“Maybe your judgment isn’t as sound as you think.”

“Just remember to keep your mouth shut about all this, all right? You don’t want your husband to end up like poor old Nedda. Do you understand me? That new lover of yours, especially. No pillow talk.”

The funny thing about Burgess, he was really rather handsome beneath the bloat and the livery color. Iris imagined that when he was younger—at university, maybe—he was really attractive. Though the whites of his eyes had yellowed to ecru, they were alive with brains and charm—a man who might have been somebody.

“I understand perfectly,” she replied.

“Excellent.” He released her wrist and held up another necktie. “Too green?”

“Too shiny.”

Iris turned and walked out of Gentlemen’s Furnishings, down the escalator and out the revolving door to the busy street, where she hailed a taxi to take her home.

But when she climbed inside, the cab wasn’t empty. A man in a dark suit and fedora sat on the other end of the seat, newspaper folded on his lap. He took off his hat and said, in a distinct courtly American accent, “Hello, Mrs. Digby. I don’t know if you remember me, but I gave you my card at a party not long ago. Sumner Fox.”

NATURALLY IRIS REACHED FOR the door handle, but it was locked. The taxi moved off down Oxford Street toward Marble Arch. Iris turned to Mr. Fox and said recklessly, “Would you mind telling me what the hell’s going on? Are you trying to kidnap me?”

“Not at all. Just seeing you safely back to Oakwood Court. London seems to have become a little more dangerous over the past twenty-four hours.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Fox looked at his watch and looked out the taxi window. He leaned forward and rapped on the glass separation; the driver opened the window and they exchanged a few words Iris couldn’t hear. He sat back in his seat and said, in a kind voice, “Mrs. Digby, I work for a counterintelligence bureau of the US government. You know what that means?”

“Of course I do. You look for spies.”

“In a nutshell. Now, I know you’ve been living overseas for some time, but I’m thinking you might perhaps have heard of what’s going on in Washington right now? The hearings and whatnot?”

“I’ve heard something about it, yes.”

“Earlier this summer, a woman named Elizabeth Bentley testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Miss Bentley, if you haven’t heard, used to run a network of intelligence agents on behalf of the Soviet Union.”