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it?”
    “I fancy indecent is the word I’m groping for.”
    “It happens to be the most exclusive perfume on the market.”
    “I don’t much like the word ‘perfume’ but in this case it seems to be entirely appropriate.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said in a high voice, “that you find my choice of words non-U.”
    “My dear Mary…!”
    Florence screwed the top on the atomizer and placed it, with the three-quarters emptied bottle, on the dressing-table. She then retired to the bathroom.
    Charles Templeton took his wife’s hands in his and kissed them. “Ah!” he said. “That’s your usual scent.”
    “The last dregs.”
    “I’ll give you some more.”
    She made as if to pull her hands away, but he folded them between his own.
    “Do something for me,” he said. “Will you? I never ask you.”
    “My dear Charles!” she exclaimed impatiently. “What?”
    “Don’t use that stuff. It’s vulgar, Mary. The room stinks of it already.”
    She stared at him with a kind of blank anger. His skin was mottled. The veins showed on his nose and his eyes were watery. It was an elderly face, and not very handsome.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said and withdrew.her hands.
    Warrender tapped on the door and came in. When he saw M iss Bellamy he ejaculated “What!” several times and was so clearly bowled over that her ill-humour modulated into a sort of petulant gratification. She made much of him and pointedly ignored her husband.
    “You are the most fabulous, heavenly sweetie-pie,” she said and kissed his ear.
    He turned purple and said, “By George!”
    Charles had walked over to the window. The tin of Slaypest was still there. At the same moment Florence re-entered the room. Charles indicated the tin. Florence cast up her eyes.
    He said, “Mary, you do leave the windows open, don’t you, when you use this stuff on your plants?”
    “Oh for heaven’s
sake
!” she exclaimed. “Have you got a secret Thing about sprays? You’d better get yourself psychoed, my poor Charles.”
    “It’s dangerous. I took the trouble to buy a textbook on these things and what it has to say is damn disquieting. I showed it to Maurice. Read it yourself, my dear, if you don’t believe me. Ask Maurice. You don’t think she ought to monkey about with it, do you, Maurice?”
    Warrender picked up the tin and stared at the label with its red skull and crossbones and intimidating warning. “Shouldn’t put this sort of stuff on the market,” he said. “My opinion.”
    “Exactly. Let Florence throw it out, Mary.”
    “Put it down!” she shouted. “My God, Charles, what a bore you can be when you set your mind to it.”
    Suddenly she thrust the scent atomizer into Warrender’s hands. “Stand there, darling,” she said. “Far enough away for it not to make rivers or stain my dress. Just a delicious mist. Now! Spray madly.”
    Warrender did as he was told. She stood in the redolent cloud with her chin raised and her arms extended.
    “Go on, Maurice,” she said, shutting her eyes in a kind of ecstasy. “Go on.”
    Charles said, very quietly, “My God!”
    Warrender stared at him, blushed scarlet, put down the scent-spray and walked out of the room.
    Mary and Charles looked at each other in silence.
    The whole room reeked of Formidable.

Chapter three
Birthday Honours
    Mr. and Mrs. Charles Templeton stood just inside their drawing-room door. The guests, on their entry, encountered a bevy of press photographers, while a movie outfit was established at the foot of the stairs, completely blocking the first flight. New arrivals smiled or looked thoughtful as the flash lamps discovered them. Then, forwarded by the parlourmaid in the hall to Gracefield on the threshold, they were announced and, as it were, passed on to be neatly fielded by their hosts.
    It was not an enormous party — perhaps fifty, all told. It embraced the elite of the theatre world and it differed in this respect from other functions of its size. It was