Eight

T

he lights burned late in Virginia Water that night. The large Victorian house of which Sir Edwin Lutyens once said ‘Good isn’t the word’ was a far cry from Lestrade’s old office at the Yard. But his study had the same green-baize wall festooned with bits of paper, the same shoe boxes stuffed with a filing system of sorts and the same carefully preserved layers of dust. Madison, Lestrade’s wife’s man, was only allowed in here on alternate Thursdays – the day Lestrade was wont to pop into the Yard for a chat with old Walter Dew to familiarize himself with the latest developments of police work and explain them to Walter.

Fanny had gone to bed a little after midnight. For all she was a copper’s daughter herself and years younger than her husband, the hectic pace of the Riviera had taken its toll. She had also worried herself sick about Lestrade and had not slept. She sat with Sholto and Emma in the study, liaising with Madison on the tripe sandwiches and cocoa, which came in a seemingly endless stream from the kitchen. She offered her comments on the current case where she could, but her dad had been a uniformed man. He’d risen to Chief Constable of the County, but he’d be the first to admit he wasn’t a natural detective. She was out of her depth. One minute she was wrestling with the complexities of poison, the next Emma was taking her cocoa out of her hand and Sholto was kissing her goodnight.

‘Don’t be long,’ she said to them both and patted their smiling cheeks.

‘Well, then,’ Lestrade stretched out on the settee, folding his arms and letting his tired head loll back, ‘let’s do it one more time, Sergeant Lestrade, and then I’ll let you go off duty. Have you ever thought of going in for the Force, Emma?’

She looked at him, her mouth hanging open. ‘There was a time, Daddy dearest, when I thought of nothing else. From the time I was eight until I was twenty-two. You put me off.’

‘I did?’ Lestrade was outraged.

‘Every time you came to Bandicoot Hall or I came up to London we’d have the same conversation. You said it was no job for a woman.’

‘It isn’t. It’s the last thing on earth I’d want a daughter of mine to do.’

‘Well, then . . .’

‘It’s just that you’re good at it,’ he told her, beaming with pride. ‘You’d make Inspector any day if you were a bloke.’

‘Ah,’ she raised a finger. ‘If I were a bloke, I’d be voting by now too. No, those policewomen’s uniforms are so ghastly, I’ll settle for being a policeman’s wife.’

Lestrade’s eyebrows rose imperceptibly. ‘Oh?’ he growled. ‘Anyone in particular?’

‘No,’ she said innocently. ‘Just speaking metaphorically. Murder one.’

‘You’re changing the subject,’ he told her.

‘No, I’m not. Murder One.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Fifth Earl of Carnarvon. Nice old boy. Friend to Antiquities. Bags of loot. Financed Howard Carter’s current expedition.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Death certificate says pneumonia. The whisper is malaria. The reality is hyoscine poisoning. And that means it had to be somebody who was with Carnarvon in the Valley of the Kings. There’s your list,’ Emma said, lolling back in the armchair. ‘Who’s your money on?’

‘Nobody at the moment. Cigar?’

Emma’s eyes widened. Not long ago, the old man was muttering about her smoking at all. The merest sight of a Will’s Capstan or a Cavander’s Army Club would have had him frothing at the mouth. Now he was passing round the Havanas. A sure sign that she’d arrived. Well, it had been a long time coming. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and took one. He lit up for them both as if she were Harry Bandicoot or Walter Dew or any of the other men he’d whiled away many a midnight hour with, wrestling with the imponderables of life; and with them, the imponderables of death.

‘Murder Two.’ She blew, as he did, smoke rings to the panelled ceiling.

‘Alain Le Clerk, French Egyptologist. Bit of a boy in the fol-de- rols department. Seemed to like mummies of all sorts. Apparently found thrown from his horse, but the actual cause of death, poisoning, by hyoscine.’

‘Makes Dr Crippen look rather feeble, doesn’t it?’ Emma said, staring at the overlapping pieces of paper.

‘There was one woman, though, he seems not to have taken to – the mysterious Mrs Ralph.’

‘Ah, yes. You saw the photograph, Daddy. What did she look like?’

Daddy shrugged. ‘What with the sun-hat and the sun-glasses, who knows? Curvy enough for our late ami I should’ve thought, but according to Burton they didn’t hit it off.’

‘Perhaps he made a pass,’ she was talking to herself really, ‘and got a rebuff.’

‘Perhaps. But something made him leave that Valley, in a hurry, in the dark of a freezing night, on a horse he knew he couldn’t control. Something frightened him.’

‘Mrs Ralph?’ Emma frowned. ‘Surely not. Perhaps she’d brought a paternity suit.’

