The scraps of information she’d gathered knocked against each other, like balls in a pinball machine in one of the arcades on the front. Secrets drew her in every time – the unsaid.

This investigation felt difficult, like driving in fog.


Mirabelle was always an enigma, and he had the sense that if he pushed her, she’d bolt.

The good thing about the aristocracy – German or English – was that they were easily traced, Mirabelle thought.

Covert operations relied on the unguarded slip, the unconscious choosing of one word over another.

People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.