“I see. Only yesterday evening a young woman was found dead on a byway close to Croydon Aerodrome. It appeared that she had been run over by a fast-moving vehicle—a motorcycle by the looks of it. We assume it was just a tragic accident. The lane was leafy and shady, and it was just after a sharp bend. Maybe she stepped out at the last minute and he didn’t see her. But he didn’t stop to report it either. And we’ve turned up no witnesses.”

I tried to keep my face interested but detached. I tried not to let Paolo come into my mind. “I’m very sorry for the woman, but I don’t see what this has to do with me,” I said. “I can assure you that I’ve never ridden a motorcycle in my life and was nowhere near Croydon Aerodrome last night, as the owner of a seedy nightclub can verify.”

“Nobody is suggesting you were,” he said. “I asked because her handbag was thrown across the road by the impact. Some of the contents wound up in the ditch. Among them was a half-finished letter, apparently to you. The writer was using a cheap ink and most of it had washed away but we could read ‘Lady Georgiana’ and the words ‘Older brother, the Duke of . . .’ ”

“How extraordinary,” I said.

“So if you don’t know this woman, we wondered why she was writing to you.” His eyes didn’t leave mine for an instant. In spite of his age, and he must have been over fifty, his eyes were extraordinarily bright and alive. “We wondered, for example, whether she might have been thinking of blackmailing you.”

“For what? My brother and I are virtually penniless. He at least owns the property. I own nothing.”

“The lower classes don’t think like that. To them all aristocrats are wealthy.”

“I can assure you that I am not being blackmailed by anybody. Was this woman known to be of the criminal classes?”

“No,” he said. “She was a lady’s maid.”

Then a memory stirred within my brain as I put together the words “Mavis” and “lady’s maid.” “Wait,” I said. “Was she by any chance in the service of Veronica Padgett, the famous lady pilot?”

“Aha.” He gave a smug smile. “Then you do know her?”

“I encountered her once, a few days ago at Croydon Aerodrome. She had come to meet her mistress and bring clothes for a party. Miss Padgett was cross with her because she was late. She pointed me out and said that Lady Georgiana could manage without a lady’s maid and she was thinking of following suit, so this young woman would have known who I was. But I didn’t have any direct communication with her.”

“You say her mistress was cross with her? Maybe she was writing to you to apply for a job.”