“Don’t tempt me,” Kim said, and they lay together in silence.

***

THEY RETURNED TO THE house for lunch. There was no sign of Lord Chingford or the Marquess, which was nice.

The newspapers had arrived: The Times and the Telegraph. Kim scooped them up along with a Daily Mail that he got off the butler, and they retired to another drawing room, this one mostly green and gold. Will couldn’t wait to find out what they called it. There they read the papers with, in Will’s case at least, a distinct sense of unreality. Yesterday he’d been a wanted man fleeing from the law; today he was a wanted man having coffee in a stately home.

“We’ve got ‘brutal murder of key witness’ in The Times, and ‘suspect fled’ with a description but still no name,” Kim announced. “Well built man, fair hair, plainly dressed. How delightfully unspecific. I wonder if that’s Merton helping. I wonder if DS knows.”

“That’s what the Telegraph has too, only they ‘understand that the Metropolitan Police are pursuing several avenues that will lead to the apprehension of the murderer’. What does that mean?”

“At a guess, that the Met don’t want to admit they lost you. I wish to God I could call Rennick without having to answer awkward questions.”

“Oh, bloody hell,” Will said. “Look. The Mail has a picture of the Messer.”

Kim leaned over to have a look. There was a photograph of the ‘distinctive murder weapon’ with a ‘do you recognise this knife?’ headline which Will found unpleasantly intrusive. At least it wasn’t a photograph of himself. He did a quick mental riffle through people who might recognise it, and came up with an obvious answer. “Hell’s teeth. Have you told the girls what’s happening?”

“Damn. No. I can telephone Phoebe at the Savoy.”

“If you would.” Will didn’t want to consider the girls seeing his face in the newspapers as a murderer. Maisie wouldn’t believe any such thing of him, he had no fear of that, but she’d want to be told what was going on, more so if she found the shop shut and empty. “Does that mean a flunky bringing in a telephone on a salver?”

“I was planning to go to the butler’s pantry and use his, for privacy, but if you prefer—”