Before him, on the table, stood the tape-recorder, an amplifier, and small sundries. A wandering network of leads connected them to one another, to the mains, to a big loudspeaker in the corner, and to the pair of phones on his head. Lengths and snippets of tape littered half the floor. ‘Another triumph of science,’ she said, coolly. ‘As I understood it, you were just going to do a bit of editing so that we could send a record of the party to Myra. I’m quite sure she’d prefer it the right way round.’ ‘Yes, but this idea just came to me –’ ‘And what a mess! It looks as if we’d been giving someone a ticker-tape reception. What is it all?’ Stephen glanced down at the strips and coils of tape. ‘Oh, those are just the parts where everybody was talking at once, and bits of that very unfunny story Charles would keep trying to tell everyone – and a few indiscretions, and so on.’ Dilys eyed the litter, as she stood up. ‘It must have been a much more indiscreet party than it seemed at the time,’ she said.
