Alex’s troubled gaze stayed with Simon, and he was dwelling on the words when he spoke to the phone. “Jill, it’s Alex Stafford. Does Jane want me at Harefield, or do you need me there?” He glanced up while he was waiting on the line. “Well, we know for certain someone was trying to read his e-mails…The problem’s at your end? I’ll be as quick as I can.” He put the phone down. “Maybe we should look into this, Simon. I wouldn’t put it past Calvin to be at least curious about Will’s moves. I have the feeling he’s not being entirely level with us. If Lucy’s right that he’s focused on the key, and he wants to examine it, then he could reasonably have discovered the password and account numbers—if he’s had the freedom of Siân’s flat. Have you got any time to check up on Dee?”

Lucy had been listening with her concentration partly divided between Alex’s words with Simon and the face she’d started to notice looking back at her from the card on the coffee table, which had fallen from the parchment.

“I have time,” she now spoke up. “Let me do something useful with my brain, Alex. I’m still on leave from work, but it’s my convalescence, not my dotage. Research is my job, too.”

Alex was aware of a growing fascination to know her more, and smiled. “OK, thank you. But I must take you home now. I’m sorry to break the flow. Simon, I’ll call you in a day or two? I’ve got to rush. We have a sick ten-year-old en route from Ormond Street.”

“Let me take Lucy home then. You get on. If that’s all right with you, Lucy?”

She glanced restlessly at the card and then replied more politely to Simon, “Yes, of course, thanks.”

Alex crossed the room back to her and stooped to give her a gentle squeeze. “I’ll call you in a day or two too.” He looked from her to the postcard on the table of the beautiful face that had magnetically been claiming Lucy’s eyes. He stood to go: “Guido Reni’s portrait of Beatrice Cenci. Will sent it from Rome. He read a lot of Shelley.”

The name burst from Lucy’s recent, vivid dream, and she could only stare. With instructions to them both to pull the door hard when they left, the doctor was gone.

AFTER TWENTY MINUTES OF SILENCE BEHIND THE WHEEL OF HER CAR, SIÂN now shut her front door with a flash of temper. “Did you have to go on about that key? I don’t want it anywhere around.” She swung on Calvin with surprising emotion. “I feel like it took Will away from me some of the time.”

“Yes, I think it did.”