The lights came on to reveal the wine cellar as he had first seen it. No bodies. No bloodstains. No sign that anyone had ever been there, let alone been murdered there. How long since he had left the cellar? An hour and a half? Two hours? He thought about it for a few moments, then did as he had been told: He went to the wine racks dead ahead, the ones covering the office door, and chose four bottles of wine. Then, with two tucked under an arm, he switched off the light, locked the cellar door, and went back upstairs.

“Find everything all right?” asked Lance, who was back seated at the banquette.

“Sure,” Stone replied, setting the bottles and the keys on the table. He sat down and resumed his drink.

Lance got up, found a corkscrew, and uncorked a bottle of Chianti Classico, then put the other three bottles into the kitchen wine rack. He got three glasses from a cupboard and set them on the table, then tasted the wine. “That should do the trick,” he said, and sat down again.

Erica tasted the sauce, then began setting the table. A moment later, she poured the pasta into a collander in the sink, then, while it drained, switched off the stove. She got a large platter from a cupboard, emptied the pasta into it, then poured the sauce on top of it and set it on the table. She brought some Parmesan cheese from the fridge, grated it over the pasta, sat down, and began serving them.

“Buon appetito,” Lance said, raising his glass.

They dug into the pasta.

Stone ate the food, which was very good, and wondered if Lance was the coolest person he’d ever met, or if he just had no idea what had occurred in his house a couple of hours before. “Who did you say owned the house?” he asked.

“A fellow in the Foreign Office, name of Richard Creighton; he’s out in the East somewhere, I believe; I pay the rent directly into his bank account. It’s quite a nice house, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is. It’s fairly lived in, for a house owned by someone who’s never here.”

“Well, I guess these diplomats have got to have some sort of home to come back to. Anyway, I’m living in it, and I suppose he rented it to others before me.”

“I’ve done a few things to make it better,” Erica said. “The living room curtains are mine, and I’ve replaced all the bedding in the master suite.”

“Mmmm,” Stone said. “Wonderful sauce.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“What plans do the two of you have for the next few days?” Stone asked, because he couldn’t think of anything else.

“We’re in London,” Lance said. “Unless something comes up.”

“What might come up?”

“Oh, you never know, sometimes a deal requires travel.”