“I need some information first. What exactly did he tell your fiancée ?”

“Oh, a lot of stuff he had no business saying. She lapped it up, of course. Really, Ronnie, women are—”

“What did he tell her?” Aaron repeated.

“Well, I’m not going to tell you,” Paul said, ruffled. “The point is, he wrapped her round his little finger, and that sort—”

“Was it true?”

Paul’s eyes widened. “That’s a damned offensive remark. Just because you’re a bobby, you don’t have to forget your manners.”

“I don’t know what he told her, but it seems to have hit a nerve with you, and it certainly did with your fiancée. So I am asking you, was it true?”

Paul’s mouth tightened mulishly. Aaron tried not to roll his eyes. “I’m not asking for fun. If this man is making up lies, he’s a charlatan, but if he’s digging out secrets and using them, then we’re looking at obtaining money by deception, and we might even have a blackmailer on our hands. So I’m going to ask you again. Was what he said factually accurate?”

“If you must,” Paul muttered.

“And what was it? I don’t care,” Aaron added. “I don’t give a damn: I just want an idea what this fellow is up to.”

“Oh, all right. You’ll keep it to yourself? He told Babs I had another girl.”

“That’s all? Nothing more specific?”

“Since you ask, he told her I’d been with a girl just before I wrote the letter.”

“Been with?” Aaron repeated blankly.

“You know what I mean. Or maybe you don’t,” he added snidely. “Gone to bed with. Like normal men do with girls. Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“He told her that you bedded a woman, and, what, wrote a letter to your fiancée as soon as you’d finished? And you’re saying that’s true?”

“You needn’t be so prissy,” Paul said. “It’s the nineteen twenties, you know. We don’t all have to behave like Victorians any more.”

“Rolling out of one woman’s bed to make plans for your engagement to another woman sounds more Georgian to me,” Aaron said. “If not Tudors—wait. Your engagement party was a costume ball? And you were going as Henry the Eighth?”

“Oh, don’t you start. Babs made a rotten fuss about that when she gave the ring back. Threw it at me, actually.”

Aaron didn’t blame her. “Are you positive Wildsmith made that specific accusation? You’re sure he didn’t say something like You were thinking of other women when you wrote, and you filled in the gaps? A guilty conscience can do that.” Not that Aaron saw much sign of a guilty conscience in Paul, but one never knew.