As the officers hauled him toward the door, Julian looked back at me, his face twisted in desperate, pathetic terror.

“Nora!

Please!

Tell them it was an accident!

Selina made me do it!

It was all Selina!”

It was, I noted, the same instinct every cornered conspirator eventually reveals: the immediate, frantic sacrifice of the accomplice to save oneself.

A minute earlier he had been Selina’s devoted lover, willing to murder for her.