What – where – was his escape now?

Was he subject to the jurisdiction of American divorce and civil courts? He didn’t think he was or could be but he’d need legal advice. The word legal echoed in his mind, like a cracked bell. Harvey Jordan’s absolute and essential necessity, the watchword by which he drew breath to survive, was always to avoid the very thought of contact with any legal authority. Now, today, his name and his address – God only knew how much else from all the legally and publicly accessible sources Jordan himself so assiduously pursued – was now legally, traceably, recorded! Displaying him to everyone and everything. It was right for him to feel so cold. He was, figuratively at least, naked, exposed for all to see and know and to dissect as and how they chose.

Not quite, came the faintly – too faintly – welcoming contradiction. They’d restricted themselves to France, to Alyce Appleton’s carefully noted and recorded departure from Nice airport on the official legal documents before him. American not English private detectives then, hired to follow Alyce from New York and watch her and anyone with whom she came into contact. If they’d continued to keep him under observation – stayed with him all the way back to England – they would have followed him to Sydney Street and after that all over England, not here, to Marylebone, where the papers had been delivered. Jordan snatched out again, not for the documents but for the envelope in which they’d been delivered, the recorded delivery sticker belatedly registering, now as brightly as if it were in multicoloured neon.