AUTHORS NOTE

That Charles X fled to England from France in 1830 and there was a dockers’ strike at Southampton in 1981, forcing passengers to disembark from the SS Canberra off Spithead instead of Southampton, is fact. The existence of the Esmeraude Collection and the SS Agora are entirely the result of the author’s imagination.

Susan Elizabeth Hague is a real person whose husband bid at a charity auction for her name to be used in this DI Andy Horton novel, thereby helping to raise £1,500 for the Sarah Duffen Centre, Down Syndrome Educational Trust, in Southsea.