Detective-Inspector Parker was, of course, waiting stolidly outside Holloway Prison when Lady Mary Wimsey alighted from her taxi at twenty-five to eleven the next day. Its dirty grey gothic towers looked less forbidding than usual in the relentless sunshine which the July of 1927 provided in such unexpected abundance, but it was nonetheless an imposing sight. Mary smiled at the sight of Charles, though, and it occurred to her that he had the gift of making the most alarming and extraordinary things seem manageable and almost ordinary. She thought of the many times over the previous week when the sight of him at an unexpected angle, somehow, or the sound of his voice saying perfectly ordinary things but in his own particular way, had made her catch her breath and she began to wonder whether he hadn't also the gift, for her at any rate, of making ordinary things extraordinary.

"Good morning, Mary," he said, and she could tell it had cost him some considerable effort to plunge into using her name and not her title, after the ebbs and flows - and rather more ebbing than flowing over the last two years - of their intimacy. She rewarded him with a radiant smile. She knew it to be radiant, partly because she was not given to the kind of false modesty which would have been required to disclaim her own obviously good looks, but partly because she could feel the strange alchemy of love - that force which lends beauty even to the plainest of faces - working within her.

"Good morning, Charles." They clasped each other's hands and looked into each other's eyes, he squinting slightly in the sun so that his eyes crinkled up delightfully. They were much like two fourteen year olds at the start of a day out to a funfair. Both had a great regard for dignity, and a strong sense that this scene didn't achieve it - but neither broke away.

At length, the world intruded upon them in the form of a small flow of people, mostly women, streaming out of the side door to the prison by which they were standing. "Morning visiting must have ended at half past ten" Charles said, letting go of Mary's hand, half-guiltily. "Miss Watson is held on remand, of course, so we have to visit her in the cells rather than in the visiting halls. Shall you be all right? Prisons can be rather harrowing places."

"Poor old Gerald's been in one, so I should think I could visit one", Mary said, and she set her jaw determinedly and walked towards the door. All the same, she was not sure how it would have felt without the palpably reassuring presence of Charles Parker as they were shown in by a grim looking guard and led down a series of gloomy corridors.

The cell which had been allocated for Lucy to receive Lady Mary was not unpleasant, containing four hard chairs, and a small table with a vase of wilting violets upon it. But it was like nothing Mary had seen before. Charles said "Lady Mary Wimsey is here to see you, Miss Watson", went in and sat neutrally and implacably on one of the chairs, nodding civilly to the female guard stationed on the chair opposite. Mary had no idea how to greet her unlikely hostess under these circumstances, and knew she would fail if she tried to echo Charles's completely matter-of-fact tones when confronted with a person she had liked brought to such an abject position. She relied on the approach which had served her, like many other pretty women, well on various occasions. She stood in the doorway and waited until due attention was paid to her.

Lucy Watson looked at her. Her prison-issue clothes were drab and she had no make-up on, but it made surprisingly little difference to her looks. Her eyes were still defiant, and not without humour.

"Why did you 'ave to get involved with the police and give me away?" she demanded without preamble. She sounded curious rather than angry. "Why couldn't you 'ave left well enough alone, when I'd done you no 'arm?"

Mary was so surprised that she started to laugh. "But Lucy, you surely can't think that you should have been allowed to go about killing people with impunity! That it was wrong for people to find out who killed those men and being the person to justice?"

"Justice my elbow", scoffed Lucy. "If they adn't been killed, what do you suppose they'd be doing as we sit 'ere now? Pressing themselves on young girls without the power to resist them, that's what, and you know it. What justice for all the girls who've 'ad to get free from the advances of men like them, or for the ones who aven't got free? I never 'ad no intention of killing that old lecher Kloves, nor would I 'ave if 'e'd just changed 'is will back to 'is son. But when I 'eard about 'ow 'e wanted to leave it all to the new parlourmaid, and 'er barely 15, I knew what it meant and I knew what to do about it."

Mary was silent awhile, and she slowly sat down on the remaining chair, opposite Lucy. She had not considered this angle before and she looked at Charles. His face was carefully expressionless but knowing him well, she detected some hint of scepticism in his bearing. Lucy saw her looking and snorted. Such was her charm that the snort was rather a pleasing sound.

"No use telling the likes of 'im. No man's 'ad to 'ide in corners to avoid being alone with someone they're bound to obey, 'as 'e? But every woman 'as. Well, every woman that's poor."

