"I try to."

"Portraits?"

"Oh, no—figure and landscape chiefly."

"Oh!... A friend of mine—well, it's no use disguising it—he's a detective—you've met him, I think...."

"That man? Oh, yes. Quite a polite sort of detective."

"He told me he'd seen some stuff of yours. It rather surprised him, I think. He's not exactly a modernist. He seemed to think your portraits were your best work."

"There weren't many portraits. A few figure-studies...."

"They worried him a bit." Wimsey laughed. "The only thing he understood, he said, was a man's head in oils...."

"Oh, that!—just an experiment—a fancy thing. My best stuff is some sketches I did of the Wiltshire Downs a year or two ago. Direct painting, without any preliminary sketch."

She described a number of these works.