“It was just luck. I still think you should see a doctor.”

He shook his head. “I’m all right.”

“Who do you think attacked you?”

He shrugged. “Friday-night toughs, I suppose. Had a few drinks and decided to go on the rampage. I imagine they were after my wallet.”

“Well, I’m glad it’s no worse.” Lydia moved toward the front door.

“I say-Mrs. Langstone? I’d like to thank you properly for being so sporting about this. Would you let me buy you lunch?”

She turned back. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Wentwood, but-”

“You’d be doing me a favor. Otherwise I’ll feel guilty for ruining your evening.” His long face grew longer and even more melancholy than before. “You could think of it as an act of charity.”

She found herself smiling at him. “Very well. When?”

“What about today?”

“All right.”

“Thanks awfully.”

He arranged to meet her outside the office. On her way to work, Lydia opened her sister’s letter. It enclosed an invitation to a private view at a gallery in Cork Street on Tuesday evening. Pammy had scribbled a few lines in violet ink.

Do come if you can, darling-everyone will be there. Or if you don’t feel like doing the polite to all & sundry, would you like to meet for lunch at Café des Voyageurs on Wednesday? They say the new chef is divine. Let me know. With best love, Pammy.

Lydia stuffed the envelope into her handbag and pushed open the street door of 48 Rosington Place. She missed her sister but she wouldn’t go to the opening or to the Café des Voyageurs. She had finished with that sort of thing. A working woman, she marched up to the second floor.

The prospect of being taken out to lunch buoyed her up during the morning. In any case Saturday was not like other days at Shires and Trimble. It was only a half-day, and most of the time was spent on dealing with the post and tidying up loose ends from the previous week. Everyone was in a mood which if not exactly festive was at least cheerful, as though the temporary liberation of the weekend offered a glimpse of the happier world outside Rosington Place.

At half past twelve Lydia went downstairs with Miss Tuffley, who was going up west to have lunch with a friend and then on to the pictures. Mr. Wentwood was waiting for her outside the door. Miss Tuffley looked at him with interest and, Lydia suspected, would have been happy to be introduced if Lydia had given her the slightest encouragement. As it was, she said goodbye and clattered down the pavement toward the Tube station.

“Where would you like to go?” Rory asked. “I don’t know anywhere around here except the Blue Dahlia.”

“Let’s go there then,” Lydia said, thinking that at least it was cheap but wishing in a dark and shameful corner of her mind that it was the Café des Voyageurs. “Better the devil you know.”

The café was less crowded than it usually was at lunchtimes, since most of the clientele had gone home for the weekend. The fat lady behind the counter greeted them with a nod. They sat down at a corner table and studied the menu.

Rory glanced at the blackboard behind the counter. “I’ll have the special. Liver and onions.”

Lydia thought of the parcel on the hall table at Bleeding Heart Square. Liver was offal and so was heart. “I think I’ll have the shepherd’s pie.”

They ordered their lunch and sat smoking while they waited.

“How are you feeling now?”

Rory touched the faintly discolored skin on his cheekbone, and winced. “Still in one piece.” He went on in the same tone, “I’ve not been altogether honest with you, I’m afraid.”

It took a moment for his words to seep in. Was he married or something? “What do you mean?”

His face was even gloomier than usual. “About my reason for moving into Bleeding Heart Square.”

“I thought you were looking for a job and needed to be near the City.”

“That’s true as far as it goes.” He flicked ash from his cigarette. “But there’s another reason. You remember the girl I was with on Sunday? In Trafalgar Square? She has an aunt, a lady called Philippa Penhow.”

Lydia crumbled her bread and watched Rory. He was smoking very fast.

“They haven’t been in touch for more than four years,” he said, speaking quickly as if trying to get the words out before he changed his mind. “In fact Miss Penhow doesn’t seem to have been in touch with anyone. Fenella-Miss Kensley-is rather worried.”

So that’s who she is, Lydia thought-Fenella Kensley. She supposed that some people would think the name was rather pretty.

“The thing is, just before Miss Penhow disappeared, she met Mr. Serridge. In fact he was one of her tenants at Bleeding Heart Square. She told Fenella that they were going to get married. A whirlwind courtship, I gather. They moved out of London in the spring of 1930 and bought a place in Essex, near a village called Rawling. Morthams Farm.”

Lydia ground out her cigarette. “What happened then?”

He shrugged. “She left. Mr. Serridge said she met an old friend and went off with him.” He paused, sowing doubt with a silence. “Anyway, a few weeks later she simply wasn’t there.”

“Surely people asked questions?”

“There weren’t that many people who noticed she had gone. She and Serridge had only just moved to Rawling. Before that, Miss Penhow lived in a private hotel in South Ken. She hadn’t any friends there, not real ones. And before that, she’d lived with an old aunt in Manchester or somewhere, but the old lady died. The only other relations she had were Fenella and her parents, but they weren’t close.”

Lydia wondered: then why the interest now?

“Anyway, the Kensleys had a lot on their minds,” Rory continued. “Fenella’s father was very ill for a year or two before he died. Afterward her mother had to take in a lodger to make ends meet, and then she herself died last summer.”

“So there’s been no sign of Miss Penhow since 1930, and Mr. Serridge seems to have acquired the house?”

“That’s about the size of it. And don’t forget the farm. That seems to be his as well.”

“Has anyone talked to the police?”

“They were notified of her disappearance. But there was no sign a crime had been committed, and no reason to doubt Serridge’s story about an old boyfriend. Fenella said there really was a man, years and years ago-she remembered her parents talking about it. A sailor, apparently. Miss Penhow wanted to marry him but her family wouldn’t let her. And then there was a letter that seemed to confirm it. Miss Penhow wrote to the Vicar of Rawling from New York asking him to apologize to Serridge on her behalf for going away so suddenly. The police think the letter’s genuine.”

Penhow, Lydia thought, P. M. Penhow. The woman herself wasn’t here but her name was everywhere. Her father came into her mind, bringing with him as he usually did a faint sense of anxiety.

“Liver and onions,” said a loud voice just above her head. “Shepherd’s pie.”

The liver landed in front of Lydia, the shepherd’s pie in front of Rory.

“It’s the other way round,” Lydia said.

“Suit yourself,” said the manageress. “You’ve got hands, haven’t you, love? You give him his, and I’m sure he’ll give you yours.”

Rory grinned up at her. “And that’s the way the world goes round, eh?”

The fat woman roared with laughter and told him he was a caution. She waddled away from their table. Lydia and Rory exchanged plates.

“She likes you,” Lydia said in a low voice. “She barely tolerates me.”

Rory looked uncomfortable. “It’s because I’m a man.”

Lydia shook her head. “It’s more than that.” Talking with a silver spoon in your mouth, she realized, could be more of a curse than a blessing. As far as most of the population was concerned, it made you a social leper and also almost unemployable because ladies weren’t supposed to work. That wouldn’t have mattered perhaps, if you actually owned the silver spoon and everything that went with it. But if you didn’t, you had the worst of both worlds.