‘Give me Murder Three.’ He drew deeply on the cheroot.

‘Aaron G. String, the American railway magnate. Wide in every sense of the word. Loud. Boorish. Even other Americans like Lindsley Foote Hall were embarrassed by him. Went berserk one night in the Valley of the Kings. Hallucinating. Blew his brains out having had a damn good go at yours. How is the head, by the way?’

‘Glad to be in England’, Lestrade told her, ‘now that April’s here.’

‘April was here when you left, Daddy,’ Emma chuckled. ‘It’s only been three weeks.’

‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘It seems like millennia. Cause of death?’

‘Gunshot wound.’ She frowned. She wasn’t at all sure about her father’s summation on the state of his head.

‘Yes, but before that. Had he not blown his brains out, as you so colourfully put it, what would have been the cause of death?’

‘Hyoscine poisoning,’ Emma said. ‘Although . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, didn’t Doctor Smith, the Cairo Praetor, say there was something else, but he didn’t know what?’

‘That’s right. I got the distinct impression that Smith was a good man. Nobody’s fool sort of bloke. Why wouldn’t he know what else was in String’s bloodstream? What other sort of poison?’

‘Perhaps it’s a new one,’ Emma suggested. ‘Some new chemical on the market. When I was in school in Switzerland, Monsieur Le Petomane told us that the Periodic Table was by no means absolute.’

Lestrade wasn’t listening to the end of that. The only thing he’d learned at school that was absolute was the Ablative and he’d never known for sure what that was. ‘Or old,’ he said suddenly, and he felt the hairs crawl on the back of his neck.

‘What?’ Emma looked at him. ‘Daddy, a strange inscrutable glint has come into your eye. What are you thinking?’

‘You said,’ he said, ‘“perhaps it’s a new one”. A new poison. Well, yes, that’s possible. But equally, what if it’s an old one? A poison that the ancients knew but which has been lost to time?’

‘You mean, a poison from the time of the Pharaohs?’

‘From the Eighteenth Dynasty,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘From the time of Tut-Ankh-Amen himself.’

‘The curse,’ Emma whispered, suddenly, inexplicably afraid. ‘The curse of the Pharaoh’s tomb that Arthur Weigall told you about. Oh, Daddy, is it possible?’

He was on his feet now, pacing the carpet, puffing frenetically, turning every now and then to scan the board. She watched him closely, proud, awed slightly. She was watching the world’s second greatest detective in action, deducting with the best of them.

‘Tell me’, he almost shouted, ‘what Carnarvon was doing in Egypt in the first place?’

‘Looking for evidence of the ancient world,’ she answered him.

‘Evidence, be buggered!’ Lestrade roared. ‘What was he really after?’

‘Er . . . treasure.’

He snapped his fingers. ‘Got it in two. The Frenchman Le Clerk, what was he after?’

‘Treasure.’ She sat upright, the light dawning in her eyes.

‘Aaron G. String.’

‘Treasure,’ she whooped. ‘He even offered to buy the tomb outright, didn’t he?’

‘He did.’ Lestrade prowled to his desk, rummaged in the papers strewn there and prowled back again to the board. ‘He did indeed. Lindsley Hall told me, and I wasn’t listening. He said they’d all come to Egypt for the same thing. To rob the dead. To steal the very heart of Egypt itself. That’s why they died.’

‘So the curse is true?’ Emma felt her own heart thumping in the lamplight.

‘In a way, yes. Oh, there’s nothing supernatural about it. Nothing magic. Somebody wants to protect the tomb. And that somebody is prepared to kill to do it.’

‘Zagloul!’ Emma clapped her hands.

Lestrade was shaking his head. ‘He’d do it by bullet and ballot,’ he said. ‘Besides, he was on the plane.’

‘The plane? I don’t follow.’

‘You told me, Emma,’ he said, looking round vaguely for an ashtray. ‘The plane was sabotaged.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘By Zagloul’s men, trying to stop us from taking off.’

‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘You think about that for a moment.’

She did. She had. ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she said.

‘That’s right,’ he nodded behind his own smoke. ‘Why not?’

‘Because they knew that Zagloul would be on board. If they couldn’t stop us at the airport, they’d lost.’

Lestrade nodded again. ‘Zagloul’s a wily old bird. He’ll turn an apparent abduction to his own advantage. And he’ll keep the treasures of the tomb in Egypt. No, whoever got at that plane’s engines wasn’t on board. They expected us to fall out of the sky somewhere over the Delta or over the sea. Either way, there’d be little left.’

‘So that takes us back to Egypt,’ Emma said. ‘One of the fellahin, perhaps?’

