He threw me off with a single snap of flexed muscles, like a man dislodging a snake or venomous insect. I staggered back, slipped, and sat down with a thud. I didn’t hear the shot but I heard him scream and saw him fall, his body curling into a hard knot of pain.

So that was what a silencer looked like, I thought, staring at the gun in Mary’s dainty hand. For some reason I’d expected it would be bigger.

Her lips parted, and out came a string of obscenities that shocked me almost as much as what she’d just done. It was like hearing Dorothy cursing Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. Her pink mouth wasn’t pretty now, it had the grotesque shape of a Greek Fury’s, and her eyes were as opaque as coffee caramels.

‘Damn him! Why’d he have to get in the way?’ She turned those yellow-brown eyes towards me and the look in them made me shrink back. That pleased her. ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. He won’t be going anywhere for a while, and you wouldn’t leave him, would you? See what you can do for him. I’d hate to have him die. I have plans for you, Vicky dear, and it won’t be nearly so much fun if John isn’t there to watch.’

The door closed. The key turned in the lock.

John sat up. ‘Missed,’ he said with satisfaction.

I stared at the spreading stain on his sleeve. ‘Missed?’ I croaked.

‘She meant to do a bit more damage than this.’

He didn’t have to elaborate. She must have known the only way she could stop him was to put a bullet in one or the other of us, and she probably didn’t care which. If he hadn’t pushed me away . . .

And if I hadn’t interfered he could have stopped her, before she aimed and fired.

Out of all the questions boiling in my overheated brain I fished the least important. ‘Is she pregnant?’

‘Not by me, at any rate.’ John didn’t look up. He was concentrating on rolling up his sleeve, and not doing a very good job of it.

‘Are you trying to tell me you didn’t . . . You never . . .’

‘As you have had occasion to observe, my principles are somewhat elastic, but there are some things at which even I draw the line. All other considerations aside . . .’ He glanced at me from under his lashes. ‘All other considerations aside, I’d as soon bed a black widow spider. If you don’t believe me, and you probably don’t, I can produce witnesses. Max and Whitbread took turns spending the night with us. Cosy little arrangement . . . Would you mind helping me with this? She’ll be back before long, and it would not be a good idea for either of us to be here when that event occurs.’