I twitched again but this time she lifted her hips to meet me.

Afterward, we dozed again, sweaty and content and lying in each other’s arms. I would have stayed there forever if I hadn’t been driven out of bed by my bladder, and a guilty sense that there were things that I needed to be getting on with—important things.

Simone lay sprawled naked and inviting across the bed and watched me getting dressed under deliberately heavy-lidded eyes.

“Come back to bed,” she said and let her fingers drift idly around one erect nipple, then the other.

“I’m afraid the mighty army of justice that is the Metropolitan Police never sleeps,” I said.

“I don’t want the mighty army of justice to sleep,” she said. “On the contrary I expect it to be most diligent in its dealings with me. I’m a bad girl and I need to be held accountable for my actions.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“At least take me to your father’s concert,” she said.

I’d told her about Dad’s upcoming gig, but I hadn’t told her that Cyrus Wilkinson’s old band would be playing with him.

“I want to meet your mum and your dad and your friends,” she said. “I’ll be good.”

I knelt down by the bed and kissed her. She clutched at my arms and I thought, Sod it—they’re going to find out sooner or later. I told her she could come.

She finished our kiss and threw herself back on the bed.

“That is all I wanted,” she said and waved her hand in a regal fashion. “You may go about your duties, Constable, and I shall languish here until we meet again.”

The rain had slackened off to a light drizzle that, if you’re a Londoner, barely counts as rain at all. Even so, I splashed out on a black cab to take me back to the Folly where Molly served up steak-and-kidney pudding with roast potatoes, peas, and carrots.

“She always does this when I’m ill,” said Nightingale. “It’ll be black pudding for breakfast tomorrow. Thickens the blood.”

We were eating dinner in the so-called Private Dining Room, which adjoined the English library on the second floor. Since the main dining room could sit sixty, we never used it in case Molly got it into her head to lay all the tables. Nonetheless, Nightingale and I had dressed for dinner—we both have standards and one of us had been exerting himself that afternoon.

I knew from experience that you didn’t dive into one of Molly’s steak-and-kidney puddings until some of the superheated steam had had a chance to dissipate and the interiors had ceased to be hot enough to fire pottery.

Nightingale swallowed a couple of pills with some water and asked about the case.

“Which one?” I asked.

“The jazz musicians first,” he said.