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low as possible. Only the sucking pig remained a problem. What the butcher had delivered had clearly not been dragged from its mother’s teats – or if it had the swine had never been weaned. It was in facta full-size boar and was so far beyond the dimensions of the oven and the experience of the chef that it had only been by cutting the middle section out of the beast and sewing the head and the haunches together that the thing had been cooked at all. Croxley, who had checked its progress, had been in two minds whether or not to have it brought in with an apple between its tusks. In the end he had decided as usual to do approximately what he was told, but he wasn’t looking forward to Lord Petrefact’s reaction.
    Now as he followed Yapp into the dining-room he was tempted to have a last word with the chef, but already Lord Petrefact had taken his place at the head of the table and was eyeing the turtle shell with genuine regret.
    ‘I’m afraid I can’t join you,’ he told Yapp. ‘Doctor’s orders, you know. And in any case I feel strongly that wildlife should not be massacred for mere human consumption.’ He turned a baleful eye on Croxley. ‘I’m surprised you ordered genuine turtle soup.’
    Croxley looked balefully back and decided that enough was enough. ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘The shell came from the Aquarium at Lowestoft and the contents from Fortnum & Mason.’
    ‘Really?’ said Lord Petrefact, managing to smile at Yapp with one side of his face while glaring at Croxley with the other. But it was Yapp who saved Croxley from further harassment by launching into a disquisition on the origins of mock turtle. He was beginning to enjoy himself; whatever reservations he had about the sourceof the Petrefact wealth, and they remained as unequivocal as ever, had been salved for the moment by the thought that he was seeing how the rich really lived. It was, as Croxley had said, like visiting a museum, and if he came away with nothing else he would have gained fresh insight into the socio-domestic psychology of the capitalist class at its most refined. He was particularly struck by the quirky relationship which existed between Lord Petrefact and his confidential secretary. It was almost as though the old man demanded or provoked defiance from Croxley, and a strange camaraderie of mutual dislike seemed to bind them together.
    ‘No, I won’t have another helping, thank you,’ Croxley said when he had finished his soup. But Lord Petrefact insisted. ‘We can’t have you wasting away, my dear chap,’ he said with his disturbingly lopsided smile, and the secretary suffered the indignity of having his plate filled by one of the waiters. It was the same with the caviar. While Lord Petrefact toyed with what looked like boiled fish fingers and Yapp had thoroughly enjoyed two helpings, Croxley clearly hadn’t wanted three.
    ‘You ought to know by now that I always have a light supper,’ he said, ‘I can’t sleep on a full stomach.’
    ‘You’re fortunate to have a stomach to sleep on. I lie awake trying to remember when I last had a thoroughly good dinner.’
    ‘About the time you ate that oyster,’ said Croxley, a remark that evidently had some esoteric significance because it produced from Lord Petrefact a smile soreptilian that even Yapp could see that it was not entirely spontaneous. For a moment it looked as though the old man was about to explode but he managed to control himself.
    ‘And how do you like the wine?’ he enquired turning to Yapp. Yapp considered the wine for the first time.
    ‘I’m not a connoisseur but it goes very well with the caviar.’
    ‘Does it indeed? Not too sweet?’
    ‘If anything a little on the dry side,’ said Yapp.
    Lord Petrefact looked from him to the decanter dubiously and finally to Croxley.
    ‘Chablis,’ said Croxley cryptically.
    Again a glance of venomous significance seemed to pass between the two but it was with the arrival of the next dish that Lord