"I suspect every woman of every class has had cause to fear the sort of thing you mean, even if some of us are shielded from the worse extremes of it by our position", Mary said, quietly. Half-suppressed moments of fear and rage and humiliation, at balls and war hospitals, and at Bolshevik meetings and hunt gatherings, and every place where a man had fed his own ego by exerting power over her and her friends, bubbled up inside her. For a moment she felt allied with Lucy and she was conscious of a kind of sick hatred even towards Charles Parker - who she knew without a doubt to be the kindest man she'd ever met - for his very maleness, though it had thrilled her minutes before, for his powerful body and the freedom with which he moved about the world, for the seriousness with which he was taken.

"I originally asked my brother whether he could look in at Mrs Schmidt's to see whether you were all right", she said, finally. "It was after you made her say she that you were working when you weren't, and she lied so clumsily that I was worried that something had happened to you. I had no notion of discovering anything which would implicate you. And my brother is great friends with Mr Parker, you see, so that was how it came to the police." Explaining that her intentions had been friendly towards Lucy seemed the only thing she could do, to express some kind of solidarity for at least some of what Lucy had said. "But if you hadn't been blackmailing poor Mrs Schmidt then I would never have said anything, you know," she couldn't help pointing out.

"Blackmailing indeed" Lucy replied, scornfully. "Can't call it blackmailing if I'd never 'ave breathed the secret to a soul even if she 'adn't done as I asked, can you? Anyway, she's got loads of money and never spends a shilling she can 'elp, so it did 'er good."

Mary was still grappling with the perverse logic of this view when Lucy added "D'you want to know what 'er secret was, anyway? Talk about a storm in a teacup!"

Lady Mary sighed, and couldn't help wishing briefly that Charles had not chivalrously insisted on accompanying her to the interview. She could see the corners of his eyes crinkle ever so slightly as he fought down a smile when she said "Of course I want to know, but don't tell me. I know it wouldn't do you, me or Mrs Schmidt any good if you did."

Lucy looked from Lady Mary to Charles and back again with that odd kindly but mocking knowingness which constituted a large part of her charm.

"Well, I won't tell you, then", Lucy said, comfortably. "The joke is it's nothing fearful. If people were just 'onest about these things then they'd save themselves a deal of trouble, that's what I say."

"Anyway", Lady Mary continued, again slightly wrong-footed by Lucy positioning herself as a moral compass, "Ch- Mr Parker would have worked it all out regardless, you know. He'd be bound to investigate the person who inherited under the old will when a man is killed just before making a new one."

"That's why I needed Mrs Schmidt to say I'd been at work the day before and the day after, isn't it?" Lucy spoke carelessly, as if the unraveling of her plans and her eventual capture did not really matter.

"Lucy, why did you get Mr Spicer involved at all?" Mary asked, suddenly, remembering Peter's question. "I don't see what he added apart from brute force, which you hardly needed for a drugged old man."

"Would you believe," Lucy responded with a gleam in her eye that showed the irony wasn't lost on her, "it was for me tender 'eart? I never thought I'd be able to look a man in the face and kill 'im, no matter 'ow deserving of it 'e may be. But I saw that Spicer do it, and it just struck me that there was nothing to it. There really isn't, you know. And I took that bottle of sleeping stuff from Kloves' bedside with the feeling that it might come in 'andy. So when Spicer started 'is tricks later that same day - I'd already promised 'im a third of the money when it came in, but 'e was on at me to run away with 'im. 'E let on like 'e was passionately in love with me, but to my mind 'e just didn't want me out of 'is sight before 'e'd got the money. Not that I really blame 'im for that", she added, fairly. "But I found I couldn't stand the eyes and 'ands of one more stinking man upon me and so I told 'im I knew of a night train from Victoria and we'd lie low in Brighton for a bit, and I gave 'im a beer with the sleeping stuff in it, and we got on the train. I thought if I left the key and crawled out through the window then it might look like 'e'd done it 'imself, maybe, or 'appened naturally."

"Why didn't you leave his bag with him, though? You must have realised it would look suspicious."

"I changed into some of the clothes 'e'd brought with him - a boy alone at night attracts a lot less notice than a girl, after all, so I 'ad to get my dress away. It was that nice red and yellow piece dress I took from Mrs Schmidt - it's a lovely cut, Lady Mary, that I will say."

