She gurgled attractively. “No, I can’t! I often wonder if he’s set me up for an indiscreet shot! Who’d be married to a professional divorce arranger? It’s like living on the slopes of a volcano.” She turned an admiring gaze on the tall, smiling sergeant. “Though I must say, if I were being entrapped myself, I’d be rather pleased to be snapped next to a good-looking young chap with a dangerous moustache.” She placed a gloved hand gently on his knee and leaned so close the straw fabric of her hat grazed his cheek and the scent of her exotic perfume tickled his nose. It wasn’t the eau de cologne or Yardley’s “Lavender” that his sisters favoured, and he found it unsettling. Disturbing also was the change in the tone of her voice as she murmured, “Now, if I were to choose this moment to say something incriminating and foolish in the hearing of our cabby—something like, ‘Darling, did you remember to tell them to put the champagne on ice at our hotel in Brighton?’—he would track us both down in no time. A quick but unpleasant court appearance, a write-up in the Times, and that’s the end of your career. For the rest of your existence, Sergeant Thoday, you’d be branded a cad and a professional gigolo. What’s my silence worth to you?”

Edith enjoyed the sergeant’s fleeting look of horror before digging him in the ribs with a peal of laughter. “It’s all right! It’s only me, Edith! Dutiful wife on her way home to the familial London hearth. Still, I have learned some surprising skills from that arsehole. And the best one? If I decided to disappear, I could. And he’d never find me. I’m probably the only person in the world who could say that. I have the skills and the means.”

Thoday shuddered. He didn’t doubt it. He had the uncomfortable feeling of one who had just offered a Friskies doggy treat to a wolf. He swallowed and pressed on. “His other businesses, Mrs. Hardy?”