They went into The Right Sort, then stopped. There was a small puddle of blood on the floor in front of Iris’s desk, and more on top where she had first skewered her quarry like a butterfly for her collection.

Gwen picked up the bucket. “I’ll fetch some water,” she said, grabbing the key for the lavatory.

Iris approached her desk and scanned it, thinking. Then she took the blotter and bent it in half, the bloody side in.

Gwen came back, water sloshing in the bucket, to see Iris inspecting the hole the dart had made in the desk.

“Not too much seeped through,” she reported. “I never knew what a good blotter this was. I’ll have to find another one like it in case of future bloodletting. I’ll drop this one in a dustbin somewhere far away from here after we leave.”

“We should call Mrs. Fisher,” said Gwen. “It’s getting late. She’ll be wondering.”

“She’s probably typing up the list of Land Girl alibi witnesses as we speak,” said Iris.

She picked up the telephone and dialed. Mrs. Fisher answered immediately.

“Mrs. Fisher, Oona Travis reporting,” said Iris.

“Good evening, Miss Travis,” replied Mrs. Fisher. “I have been awaiting your call. On tenterhooks, I should add. I’m dying to know what happened.”

Someone beat you to it, thought Iris.

“I’m afraid our rendezvous didn’t go as planned,” she began.

“Difficulty locating it?”

“No, we found the place. Someone was already there. And someone else had killed him.”

Gwen could hear a tinny shriek of dismay as Iris yanked the handset away from her ear, wincing in pain.

“I’m sorry, that cannot have been what you were expecting,” Iris said. “Imagine how we felt.”

“But, but,” stammered Mrs. Fisher. “Oh my God. I thought—” She took a breath. “Are the two of you all right?”

“We are, thank you.”

“And are the police involved?” Mrs. Fisher continued, her voice quavering. “Do they know about you? About—about us?

“The police are involved, but we were long gone by the time they got there. Nobody saw us leave. Nobody knows about your involvement.”

“What about—was there a cabbie?”

“We went to a cab stand several streets from here, and he left after dropping us off. He won’t know our names, and it’s doubtful that he could connect us to the murder.”

“Murder,” whispered Mrs. Fisher. “So it was murder.”

“Yes, it was murder, Mrs. Fisher. There’s no other word for it.”

“And the letters?”

“We didn’t find any.”

“You searched him? You searched the, uh, body?”

“Thoroughly.”

“That can’t have been—my God, I can’t even imagine what that was like.”

“It wasn’t pleasant, but it’s what we were hired to do, wasn’t it?”

“Not that.”

“All right, not corpse-searching specifically, but that was well within the requirements of the job.”

“What do we do now? This wasn’t how things were supposed to go at all.”

“What you and Lady M do now is nothing. We intend to lie low and not risk drawing any further attention.”