“Everything all right, Lily? You’re letting your egg congeal.”

“Not quite awake yet, darling.” She slipped the card back into its envelope and shuffled it in with the rest. She shrugged one shoulder. Nonchalant. Bored. “Here’s another invitation to buy one of those floor-cleaning machines from Harrods. Nothing personal—they seem to be targeting the housewives of Hampstead,” she murmured, passing over a flyer singing the praises of Mr. Hoover’s latest invention. “It beats as it sweeps as it cleans, apparently.”

Her husband sighed, took it dutifully and favoured it with a cursory look. He gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Have you really read this, Lil? Look—it claims to work according to a new cleaning principle: positive agitation. It beats out the dirt and extracts the whole unpleasant mess, leaving behind a fresh home you can be proud of. I’m all for a little positive agitation! I shall adopt it as my motto.” He returned, still chuckling, to his own correspondence.

“We could do with a new cleaner, but they are expensive. I’ll see what Emma thinks. She’s getting a bit cronky—had you noticed?—and could do with a bit of extra help.” Lily peered across the table at her husband’s copy of the Times, lying open at the sports page, and read the headlines upside-down with no difficulty. “Gracious! Can Middlesex possibly have lost to Yorkshire? Again?”

She listened with half an ear to the genial huffing and puffing and the sporting explanations that followed her attempt to distract, preoccupied by the words she’d just read. In black ink, chiselled characters on a white card:

My office. 9:00 Tuesday. I have a problem I’d like you to help me with. S.

Waylaid by memories, Lily fought back a smile and lowered her eyes to her plate in case they were shining with more emotion than could reasonably be accounted for by a congealed egg.

Her husband rumbled on companionably, reminding her quite unnecessarily of his imminent business trip, as he called his secretive forays into Europe. “Packing coming along is it?… Good … I say—it’s beginning to look more like ten days now with this excursion into the Black Forest. Ugh! Pop two extra ties in, will you, love? Oh, and shove in a pair of long-johns—we’re promised a flight in an aeroplane. Nasty, draughty things, aeroplanes.”

“Yes, dear. Will six pairs of underpants do? There’s bound to be an in-house laundry service. Browning or Beretta? I wasn’t sure, so I’ve left that for you to decide.”

“Oh, Browning I think. I’m hardly likely to use it, so I may as well impress them with the bulk. German military tailoring hardly minimises the size of the opposition’s bulges; in fact, I think that’s the point of it. They’ll be eyeing up my Browning while I’m admiring their Lugers. Both useless for close-up work. On second thought, I’ll pop the Beretta in there as well. Don’t bother with hats, darling. I’m planning to buy something suitable when I get to Berlin. Bit of local cover called for—don’t want to be taken for an Englishman on holiday. Would you find me fetching in a green felt Tyrolean with a feather in the side? What do you say, Lil? Lil? Are you listening?”

She gave him the cheerful mechanical reassurances he expected.

“Well, I have to dash now … Look, my dearest Lily …” He came round the table and took her hands in his, suddenly earnest. He gave her the devastating smile that had knocked her for six so many years before. “Just go and get one of those machines … those vacuum thingamies … you know what I mean … I see the very idea of one brings a flush of excited anticipation to your damask cheek.” He winked and caressed the damask cheek. “Now I wonder how Harrods could possibly know I’ve just had a pay rise?”

He’d guessed. Of course he had. That was one of the penalties you paid for being married to the smartest man in the kingdom. She handed him his briefcase, put her arms round his neck and kissed him. He bit her ear.

LILY WENTWORTH (AS was) entered the reception hall of Scotland Yard at ten minutes to nine on Tuesday morning and announced herself. She acknowledged with annoyance that her knees were trembling and she was breathing fast. The formidable building still had the power to intimidate, however often she ventured into it. Everyone else was walking purposefully up and down the tiled corridors wearing a police uniform or a business suit with bowler hat and briefcase. In her lady-heading-for-Liberty’s outfit, she felt herself doubly an outsider. Staff changed swiftly at the Yard, and no one called out a friendly “Wotcher, Lil!” How long had it been? She calculated that it was eleven years since she’d received the first of his summonses. Each one had changed her life. Some had left scars, on flesh and spirit.

The young copper assigned escort duty took her up to the top floor in the lift. Sharing the confined space with a stranger was always awkward and, after an exchange of pleasantries, they fell silent. Out of the corner of her eye, Lily watched him doing exactly what she expected a young officer would be doing with a new subject in a lift. He was filling in his mental portrait form. Page 22 of the trainee copper’s handbook. She followed his glance as he made his top-to-toe clandestine observations:

Subject: Female.

Nationality: English.

Married status: Unknown (gloves worn).

Height: 5’ 6”.

Build: Slim.

Age (conjectural)… mmm … thirtyish. (She flattered herself.)

Hair: Fair, short and waved. (What he could see of it.)

Eyes: Green.

Distinguishing features: Surgical scar to right jaw, not totally disguised by a layer of Leichner’s shade number 2: ‘Porcelain.’

Purpose of visit: By invitation, to attend Assistant Commissioner Sandilands.

Lily sensed that his exercise became trickier when it came to evaluating her outfit. He noted her smart cream linen two-piece and matching cloche hat, she thought, with quiet approval. The gloves and shoes were impeccable, but his eyes snagged on the one jarring note in her appearance—a leather satchel she carried slung from her shoulder. Unlike the neat purse just about able to contain a penny coin for the loo and a cologne-scented handkerchief that London ladies clutched to their bosoms, this capacious and battered object was decidedly utilitarian. Lily sighed. Time perhaps to exchange her old friend for something classier from Vuitton? The copper frowned in puzzlement and, sensing his unease, Lily reassured him in her best Mayfair voice that her bag had been checked at the reception desk.

It hadn’t.

The desk officer had given it a cursory look and waved her straight through without bothering to search it. Lily didn’t want to risk a sudden panicking lunge from her dutiful escort in the confined space of the lift and she gave him a broad, disarming smile. He was right to be watchful. She knew she didn’t look like a Sinn Féin gangster’s moll, but there was a chance she could have been one of those demented society women the Mosleyite Fascisti cultivated and cajoled into doing their bidding. It wouldn’t have been the first time an apparent innocent had walked into Scotland Yard with a hidden explosive.

As the lift lurched to a halt and he opened the doors with a flourish, she eased under the young man’s outstretched arm murmuring a word of thanks and added, “Suit is from Monsieur Worth and perfume from Mademoiselle Chanel, Officer.”

This was greeted by a shout of laughter. “And smile from Heaven, miss!” he told her gallantly. “The assistant commissioner’s a lucky chap! Don’t know how he does it!”

“THERE’S A BOMB in there!

“Bam! Splat! Bam! You’re strawberry jam!” Lily announced in playground Cockney, slamming her bag down under the Assistant Commissioner’s nose.