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newspaper business. It’s so like her! Why can’t she just tell the truth and be done with it?’
    The Major decided magnanimously to treat the incident as closed. There was after all still the possibility that he might be able to milk the situation for at least one more drink.
    ‘Not her way, eh? To tell the truth I mean,’ he ventured, staring deeply into his glass.
    His wife, leaning towards him, sighed deeply in a manner which she hoped would convey the easy and natural understanding between them that must lead inevitably to instant consensus on any major issue. The fact that this inclination of the body made it possible for her to rest her hands on the arms of the Major’s chair and push downwards as she rose to her feet, thus releasing the unwelcome upward pressure of her foundation garment, was nothing more than a happy coincidence.
    ‘No indeed,’ she concurred. ‘Though it may be unchristian to say so, Benjy, one has to admit that Lucia and the truth are complete strangers to one another.’
    ‘Not unchristian at all,’ her husband averred. ‘The damn woman’s a liar; no two ways about it.’
    ‘But why is it that nobody else sees that?’ Mapp wailed. ‘Why, when it’s as plain as a pikestaff?’
    ‘Not as bright as you, Liz-girl. Why, I’ve always said that you were as bright as a button. You’ve always seen through her stories, haven’t you?’
    He took a pull at his drink and cast a hopeful glance towards the tantalus.
    ‘All you have to do, surely,’ he went on, ‘is to concentrate on one particularly blatant lie – maybe like knowing this Noël Coward feller – and make sure everyone knows it isn’t true. Shouldn’t be difficult either, not after that letter he wrote her.’
    ‘But how can I, Benjy?’ wailed his wife. ‘After that picture in the
Telegraph
everyone will take it for granted that she knows him – yes, and that vile Gielgud creature as well.’
    ‘No, no,’ the Major replied, shaking his head for greater emphasis. ‘Don’t see that. Don’t see that at all.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Elizabeth asked somewhat plaintively.
    ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure it even proves that Pillson knows him. Yes, all right they were clearly at that restaurant together, but suppose it was the first time they’d ever met? Isn’t it much more likely that the Bracely woman knows him and just introduced him to Pillson because they all happened to be dining at the same place at the same time?’
    ‘Do you think so?’ Elizabeth asked uncertainly.
    ‘Sure of it,’ the Major averred, making an expansive gesture with his by now empty glass to emphasise his certitude. ‘After all, we know that it was after the opera, cos the paper said so, and how many restaurants are open after the opera? Damn few. Anyway, all these theatrical johnnies probably go to the same place – mince around smoking Turkish cigarettes and all that sort of thing.’
    ‘But even if you’re right – and I’m sure you are, Benjy-boy – how can we catch her out?’
    ‘Simple, old girl,’ he responded. ‘Either she knows him or she doesn’t. If she does, then she can invite him down for the weekend. If she doesn’t, she can’t. And we know from that letter you saw that she doesn’t know him, and he doesn’t want to come. All you have to do is keep jabbing away and sooner or later she will run out of excuses. If the horse won’t run, then it won’t run, and that’s all there is to it.’
    ‘Benjy!’ Elizabeth marvelled. ‘Why, that’s positively inspired! Of course that’s what we shall do.’
    Greatly daring, the Major rose and crossed to the fount of his inspiration in a fine display of masculine superiority. It was good for the little woman to know that when she needed advice on a particularly tricky point, then she could turn to the infallible oracle that was her husband.
    ‘Course, the best thing,’ he opined airily while pouring himself another drink, ‘is that once you’ve caught