‘The fellahin use poison, yes. Apparently, it’s quite common. And henbane is the most common of all. But this takes a expert. Tell me, what did Mainwaring say about the plane? The sabotage, I mean?’

‘He said that somebody had filed down some bolts, I think. The vibration of the aircraft made them seize up. It was a simple matter to replace them once we’d landed, but in the air . . well . . .’

‘Did he say the plane was under guard before take-off, bearing in mind the disturbances in Cairo?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘British guards? Or Egyptians?’

‘Er . . . British, I think. Yes, the Sirdar’s troops.’

‘I thought so, though where they were when we needed them, I can’t imagine.’

‘Why?’

‘They wouldn’t have allowed an Egyptian near the plane,’ Lestrade explained. ‘But a white man, an Englishman like themselves? That’s different. Especially if he knew all the right words, the people involved.’

‘But . . . an Englishman, Daddy? Howard Carter, Lord Carnarvon, two thirds of the expedition team, they’re all Englishmen. Why should one of them want to kill to protect an Egyptian tomb? It just doesn’t make sense.’

‘We’re forgetting one thing in all this.’ Lestrade’s eyes narrowed over his cigar.

‘What?’

‘Clifford Hanger, our fourth victim.’

‘Gunshot,’ Emma volunteered. ‘Like Aaron String.’

‘But not like him,’ her father countered. ‘The shot was not self- administered. But he was killed by someone in the hotel.’

‘How far did you get with that?’

He looked wryly at her. ‘Before someone insisted that I come home, you mean? Not very far.’

‘Daddy.’ She crossed to him, knelt at his feet and rested her chin on his knee. ‘You nearly died out there. You were poisoned, weren’t you? Shot at? Beaten up? If I don’t say this, nobody else will – you’re too old to be . . .’

But he’d clamped a hand over her lips. ‘Why was I poisoned?’ he asked. ‘Why did I nearly go the same way as Aaron String?’

Emma frowned. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘Because I came too close,’ Lestrade told her. ‘I was in danger of stumbling on to something. So was Cliff Hanger. That’s why he had to die. And in a hurry. There was no time for the random effects of hyoscine and something else. The Curse of the Pharaohs is too damned slow when push comes to shove. At that point, a little Smith and Wesson or a Parabellum comes in pretty handy.’

‘Who wasn’t on the plane with us?’ Emma said. She was asking herself really. ‘Arthur Mace.’ she read them off the wall, ‘Alfred Lucas, Pecky Callender, Harry Burton, Alan Gardiner, Lindsley Foote Hall and Acting Sergeant Adamson. Who’s your money on now, Dad?’

Lestrade sighed, giving up the ghost and stubbing out the cigar in one of Fanny’s hyacinth pots. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I know a man who does. Or, to be precise, a man and a woman.’

‘Oh?’

‘In the scheme of things,’ he said, ‘assuming I’m right about the grave robbers, who’s the biggest thief of all?’

‘Er . . . Lord Carnarvon,’ Emma said, ‘because without him, there’d be no expedition.’

‘Exactly. But he’s dead. So who’s next?’

‘Carter,’ she clicked her fingers. ‘Carter’s the expert. The front man as they say these days.’

‘Precisely. So he’s our man. The next sitting target.’

‘That was what the plane was all about.’ Emma shouted. ‘It was to get Carter.’

Lestrade nodded. ‘But now the target’s widened,’ he said. ‘Who has Carter come to see?’

‘Almina,’ Emma told him. ‘Lady Carnarvon.’

‘. . . Whose money he still needs to continue to finance the whole operation. So Lady C becomes a sitting target too.’

‘What are you saying, Daddy?’ Emma frowned, looking up at him.

‘There’s an old saying’, he smiled, ‘in the land we left three days ago. It goes something like “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain”.’

‘So . . . we are Mohammed.’

‘I am Mohammed,’ he corrected her. ‘And Carter and Lady C are the mountains. The twin peaks. Don’t worry, I’ll get Fred Wensley on to them. Round-the-clock protection. With just a teeny gap left in the high security. Just big enough for a murderer to think he can squeeze through.’

‘Daddy,’ she was his little girl again, all ringlets and taffeta looking up into that dark, sad face, ‘will it be all right?’

‘Of course.’ He kissed her on the forehead. ‘It will always be all right.’

‘Round-the-clock protection?’ Chief Constable Fred Wensley looked as though Lestrade had just made an indecent proposal.

‘It’s only for a while,’ his old oppo urged.

