“What choice do I have?” Talbot raised his voice for the first time, his desperation ragged through his rapidly slipping composure. “It’s idiotic, I know that! Of course he was there. He was actually coming from the mews, where I imagine he’d gone to harness up a horse and hitch it to a trap, or whatever she has, to take the body somewhere and get rid of it. They’re only a stone’s throw from Hyde Park. That would do. It would be found, of course, but there would be nothing to connect it with either of them. But we got there too soon. We didn’t see him with her, and she isn’t saying anything.”

“And you don’t ask him because you don’t want to know,” Pitt finished for him.

“Something like that,” Talbot admitted, his eyes hot and wretched. “But if you want to, then Special Branch is very welcome. Have it! Have it all! Go and ask him. He lives in Paulton Square, Chelsea. I don’t know the number, but you can ask. There can’t be many cabinet ministers there.”

“I’ll see the Egyptian woman first. What is her name?”

“Ayesha Zakhari,” Talbot replied. “But you can’t see her. That’s my orders from the top, and Special Branch or not, I’m not letting you in. She hasn’t implicated Mr. Ryerson, so you’ve no brief here. If her embassy says anything it’ll be a matter for the Foreign Office, or the Lord Chancellor, or whoever. But so far they haven’t. She’s just an ordinary woman arrested for the murder of an old lover, and there’s no reasonable doubt that she did it. That’s how it is, sir-and that’s how it’s staying, as far as I’m concerned. If you want to make it different, you’ll have to do it somewhere else, ’cos you’re not doing it here.”

Pitt pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, finding a small piece of string, half a dozen coins, a bull’s-eye sweet wrapped in paper, two odd lumps of sealing wax, a penknife, and three safety pins. In the other were a notebook, a stub end of pencil, and two handkerchiefs. It flicked through his mind that that was too much.