Lord Peter Wimsey sends Bunter to charm his way into Norman Urquhart’s kitchen, where the parlourmaid Hannah Westlock and the cook hold what Wimsey needs. Bunter first surprises his master by asking whether he plans changes to the household, having correctly guessed the lady in question. Wimsey then enlists Marjorie Phelps, who makes figurines and porcelain, to guide him through the studio parties of Philip Boyes’s circle. At the Kropotkys’, amid kippers, sausages, and a tone poem inspired by five days on the Piccadilly tube escalator, he finds Ryland Vaughan eating caviar with a pickle fork.

Vaughan calls himself Boyes’s only friend, blames Harriet’s spite and Urquhart’s influence, and insists Boyes would never have killed himself without telling him. Then, drunk on brandy, he pulls a small bottle from his pocket that he is saving until he finishes editing Boyes’s books. At the flat of Sylvia Marriott and Eiluned Price, Sylvia suspects the too sleek Urquhart while Eiluned bets on suicide out of spite. A phone call from Parker brings news: the police have found the pub and are on the track of a packet of white powder.

• Marjorie’s verdict that Vaughan is a ‘house dog’ for his friend the genius
• Vaughan’s claim that Harriet refused to give Boyes opinions on his writing
• A fat critic dismissing the tone poem as bourgeois program music next to an ecstasy on the letter Z
• Eiluned Price refusing to let Wimsey carry her kettle of six pints
• Marjorie’s plea that Peter not change, and his sudden fear that everything will