‘Sholto, Sholto,’ Wensley sighed, shaking his head. ‘I’ve got racecourse gangs, Indians protesting over the salt tax, the possibility of a spread of the Norfolk farmhands strike; front desks all over the Divisions are being besieged by wives petitioning against their husbands’ adultery. Riots over Baldwin putting a penny on a pint; the Duke of York is marrying Elizabeth Bowes Lyon tomorrow, and to cap it all, there’s a new marathon-dance craze about to hit.’

‘Is there?’

‘The police in Baltimore stopped one after fifty-three hours non-stop. Good God, after a couple of minutes on the floor, Mrs Wensley always tells me to sit down. In Cleveland, the girl who won had worn out five male partners – which reminds me, Kate Meyrick is up to her old tricks again. Night-clubs! I’d ban ’em out of hand. Her ankles had swollen to twice their normal size, you know.’

‘Kate Meyrick’s . . .?’ Lestrade frowned. ‘You did say ankles?’

‘No, no.’ Wensley ran his hands through what little hair he had left. ‘Not her. The winning girl in Cleveland. Then of course, there’s the Old Fogey Murders and the little-mentioned fact that you’ve had three of my inspectors off on a little jolly for the past three weeks!’

‘Jolly?’ Lestrade exploded. ‘I’ve just finished telling you . . .’

‘. . . How you nearly died; yes, I know. All the papers said was “Some Unpleasantness In The Streets Of Cairo”.’

‘You didn’t read that in the Daily Mail, did you?’ Lestrade was horrified.

‘I don’t read anything in the Daily Mail,’ Wensley assured him. ‘I’m sorry, Sholto. Even if your assumption about Howard Carter is correct – and I’m by no means certain that it is – I can’t spare you so much as a copper at the moment. Stretched isn’t the word for it.’

‘What is the word for it on the Old Fogey business?’ Lestrade asked.

‘No breaks. No leads. No collar,’ Wensley shrugged. ‘I’d have been a damned sight happier if there’d been another one while those three wise monkeys of yours were away. That would have eliminated them entirely.’

‘Well, there it is,’ Lestrade said. ‘Mind how you go, Fred.’ And he made for the door.

‘By the way,’ Wensley stopped him, ‘didn’t have any trouble with the man at the desk, did you?’

‘No,’ Lestrade said. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, usual thing,’ the Chief Constable told him. ‘Spate of racism in the Met again. In America, half the police force are supposed to be associate members of the Ku Klux Klan and you do look rather dark this morning.’

‘What’s this obsession of yours with America, Fred?’ Lestrade leaned on the glass-panelled door. ‘Dance crazes? Policemen in the Klu Kucks Kan? When I left three weeks ago, this place was England.’

‘Ah, you mark my words,’ Wensley wagged a finger at him, ‘the world’s turning, Sholto. I fear the days of the Empire are numbered. Don’t fancy a Coca Cola do you?’ And he held up a bottle of dark liquid.

‘Next time I have fish and chips, I’ll come to you to sprinkle some,’ Lestrade said and saw himself out.

Howard Carter was a particularly difficult man to find. Without his Panama, his jodhpurs and his cravat, and without the awe-inspiring splendour of Karnak or the Valley of the Kings, he was really very ordinary indeed. He was not at the Strand Palace, where he said he’d be. Nor had they seen him at the Indiana Club, Mecca of archaeologists the world o’er. His mother, Mrs Carter, hadn’t seen the boy for years.

‘That’s it!’ she’d snapped at Lestrade. ‘He’s got time to gallivant all over these heathen countries, but as for visiting his dear old mum, oh dear, no. Well, that’s bloody typical, that is. Always poking about in other people’s business. It’s macabre, that’s what it is. Macabre. And tell him when you see him, he still owes me three and six from 1909. Mothers are like elephants, they never forget, and they don’t bloody well fade away either.’

So it was that Emma telephoned her old school chum, Lady Evelyn Herbert.

‘Darling, how lovely to hear from you.’

‘Darling, I was so sorry about poor Lord C.’

‘Yes, it was rather a blow.’

‘How’s Lady C taking it?’

‘Mumsy? On the chin, as always.’

‘We’ve been there, you know. To Egypt.’

‘No. What a coincidence.’

‘Coincidence? I thought you’d asked for Daddy’s services?’

‘Lord, no . . . um . . . I mean, I wish I’d thought of it.’

‘Jack Holinshed said you had.’

‘Jack? Oh, he’s such a darling, isn’t he? And so good looking. I hear he’s broken it orff with that ghastly Pamela de Vere Hinchinbrook.’

‘Wasn’t she in the Ladies’ Tug of War Team at the Antwerp Olympics?’

‘That’s right. Anchor woman.’

‘Well, no wonder Jack broke it off.’

‘Oh, you are a one, Emma. No, it’s typical of Jack to say what he did. Hates to poke about in other people’s business. I would have engaged your daddy, of course, but well, it all came as such a shock. How is Tilly?’

