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might.’
    â€˜I’ve always supposed it comes of being a twin,’ said Angelica, and Harry looked at her. After a moment, he said, in a voice carefully devoid of all expression, ‘She’s a twin, is she?’
    â€˜Yes, although she never mentions it. I don’t know what happened to the twin—I think she—or it might even have been a he—must have died.’
    People died and people disappeared, Markovitch had said.
    â€˜I’ve sometimes thought Simone feels a bit incomplete because of it,’ said Angelica, and Harry, who had been re-filling the wine glasses, glanced up, because this was an unexpectedly shrewd remark.
    He said, carefully, ‘Twins do have an amazingly strong link, of course.’
    â€˜Yes, and—Oh, this is very good wine, Harry. And Simone was right about the house, of course. It’s absolutely perfect. In fact she wondered—’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜I do hate to mix business with pleasure,’ said Angelica semi-apologetically, and Harry smiled at her and thought, Oh, no you don’t, my dear. You’d mix anything you felt like mixing.
    â€˜Simone wondered if you might be able to dig up something about its history,’ said Angelica. ‘It’s smack in the middle of where the aesthetes used to gather, isn’t it? In the eighteen-nineties and the early nineteen-hundreds. Earnest young men with soft shirts and brooding eyes and metaphysical conversation. I don’t mean we want to nail up labels saying Isadora Duncan danced on this table or a plaque saying Oscar Wilde slept here, but Simone thought if anything interesting had happened in the place or if anyone famous had lived there she could set up a display. Old photos and newspaper cuttings and so on. She’s very good at that kind of thing, you know. The past shadowing the present.’
    â€˜I know she is.’ Finding out about the house’s past would mean another link to Angelica and—more to the point—to Simone herself. Harry said, ‘I’ll see what I can find.’
    â€˜Would you? We’d be so grateful.’ Angelica managed to make it sound as if her gratitude might come in a very alluring form indeed. Harry mentally calculated how much his credit card was good for and ordered a second bottle of wine anyway.
    â€˜Did you actually buy the house?’ Because if Angelica had been able to outright buy a house in that part of London she must be even wealthier than the tabloids said.
    â€˜No, we took over a lease. The freeholder’s one of those property management companies—all very efficient, but hydra-headed, and so faceless. Can you be hydra-headed and faceless both together?’ She studied the dessert trolley which was just being trundled past.
    â€˜Do have whatever you’d like,’ said Harry.
    â€˜As a matter of fact,’ she said, resting her chin on her cupped hand and gazing at him with sudden intensity, ‘what I’d really like is to adjourn to my flat for coffee.’ Harry stared at her. ‘What do you think?’ said Angelica and her voice slid down an octave into a sexy purr. Harry felt as if she had stroked the inside of his thigh with a velvet-covered hand. Angelica smiled. ‘Or would you rather stay here for pudding?’
    â€˜I think,’ said Harry, finally disentangling himself from the smile, ‘that I’d rather go to your flat.’
    â€˜For pudding?’
    â€˜Perhaps for a just desert.’

    Angelica set a pot of coffee to filter as soon as they got into the flat, and put out a bottle of brandy and two glasses. The kitchen was so small that avoiding physical contact was impossible so Harry did not bother to avoid it.
    She was clearly delighted at the approach. She was taller than most girls (those legs), and she moved forward at once so that they were pressed hard together. Her mouth opened under his, and for several minutes they stood locked thigh