Across the river a catamaran pulled away from the Millbank Pier in a roar of diesel. I bundled up the kebab paper and dumped it in a rubbish bin. I climbed back into the Jag, started her up, and pulled out into the twilight.

At some point I was going to have to hit the library back at the Folly and look for historical cases. Polidori was usually good for lurid stuff involving drink and debauchery. Probably from all the time he spent off his head with Byron and the Shelleys by Lake Geneva. If anyone knew about untimely and unnatural deaths it was Polidori, who literally wrote the book on the subject just before drinking cyanide—it’s called An Investigation into Unnatural Deaths in London in the Years 1768–1810 and it weighs over two pounds—I just hoped that reading it didn’t drive me to suicide too.

It was late evening by the time I reached the Folly and parked up the Jag in the coach house. Toby started barking as soon as I opened the back door and he came skittering across the marble floor of the atrium to hurl himself at my shins. Molly glided in from the direction of the kitchens like the winner of the world all-comers creepy gothic Lolita contest. I ignored Toby’s yapping and asked whether Nightingale was awake. Molly gave me the slight head tilt that meant “no” and then an inquiring look.

Molly served as the Folly’s housekeeper, cook, and rodent exterminator. She never speaks, has too many teeth and a taste for raw meat, but I try never to hold that against her or let her get between me and the exit.

“I’m knackered—I’m going straight to bed,” I said.

Molly glanced at Toby and then at me.

“I’ve been working all day,” I said.

Molly gave me the head tilt that meant “I don’t care, if you don’t take the smelly little thing out for his walk you can be the one who cleans up after him.”

Toby paused in his barking long enough to give me a hopeful look.

“Where’s his lead?” I asked.

Chapter 2 - The Spice of Life