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'How do you know that?'

'I don't. But that's the general opinion. He himself has stated that "I had no adventures of a sexual kind until I was twenty-nine..." '

'A bit retarded.'

'I doubt he's had any at all,' I said. 'Many famous women have pursued him, but without success. Mrs Pat Campbell, gorgeous actress, said "He's all hen and no cock." '

'I like that.'

'His diet,' I said, 'is deliberately aimed at mental efficiency. "I flatly declare," he once wrote, "that a man fed on whiskey and dead bodies cannot possibly do good work."'

'As opposed to whiskey and live bodies, I suppose.'

Pretty quick our Yasmin was. 'He's a Marxist Socialist,' I added. 'He thinks the State should run everything.'

'Then he's an even bigger ass than I thought,' Yasmin said. 'I can't wait to see his face when the old Beetle strikes.'

On the way through London, we bought a bunch of superb hothouse Muscatel grapes from Jackson's in Piccadilly. They were very costly, very pale yellowish-green and very large. North of London, we stopped on the side of the road and got out the tin of Blister Beetle powder.

'Shall we give him a double shot?' I asked.

'Triple,' Yasmin said.

'D'you think that's safe?'

'If what you say about him is true he's going to need half the tin.'

'Very well, then,' I said. 'Triple it is.'

We chose the grape that was hanging at the lowest point of the bunch and carefully made a tiny nick in its skin with a knife. I scooped out a little of the inside and then inserted a triple dose of powder, pushing the stuff well into the grape with a pin. Then we continued on to Ayot St Lawrence.

'You do realize,' I said, 'that this will be the first time anyone's had a triple dose?'

'I'm not worried,' Yasmin said. 'The man's obviously wildly undersexed. I wonder if he's a eunuch. Does he have a high voice?'

'I don't know.'

'Bloody writers,' Yasmin said. She settled herself deeper into the seat and kept a grumpy silence for the rest of the trip.

The house, known as Shaw's Corner, was a large unremarkable brick pile with a good garden. The time, as I pulled up outside, was four-twenty in the afternoon.

'What do I do?' Yasmin asked.

'You walk round to the back of the house and all the way down to the bottom of the garden,' I said. 'There, you will find a small wooden shed with a sloping roof. That's where he works. He's certain to be in it now. Just barge in and give him the usual patter.'

'What if the wife sees me?'

'That's a chance you'll have to take,' I said. 'You'll probably make it. And tell him that you're a vegetarian. He'll like that.'

'What are the names of his plays?'

'Man and Superman,' I said. 'The Doctor's Dilemma, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles and the Lion and Pygmalion.'

'He'll ask me which I like best.'

'Say Pygmalion.'

'All right, I'll say Pygmalion.'