“I had fins made for the Moth so that I can fly up here,” she said. “The lochs are the only places nearby flat enough to put down a plane.”

“It must be a wonderful feeling to fly,” I said.

“I’ll take you up some time if you like,” she said. “Just let me know when. I’m here for a while. At least until they put that boat through its paces.” She leaned closer to me. “Between ourselves I’m hoping to be given a chance to break the record myself. I’m sure I’d do a damned sight better than that foreign idiot Paolo. But then, he’s got the money and we Padgetts are as poor as church mice.”

“Really?” I looked surprised.

“Yes, Father has a grace-and-favor position at Balmoral these days. There were times when he was in the thick of things. He had been promised a knighthood at least for services to Queen Victoria and King Edward, but he suffered some kind of ill health and was sent up here to recuperate. And here he’s stayed. It’s rather lonely for my mother. We really are in a godforsaken spot in the middle of nowhere.”

“Don’t they come down to London?”

“Not often. We no longer have a London house and my little matchbox is too small to accommodate them properly.”

A memory stirred in my head at the mention of her London flat. “By the way, I was awfully sorry to hear about your maid.”

She nodded. “Yes, it was a rum do, wasn’t it? Poor little thing. She was still a country girl at heart. Hadn’t a clue about traffic. Always wandering across the road without looking, even in London. Although what she was doing at Croydon Aerodrome on that particular evening I simply can’t fathom. I’d told her to wait at the flat in London for my instructions and I wasn’t planning to return for several days.” She broke off and looked at me with interest. “So how did you come to hear about her accident?”

“The police mentioned it to me,” I said. “It seems that there was a half-finished letter to me in her purse when she was killed.”

“A letter to you? How extraordinary—what did she want?”

“I’ve no idea,” I said. “It had fallen into a ditch and most of the ink had washed away, but it was clearly addressed to Lady Georgiana and I suspect I’m the only person with that name in London. The police thought that maybe she was asking me for a job.”

“A job—with you? Why would she be doing that?”

“I thought perhaps because you were threatening to dismiss her.”

“Dismiss her?”

“You told her to watch her step when I saw you together.”