“At this point, I turned up,” Kim said. “Whereupon I was given the pleasure of informing Miss Jacobs that the will and insurance documents under his real name had been found, that she was not mentioned, and that he’d been a free man for some years. She took it poorly.”

“Oh, it was far better for you to tell her,” Phoebe said. “That way we could comfort her and agree on how dreadful men are. And she was quite right to be furious, although perhaps not at you. But once we had her angry at Fairfax rather than at Kim for telling her about him, which I admit did take a little while, she said he could look in the study to see if there was any useful information there. Of course it was locked, and she didn’t even have a key to the room. In her own house! Really, the whole business made me want to chain myself to railings and throw myself under a horse.”

“You got in?” Will asked.

“Picked the lock and found Aladdin’s cave,” Kim said. “There was correspondence with various interesting people, including names I knew. Account books that showed a great deal of money moving around, names and sums in a notebook, a fascinating-looking ledger kept entirely in code for which I have very high hopes, and a stash of banknotes. He was Zodiac, Will.”

“And we think he was planning to run away, like you guessed,” Maisie added. “For one thing, he hadn’t visited Florrie for a fortnight before he died, which Kim said sounds like he didn’t want to lead anyone there. For another, it turns out he’d put a whacking great lot of money in her bank account just last week, which might be why he needed to make more.”

“That calmed her down a little, once Kim told her,” Phoebe said. “And made me feel I could forgive him. At least he’d thought about her.”

“Well, yes,” Kim said. “Although, if that was what led to him getting killed—”

“Do shush, darling.”

Will looked between the ladies. “This is incredible. Blimey. You two.”

“We are rather wonderful,” Phoebe said modestly.

“All in a day’s work,” Maisie added. “Anything else we can do while we’re about it?”

“If there is, we’re not doing it tonight. We have dinner with Lucile in—oh my goodness!” Phoebe shrieked. “Maisie, we have to be there in an hour and we aren’t dressed! Kim, you are the most awful nuisance.”

“And you are a miracle,” Kim told Phoebe, as Will gave Maisie a hug that didn’t come close to conveying his feelings. “A pair of miracles, and I will buy you a lunch to end all lunches. Give Lucile my love.”

The girls hurried off in a whirl of goodbyes. Will turned to Kim as the door shut. “Bloody hell.”