“What the hell is all this?” he demanded, turning to Julia.
The girl had been sitting on the arm of a couch, her head bowed and her long silk legs stretched elegantly. Now she raised her face towards him, her cheeks flushing red and white.
“Of course that’s only half true,” she said frankly. “I really came round because I wanted any excuse to see you, I suppose, but the story is going about and I do think it ought to be stopped. Ralph Quy rang me this morning and told me that out at dinner in Knightsbridge last night he heard that you’d got in a temper with an old lady from South Africa and shaken her or frightened her or something so that she had a heart attack and died, and that Eustace Kinnit had hushed it all up ‘as usual.’ ”
“ ‘As usual’? What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, Tim.