‘Fine. We had a bit of a rough ride getting out.’

‘Really? Nothing about that in the Tatler. But the natives can be so revolting, can’t they?’

‘You haven’t seen Howard Carter, I suppose?’

‘Little man? Broken nose? Bally huge chin?’

‘That’s him.’

‘Not for a while, no. But Mumsy has. In fact, she’s seeing him now.’

‘What, as we speak?’

‘As our resonance reverberates on the wires, yes.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Well, let’s see. The wedding? No, that was Westminster Abbey a couple of days ago. Didn’t Lizzie Bowes Lyon look an absolute fright in that dress? After all the fuss about it, I thought it would have been something other than her mother’s.’

‘So, Howard and Mumsy . . .?’

‘Wait a minute. What day is it?’

‘Saturday.’

‘Saturday. Saturday. Yes, I’m just checking Mumsy’s social calendar. It’s just here by the phone. Yes, I thought so. Wembley.’

‘Wembley?’

‘The football thingie. Mumsy’s an absolute fanatic. She wanders all over the place to watch Bolton.’

‘Does she?’

‘Bizarre, isn’t it? But as she says: “Life has to go on.” That’s where they’ll be. The VIP enclosure. Byee.’

And she was gone.

‘Wembley.’ Emma told Lestrade. ‘The football thingie.’

‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

‘Has the Pope’s Encyclical called for World Peace?’

‘I’ll get the Lanchester.’

‘Daddy,’ she snatched up a set of keys, ‘that jalopy of yours is twenty years old if it’s a day. We’ll take my Austin.’

The Baby Seven died just yards from the ground at Wembley. The Empire Stadium was a magnificent sight, every bit as imposing as Karnak, Lestrade thought. But in fact, his view of it was rather impeded. He spent most of his time with his face jammed against the canvas roof of his daughter’s motor, pushing for all he was worth. But the heat of the Tropics, the after-effects of poisoning and the clubs of Zagloul Pasha’s fellahin had taken their toll. He got the vehicle off the roadway with the help of Emma and two patrolling constables who looked rather askance at this coloured gentleman in the company of so young a girl. While Lestrade whistled ‘You made me shove you’ to the car, ‘She should have bought a Buick, She should have bought a Buick’, the two coppers wandered off, whispering together about white slavery and muttering embrocations.

‘Police.’ Lestrade flashed an old tram ticket to the bloke on the turnstile and jostled his way through the host of flat caps, holding on grimly to Emma’s hand. He’d never seen so many people in his life, all of them swaying in time to hymns and ragtime tunes, chanting ‘Here we go, here we go, here we go’.

The Lestrades of two generations cut below the edge of the crowd, seeping now beyond the congested terraces, and made for the VIP enclosure where they’d built a large, striped awning to keep off the rain. Of Howard Carter and Lady Almina Carnarvon, there was no sign.

‘God,’ Lestrade heard a worried official mutter, ‘this is disastrous. Disastrous.’

The official was talking to a uniformed Chief Superintendent, resplendent in blue and silver.

‘I’m looking for Lady Carnarvon,’ Lestrade said.

‘What’s the matter?’ the Chief Superintendent ignored the ex-Chief Superintendent, turning instead to the official.

‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’ For all it was a cool end of April, the official was sweating, mopping his brow with an outsize handkerchief. ‘Look at that bloody crowd, that’s what’s the matter. Do you know how many this stadium holds? Do you? Do you?’

‘A hundred thousand, isn’t it?’ the Chief Superintendent was calm itself. He’d worked his way up through the ranks, man and boy; from Horse Troughs to high office. He knew how many beans made nine. Nine of them did.

‘Well, I’ll tell you how many,’ the official shrieked, hysteria etched in every wrinkle. ‘A hundred thousand, that’s how many. But that’s not the point. That’s not the point,’ the official swept on, eyes swivelling wildly from left to right. ‘There seems to have been a miscalculation. According to the turnstile returns,’ he waved a wad of paper under the policemen’s noses, ‘according to these, no less than a hundred and twenty-six thousand persons have been let in. And that’s not all . . .’

‘I knew it wouldn’t be.’ the Chief Superintendent sighed.

‘I’m trying to find Lady Carnarvon.’ Lestrade tried again.

‘And I’m trying to find some peace of mind.’ the Chief Superintendent snapped, looking the nut-brown man up and down. ‘You’ll find the Indian contingent over there.’

‘Thanks to your lax security,’ the official railed, ‘an estimated seventy-five thousand more have climbed in over the walls. That means, apart from the huge loss of profit – a huge loss of profit – there are . . .’

