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“I see. And?”

“She came to see me after you and I met in the Botanics. She said that she had to warn me about something.”

Jock Dundas had taken a pen out of his pocket and was fingering it, slipping the cap on and off. Isabel watched his fingers; they were tanned and the nails were carefully manicured. He was an elegant man; Minty would never have consorted with anybody crude.

Jock continued with his explanation. “Margaret said that she had found out that Minty had approached a woman enforcer. That’s the word she used. Enforcer.”

Isabel wanted to laugh. It was completely absurd. Enforcers were the thugs used by gangsters to twist people’s arms metaphorically, which meant to break them in reality.

“She said I was an enforcer?”

He nodded. “She said you were a subtle one.”

“Well, at least that’s something,” said Isabel. “I should hate to be thought of as some sort of mafiosa.” She wondered whether Italian had a feminine form of mafioso. Presumably not, as the Mafia was traditionally a male organisation.

“She said that you specialised in ruining reputations,” Jock continued. “She said that you could kill a professional reputation stone-dead. Through smears.”

“I see.”

“Yes. And she said that you were going to make sure that I didn’t get my partnership here.” He cast a quick glance over his shoulder. “This is a fairly conservative firm, as you may know. It wouldn’t be helpful for the partners here to know that I had …”

“Had an affair with another man’s wife?” prompted Isabel. “Particularly a man as well-connected as Gordon?”

“Yes. And she said that you could ruin me in other ways. She didn’t say how.”

“I suppose there are ways,” said Isabel. “But not being an enforcer, I wouldn’t really know.”

He sat back in his chair. “So I tried to contact you. To tell you that I was dropping my claim to Roderick. I didn’t get you and so I telephoned Margaret and asked her to pass on the message to Minty that I was out of it. Altogether. Completely. She wouldn’t hear from me again.”

Isabel was listening, but as she did so she was trying to master what had happened. It was very neat. Minty had used her to give Jock Dundas a fright. She could have made the threats herself, but it might not have had the same effect. To hear that somebody else had been engaged—particularly somebody portrayed as being ruthless—gave a subtle twist to the situation. It was considerably more frightening, bringing in two enemies instead of one.

“May I ask you something?” Isabel said.

“Yes.”

“If I tell you that this is complete nonsense,” she said. “If I tell you that I spoke to you the other day purely as a favour for Minty and with no intention at all of intimidating you. If I told you all this—and if you believed me—would you still give up your claim to Roderick?”

“Yes.”

“For career reasons?”

It took him some time to speak. “All right. Yes. You won’t approve of that, will you?”

Isabel remembered T. S. Eliot. This was a clear case of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. But she said nothing about that.

“I think it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “It really is.”

She rose to her feet and offered her hand. “I think we should shake hands. We don’t have anything else to say to one another really.” But then she thought that in fact she did.

“We have both been wronged by the same woman,” said Isabel.

Jock Dundas looked thoughtful. Then he nodded his agreement. “Yes, we have.”

“And I hope that you find somebody else,” said Isabel. “Maybe somebody with a child, or children. It’s a good thing to be a stepfather, you know, even if you can’t be a father. It’s a good thing.”

They shook hands. Isabel noticed how soft his hands felt, like the hands of a woman, a young girl. She noticed, too, that he was wearing some sort of cologne—sandalwood, she thought. She had bought Jamie a bottle of something like that the previous Christmas, but he had left it on a shelf in the bathroom with the top off and it had evaporated. She had asked him, “Was that a mistake, Jamie? Or did your subconscious