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shivered – and at the same time relaxed. ‘Money?’ she questioned vaguely.
    ‘Have you never felt that there is something odd about Oliver and money? Has he ever told you anything? After all, his mother–’
    ‘Oliver seldom mentions such things. Of course I know he needs money. But about that, you must admit, he has been doing his best.’
    ‘A damned poor best, if you ask me.’ Sebastian lifted a tired chin, and the action seemed to show him not a tired man merely but a sick man as well. ‘I don’t care for your son, you know.’
    ‘I realize that. Oliver is not a very attractive person, I suppose. Although I believe that Lucy–’
    ‘The more fool she.’ Sebastian Dromio’s harsh tone seemed momentarily to soften as he mentioned the girl. ‘I’ve sometimes thought that your abominable fire couldn’t have done worse. If it had been one of the others that Romeo got out the brat might have proved a less poor fish than Oliver.’
    Lady Dromio flushed – but with what emotion it would have been hard to discern. ‘That is rather a brutal thing to say – and gets us nowhere.’
    ‘No more it does.’ Sebastian’s face – one of those faces that harden as they grow old – contrived an appearance of contrition. He shifted restlessly in his chair. ‘The business,’ he said, ‘I have my finger pretty well on the pulse of that. And I keep liking it less and less. But there’s something else.’ His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. ‘Look here, Kate, about that Mrs Gollifer–’
    ‘Mrs Gollifer!’ Lady Dromio drew a careful stitch through her embroidery and then looked up blankly at her brother-in-law.
    ‘Yes, Mrs Gollifer. Is she Oliver’s mistress?’
    Lady Dromio’s expression of astonishment grew – but there was an obscure horror behind it. ‘Sebastian, Oliver is forty, and Mary Gollifer is old enough to be his–’
    ‘Yes, yes, I know all that. Only some people have queer tastes. Otherwise I don’t see–’ Sebastian hesitated. ‘Tell me,’ he said quietly, ‘do you know Oliver to be hiding?’
    ‘I have no idea what you mean.’
    ‘He hasn’t been down here – quietly?’
    ‘Of course not! He’s in America still.’
    ‘He’s no such thing, Kate. I saw Oliver in London at lunchtime today.’
    Lady Dromio said nothing. She rose, walked to another window, and searched the park rather as if expecting her absent son to be lurking behind an elm or in a ha-ha. ‘You spoke to him?’ she asked.
    ‘No, I did not. It was a deuced queer thing. I’d gone into a restaurant to lunch – sometimes, you know, I feel I can’t stick the faces in that damned club – and I had got pretty well through a filthy meal when I became aware of two men getting up from a table on t’other side of a pillar. As they rose their voices reached me for the first time – or I attended to them for the first time – and I’ll be damned if one of them wasn’t Oliver’s. I swung round, pretty thoroughly surprised. I had no more notion than you’ – and Sebastian glanced swiftly at Lady Dromio, silent by her window – ‘that he was back in England. There he was, pretty well within a couple of yards of me. But I saw him only for an instant, for no sooner had our eyes met than he whipped out a handkerchief, buried his nose in it like a fellow being led into a police court and hoping to dodge the photographers, and bolted through the door. Fishy way for a nephew to behave towards his uncle, it seemed to me.’
    ‘It was certainly strange.’ Lady Dromio returned from the window and sat down quietly in her chair. ‘But didn’t you follow?’
    ‘I sat tight. It was too queer to be comfortable, and it struck me at once that Oliver might have got into some pretty stiff pickle. Mightn’t want to be greeted, you know, before this other fellow. You see, I’ve had my doubts for some time. This disappearing into America and not being heard of–’ Sebastian broke off. ‘Look here, Kate, what was