Again, Mary had the odd sensation of being condescended to by the disgraced prisoner, but found herself pleased by the compliment nonetheless.

"That was sensible", Mary admitted. "Nobody ever remembered seeing anyone that evening." Mr Parker's expression became anguished and he shook his head ever so slightly. Lucy laughed.

"Don't worry, detective, you've got your prints, 'aven't you? Nothing I find out now can 'elp me explain them away. That's Spicer's fault, too, that I left them at the Kloves 'ouse. 'E dropped one of 'is gloves somewhere in a field between the inn and the 'ouse, so I gave 'im mine. It should've been all right, as I wasn't supposed to be touching anything, just showing the way and keeping a look-out. But that fool almost let the bedroom door bang shut, and I 'ad to grab it. I wouldn't make the mistake of getting 'elp from someone like that again, that's for sure."

Mary didn't know what to reply. It seemed tactless to point out that surely Lucy wouldn't have the opportunity to make many mistakes of that or any other nature. "Lucy, is there anything you'd like me to do, for your mother, perhaps?"

"Very kind of you to offer, my lady," Lucy said in her tone which was as likeable as it was irreverent, "but she's got my brothers to look after 'er. I just wanted to know why you got involved in the first place. It bothered me that it should be a woman what brought me down. It's settled my mind to know you never meant any of this to 'appen."

Mary stood up, and shook hands with Lucy. They were both tall and slender women, one fair and one dark. Parker thought they looked like a pre-raphaelite painting of particularly heavy symbolism as they stood in the heavily filtered sunlight of the small room.

Mr Parker escorted Lady Mary out of Holloway Prison and back out into the sunshine in silence. They stood outside, not looking at each other. At length, Parker said gently, "She prepared those travel papers under a fake name several weeks ago, you know, Mary. And why did she take the key at the station on Friday night if it really didn't occurr to her to kill Spicer until he behaved boorishly on Tuesday?"

"Yes, I know", Mary said hesitantly. "But I think there is some truth in what she says - well, at least, that the kinds of experiences she must have contributed to what she did."

"Plenty of people have a rotten time of it in various ways without committing murder," Parker pointed out.

"Yes, but they shouldn't have to! These girls shouldn't have to put up with men preying on them, nobody should. How is it right that Lucy's brought to justice when, other than by her crime, the men never are? Why is one enormous crime punishable by death when the silent oozing of the horridness of those men into the world meets no punishment at all?"

Mr Parker stood silent for a while. "I'll see if Lucy's mentioned this line of hers to her solicitor and her brief. It obviously doesn't change anything about whether she's guilty of the crime, but I expect in the right hands it may be able to lead somewhere on sentencing. Peter's got her Sir Impey Biggs, you know. If anyone can make something of it, it's him."

"Good old Peter", Mary said, vaguely. She felt cold, despite the sunshine.

"Excuse me, Mr Parker, Sir," a young man's voice spoke behind them. They turned and recognised Fred Gibson.

"D'you know whether I'd be allowed to go in? Y'know, and see Lucy?" He nodded towards the prison.

"You'll have to give your witness statement to the crown first, I should think", Parker said. "After that, it'll be up to the prison staff." Looking at Fred's pale and pinched face, he added, kindly "If you care to write to her, care of my office at Scotland Yard, I can see that she gets it. Someone will have to read it first, but I can arrange for it to be someone other than me - someone who's never met either of you - if that's more comfortable for you." Fred looked slightly downcast at the prospect of further correspondence, but nodded gratefully, and went on his way. He appeared to be pacing around the prison, looking up at all the windows for Lucy's face.

Mary watched him. "Poor Clare Jenkins", she said, half to herself. "I don't think Fred will forget Lucy in a hurry."

"No," agreed Charles. He seemed to be speaking half to himself, too. "He may turn out to be one of those men who can only love one woman all of their lives, however hopelessly. Poor lad." His voice was softer and his vowels more Northern as he spoke the last two words than Mary had heard before. She looked up at him and blushed.

At length he said "I've a lovely spate of burglaries on the go now, and I need to spend the afternoon following up an idea I've had about them. But it must be nearly lunch time. Would you like...?"

Mary smiled for the first time since they had entered the prison. "Oh Charles," she said, "you and your noontime lunches! I know, I know, you get up hours earlier than I do. As a matter of fact, I haven't breakfasted today. Let's have some kind of odd hybrid meal together."

He gave her his arm, and they set off down the road in the sun.