“This is a stupid time to tell me that,” I snapped and promptly burst into tears.

“Georgie.” He reached forward and dragged me into his arms while the aeroplane rocked dangerously. “It’s all right. We made it. You’re safe now.”

“I know,” I said. I tried to stop crying, but I couldn’t. I knelt on the seat with my cheek against his leather jacket and sobbed. “I feel such a fool,” I said at last. “And I’ve made your leather jacket all wet.”

“That’s okay. Cows get wet from time to time, don’t they?” He smiled and stroked my hair, which by now resembled a haystack. “But the rest of you is already wet. How did that happen?”

“I swam to the aeroplane. She tricked me. I thought that Podge was in it, but he wasn’t.”

“You’ve had quite a morning so far.” He was still smiling. “At least you can’t say it was dull.”

“I thought you’d gone away again.”

“Well, fortunately I got in touch with your Sir Jeremy and it turned out we had a few friends in common, so the need to go somewhere was avoided.”

“How did you find me?” I asked, at last.

“Pure luck. We were sitting outside the house and we actually watched the plane take off. Next moment I received a telephone call to say that the rifle that killed Hugo Beasley-Bottome had been found at the Padgetts’ house and that your nephew was missing. Then someone said they’d seen two people in the plane, so we assumed the worst. Luckily Paolo had come back from London in his own float-plane this time, so we were up in the air shortly after you. And Paolo’s machine is a lot faster, so we caught you quite quickly. I take it Ronny was in the plane at some point? You didn’t actually take off by yourself?”

“Of course she was in the plane.”

“What happened to her?”

“She jumped out,” I said. “She said she was wearing a parachute but I didn’t see it opening. I think she just fell.”

“A suitable ending for her.” Darcy nodded gravely. “I would have hated to see someone like that be hanged or put into an insane asylum.”

“Her mother is in one,” I said. I was about to say that she had contracted syphilis, but I couldn’t discuss such an unmentionable subject with Darcy.

“Maisie McPhee, right? Sir Jeremy’s men looked her up at the New Register House in Edinburgh, you’ll be pleased to know. She did have a child—unnamed baby girl about the right age for Ronny.”

“And the father?”

“Someone named Eddy Axton, although it looks as if the birth certificate has been tampered with.”

“Eddy Axton. That sounds very ordinary. And she didn’t marry him or have any other children?”

“No.”

“Poor Ronny, all those grand illusions for nothing.”