‘And how long had you been in Miss Newton’s employ?’ said Joe.

‘For five years. I met her in the south of France in 1914 before the war. I am southern French as the commander guessed. She was living under the protection – I think that’s the phrase – of a naval officer and in addition to the flat, the jewels, the motor car, he paid for the services of a maid. Myself.’

‘And when she moved to Paris she took you with her. Tell me, madame, how did you enjoy life in the Avenue de l’Opéra?’

Joe asked the question with an easy smile but his intention was to disconcert and alarm. He felt himself disadvantaged by her calm. At that moment a tray of tea was carried in and placed on the table in front of Flora. Deliberately, she busied herself with the formalities of the presentation of teacups and avoided his eye and his question. Having dispensed China and Indian tea, lemon and milk in the correct proportions, she once again turned to Joe.

‘To know that we resided in the Avenue de l’Opéra, my mistress and I, you must have very special knowledge of our past, Commander. Such information could only come from one source. And that source is at present in Simla. Am I correct?’

‘That is correct, madame. You will realize that Isobel Newton has told me everything.’

To Joe’s surprise Flora burst out laughing. ‘All? Are you quite certain of that, Commander? Unless she is much changed she will have told you exactly what she wished you to know and no more than that! You won’t have learned all there is to know about Isobel Newton!’

The tone was still light but now had a diamond-hard edge. A vengeful edge, the edge of a hatred which Joe welcomed. A show of emotion and particularly hatred in an interview was often the first crack in the façade and he thought the moment had come to widen the crack. Increase the leverage in the weak spot.

‘On the contrary,’ he said seriously, ‘Isobel has confided her secrets to me. She has at great pains to herself revealed the unkind blows dealt her by fate. She has entrusted me with an account of how she came to fall from innocence and how she was subsequently manipulated and abused by those who had seemed to be her protectors.‘ He managed a heartfelt sigh as one saddened by the iniquities of the world.

To Joe’s delight, Flora put her teacup down with a crash. Her dark eyes glowed with the intensity of jet and she shook her head slowly from side to side, never taking her eyes from Joe’s. He felt himself recoil instinctively; it was for a moment as though a hooded cobra had reared up in front of him.

‘Fall from innocence!’ she hissed. ‘That girl was never innocent! She was born guilty as sin! She was selfish to the core. She manipulated, she used, she deceived! And still it goes on. And you, Sandilands, are her latest victim it would seem! One of hundreds! How often I’ve seen it!’

Joe sat in silence as the dam began to burst. Flora went on, her voice rising as she spoke. ‘Her own father couldn’t wait to get rid of her. There was already trouble at home before he sent her away to the south of France. Silly old fool assumed that she’d be safe with his strait-laced parishioner… it wasn’t two minutes before little Miss Isobel had betrayed her employer’s trust. She was thrown out of the hotel but she ended up in a very chi-chi little flat in St Raphael which is where I began to work for her… Fall from innocence, indeed! She jumped! And she landed in a feather bed!’ Her eyes clouded for a moment and she added in an undertone, ‘I could tell you stories of besmirched innocence that would make your blood run cold.’

‘And what, precisely were your duties, madame?’ Joe cut her short. ‘I am wondering why, if you so despised Miss Newton, you remained in her employ? I must presume that the work was to your liking?’

‘It was work! Can you imagine what is available to a girl, a lonely and unsupported girl in France? It was not to my liking, as you put it, but it was not the street. I had a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, enough food and good clothes. If I didn’t have much affection for the woman whose clothes I pressed, whose pearls I polished, I could at least put on a good face.’

‘You are a beautiful woman, Flora, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ said Carter diffidently. ‘Er… didn’t Miss Newton feel any jealousy?’

Flora’s rouged lips opened slightly in astonishment and then curved into a sly smile. ‘My word, Superintendent! And to think I took you for a man of the world!’ She leaned forward and spoke slowly as though explaining an intricate idea. ‘It is the custom of poules de luxe to employ not an old hag but an attractive maid to receive their clients. If there should be any delay in service – if mademoiselle for instance has decided to sleep until midday or is caught dallying with someone she should not be dallying with – then a pretty maid can be a not unwelcome distraction.’ Her voice became hard again as she went on, ‘And if a client has lost his attraction or – even more unforgivably – has lost his money or mademoiselle is simply feeling lazy or indisposed, then her pretty maid may be required to exercise her own arts of seduction. To draw the fire. Isn’t that what a soldier would say? I cleaned for that woman, I polished and scrubbed, I lied and I whored! And, in the end, she rewarded me with a third class ticket!’

‘So when you arrived to identify the corpse you saw, of course, that it was not that of Isobel Newton but that of some other woman…?’

‘Yes. I would never have bothered going all the way to Beaune to look at that woman’s body but I thought there might just be some jewellery I knew she always wore – a ring, a necklace – that had escaped attention. She was never empty-handed, that one! She owed me a lot of money and now she was dead there would never be another way of retrieving any of it. Well, no luck there. The jewels had disappeared. The hospital was in chaos. People running around everywhere, no one’s identity being checked. They left me alone with the body in a little cubicle and the first odd thing I noticed was that she was wearing lisle stockings. She had lost her shoes but the stockings were plain to see. When I investigated further I noticed her underwear. What you English call a camisole, a pink woollen vest and pink cotton drawers. Elasticated – they were called directoire knickers – a thing Isobel would never have worn.’ She laughed a brittle laugh. ‘She wouldn’t have condescended to have been seen dead in such things! I had actually seen Isobel put on her green silk that morning. This was not Isobel Newton but a body dressed in her outer clothes. I took a closer look and then I remembered the other English girl. The one in the station bar. I came up to the bar to give Isobel a message about the luggage she’d left me to deal with and had quite a shock. She was sitting opposite a girl who could have been her twin sister! But she was very badly dressed. Expensive clothes but not smart and she was wearing just such stockings.

‘What had happened became clear to me. Not so easy but not impossible to exchange outer garments. In that situation – with blood and bodies, shrieking steam from the shattered engine, fire breaking out – I can imagine the scene – our lady was cool. We all know she can be but to peel underclothes from a body and put them on to herself was too much of a task even for her. It wasn’t an oversight – it was a calculated risk. And it paid off. But for me. It gave me all I wanted!’

Her smile of triumph was too much for Joe and he dropped his eyes from her face.

‘I guessed what Isobel had done,’ she went on.

Joe recognized this as the next stage in a confession. She had given them the truth and now felt the normal compulsion to follow it up with, if not a justification, then an account of her own cleverness.

‘It was not out of character. She was using someone again but this time she had stolen a whole identity for herself. I wondered why. I wondered what was so special about this girl she was attempting to become. I left the hospital and bought a newspaper. There was an account of a Miss Alice Conyers who was the only one apart from a baby to have survived the accident. It described her as an heiress going out to India to take control of a large trading empire.’