Oakley said it was making her feel quite giddy. There was a red-haired girl coming out as I went in, and she stamped her foot at me in the corridor and said in one of those piercing whispers you can hear all over the place, ‘Pure poison-I wouldn’t take it for a thousand a year.’ Then she grinned and said, ‘Well, I suppose I should, but I should end by cutting her throat and my own, and anybody else’s who was handy.’ ”

Justin sounded quite interested-for him.

“What does one say to a total stranger who bursts into confidences about throat-cutting in a corridor at Claridge’s? These exciting things don’t happen to me. You intrigue me. What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Why?’ ”

“How perfectly to the point!”

“And she said, ‘Go and see for yourself. I shouldn’t touch it unless you’re absolutely on your uppers.’ And I said, ‘Well, I am.’ ”

“And are you?”

In a tone of undiminished cheerfulness Dorinda said,

“Just about.”

“Is that the reason why there wasn’t time for lunch?”

He heard her laugh.

“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter now, because I’ve got the job. I went in, and Mrs. Oakley was lying on a sofa with most of the blinds down, all except one which made a spotlight where you had to go and sit and be looked at. It gave me the sort of feeling of being on the stage without any of the proper clothes, or make-up, or anything.”

“Continue.”

“I couldn’t see much to start with, but she sounded fretty. When I got used to the light, she had a lot of fair hair which she was being rather firm with-not letting it go grey, you know. Fortyish, I thought. And she hadn’t ever got out of being a spoilt child-that sort. And the most heavenly pale pink negligée, the kind people have in films, and a little gold bottle of smelling-salts.”