“Oh,” wheezed Daniel, his pale face reddening, “She’s sorry. She’s outraged the richest woman in Switzerland, the only child of the Karl Rosenkrantz, the heiress of his entire fortune, the most wanted client of jewel dealers around the world, who will probably now never cross our threshold again, but if she’s sorry—”

Istvan murmured something soothing to Daniel in Hungarian, a hand on his arm. Daniel took a huge breath, and his red face began to return to a more normal colour. They all swayed gently. Clearly, Marek, Marek and Ruszy were not used to feeling this much emotion in one go.

Hanna’s hands were still gripping on to Max’s shoulders.

“Please,” said Max, “could I—”

But she didn’t have to finish the sentence, because Istvan was looking at the contents of the parcel, and something that he said sharply to the other two made them both forget her for a moment. Hanna lifted her hands as she reached out for the letter.

Cover blown: now they all knew that she hadn’t brought a proper parcel at all, just a letter in French and a postcard. They were going to want to know what she was doing there. Max would guess she had about three seconds before she was in really serious trouble.

She ran.

They shouted huskily after her, but she was already slamming the door, pounding down the street the way she had come, praying that Ester and Klaus would be in sight. The bright sky and stinging cold were a shock after the warm, lamplit hallway.

At the end of the road, she looked left. Cars and colourful curling buildings and trees and twisting black lampposts and crowds of people and pigeons and no sign of anyone she knew.

She looked right. Cars and colourful curling buildings and trees and –

– and very far off, but helpfully a foot above everyone else, the looming head of Klaus Grob. Max laughed out loud with relief, and sprinted after them, weaving in between the crowds. It was wonderful to be back outside, heart pumping, leaving those three long, silvery people to sway about by themselves in their silent hallway.

As she closed in on her quarry, she slowed to a jog, and her heart began to calm down, and her thoughts began to fall into place. And as she dropped to a walk, following them past a park that had turned forlornly brown for the winter, she noticed that one of her thoughts felt particularly niggly. And then she realized why.

This was what she realized:

If Ester Rosenkrantz was the only child of this Karl Rosenkrantz person, then she didn’t have any brothers or sisters. And if she didn’t have any brothers or sisters, then she couldn’t have any nieces or nephews. And if she didn’t have any nieces or nephews, who was Klaus Grob?

7. The Széchenyi Baths