Chapter 12Florence Duke was standing there. She had been standing there ever since they came back from the cellars—not talking to anyone, just standing there drinking coffee, sip after sip, quite slowly until the cup was empty, and then sip after sip again after it had been filled up. She had the look of a woman among her thoughts, listening intently. It was plain that she was taking no part in what was going on around her—Geoffrey Taverner’s conversation with Marian Thorpe-Ennington, Al Miller’s noisy talk and laughter, or the sometimes angry, sometimes tactfully intended remarks of Fogarty Castell. Not even when he turned to her with one of his foreign gestures and said in a passionate undertone, ‘This Al Miller, we are going to have a scene with him, I tell you. Why can’t he take his dr
