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“I must be toddling back. Give me the broccoli.”
    Sir Rowland handed the broccoli to Miss Peake. “Horse chestnut – chestnut horse,” she boomed at him. “Jolly good – I must remember that.” With another boisterous laugh she disappeared through the French windows.
    Hugo watched her leave, and then turned to Clarissa and Sir Rowland. “How on earth does Henry bear that woman?” he wondered aloud.
    “He does actually find her very hard to take,” Clarissa replied as she picked up Pippa's book from the easy chair and put it on the table.
    She collapsed into the easy chair as Hugo responded, “I should think so. She's so damned arch! All that hearty school-girl manner.”
    “A case of arrested development, I'm afraid,” Sir Row land added, shaking his head.
    Clarissa smiled. “I agree she's maddening,” she said, “but she's a very good gardener and, as I keep telling everyone, she goes with the house, and since the house is so wonderfully cheap – ”
    “Cheap? Is it?” Hugo interrupted her. “You surprise me.”
    “Marvellously cheap,” Clarissa told him. “It was advertised. We came down and saw it a couple of months ago, and took it then and there for six months, furnished.”
    “Whom does it belong to?” Sir Rowland asked.
    “It used to belong to a Mr. Sellon,” Clarissa replied. “But he died. He was an antique dealer in Maidstone.”
    “Ah, yes!” Hugo exclaimed. “That's right. Sellon and Brown. I once bought a very nice Chippendale mirror from their shop in Maidstone. Sellon lived out here in the country, and used to go into Maidstone every day, but I believe he sometimes brought customers out here to see things that he kept in the house.”
    “Mind you,” Clarissa told them both, “there are one or two disadvantages about this house. Only yesterday, a man in a violent check suit drove up in a sports car and wanted to buy that desk.” She pointed to the desk. “I told him that it wasn't ours and therefore we couldn't sell it, but he simply wouldn't believe me and kept on raising the price. He went up to five hundred pounds in the end.”
    “Five hundred pounds!” exclaimed Sir Rowland, sounding really startled. He went across to the desk. “Good Lord!” he continued. “Why, even at the Antique Dealers' Fair I wouldn't have thought it would fetch anything near to that. It's a pleasant-enough object, but surely not especially valuable.”
    Hugo joined him at the desk as Pippa came back into the room. “I'm still hungry,” she complained.
    “You can't be,” Clarissa told her firmly.
    “I am,” Pippa insisted. “Milk and chocolate biscuits and a banana aren't really filling.” She made for the armchair and collapsed into it.
    Sir Rowland and Hugo were still contemplating the desk. “It's certainly a nice desk,” Sir Rowland observed. “Quite genuine, I imagine, but not what I'd call a collector's piece. Don't you agree, Hugo?”
    “Yes, but perhaps it's got a secret drawer with a diamond necklace in it,” Hugo suggested facetiously.
    “It has got a secret drawer,” Pippa chimed in.
    “What?” Clarissa exclaimed.
    “I found a book in the market, all about secret drawers in old furniture,” Pippa explained. “So I tried looking at desks and things all over the house. But this is the only one that's got a secret drawer.” She got up from the armchair. “Look,” she invited them. “I'll show you.”
    She went over to the desk and opened one of its pigeon-holes. While Clarissa came and leaned over the sofa to watch, Pippa slid her hand into the pigeon-hole. “See,” she said as she did so, “you slide this out, and there's a sort of little catch thing underneath.”
    “Humph!” Hugo grunted. “I don't call that very secret.”
    “Ah, but that's not all,” Pippa went on. “You press this thing underneath – and a little drawer flies out.” Again she demonstrated, and a small drawer shot out of the desk. “See?”
    Hugo took the drawer and picked a