Dawson reached for the menu card in its clip, and wrote quickly on the back-

_The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close._

Wigram nodded appreciatively. Eliot wondered how early in his patient's illness Dawson had composed the phrase.

'I'll take it to the Queen at once, then have it telephoned to Portland Place.' Dawson rose.

'I'll come with you,' said Eliot, abandoning his fish. 'I'm not hungry.'

The remaining men at the table also stood. Lady Beckett had entered the dining-room.

Nancy Beckett was better known than Eliot in Mayfair or Monte Carlo or Manhattan. Her social star had twinkled before cultivating Americans in London society had moved from the freakish to the smart. Her hair was cut square and loose like Greta Garbo's, and had never been a richer shade of auburn. She had large green eyes and a pert nose. Her pale skin, as clear as a silk mask, was submerged regularly under mud-packs in Bond Street. Her figure represented a slim-waisted trophy for self-discipline. She wore a black silk calf-length dress, and in deference to the melancholy evening no jewellery except a diamond the size of a humbug.

She exchanged a smile with her husband. Her place was next to Lady Evesham, a lady-in-waiting with pale grey hair, which Nancy suspected she would have loved to peroxide.

'I was so thrilled at Sir Eliot's VC,' Lady Evesham began. 'I was a VAD nurse during the war, you know, at the base hospital at Wimereux-the medical men were terrible old dug-outs. It was such a boost for our morale-a doctor at the front winning the supreme decoration. That terrible March of 1918! Ludendorff taking us completely by surprise on the Somme, poor Hubert Gough sacked for retreating, the Germans expected in the Channel ports any day, and Douglas Haig's wonderful order about "Our backs to the wall."'

Nancy was aware that the war had been conducted for Britain largely by members of Lady Evesham's own family.