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in the Rawlings home, was five o’clock. Middlesex were playing Surrey at Lord’s. He pondered these three facts slowly as he drank his coffee. Two lines of worry creased his forehead. Surely, he argued to himself, the purchase of Passion and Repentance represented culture and devotion enough for one day? But still he felt quite broken by the weight of the decision he was making, and the knowledge that Vicky would disapprove of it. Almost mournfully, he walked out of the Criterion, and directed the Bentley’s bonnet towards Lord’s. As he drew nearer to the St John’s Wood ground, however, his spirits brightened at the prospect of seeing Hearne and Hendren. “I mustn’t be late to tea,” he thought as he drove in. “Whatever happens, I mustn’t be late to tea.”
     
IV
    Victoria Rawlings’ Diary
     
    At ten o’clock that Monday night Victoria Rawlings retired to her bedroom on the pretext of a raging headache. Her mother and brother were both inclined to resent this early departure: her mother because she wanted to enlist Vicky’s aid in dealing with one of the crossword puzzles that had recently appeared in the more popular newspapers, and brother Edward because she robbed him of half the audience before which he could express his worries.
    Edward Rawlings was a professional worrier; or (to use a more modern term) he suffered from a deep anxiety neurosis. He worried about politics, about money, about his family and about his practice. He worried because the Liberal Party, which he supported, did not use its Parliamentary position to defeat the Labour Government; he worried because the practice which he had inherited on his father’s death showed a slight but persistent decline; he worried because his mother was an expense, and because his sister was unmarried; he worried lest his professional diagnoses should have been incorrect or his prescriptions wrongly written out. At the age of twenty-eight Edward’s hair was thinning, doubtless from worry about his own health, and his bank balance was thinning too. On that particular evening he had expressed a good deal of mental perturbation about old Mrs Browder, who suffered from indigestion – or it might be something worse. Suppose that she was right in thinking she had some severe internal trouble… Edward, Vicky reflected, grew more tiresome, and her mother more inconsequent, every day. How delightful it would be when she was married and away from both of them.
    When she thought of the word marriage , Vicky sat down at an elegant but slightly rickety kidney-shaped writing desk in her small bedroom. Her mouth fell open and her expression became slightly vacant. Like her mother, Victoria Rawlings was long and slim and had dark hair, and if her mouth was a little too wide, and her eyes too far apart, for beauty, she was certainly extremely attractive. Now she sat at the writing desk in her bedroom that was ornamented by a rather odd collection of prints from the Medici Society, including two Holman Hunts and a luscious Tuke, and thought about marriage. She delved in the neck of her dress and fished up two small keys. With one of them she unlocked one drawer of the writing desk, and revealed a great red book with an imposing brass lock on it. With some difficulty, Vicky bent her swan-like neck until she could undo the brass lock with the other tiny key. The big red book was the diary in which Vicky recorded, in a manner that seemed to her vivid and lifelike, the events and reflections of her days. It was not every day that she found material worthy of record, but tonight she was almost embarrassed because she had so much of importance to tell. She took up her fountain pen with its Relief nib, turned to an open page – and paused. It was her custom to begin with some philosophical reflections before getting down to facts. What should it be tonight? Absently she scratched the tip of her nose with the nib of her pen, leaving a small violet mark on it, and then began