 Final Curtain by Nayo Marsh. The book's dedication reads, for Joan and Cecil, with my love. CHAPTER I. SEAGE OF TROY Considered severally, said Troy, coming angrily into the studio, a car-bunkle, a month's furlough, and a husband returning from the antipodes, doesn't sound like the ingredients for a hellbrew. Collectively they amount to precisely that." Lady Bostock stepped heavily back from her easel, screwed up her eyes, and, squinting dispassionately at her work, said, Why? They've telephoned from C.I. Rory's on his way. He'll probably get here in about three weeks, by which time I shall have returned, cured of my car-bunkle to the girls in the back-room. At least, said Miss Bostock, scowling hideously at her work. He won't have to face the car-bunkle, there is that. It's on my hip. I know that, you owl. Well, but—Catty, Troy argued, standing beside her friend, you will allow and must admit it's a stinker. You are going it, she added, squinting at Miss Bostock's canvas. You'll have to move into the London flat a bit earlier, that's all. But if only the car-bunkle and Rory and my leave had come together—well, the car-bunkle a bit earlier, certainly—we would have had a fortnight down here together. The A.C. promised us that. Rory's letters have been full of it. It is tough, Catty, you can't deny it. And if you so much as look like saying there are worse things in Europe— All right, all right, said Miss Bostock, pacifically, I was only going to point out that it's reasonably lucky your particular back-room and Roderick's job both happened to be in London. Look for the silver lining, dear, she added, unkindly. What's that letter you keep taking in and out of your pocket? Troy opened her thin hand and disclosed a crushed sheet of note-paper. That, she murmured. Oh, yes, there's that. You never had anything so dotty. Read it. It's got cadmium red all over it. I know, I dropped it on my palette. It's on the back, luckily. Miss Bostock spread out the letter on her painting-table, adding several cobalt fingerprints in the process. It was a single sheet of pre-war note-paper, thick, white, with an engraved heading surmounted by a crest, a cross with fluted extremities. Crikey, said Miss Bostock, anchored to manner. That's the crikey. Being one of those people who invariably read letters aloud, she began to mutter. Miss Agatha Troy, Mrs. Roderick Alleyne, Tappler's Endhouse, Bossy Cott, Bucks. Dear Madam, my father-in-law Sir Henry Anchored asks me to write to you in reference to-