‘Your business must be doing very well,’ she remarked.

‘Because of my Rolls?’

‘Yes.’

‘Business has been excellent if tiresome. But people are prepared to pay a fortune for me to cover up scandals or even to find their lost dogs. I have told my secretary, however, that I am not taking on any further business until this case is solved.’

They stopped at an inn in a village outside Oxford for lunch because they had set out early that morning. ‘I wonder if Jeremy Tremaine is at the university,’ said Harry.

‘Hardly.’ Rose poked at the food on her plate. She would not confess that she was still nervous and frightened, expecting assassins to jump out from behind every bush. ‘It’s high summer. What college does he attend?’

‘Saint Edwin’s.’

‘I wonder if this visit to the Tremaines is really necessary. They cannot know anything and they will hardly admit they drove their daughter into trying to run away because they were forcing her into marriage with Lord Berrow.’

‘They might just know something,’ said Harry. ‘If you’ve finished toying with your food, we’ll get on the road again.’

Inspector Judd entered Kerridge’s office looking excited. ‘A man’s been dragged out of the Thames under Westminster Bridge.’

‘So?’

‘He hadn’t been in the water long and he looks like the man from Plomley.’ The police artist had made a sketch of Rose’s would-be assassin from the Plomley landlord’s description, and the picture, prominently displayed on posters, had already been distributed to every police station in Britain.

Kerridge leaped to his feet and grabbed his bowler hat. ‘We’d best get down there and have a look.’

The body was lying, covered with a blanket, on the landing stage at Charing Cross. ‘Anything in his pockets?’ asked Kerridge.

‘I recognized him from the poster,’ said the policeman, ‘and left him just as he was when he was dragged out of the river and gave instructions that you should be informed, sir.’

‘Good lad. Let’s have a look.’

The constable pulled back the blanket. ‘He can’t have been in the water long,’ commented Kerridge. ‘Who found him? Where exactly was he found?’

‘It was low tide and two children found him, half in, half out of the river.’

‘That artist did a good job. Let’s see what he has in his pockets.’

Kerridge knelt beside the body and began to pull out the contents of the dead man’s pockets. There was a gold watch, a wallet containing a wad of notes, a blackjack, and, in one coat pocket, to Kerridge’s delight, a pistol – a lady’s purse pistol. ‘This looks like our man,’ said Kerridge. He turned the body over with the help of Judd. Someone had struck the man a vicious blow on the back of the head.

Kerridge sat back on his heels. ‘I think that’s what killed him, not drowning, but the pathologist will let us know. Let me have a proper look in this wallet.’

He carefully extracted the sodden notes, all five-pound ones. ‘I think there’s about five hundred pounds here,’ he exclaimed. ‘Anything else?’