Chapter One
I t was Miss Somers’s turn to make the tea. Miss Somers was the newest and the most inefficient¹ of the typists. Shewas no longer young and had a mild worried face like a sheep. The kettle was not quite boiling when Miss Somerspoured the water onto the tea, but poor Miss Somers was never quite sure when a kettle was boiling. It was one of themany worries that afflicted² her in life.
She poured out the tea and took the cups round with a couple of limp, sweet biscuits in each saucer.
Miss Griffith, the efficient head typist, a grey-haired martinet³ who had been with Consolidated⁴ Investments Trustfor sixteen years, said sharply: “Water not boiling again, Somers!” and Miss Somers’s worried meek⁵ face went pinkand she said, “Oh dear, I did think it was boiling this time.”
Miss Griffith thought to herself: “She’ll last for another month, perhaps, just while we’re so busy . . . But really!
The mess the silly idiot made of that letter to Eastern Developments—a perfectly⁶ straightforward⁷ job, and always sostupid over the tea. If it weren’t so difficult to get hold of any intelligent typists—and the biscuit tin lid wasn’t shuttightly last time, either. Really—”
Like so many of Miss Griffith’s indignant inner communings the sentence went unfinished.
At that moment Miss Grosvenor sailed in to make Mr. Fortescue’s sacred tea. Mr. Fortescue had different tea, anddifferent china and special biscuits. Only the kettle and the water from the cloakroom tap were the same. But on thisoccasion, being Mr. Fortescue’s tea, the water boiled. Miss Grosvenor saw to that.
Miss Grosvenor was an incredibly glamorous⁸ blonde. She wore an expensively cut little black suit and her shapelylegs were encased in the very best and most expensive black-market nylons.

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