Lady Rose Wareham stood with her arms in the air and regarded herself in the full-length glass as Mrs. Dragusha, her mouth full of pins, made some minute adjustments to the side-seam of her dress.

‘You see, with the cut on the bias we must be very, very careful, or there will be much unevenness in the line, and that would be a dreadful tragedy,’ said Mrs. Dragusha indistinctly. ‘But you are fortunate that I learned this at my mother’s knee.’

Ro stood obediently as Mrs. Dragusha worked her way down to the hem. She drove the last pin home, then straightened up, regarded Ro’s reflection with a practised eye, and smiled.

‘See how it skims across your figure!’ she said. ‘Now I will sew it and you will see the difference. You young people are very lucky. For you I can use the most delicate silk charmeuse and there is no need to hide the body beneath it with panels or sequins or ruffles, for your line is perfect in itself and has no need of disguise, only enhancement. You must enjoy it while you can, for in ten, fifteen years, everything will change. You will marry and have children, and if you want to look as beautiful as you did when you were twenty, then you will have to stop eating or you will never be able to wear such a dress as this again. Look at me,’ she went on. ‘I eat so little, and yet still I must pull myself in with boning and many layers of stitching.’

‘Well, I suppose I’ll take your word for it, but you don’t look as though you needed anything of the sort,’ said Ro, glancing at the dressmaker.

Mrs. Dragusha received the compliment graciously. Although she was careful never to reveal her age, she might have been thirty-five or perhaps a well-preserved forty, and no-one could have denied she was a handsome woman. While not especially tall, she carried herself very straight, which gave her the illusion of height. Her hair was the palest gold, carefully waved in the latest fashion, and nobody would have dreamed of suggesting that the colour was anything but her own. Her clothes were elegant and beautifully tailored, as befitted a woman who was accustomed to dress ladies of the highest rank. Yet her smart looks and attire were deliberately understated, for she knew that in a business such as hers, to draw attention to herself and outshine her clients would not do at all. Her manner was animated but respectful—especially when in the company of the aristocracy, and this manner, combined with her undoubted ability to create beauty where none before existed, had in a very short time placed her at the very pinnacle of her business. ‘Oh, it’s a Dragusha, darling, you simply must try her out,’ was a remark heard at many a ladies’ luncheon or evening-party. She had a long waiting list to which she adhered ruthlessly, and which only made her services even more in demand, and many a young woman clapped her hands together in glee on receiving the card on which was inscribed the long-awaited message that Mrs. Dragusha would be pleased to see Miss So-And-So at her premises in Conduit Street for a consultation. For the moment, her face was drawn in an expression of the utmost concentration as she stepped back and regarded Ro.

‘Yes, I am glad we chose the dark and not the pale blue,’ she said. ‘It suits you very well, and gives depth to the hazel of your eyes.’

‘Hmm,’ said Ro, not displeased with the result. ‘What do you think, Iris? Shall I do?’

Another girl, who had been sitting at Ro’s dressing-table, rifling through her things, turned round. She had golden-brown hair and a very pretty nose covered with a delicate sprinkling of freckles which only made it prettier.

‘It’s gorgeous, of course,’ she said. ‘You are clever, Mrs. Dragusha.’

The dressmaker preened.

‘Yes, it is true,’ she said. ‘Clothes, they speak to me as they do not speak to other people. I understand their language, and I bestow my talents freely upon my ladies, for it would be shameful to keep them to myself.’

Ro laughed.

‘There’s no false modesty about you, at any rate,’ she said.

Iris had turned back to the dressing-table and was trying on a pair of Ro’s earrings. She turned her head from side to side, pleased with the way they sparkled in the light.

‘What a lot of jewellery you have!’ she said. ‘And you’re so careless with it! I should never dare leave things lying around as you do.’

‘Oh, most of that’s not worth much,’ said Ro. ‘I keep the really good stuff locked away.’

‘What about the pearls? Have you got them yet?’

‘Not officially. Only to try on with the dress. I’m not allowed to wear them until the dinner tomorrow.’

‘Where are they? May I see them?’

‘In the drawer,’ said Ro. She tore herself away from her reflection and went across to the bed, where she picked up a crumpled tweed skirt that she had discarded and rummaged in the pocket for her keys. She unlocked a drawer in the dressing-table and brought out a little enamelled box which was also locked. ‘You see, they’re perfectly safe,’ she said, as she inserted another key into the lock of the box and turned it.

Iris and Mrs. Dragusha watched as Ro brought out a magnificent pearl necklace, formed of three long strings fastened with a diamond and sapphire clasp. She held them out and turned them to the light, in order to show off their iridescence to greatest advantage, and the others leaned forward and gazed at them.

‘Might I—might I hold them?’ said Iris hesitantly.

Ro handed them over, and Iris stepped up to the glass and held them against her breast.

‘Goodness!’ she said. ‘They are rather marvellous, aren’t they? Aren’t they meant to be fantastically old and valuable?’

‘They’ve been in the family for over a hundred years,’ said Ro. ‘I think they’re supposed to be worth twenty thousand pounds or something ridiculous like that. Of course, there’s some story behind them. One of my ancestors is meant to have slaughtered fifty Indian soldiers to get his hands on them. Quite dreadful if it’s true, although I think it’s probably an exaggeration. Anyway, they’ve been handed down through the generations, and now they’re mine—or they will be this evening.’

‘Put them on, do!’ said Iris. ‘Let’s see what they look like with the dress.’

