He didn’t say any of that. He said they could give Mr. Thompson a couple more days’ leeway, and Kim said if you gave a book-collector an inch he’d take a mile, and they argued about it for long enough to eat the platter of sausages, toast, and mushrooms that Peacock brought in.

It was a fragile bubble of normal life that they both knew couldn’t outlast breakfast. Kim finished his tea-coloured water, and pushed his plate away. “I suppose I’d better get on and make those calls. Good God, it’s past nine. Do you need to get to the shop?”

“It does the customers good to wait. I’ll stay as long as you want me.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Kim said. “Don’t promise me that unless you mean it.”

Will blinked. Kim gave him a twitch of a smile. “Sorry. I spent too much of last night thinking rather than sleeping.”

“You want to tell me what you were thinking about?” Will asked cautiously.

“Nothing good. I don’t want this to happen, Will. I’m avoiding plugging in the telephone because I am dreading the news that the stupid oaf has been arrested and then the downward slide begins. How long does it take from arrest to the noose these days?”

“Is this,” Will began and then rephrased the question into, “How bad is this going to be?”

“For—?”

“You. Us. Him indoors.” He jerked a thumb. Kim gave him a questioning look. “Mr. Peacock seemed a bit worried about what this might mean for him.”

“As well he might.”

“Why? Are you going to sack him and get a posher valet? Someone more suitable for his lordship the marquess?”

It came out a touch more belligerently than he intended. Kim didn’t point that out. Instead, he got up, checked the kitchen was empty, and returned to the table. “Between us, Peacock did two years for embezzlement.”

Will had to have misheard. “Say again?”

“Embezzlement. He took a significant amount of money off Lord Carnforth, for whom he was butler, and went to Pentonville accordingly. They released him to the war and he did sterling work in France, but he couldn’t get a new place afterwards. So I made him an offer.”

That seemed perverse even by Kim standards. “Why?”

“Because he couldn’t get work. I needed someone who’d keep his mouth shut about my personal and professional life.”

“Are you joking? If he was ready to turn over the last bloke he worked for—”