Prunella said to Mr. Markos, “I’m tightish. How awful.”

“Are you? Eat some olives. Stuff down lots of those cheese things. You’re not really very tight.”

“Promise? All right, I will,” said Prunella and was as good as her word. A car came up the avenue.

“Here is Miss Verity Preston,” said Mr. Markos. “Did we tell you she was lunching?”

“No!” she exclaimed and blew out a little shower of cheese straw. “How too frightful, she’s my godmother.”

“Don’t you like her?”

“I adore her. But she won’t like to see me flown with fizz so early in the day. Or ever. And as a matter of fact it’s not my form at all, by and large,” said Prunella, swallowing most of an enormous mouthful of cheese straw and helping herself to more. “I’m a sober girl.”

“You’re a divine girl. I doubt if Gideon deserves you.”

“You’re absolutely right. The cheese straws and olives are doing the trick. I shan’t go on about being drunk. People who do that are such a bore, always, don’t you feel? And anyway I’m rapidly becoming sober.” As if to prove it she had begun to whisper again.

The Markoses went to meet Verity. Prunella thought of following them but compromised by getting up from her swinging seat, which she did in a quickly controlled flounder.

“Godma V,” she said. And when they were close enough to each other she hung herself about Verity’s neck and was glad to do so.

“Hullo, young party,” said Verity, surprised by this effusion and not knowing what to do about it. Prunella sat down abruptly and inaccurately on the swinging chair.

The Markoses, father and son, stood one on each side of her smiling at Verity, who thought that her godchild looked like a briar rose between a couple of succulent exotics. “They will absorb her,” Verity thought, “into their own world and one doesn’t know what that may be. Was Syb by any chance right? And ought I to take a hand? What about her Aunt Boo?” Boo was Syb’s flighty sister. “I’d better talk to Prue and I suppose write to Boo, who ought to have come back and taken some responsibility instead of sending vague cables from Acapulco.” She realized that Nikolas Markos was talking to her.

“—hope you approve of champagne at this hour.”

“Lovely,” Verity said hastily, “but demoralizing.”

“That’s what I found, Godma V,” whispered Prunella, lurching about in her swinging chair.

“For Heaven’s sake,” thought Verity, “the child’s tipsy.”

But when Mr. Markos had opened the portfolio, tenderly drawn out its contents and laid them on the garden table, which he dusted with his handkerchief, Prunella had so far recovered as to give a fairly informed comment on them.

“They’re the original plans, I think. The house was built for my I don’t know how many times great-grandfather. You can see the date is 1780. He was called Lord Rupert Passcoigne. My mama was the last Passcoigne of that family and inherited Quintern from her father. I hope I’ve got it right. The plans are rather pretty, aren’t they, with the coat-of-arms and all the trimmings and nonsense?”

“My dear child,” said Mr. Markos, pouring over them, “they’re exquisite. It’s — I really can’t tell you how excited I am to see them.”

“There are some more underneath.‘’

“We mustn’t keep them too long in this strong light. Gideon, put this one back in the portfolio. Carefully. Gently. No, let me do it”

He looked up at Verity. “Have you seen them?” he asked. “Come and look. Share my gloat, do.”

Verity had seen them, as it happened, many years ago when Sybil had first married her second husband, but she joined the party round the table. Mr. Markos had arrived at a plan for the gardens at Quintern and dwelt on it with greedy curiosity.

“But this has never been carried out,” he said. “Has it? I mean, nicest possible daughter-in-law-to-be, the gardens today bear little resemblance in concept to this exquisite schema. Why?”

“Don’t ask me,” said Prunella. “Perhaps they ran out of cash or something. I rather think Mummy and Bruce were cooking up a grand idea about carrying out some of the scheme but decided we couldn’t afford it. If only they hadn’t lost the Black Alexander they could have done it.”

“Yes indeed,” said Verity.

Mr. Markos looked up quickly. “The Black Alexander!” he said. “What can you mean? You can’t mean—”

“Oh, yes, of course. You’re a collector.”

“I am indeed. Tell me.”

She told him and when she had done so he was unusually quiet for several seconds.

“But how immensely rewarding it would be—” he began at last and then pulled himself up. “Let us put the plans away,” he said. “They arouse insatiable desires. I’m sure you understand, don’t you Miss Preston? I’ve allowed myself to build — not castles in Spain but gardens in Kent, which is much more reprehensible. Haven’t I?”

How very intelligent, Verity thought, finding his black eyes focused on hers, this Mr. Markos is. He seems to be making all sorts of assumptions and I seem to be liking it.

“I don’t remember that I saw the garden plan before,” she said. “It would have been a perfect marriage, wouldn’t it?”

“Ah. And you have used the perfect phrase for it.”

“Would you like to keep the plans here,” asked Prunella, “to have another gloat?”

He thanked her exuberantly and luncheon having been announced, they went indoors.

Since that first dinner-party, which now seemed quite a long time ago, and the visit to Greengages on the day of Sybil’s death, Verity had not seen much of the Markoses. She had been twice asked to Mardling for cocktail parties and on each occasion had been unable to go and one evening Markos Senior had paid an unheralded visit to Keys House, having spotted her, as he explained, in her garden and acted on that spur of the moment. They had got on well, having tastes in common and he showing a pretty acute appreciation of the contemporary theatre. Verity had been quite surprised to see the time when he finally took his stylish leave of her. The next thing that she had heard of him was that he had “gone abroad,” a piece of information conveyed by village telegraph through Mrs. Jim. And “abroad,” as far as Verity knew, he had remained until this present reappearance.

They had their coffee in the library, now completely finished. Verity wondered what would happen to all the books if, as Mrs. Jim had reported, Mr. Markos really intended to sell Mardling. This was by no means the sterile, unhandled assembly made by a monied person more interested in interior decoration than the written word.

As soon as she came in she saw above the fireplace the painting called Several Pleasures by Troy.

“So you did hang it there,” she said. “How well it looks.”

“Doesn’t it?” Mr. Markos agreed. “I dote on it. Who would think it was painted by a policeman’s Missus.”

Verity said: “Well, I can’t see why not. Although I suppose you’d say a rather exceptional policeman.”

“So you know him?”

“I’ve met him, yes.”

“I see. So have I. I met him when I bought the picture. I should have thought him an exotic in the Force but perhaps the higher you go at the Yard the rarer the atmosphere.”

“He visited me this morning.”

Prunella said: “You don’t tell me!”

“But I do,” said Verity.

“And me. According to Mrs. Jim,” said Prue.

Gideon said: “Would it be about the egregious Claude?”

“No,” said Verity. “It wouldn’t. Not so far as I was concerned. Not specifically, anyway. It seemed to be—” she hesitated, “—as much about this new Will as anything.”

And in the silence that followed the little party in the library quietly collapsed. Prunella began to look scared and Gideon put his arm around her.

Mr. Markos had moved in front of his fireplace. Verity thought she saw a change in him: the subtle change that comes over men when something has led a conversation into their professional field: a guarded attentiveness.