— very nicely, he said, though of course it was a very simple and straightforward case, and the landlords had had no chance of winning: when one looked properly at the evidence, as Miss Jardine herself had pointed out to the judge, they really had no case at all. Still, she had done it very nicely. Recalling the care of Selena’s preparation and Rupert’s own unhelpfulness towards success, Julia had thought it right to make clear to him that but for his good fortune in being represented by one of the most persuasive advocates in Lincoln’s Inn he would even then have been seeking accommodation on the Thames Embankment; and had added that that, in Julia’s opinion, would have been a just reward for his ingratitude.
“It was kind of you to say that,” said Selena, turning her glass thoughtfully between her fingers. “I shouldn’t like you to think that I don’t appreciate it. Although as things turned out—”
Startled by the vehemence of her indignation, Rupert had remarked that she seemed to be a great admirer of Selena’s; to which Julia answered that indeed she was, for to know Selena and not to admire her was a thing impossible.
“Julia,” said Ragwort, “have you no sense at all?” A foolish question, since he knows she has not.
“Julia was not to know,” said Selena, “that Rupert is a rather — unsophisticated sort of person.”
The lunch had thereafter proceeded amiably. At its conclusion Rupert had invited Julia to bring Selena to a little party he was holding at the end of the following week; it would be the sort of thing, he said, that he thought they might find amusing.
She had attached, at the time, no particular significance to these words or the manner in which they were said.
“I believe we have reached a part of the narrative,” said Timothy, “which may not be suitable hearing for the Revenue silks whom I see gathered at the next table. Shall we adjourn to Guido’s?”
No more was said, as we walked along Kingsway in the warm May evening, of the affair of the Grateful Client. Not until we were comfortably installed in Guido’s and all necessary choices had been made between asparagus and tagliatelli, grilled sole and scampi Nizzarda, Valpolicella and Frascati, did Selena resume her narrative.
“Thinking,” said Selena, “that if Rupert wished further to express his gratitude in the form of food and drink it would be unkind of us to discourage him, we made our way on the appointed evening to his penthouse in Mortlake. It is on the fifth floor of a rather elegant block of flats close to Barnes Bridge, with a view across the river to Duke’s Meadows. The door was opened by a red-haired girl, quite substantially built, wearing a black dress and black stockings and a little white pinafore.”
“In brief,” I said, “an old-fashioned parlormaid.”
“Your ‘in brief’ is appropriate, your ‘old-fashioned’ less so. When I say she was wearing stockings rather than tights, I do not speak from surmise. I am able to add, again without surmise, that they were secured by a black lace suspender belt. You may conclude that the dress was very brief indeed.”
“Quite disgraceful,” said Ragwort.
“We hung up our coats and she led us into the drawing-room. It was a nice spacious drawing-room, the result, I imagine, of knocking two rooms into one, with a balcony and French windows on the side looking on to the river. The furnishing was of the sort designed to be recognized as opulent — Wilton carpets and leather sofas and so forth.”
“If I may say so,” said Julia, “it was not the quality of the furniture which most immediately engaged one’s attention. It was the presence in the room of a number of people with no clothes on.”
“Yes,” said Selena a little reproachfully. “Yes, Julia, I was coming to that. Ah good, here’s the asparagus.”
“You should have left forthwith,” said Ragwort, “pausing, if at all, only to utter a brief denunciation.”
“It was possible,” said Julia, “that Rupert meant well and did not intend us to be disconcerted. In which case, we would not have wished to appear so.”
“And even more possible,” said Selena, “that he did not mean well at all and intended us to be very disconcerted. In which case still less would we have wished to appear so. Moreover, we had travelled halfway across London in an inconvenient direction to enjoy his hospitality, and I at least did not intend to leave until I had my money’s worth. We accepted the champagne offered us by the parlormaid person, and sat down on one of the sofas to consider our position. Julia was afraid that we might be committing some kind of solecism by not taking our clothes off; but I thought we could regard the occasion as one at which dress was optional. So we kept them on.”
“Looking round at our fellow guests,” said Julia, “one could not help feeling that they would have done well to do likewise. I refer in particular to those of the male sex. With the exception of our host — who was, I am relieved to say, more formally clad in a pair of black leather bathing trunks — with that exception they were all entirely naked; and they were, alas, well past the age at which a man may carelessly disrobe and be confident of being an object of desire and admiration.” Julia sighed. “To be naked with elegance, even for the most slender and graceful young man, is a severe test of deportment. The scene before us, therefore, despite a well-advised dimness of lighting, was one neither pleasing to the eye nor conducive towards desire.”
“On the other hand,” said Selena, “the champagne was excellent.”
Mindful of his duty as host to ensure their entertainment, Rupert had completed their introduction to the quasi-parlormaid: her name, it appeared, was Rowena, and she was the girl about whom, as Rupert put it, Selena had been so severe with him — that is to say, the girl from the typing agency whose visits had obliged Selena to revise her closing speech. Perhaps prejudiced on this account, Selena had not much cared for her; but she had seemed to Julia to be a pleasant, good-natured sort of girl — a conclusion drawn from the circumstance that she constantly filled their glasses. She also offered them some fudge, which she described as being “something rather special.”
“I thought she meant,” said Julia, “that it was homemade.”
“No doubt it was,” said Selena. “It also had — how shall I put it? — a decidedly North American flavor. I did suggest, Julia, that it would be better not to eat too much of it.”
“As always, I would have done wisely to act on your advice; but it was rather delicious fudge, and I was quite hungry. You will be interested to hear, Hilary, that it had a most remarkable effect — even on Selena after a very modest quantity. She cast off all conventional restraints and devoted herself without shame to the pleasure of the moment.”
I asked for particulars of this uncharacteristic conduct.
“She took from her handbag a paperback edition of
“I don’t think,” I said, “that fudge and champagne mix well together, Julia.”
“No,” said Julia sadly, “no, they don’t. A realization of this came suddenly upon me, obliging me to make my way in some haste to the bathroom. The bathroom, however, proved unsatisfactory. It was in many respects an admirable bathroom — marble walls, gold taps, and a bath the size of a paddling pool. It did not, however, afford the privacy which was my objective. The bath, you see, was full of people — I can’t say exactly how many, since they were rather tangled up together.”
“How,” I asked, “did you resolve your difficulty?”
“I said I was terribly sorry and withdrew, not knowing what to do next. But fortunately I found Rowena just outside the bathroom door: she told me that there was another one en suite with Rupert’s bedroom, and offered to conduct me there. I accepted with alacrity, and in due course emerged feeling much better. Rowena had waited for me in the bedroom, intending — or so I supposed — to escort me back to the center of the social whirl. She showed no inclination, however, to leave the bedroom: she said there were some very interesting things in Rupert’s wardrobe and that if I liked she would show them to me. I could hardly say that I wasn’t interested, could I?”
To say so, I perceived, would have seemed to Julia a breach of the rules of polite conduct which had been impressed on her during her schooldays. I inquired the nature of the interesting objects.
“Sundry items of leatherwear, various whips and things, one or two pairs of handcuffs — I found it difficult to
