It wasn’t hard to make myself cry – for I was terrified – and through the tears I told them that I worked in Langham’s house as a cook and that it was his particular perversion to have me dress up in his clothes. The passport I couldn’t explain. I supposed, between sobs, that he must have left it in his jacket. Eventually, they came to the obvious, and correct, conclusion: Langham had used his silly, trusting domestic as a decoy, in order to secure his escape from Tangiers.

By this point, the clock on the police station wall read a quarter past five. Langham had won himself over three hours’ head-start. More than enough for a man like him. The police knew it, and they vented their frustration on me. They grilled me for hours. What had Langham done in the days prior? Who did he talk to? Who visited the house? Again and again, I pleaded ignorance. I was just the cook, a poor girl Langham had taken a fancy to, who he liked to see dressed up in men’s clothes. I didn’t know about his business, I was always in the kitchen.

I knew they were getting desperate when they asked me about Cabrera.

You won’t see him again, I almost said. But I didn’t. Instead, I gambled that Cabrera had kept the information about me to himself, for future use. I told the police that a man of that name had once come to dinner, that was all.

I told them my name was Alejandra del Potro, praying they wouldn’t check it with the consulate. I’m just a poor silly girl, I tried to make my demeanour cry, taken in by her corrupt employer. Of course, they wanted my papers; they wanted proof of who I was. My story would have unravelled then, and I would have found myself headed for a Spanish jail and the garrotte, had it not been for the cool, familiar voice that rang out beyond the cell door.

Hilde. It was Hilde. And though I could hear the panic in her voice, she was strong enough and smart enough to hide it from them. In icy British tones, I heard her complain of the police tramping through her bedroom all night. I heard her declare that she had no notion of where Mr Langham might be – though she was sure he would return in a day or two – and that in the meantime, she would like her cook released, since she, Lady de Luca Bailey, couldn’t so much as boil an egg on her own.

She vouched for my story. She dismissed their charges of impersonation and immorality with a haughty laugh and a casual reference to her solicitor. She paid the desk clerk to discharge me, took me by the arm and swept me from the station towards Langham’s car, which stood, gleaming in the first light of day.