‘All right,’ said Ro, and took them from Iris. The clasp was open. ‘Will you fasten it for me, Mrs. Dragusha?’ she said. Mrs. Dragusha stepped away and shook her head. ‘Oh, I forgot—you think they’re bad luck, don’t you?’

‘It is true that they have a bad history,’ conceded Mrs. Dragusha. ‘I should prefer to keep away from them.’

‘I don’t believe in all that kind of thing,’ said Ro.

Iris fastened the clasp for her, then clapped her hands together.

‘You look quite spectacular, darling!’ she said. ‘Doesn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Dragusha. She was regarding the necklace thoughtfully. Ro turned and examined herself in the glass.

‘Not bad,’ she conceded. ‘I have to admit, you were right about the dark blue, Mrs. Dragusha. I wasn’t sure at first, but now I see why you insisted.’

‘But of course,’ said Mrs. Dragusha. ‘That is why you pay me a lot of money and bring me all the way down here from London to do it, instead of going to some respectable old woman in the village. She will make you look like a lady, but I—I will make you look like a queen!’

Her words were characteristic, but she spoke with less than her usual ebullience. Iris glanced across at the dressmaker and saw her looking from the pearls to Ro with a frown.

‘Well, I can’t stand here all day gawping at myself,’ said Ro. ‘Help me get them off, will you?’

Once again it was Iris who stepped forward to undo the clasp of the pearl necklace.

‘You had better lock them away safely,’ said Mrs. Dragusha, who had not moved. ‘If they are as valuable as you say, then you do not want someone to come and steal them from you.’

‘Nobody will steal them,’ said Ro, as she replaced the necklace in the box and locked it. ‘They’re kept in the safe as a rule. I’ve only been given them today to try them on, and they’ve been locked in this drawer all morning.’

‘But somebody could sneak in and break the drawer open,’ said Iris.

‘Hardly. It would take a good while, and there are always servants and guests wandering about upstairs. I suppose someone could always sneak in through the secret passage while our backs were turned, but we’d still hear them.’

‘A secret passage?’ said Iris in astonishment. ‘Is there really such a thing?’

‘Oh, we have several,’ said Ro. ‘We played in them as kids, although they’re a bit old hat now.’

‘And there’s one here in this room?’

‘Behind that tapestry,’ said Ro, with an indifference of manner only to be achieved by someone who has spent most of her childhood in one of England’s finest stately homes.

Iris went across to where Ro had pointed. Ro’s bedroom was a grand one, with a red-patterned carpet and panelled walls hung with portraits of long-forgotten members of the Wareham family which were not thought good enough to put in the gallery. Set against one wall was a four-posted bed, draped with red velvet curtains trimmed with gold braiding. On the wall to either side was a tapestry. Iris examined the one to the left, which Ro had indicated, and Mrs. Dragusha now came to join her.

‘It is beautiful,’ said Mrs. Dragusha, examining one part of the tapestry, which depicted a glorious array of long-tailed birds sitting in a tree.

‘Dreadfully unhygienic if you ask me,’ said Ro, who had been changing back into her tweed skirt. She came over and pulled the wall-hanging to one side. Underneath, the panelling was relatively bare, with only the odd carving of a fleur-de-lys here and there.

‘Where is the secret passage?’ said Iris.

Ro squinted at one of the carvings.

‘It’s one of these, but it’s been so long—’

She prodded at a fleur-de-lys. Nothing happened.

‘Then it must be this one next to it,’ she said. She felt underneath the carving. ‘Ah!’

There was the slightest of creaks, and with a little shove from Ro a door opened. It was not more than four feet high and two feet wide.

‘You see how it follows the line of the panels, so you can’t see it?’ said Ro.

A cold draught breathed out through the newly-appeared hole in the wall. Iris poked her head in.

‘It’s rather narrow,’ she said doubtfully.

‘It’s wider inside,’ said Ro. ‘Quite well ventilated, too. Whoever built it had fairly civilized notions, at least.’

Iris ducked through the doorway and disappeared.

‘It’s dark,’ came her voice from a few feet away.

‘Of course it’s dark. Full of spiders, too, I expect.’

There came an alarmed squeak, and Iris reappeared in a hurry.

‘I’ll go and fetch my torch,’ she said. ‘I’d like to explore it properly.’

‘And so you shall, my dear, only not now. Let’s do it tomorrow, when the guests are here.’

Just then there was a knock at the door and the Duchess entered.

‘Oh, I’d forgotten about that old secret passage,’ she said, when she saw what they were doing. ‘Do shut the door before a lot of dust blows in. Hallo, Mrs. Dragusha, I guessed you’d still be here. I want to speak to you about my red silk.’

The next quarter of an hour or so was taken up with matters of dress, then a bell was heard.

‘Gracious, is it time for luncheon already?’ said Bea. ‘I feel we’ve hardly begun.’

‘I’m famished. Odd how standing still for hours makes one hungry, isn’t it?’ said Ro, and started towards the door.

‘Your ladyship has forgotten to put the pearls back in the drawer,’ said Mrs. Dragusha.

‘So I have,’ said Ro with a laugh. ‘After all that.’

‘You are careless, darling,’ said Bea. ‘Perhaps you’d better bring them downstairs and have Spenlow lock them in the safe until tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps I shall, just to be on the safe side,’ said Ro. She picked up the enamelled box and they all left the room together and went down to luncheon.