Was it possible that Lady Grylls was… laying a trap? Her eyesight might not be as bad as she claimed… Lady Grylls, by her own admission and contrary to all appearances, was not a nice person. She could be ruthless all right. Antonia remembered Hugh telling her how at some shooting party his aunt had gone round with one of those sticks with a hammer at the end, clouting half-dead pheasants on the head, finishing them off… Lady Grylls adored ploys… She must be acting in cahoots with Maitre Maginot, whom she professed to detest without ever having seen her… Extravagant animosity between two characters was always suspect… That might be a mere charade, an essential part of the deadly deception that was being played out… Antonia nodded to herself. What about Mr Jonson, the private detective? Well, he would simply… fail to materialize. Yes… Mr Jonson did not exist. They hadn’t witnessed that phone call either. Mr Jonson was a figment of Lady Grylls’s imagination – the kind of corroborative detail that gives verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative… Lady Grylls had prepared the ground and was now getting ready to go for the kill.

What reason could Lady Grylls possibly have to want to kill her god-daughter, though? Well, the reason went back a long way… It was something to do with Corinne’s parents… Yes. Corinne’s death would be the price for something absolutely terrible her parents had done to Lady Grylls – or to a member of Lady Grylls’s family… Corinne’s father in particular seemed to be implicated. That was when the change had come over Lady Grylls. Le falcon, she had reiterated. Corinne’s father had been French. A nation of dashing lovers, the French – reputed to be the best lovers in the world. A popular myth, no doubt, but Antonia found herself changing tack… Lady Grylls and le falcon had had an affair.