‘Two hundred and one thousand.’ The Chief Superintendent’s mental arithmetic was calmer than the official’s.

‘No, no,’ the official was shouting. ‘You see, that’s just where you’re wrong. There’s two hundred and one thousand people in a stadium designed to hold one hundred thousand. That’s . . . that’s . . .’

‘Twice the capacity,’ the Chief Superintendent told him.

‘That’s twice the amount this place will hold. Look at ’em,’ he screamed, pointing a trembling finger. ‘They’re spilling over on to the pitch. Thousands will die. Thousands!’

He suddenly reeled backwards from a stinging slap from the Chief Superintendent, never one to suffer officials gladly. ‘No one’s going to die, you horrible little man. Get a grip on yourself.’ He flicked a loudhailer up to his lips. ‘Gentlemen, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to show your ticket receipts. Some of you crafty buggers haven’t paid. We’ve all got your number. Of course, the match will be delayed a little . . .’

‘Yes, till week next Thursday,’ Lestrade growled.

‘Look,’ the Chief Superintendent bellowed at him through his loudhailer, then realized his error when Lestrade went an even funnier colour. ‘Look.’ he let it fall to his side, ‘I thought I told you, the Indian contingent . . .’

‘I don’t want the Indian contingent,’ Lestrade snapped. ‘Are you supposed to be in charge here?’

‘I am in charge here.’ The Chief Superintendent stood his ground. ‘You men,’ he pointed to a knot of constabulary eyeing the crowd nervously, ‘get out there and start collecting. Ninepence a head. And make sure you give receipts.’

‘How many men have you got?’ Lestrade asked.

‘Thirty-six,’ the Chief Superintendent told him. ‘Look, who the bloody hell are you?’

‘Sholto Lestrade.’ Lestrade answered. ‘Formerly of Scotland Yard.

‘Oh, yeah,’ the Chief Constable looked him up and down again, ‘and I’m the Angel of Mons.’

‘Got any horses?’

‘Why doesn’t that bloody band shut up?’ the Chief Superintendent muttered.

In the centre of the pitch, the Coldstream Guards, in scarlet and gold, were playing all the tunes of glory, but the space between them and the flat-capped crowd was lessening all the time as they still trickled in over the walls and through the turnstiles.

At their ragged edges, where the hapless policemen were now asking to see ticket stubs, scuffles were breaking out, helmets flying.

‘Answer him!’ Emma shrieked, grabbing the man’s lapels.

‘Four,’ he snapped. ‘Four horses.’

‘Where?’ Lestrade couldn’t see any.

‘In the tunnel,’ the Chief Superintendent said. ‘Where the teams come out.’

‘Emma,’ Lestrade gripped the girl’s hand, ‘you wait here. Lady C should be somewhere in this lot. Find her. Carter too. And for God’s sake, keep your head down.’ And he kissed her.

‘Daddy . . .’ But he was gone, unravelling the bandage from his head, flinging the Panama to the winds. She spun on her heels from the Chief Superintendent, still looking authoritative with his loudhailer, but paralysed by inexperience.

The tunnel was full of more anxious officials, men in ludicrous long shorts and the smell of liniment. Four coppers lounged there too, their horses tethered to the space at the rear.

‘Whose is the grey?’ Lestrade asked.

‘Mine.’ A curly-headed constable straightened. ‘Why?’

‘Message from the Chief Superintendent. You’re to lend him to me.’

‘Her,’ the constable corrected him. ‘Him is a her. Gertie.’

‘Fine,’ Lestrade said. ‘I’ve ridden mares before.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Lestrade of the Yard,’ Lestrade said, glancing at the Divisional silver letters on the constable’s collar. ‘How’s old Bill Cooper? Still sucking his thumb?’

‘Well. . . yes, sir, as a matter of fact . . .’

‘Get your tunic off, lad, and your helmet.’

‘Look, Mr . . . Lestrade, I don’t really think . . .’

‘I know, son.’ Lestrade winked at him. ‘That’s what they pay us Chief Supers to do. What’s your name by the way?’

The lad straightened. ‘Scorey, sir. George Scorey.’

‘Righto, George.’ He snatched the dangling tunic. ‘Blimey, I must have put on a few pounds since last season.’

‘Are you sure the Chief Superintendent . . .’ Scorey handed him his helmet.

‘As sure as I’m standing here.’ Lestrade breathed in to hook up the bottom three buttons. He rammed the helmet on his head. ‘I haven’t got time for the boots. You lads,’ he called to the others, standing open-mouthed, ‘give me five minutes. If I’m still in the saddle by then, come out – slowly, mind. No cantering. Softly, softly preventee crushee.’

