“Somewhat irresponsible for a married man with children, isn’t it?” asked Haldon.

“Oh, well,” I replied weakly, “one wants to escape from time to time, you know.”

“You’d better tell that to Mrs. Taine,” he said, with a dryness that suggested he wasn’t wholly satisfied.

He pressed a bell on his desk. There was a moment of awkward silence. Then the door opened, and in came Cecily.

Damn Haldon! I couldn’t help it. I seemed to have been away from her for a year.

“Who’s looking after the children?” I asked.

“I told the police they had to come with me,” she said “There’s a sergeant out there, playing with them. They wanted to see how handcuffs worked.”

She stifled a sob and looked at us both, very still but not white. She forced herself to appear natural and proud. I don’t know how she did it.

“Mrs. Taine,” said Haldon. “There is just one point I want cleared up. You stated to the Dorset police that you were absolutely certain that no one had ever hidden in your house. Would you care to amend that?”

“No,” she answered. “No one was ever hidden in my house.”

I could have believed her myself. I said:

“It’s all right, darling. Tell him the truth.”

“That’s very wrong of you, Inspector,” she complained hotly. “How was I to know? Of course there were two of them in the roof, General Sandorski and a man they called Lex.”

“I see,” he answered with a heavy neutrality. “Mrs. Taine, when did you first know that your husband was engaged in these activities?”

That was a vilely clever question. I stayed frozen, for Haldon was watching both our faces. If she answered that she had known for three weeks, I was done.

“What activities?” she asked.

“Assisting the police.”

“Oh, when he brought General Sandorski home the first time,” she replied, straight off the bat.

“Thank you, Mrs. Taine. I should say perhaps that my report from the Dorset police”–was there a shade of irony in his voice?–”states that you gave an impression of absolute honesty and innocence.”

“Didn’t I?” I asked.

“You were rather too pleased with your acting, Mr. Taine,” he replied, and added mysteriously: “It’s a fault that Mr. Roland will doubtless take in hand. We don’t want to lose people like you, you know.”

He let Cecily go, telling her that he would only detain me another minute. Then he joined me on the public side of his desk, and produced a decanter of whisky.

“We’re allowed a good deal of liberty at the Special Branch,” he said.

I answered that I had noticed it. He had tidied up Fulham Park Avenue with remarkable speed.

“Heyne-Hassingham was a prominent man,” he went on, “and I think I shall be permitted to make the inquest as uncomplicated as possible. No Lex. No Sandorski. Just a combination of a routine police inquiry and overwork. That will give us time to throw the net a little wider. But there is just one thing bothering me, and I daren’t leave it hanging about unsolved in the background. That corpse in the car. If you can, let me have a statement for the files– completely off the record, as a little bit of fiction, perhaps-just so that I know what happened.”