Jane Tasker: the wife Gibbs had described as being like a servant working for a man who didn’t need or want one. Waiting to do Reuben Tasker’s bidding, as if nothing else could give her a purpose in life. Terrified when she found out she owned a memoir by Damon Blundy’s ex-wife in case Tasker was furious. Giving him an alibi, or so it had seemed. Simon had even thought, Oh, she obviously lied about that, without thinking that Jane too might have been involved in the murder, let alone that she’d done it herself, while Reuben stayed at home and wrote Chapter Fourteen of his latest novel.

It was the minutest details that stung the most.

Simon had been wrong about something else too: he’d assumed the cryptic crime scene was the killer’s way of communicating with the police. With him, specifically—the great Simon Waterhouse. Instead, all the clues had been for the benefit of Nicki Clements. Reuben Tasker had taken for granted that the details of how Damon Blundy had been killed would appear in the press and that Nicki would realize who must have killed him.

Simon had been so sure that the message was for him. Humiliating though it was to admit it to himself, he now felt ignored and irrelevant.

“I didn’t tell you I’d hired Uskalis to follow Nicki because I couldn’t,” said Paula. “Not without revealing a suspicious level of interest in a woman I didn’t know.”

“Yet now you’re willing to reveal the suspicious interest that you took in Nicki Clements,” said Simon.

“Yes, I am.” Paula flashed him a “lucky you” smile. “As I told you before, Nicki’s comments on Damon’s columns made it clear she was in love with him. I wondered if they were having an affair. Since I’m rich, I could afford to find out.”

“You wondered because you were jealous,” said Simon. “You were Damon’s other woman, and you hated the thought of him having someone else on the go at the same time.”

“Actually, no,” said Paula, sipping her tea. Unlike Simon, she’d spilled none in her saucer. Not a drop. “I wanted to dig up dirt on Damon, so that I could publicly embarrass him. Not with an affair—in itself, that wouldn’t have made a dent—but . . . well, as far as I could tell, Nicki Clements was just a nonentity housewife. She’s hardly A-list. Damon wouldn’t have wanted to be caught screwing a nobody.”

Simon narrowed his eyes at her. “Very good,” he said. “That’s my cue to say, ‘Didn’t you once hope to be the first female Labour prime minister?’ and get distracted by the hypocrisy of champagne socialism—talking about equality while secretly sneering at ordinary people. I’m sure you are a snob, but you’re playing it up to distract me from the lies.”