And he crossed to the waiting animal. ‘Er . . . excuse me, sir . . .’

‘Yes, George?’

‘You get on the other side, sir,’ Scorey told him.

Lestrade turned and winked. ‘Well spotted, Scorey. You’ll go far. Somebody give me a bunk-up.’

Four policemen found the stirrup for him and pushed so hard he almost sailed right over the top. Luckily, Gertie was parked nearest the wall, so Lestrade merely hit it with his shoulder and bounced back again into the saddle. He took up the reins and pulled the animal back. Nothing.

‘Heyup, Gertie.’ Scorey clicked his tongue and the grey whirled with a splaying tail and walked placidly up the tunnel. A man with a centre parting and long shorts hailed him. ‘Can we start, officer?’ he asked in a Northern twang.

‘How many men have you got?’ Lestrade asked, unable to stop his horse.

‘Eleven.’ The Bolton Wanderers captain seemed a little surprised by the question.

‘Well,’ Lestrade called back, ‘there are two hundred and one thousand people out there. I’d think you’d find yourselves under a bit of pressure.’

‘Good gate, Albert,’ his vice captain said to him. ‘Must be very nearly a full house.’

Now, Lestrade thought, the basics. He was pointing the right way – he knew that because the animal’s ears were twitching ahead of him; always a good sign. His knees were tight against the saddle leather and his heels were down approximately where his heart was. It was as well he couldn’t see Gertie’s face from where he was – the flared nostrils, the rolling eyes. All horse and rider could see was a jammed mass of people, pressing ever wider across the pitch, rolling up the scattered policemen disappearing at the crowd’s edges. Not many sugar lumps there, Gertie told herself.

The band of the Coldstream Guards had stopped playing and were packing up their instruments. There were roars from the crowd, indignant now at the delay and incensed by the pressure from the boys in blue.

Emma’s eyes narrowed on her prey. There was Lady Carnarvon, radiant as ever in a rather fetching little black number by Coco Chanel. And hangdog as ever, the mournful face of Howard Carter loomed at her shoulder.

‘Lady C, Mr Carter, what a lovely surprise!’ She bounded over to them.

‘Emma, my dear.’ Lady Carnarvon unwrapped her face from her Bolton Wanderers scarf and kissed the girl. ‘I didn’t know you were in town.’

‘Miss Lestrade.’ Carter tipped his hat.

‘Quite beastly, this delay, isn’t it?’ the old girl said.

‘I was very sorry to hear about Lord C,’ Emma said.

‘Thank you, my dear,’ she nodded. ‘But he’s at rest now, over- looking his beloved Highclere. My, you’ve got a tan. Been somewhere nice?’

‘Egypt,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you mention it, Mr Carter?’

‘Slipped my mind,’ the surly archaeologist said.

‘Oh, my God, no.’

‘What is it, dear?’ Lady Carnarvon sensed the girl stiffen at her side. She seemed to be staring at the policeman, the one on the white horse. ‘Oh, he’ll be all right. I have heard it said,’ Lady Carnarvon whispered in her ear, ‘and only a few moments ago, not a million miles from this enclosure, that the riff-raff are intent on causing trouble. Violence on the terraces, indeed! Stuff and nonsense. Why, those fellows are simply like our servants at home or the fellahin in Egypt – rather whiter, of course. Give them plenty of largesse at Christmas and the vote or two and they’re happy enough. And I have yet to see a howling mob of vermin that was the equal of a lone policeman on a white horse.’

The lone policeman on the white horse was feeling very much alone at that moment. Gertie couldn’t push her way any further and with the instinct of a police horse, swung herself sideways to roll the crowd back. Admirably trained, Lestrade thought, but he also knew that the animal now presented a greater target. One broken bottle in the wrong hands could rip the old girl’s belly wide open. He kept up the same banter, level, steady, keeping the reins tight and the long-handled truncheon firmly scabbarded at the saddlebow.

‘Come along now, gentlemen,’ he cooed, as though to nervous pigeons. ‘We can’t start the match until you move back, can we? Now, you don’t need that brick, sir, do you? Put it back in your pocket, there’s a good gentleman. That’s it, now. Move along there. Move along.’

Five minutes had passed. The same five minutes that to Emma Bandicoot-Lestrade felt like years. Turning as far as he dared, Lestrade saw three other coppers walking their horses across the pitch.

‘All together now!’ He raised a hand, wobbling in the saddle as he did so. ‘The king’s just arrived. Those blokes behind me, that’s the signal. Let’s hear it for His Majesty.’ And he broke, albeit flatly, into ‘God Save The King’. One by one, the flat caps came off and the bricks and bats disappeared. One by one, the crowd melted away, as Bolton Wanderer supporter sat side by side with West Hammer and peace was restored to Wembley Stadium.

