He was insistent. ‘I’m to wait for an answer, Miss Granville.’

It was Hannah’s turn to be flustered.

Despite boasting about the way that he’d won the confidence of the chief magistrate, Harry Scattergood was also ready to chide himself.

‘It was a mistake to go back to the theatre in daylight,’ he admitted.

‘We needed to go through it all one more time, Harry.’

‘Yes, but we should have done it after dark. Nobody would have seen us then, especially Paul Skillen.’

‘How do you know it was him?’ asked Kinnaird. ‘You told me that he has a twin brother who looks identical.’

‘Paul is the one with a good reason to visit the Covent Garden Theatre,’ said Scattergood. ‘In fact, it’s the best reason possible. He is Hannah Granville’s beau. That makes him the envy of every red-blooded man in London.’

‘But he didn’t recognise you, did he?’

‘We didn’t stay long enough for him to take a good look at me.’

‘He still wouldn’t realise that it’s you. Didn’t you say that he looked you full in the face the night you mingled with the others outside the stage door?’

‘The light was poor on that occasion. That would have helped.’

The two friends were in the hotel they’d chosen as the place where Charles Mifflin was going to be apprehended. Situated near Piccadilly, it was the kind of establishment where a wealthy visitor might be expected to stay during his time in the capital.

‘You’ve no need to worry,’ said Kinnaird, eyeing him up and down. ‘Even I didn’t recognise you when you chose to go up in the world. Besides, when you were caught by the Skillen brothers, you looked completely different. Paul Skillen could peer at you a hundred times and still not know who you were.’

‘You underestimate him, Alan.’

‘Do I?’

‘He only caught a glimpse of me this time but it was enough to make him stare. If we hadn’t bolted, he’d soon have worked out who I was. I’ll take no more chances,’ said Scattergood. ‘I’ve fooled him twice. Paul Skillen is not going to let me do it a third time.’

Charlotte Skillen was not merely employed to handle the bookings at the shooting gallery. Ever since they’d offered their services as detectives, she had become their archivist, keeping details of every case in which they were involved. She was also a talented artist. Whenever she attended trials of those arrested by Peter and Paul, she drew sketches of the miscreants in the dock. Her record books therefore had the advantage of being illustrated. As a result, her brother-in-law was eager to leaf through her archives in a bid to identify the person he’d seen outside the theatre in Covent Garden.

‘Was it Ned Greet?’ asked Peter.

‘He’s still in prison,’ replied his brother.

‘What about Humphrey Iliffe?’