Background: Aouda Fogg felt snug in Savile Row. And she was sad that her housekeeper decided to retire. At sixty she still wanted to study and was accepted at Reading University for a BSc.So! What a sucker for punishment, Aouda Fogg thought, covering up that she was extremely nervous about any replacement.

She had a glass of Graubugunder from areas near the Alsace and was wondering whether to also indulge in a cigar when granddad's clock struck twelve. She was surprised that there was no knock on the door. Good God, she chuckled, what has happened to the Foggs! Her grandparents’ obsession with timekeeping and punctuality and their relation to their housekeeper, one Jean Passepartout, was legendary. She was rather tipsy and hungry by the time the expected knock happened. Go away! she wanted to shout, I need nobody!

She was shocked. It was not the age of the prospective housekeeper that shocked her. It was that he was a “she” whereas she had expected a “he”! And, instead of a French man, her own Passepartout, she was a cockney-tinged Senegalese, hardly thirty years old: Marcelle Diouff. She took off a poor version of a bowler hat and beamed, extending a hand. She had a slight limp.

“I thought you were French.”

“I was, I was,” Marcelle replied. “Ah! But I am English now. And you, Madame, are you from India?” “No, I am a Londoner.” “Me too,” she beamed. “You too? And your name is Marcelle?” “Oui, if it pleases you.” “Diouff?” “Diouff!”

“So, Marcelle Diouff what do you know of housekeeping?” “It is in my blood, Madame!” “How so?” “My father was the housekeeper of the Swiss ambassador in Senegal. When he was posted in Paris, he brought us with him. And when he left, he passed us over to the ambassador of Belgium. And for the last two years I have been the housekeeper of Mr. Boris Zinoviev, the big Russian businessman who had his mansion in Kensington.” “Hasn't Mr. Zinoviev been deported and jailed?” “Precisely. It is unethical to keep on running an abandoned house, even if the money keeps on pouring in.”