Martha Triggett had a husband, a small and self-effacing man named Edward, who was a clerk at a betting-shop. Martha, who was also small, though plump, was anything but self-effacing. A most gregarious soul, who loved the limelight and loved company, she had worked up a nice little business: one ‘school’ for beauticians and women’s hair stylists, and another for hairdressers for men. She gave each a month’s training, good training as far as it went, then sent them out to get jobs in a London hard-pressed for hairdressers of either sex.

She also ran another ‘school’ in conjunction with these two: a school for bag-snatchers and pick-pockets, who became remarkably skilled at their jobs. She called this the Charm School. Aunty, if asked, could not explain precisely how this school had begun; although under pressure she made many brave attempts, offering remarkable variations on how she had seen what a good thing the Charm School could become. There were, however, two things, one a phrase and one a theme, common to all the variations.

“Oh, my dear,” she would say, her bright blue eyes lighting up, “it was a stroke of genius. I have to admit it was a stroke of genius?’ With which she would puff out her pigeon bosom and tuck away imaginary loose strands of her immaculate mass of gold-blonde hair-it had not changed colour in twenty years — and accept the exclamations, the awe, the congratulations of her listeners.

And, sooner or later, she would say: “Of course, I never influenced anybody to be bad-not even in the early days of the Charm School. If a person wants to be strictly honest, I always say, let them! But the truth is, dears, not everybody is honest. In fact —” she would survey her pupils with a wicked gleam in her eye, and go on: “It’s not so very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff, I can tell you! But it started by accident, really — I left a purse out one day and a light-fingered little basket had a pound note out of it in no time. I sent him home with a flea in his ear, I can tell you.”