"Oh! Oh, I see." A smile actually broke through. "Disconcerting but invigorating. George an ancestor of yours?"
"George? Oh. No. No, I can tell lies with the best."
"You'll have to tonight. Unless you are going to give me up."
"I don't suppose anyone will question me at all," she said, ignoring the latter half of his remark. "I don't think a beard becomes you, by the way."
"I don't like it myself. I took a razor with me but couldn't manage to do anything without soap and water. I suppose you haven't soap in the car?"
"I'm afraid not. I don't wash as often as I eat. But there's a frothy stuff in a bottle — Snowdrop, they call it — that I use to clean my hands when I change a wheel. Perhaps that would work." She got out the bottle from the car pocket. "You must be much cleverer than I thought you were, you know."
"Yes? How clever does that make me actually?"
"To get away from Inspector Grant. He's very good at his job, Father says.
"Yes, I think he probably is. If I didn't happen to have a horror of being shut up, wouldn't have had the nerve to run. As it was, that half hour was the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. I know now what living at top speed means. I used to think having money and doing what you liked — twenty different things a day — was living at speed. But I just didn't know anything about it."
"Was she nice, Christine Clay?"