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was assisted by a woman with tightly set auburn hair, wearing a neat dark dress, who alternately stood at the sideboard and darted out to marshal in fresh supplies of food. From time to time Julian Cartwright issued orders to the manservant in quite a loud voice - he had called him Blagge but the woman Mrs Blagge - as a result of which both Blagges stopped doing whatever they were engaged in and still more wine was poured into the array of bevelled glasses. Christabel Cartwright's precise words could on the other hand hardly be distinguished, but it was noticeable that things moved much faster whenever she did speak; dishes, a delicate egg mousse for example in a blue and white souffle dish, were whisked round the table again and again; plates were removed, fresh plates were substituted; it all happened so fast and so deftly whenever Christabel murmured that she might have been whispering some magic password which made the table itself start spinning.
    Meat was carved. Spring lamb appeared, presto, on the latest wave of blue and white plates. Mrs Blagge proffered mint sauce and gravy in matching dishes, first to Jemima Shore.
    'Madam—'
    The hand with which she extended the sauce-boat was quite blotched and claw-like, the hand of an old woman; the striking auburn hair must be dyed.
    If only Jemima could be quite sure that Cherry wasn't drinking too much (such efficient service of wine, she felt, plus the presence of such an indubitably glamorous older man as Julian Cartwright presented an irresistible combination of temptations to Flowering Cherry) she, Jemima, could have concentrated totally on Christabel Herrick's, no, Christabel Cartwright's, dazzling performance.
    Even the white bandage which Christabel wore on her right hand had an air of elegance: a white kid glove or mitten perhaps. Although at one point Christabet did wince at some inadvertent gesture: had one of her daughters, the sulky little fat one in the unsuitable sun-dress, touched the hand by mistake?
    Immediately on hearing the slight cry, Julian Cartwright broke off his conversation with Cherry, perhaps to the ultimate advantage of the latter; since Cherry was leaning forward dangerously in her tight white pearl-buttoned blouse, while her large eyes bore an expression which Jemima for one found it all too easy to interpret.
    'All right, darling?' Julian Cartwright called out down the table. The sound of his voice, so redolent of authority that it made a question sound like a command, drew other conversations to a close. 'Christabel, poor sweet, did herself some fearful injury on a pair of garden scissors this morning,' he explained. 'Stabbed herself in one hand in some quite remarkable way, while cutting flowers after breakfast. Darling, do you know, you've never had time to tell me properly how it happened?'
    Jemima, professionally trained interviewer, became suddenly and acutely aware that some special tension had been brought into the room by Julian's question. She could not say exactly where this tension was located. After all, everyone in the room gave the polite appearance of listening for Christabel's explanation. Nor could she say further what had stirred her instinct; she only knew that curiosity, Jemima Shore's dominant emotion, had been aroused - curiosity and a strange feeling of apprehension.
    Jemima looked down the table and inspected the guests. The dexterity with which the two servants were handling the meal was made the more remarkable by the fact that it was a large lunch party.
    Jemima as presenter and Cherry as production assistant were the only two official guests from Megalith since the director, Jemima's old friend and former assistant Guthrie Carlyle, was still in Greece - shooting the Parthenon for what he assured Jemima was a wholly uncontroversial programme on the Elgin Marbles sub-titled Ours or Theirs?
    Then there were the two Cartwright girls, who sat together at their mother's end of the table, on either side of a woman whom