“No but I spent three weeks in a drugs den, until I could stand my own stink no longer.”

“Mr. Woodhead?”

“Who else? But I am here to tell you that the commander has retired to the country, to spend more time in his garden.”

“So that’s the lie of the land.”

“I thought you’d want to know. You’re still on the list of wanted women for the right sort of investigations. You would have been anyway. In a place so big, the left hand doesn’t always know what the right hand is doing.”

She did not volunteer any more information.

Instead, she talked about the sort of cases she enjoyed, working for rather grand people, who remained nameless, but who got themselves into bother now and again, “Particularly the young people whose parents are most anxious to guard reputations.”

“We move in very different circles, Annette.”

“Ah and before I forget –” She produced a fat white envelope from her elegant bag. “You are not allowed to refuse this, as you’ll see from the writing on the envelope.”

It was handwritten, and I saw straight away that the penmanship was not English.

For The Benefit Of The Orphans

“It would take rather a long time to count, and so you may want to put it in a second envelope and have it kept in the hotel safe.”

For some reason, my heart began to pound—a feeling I could not explain. This felt like an indirect way of paying me for my information about the murder of Harry Aspinall.

“Is it from Mrs. Aspinall and her son? Are they still in London?”

“Oh no. As far as I’m aware, they went back to France with the poor man’s body. Couldn’t wait to be away from here.”

“Who then?”

“I’m not allowed to say his name, but he is very charming and diplomatic, and is acting for the person most senior to himself.”

“Bernard Campaner?”

“You don’t see me shaking my head.”

As far as I knew, I was as much in his debt as he in mine. Had it not been for the intervention at higher levels than our CID and Commander Woodhead, Stephen Walmsley would be in the dock.

After I had done as she suggested, and deposited the money in the safe, she came up to my room, to help me change. I can manage with one arm in a sling, but it takes such a long time.

“What’s the matter, Kate?”

I told her about my episode at the Dell house, and my sojourn in the cellar. “And they are here, Eliot Dell and Gertrude, conducting their business, in this hotel, on this floor.”

“Good heavens! And you have the nerve to stay here?”

“Gertrude once said that I don’t give up, and she was right. Let them think I am here to stay on their trail.”

“They might try again.”