‘Darling!’ Beatrice protested. ‘That’s part of the fun! It’s called fair play.’

‘I am sorry, but tricksy whodunits irritate me to screaming point.’ That means she doesn’t like my books, Antonia thought. She saw Beatrice mouth at her, Pay no attention.

‘Same as church music and Dickens’ novels, which I used to love,’ Ingrid went on. ‘I used to have a dog named Pip.’ Both women were terribly well spoken, though Ingrid’s voice was deep and gravelly. They brought to mind Cheltenham Ladies’ College, or even Benenden. There was something almost parodically Pathe-like about their diction. Were they actresses? Speech therapists? Bridge hostesses? (Did bridge hostesses still exist?)

‘Not every crime has a punishment, every mystery a solution and every story an ending,’ Ingrid declared some-what inconsequentially.

‘Ingrid prefers excursions into the – how shall I put it? The darker reaches of the human psyche. Don’t you, my sweet?’ Beatrice said. ‘It’s affected the way she looks at things. Honestly. For example, she says – shall I tell Miss Darcy?’

‘Tell her what?’ Ingrid said absently. Her attention seemed to be distracted by a woman and a little girl and her eyes followed them as they walked across the hall towards the exit.

‘Ingrid says I sometimes do things which I have no recollection of having done. She suggests I have fugues.’

‘I never said you had fugues.’ Ingrid was still looking in the direction of the exit.

‘All right. I did do something.’ Beatrice heaved a histrionic sigh. ‘But it happened only once and that was so silly.’ ‘I like Patricia Highsmith,’ Ingrid said suddenly. ‘Now there’s a highly original writer who never allowed her books to become calcified by cliche.’

‘Some of them are very good,’ Antonia agreed. ‘Not the later ones though.’