“There’s four others,” she began. “Up above there’s Colonel and Mrs....”
“I see,” Michael interrupted. “Just ordinary people. Do they ever go out? Or do they sit and peer at the water all day from behind strange curtains?”
The housekeeper stared at him.
“They play tennis and croquet a good deal in the summer, sir. The courts is on the other side of the house. Mr. Gartside is the gentleman to see about the flat.”
She gave Michael the address, and that afternoon he settled to take Number One, Ararat House.
“It absolutely was made to set her off,” he told Maurice. “You wait till I’ve furnished it as it ought to be furnished.”
“And we’ll have amazing fêtes aqueuses in the summer,” Maurice declared. “We’ll buy a barge and—why, of course—the canal flows into the Thames at Grosvenor Road.”
“Underground—like the Styx,” said Michael, nodding.
“Of course, it’s going to be wonderful. We must never visit each other except by water.”
“Like splendid dead Venetians,” said Michael.