‘Alice, couldn’t you have set yourself up in a tea shop and bought a pair of poodles?’ Joe burst out.

Alice and Bonnefoye both turned a pitying glance on him.

‘A cup of tea brings in one franc,’ said Bonnefoye. ‘A girl, between a hundred and a thousand. A dirty business but a calculatedly short one, I’d guess. Five years . . . I’d say you were pretty well poised to make off with your ill-gotten gains?’ he guessed.

‘I am,’ she said with a confident smile.

‘So – tell us about the moment when your organization became his.’

‘Ah! A sad story! And one you will have heard many times before. I became friendly with one of my clients. Over-friendly. I fancied myself in love with him. He reminded me very much of someone I had been fond of in my past and I allowed him to get too close to me. He also was recently arrived in the city, finding his feet, totally without female companionship. Someone introduced him to the establishment. We were a comfort and a support to each other.’

Joe was remembering just such a confession in a moonlit garden in Simla when she’d talked of a man she’d loved, and he wondered.

‘I was rash. I confided in him. But why not? He gave me good advice and he brought me more clients – he’s a well-connected man. I told him one day, for his amusement, of a fantasy shared with one of my girls . . . Thaïs, it was . . . A regular customer of hers had whispered in her ear. They do. And my girls are required as part of their job to pass on their confidences.’

‘God! I’d like to get a look at your little black book, madame,’ Bonnefoye chortled.

‘Clients assume – perhaps you will know the reason for this, Inspector – that the head on the adjoining pillow may always be disregarded. The woman, by nature of her employment, must be empty-headed, deaf or have a short memory. None of that is true.

‘Thaïs told me that her client, a regular visitor and an agreeable young man, was suffering at the hands of his old uncle. Known for years to be his uncle’s heir, he had been played with, tormented beyond reason by the old man on whom he was financially dependent. Finally the chap had informed his nephew that he was to be cut out of the will, that he (a keen theatre-goer) was leaving the entire fortune to the Garrick Club in London, to be distributed to indigent old actors. Our client spent some time outlining to Thaïs exactly what he wanted to see done to his uncle by way of retribution. His fantasy was amusing. He saw his uncle centre stage at the Garrick Theatre, spotlit of course, knife in his heart and an orifice unmentionable in mixed company stuffed with banknotes.’

‘Oh, good Lord!’ said Joe. ‘November 1923?’

Alice smiled. ‘I told my friend jokingly about this and to my surprise he didn’t laugh. He was intrigued. He gave way to a fantasy of his own. “What a cracking notion! Well, why not? Tell Thaïs to whisper in the boy’s ear that all his dreams can come true! Overnight he will become a very rich and very grateful client, will he not? Let’s put a proposal to him. We undertake to set the stage and provide the body for a fee to be agreed. How much?”

‘Thinking he was playing a game, I suggested a sum.

‘“Ridiculous! Triple that. The overheads will be tremendous. People to pay off . . . Thaïs must be rewarded . . . and Vévé.”’

‘Vévé?’

‘Vincent Viviani, my Zouave. In the end, my friend went to London with him to smooth his path.’

‘Obviously a successful outing. I remember the case. No one was ever arrested. Yes, a smooth beginning. You were inspired to continue?’

‘Yes. Suddenly he was talking about what “we” would do and I realized I’d lost control. There was nothing I could do about it – I’ve told you, he is well connected and powerful.’

‘And you made a profit from these excursions into Hades?’

‘Oh yes. But it was more than that. He enjoyed what he was doing. A game, you know.’

‘You must have exercised a measure of control over him? In the selection of victims, Alice?’

For a moment she was puzzled, trying to guess his meaning.

‘You appear, like the black widow spider, only to kill the males of the species. I have yet to hear – apart from the unfortunate Mademoiselle Raissac who merited punishment as an informer – of a female victim.’

Alice breathed out – with relief? ‘Of course! You must have noticed our clients are men? They have aggressive fantasies about other men in their lives. Men blocking their advancement, men deserving an act of revenge on the battlefield or in the boudoir, questions of inheritance. Sometimes a vengeful fantasy will be triggered by a hurt done to a female in his circle: the father who requests that his impressionable daughter’s young man, whom he has discovered to be a penniless male vamp, be thrown from the Eiffel Tower . . .’

‘You don’t jib at academics, Alice?’ Joe asked, interested in her methods. ‘I’m thinking of a case in 1923 – must have been towards the very start of your activities. A professor who ended up inspecting, rather more closely than he would have liked, the inside of a mummy case. In the Louvre? In front of a delighted audience of fellow academics? No?’

‘No. Not one of ours. I’m sure if we’d been asked . . . he couldn’t have resisted.’

Joe was tiring of her games. ‘Bonnefoye, Alice here confessed to me while we were alone in the back of the taxi that she went to the theatre that night to save the life of Sir George who was – as we suspected – the real target.’ He filled in the details, which came as no surprise to the Frenchman.

‘I’m sure Sir George will be most relieved to hear that he survived!’ He grinned. ‘And doubtless pleased to hear that Miss Alice did what she could to divert the knife from his throat on to a more deserving one. Can’t wait to tell him! But, Joe, there is one detail in this nasty piece of entrapment that puzzles me. The tickets and the note that drew him in – I’d like to hear her account for that.’

‘You’d shudder if you knew how much they cost, those tickets! But Somerton was determined to have his fun – you might almost say, desperate – and offered to pay well over the odds for a good performance.’

‘And the note? The note that lured George to the theatre? How did you know about his relationship with his cousin at the Embassy? Did he speak of it in Simla?’

A trap.

She looked puzzled. ‘Why no. I believe I must have left India before ever his cousin took up a post here . . . Not certain. He never mentioned a cousin at any rate.’

Then she looked at him and smiled. And Joe felt the furry feet of the spider easing their way up his spine. Selecting a soft place for her fangs.

‘My boss, as you call him, wrote the note himself.’

‘Taking a reasonable shot at the handwriting, it would appear?’

‘Why would it not be an entirely reasonable shot? Not necessary to fake one’s own handwriting, Commander!’

Chapter Twenty-Five

‘Before I say another word, Commander . . . Inspector . . . I want your reassurance that I may walk free from here when I’ve told you what you want to know. I came here as a witness and will leave as a witness. I’ll sign any statement you care to draw up but I must go free. I will give you an address at which I may be reached. If you require me to attend a magistrate’s hearing or a trial I will, of course, do that. So long as the man I denounce is in custody.’

‘And if we don’t agree to that?’

‘Then, one morning, you’ll find me dead in my cell in the women’s prison. His reach is a long one. And the killings will go on. Is that the proof you will be looking for?’

‘Up to you, Bonnefoye. I don’t trust her.’

He could see his young colleague had been fired by the chance of landing a male suspect. A foreigner, a well-to-do foreigner. Fourier would not have hesitated. Was it likely that the madame of a brothel, no matter how successful, could devise these murderous attacks? No, there must be a male intelligence and will underpinning everything. And who was to say he was wrong? Here was Alice on the verge of trading a devastating betrayal for her freedom.