Wobbling between this and that.

Death sat gaunt and unloved at the piano in Alice's drawing room after many years of silent tears and honey. His coattails fell almost to the floor behind him. Light from candles threw shadows on the walls as his fingers raced over the keys releasing shivers of Tchaikovsky that transported Alice to some place where she believed love could never touch her.

Then Leonard came in after midnight. He sat on the recently reupholstered Voltaire in the corner of the room and watched Alice start to sink into oblivion and gravitate towards Death's clutches. He blew blue rings of cigar smoke towards the dead roses that were looking in at him from the patio on the other side of the French windows. From the air he grabbed hold of the floating notes of Tchaikovsky as they passed under his nose.

Alice was already starting to dissolve. Leonard mixed the black notes of Tchaikovsky in the bottle of Chablis that Death had left to chill on the hearth of the unlit fire. As he poured the adulterated wine into a pewter goblet the musical notes were rearranged into a waltz-like version of "Arrivaderci Roma". 

The spell that Alice had fallen under was disrupted. She swooned, Leonard caught her and laid her limp, feeble body on Daphne's chaise longue. Death put on his overcoat, wrapped a white scarf round his scrawny neck and took off in a huff.