‘Fearing for her life, Lulu picked up her crucifix and positively ran back to her chambers. From then on, it was she who locked her door every night, whilst every day she lit a candle to the Virgin, praying for her husband’s death. “La più gran tristezza”, indeed!’ Alice concluded her oration in a furore of clamorous indignation.
‘Please, Alice!’ Sir Christopher raised his hand as if to halt traffic.
‘Well you must admit that it is rather provoking. There, Lulu had been praying, for years, years mind you, for her husband to die – and she only refused a divorce because she wanted that title and the money – but then, when he finally did up and die, she went round playing the bereaved widow, with black-edged envelopes into the bargain.’
‘I can believe,’ Sir Christopher said, ‘that it might