Emma breathed an audible sigh of relief as the singing reached a crescendo and top hats all round her were swept off.

‘I don’t see him,’ Lady Carnarvon said. ‘I don’t see the king. Where is His Majesty?’

‘British Honduras,’ someone nearby told her, between lines. ‘Deuc’d peculiar, isn’t it?’

Emma saw the man on the white horse wheel and canter back across the pitch. She saw him reel at the tunnel entrance. Then a great roar went up and huge applause burst from the massive crowd.

‘Come on you Wanderers!’ Lady Carnarvon bellowed, whirling a wooden rattle for all she was worth. ‘Up Bolton!’

Emma was still watching the figure on the white horse, struggling to stay in the saddle as the teams jogged out in keyed-up lines. She was standing on tiptoe, hoping her father was all right when she felt it. A thump in the centre of her back. From an over-exuberant fan no doubt. Even so, it hurt and for a moment, it knocked the breath out of her. She slumped forward, the feathered cloches in front of her a blur.

There was a scream. The girl was falling. As she went down, Lady Carnarvon’s black dress was daubed with red.

There was no doubt about it. The man on the white horse had saved the day. Stories about more casualties than the Somme were grossly exaggerated. There was only one. A young woman stabbed and in the VIP enclosure too. A number of the brick-carrying vermin read all about it next day in the News of the World and shook their heads. Nobs stabbing each other! What was the world coming to?

Sholto Lestrade had had gravity to help him dismount and he rapidly exchanged clothes again with a bewildered George Scorey who had the presence of mind to remount, keep his mouth shut and earn himself a place in history.

‘You ought to be in hospital,’ Lestrade looked into the face of his only daughter, lying on her soft white pillows back at home.

‘You see.’ Fanny held her hand. ‘We can’t both be wrong.’

‘Hello, hello, hello,’ Emma whispered. ‘What’s all this, then?’ She ran her fingers across her father’s cheek. It was wet with tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ he managed. ‘I should have been there.’

‘You were,’ she told him, easing herself back on the pillow as best she could. ‘Saving hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives. I was so proud of you.’

‘And I of you,’ he smiled through the tears, ‘but . . .’

‘Let’s have nothing said,’ she wagged a finger at him, ‘about sending a girl to do a man’s job.’

‘Not a bit of it,’ he promised. ‘The fact is, Sergeant Lestrade – by the way, I’m promoting you to Honorary Inspector from today – the fact is, you saved the life of Lady Carnarvon or Howard Carter or both.’

‘I did? How?’

He leaned back. ‘I’ve made my enquiries,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t easy. I’d forgotten what an unobservant, tight-lipped lot the nobs of old England are.’

‘Sholto,’ Fanny tutted, ‘you sound more like a Bolshevik every day.’

‘Communist, dear,’ he corrected her. ‘They’re calling themselves Communists now, apparently.’

‘And?’ Emma was all ears. She had her father’s ears. Mercifully, the haute couture of 1923 hid them from view.

‘Chummy was a woman.’

‘A woman?’ Emma frowned. Even that much movement cost her a lot.

‘For a trained archaeologist, Howard Carter has the observational skills of a gnat. As for Lady C, she was able to give me a blow- by-blow account of the game and the midfield accuracy of Bolton, but an attack by a maniac on a young girl known personally to her that happened only inches away seems to have left her strangely unmoved. Luckily, a little kid called Algie came up trumps. He noticed a woman, swathed in black, not dressed at all like the other females in the enclosure and he asked his mother who she was. The reply was, if my memory serves, “Don’t stare dear. She’s foreign. They can’t help having no dress sense.”’

‘Foreign?’ Emma queried.

‘You and I, Emma, have seen quite a few examples of the get-up recently. At least, if little Algie’s description is anything to go by.’

‘Egyptian?’ Emma asked.

‘Egyptian,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘But that’s not all. She was wearing a veil.’

‘So?’

‘So nosy little Algie – and thank God he was – couldn’t help noticing the woman’s eyes.’

‘Her eyes? What about them?’

‘She had nicks on her eyelids, at the outer corners.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I asked friend Carter about that.’

‘And?’

‘It’s an old Egyptian custom,’ her father told her, ‘especially among high-born Egyptians. They tattoo themselves to ward off afreets, evil spirits. Devils.’

‘I see. I don’t suppose we know who this woman was?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lestrade said. ‘We know exactly who she was. She was Mrs Ralph. The question I can’t answer – yet – is who Mrs Ralph is.’

‘Now, come on.’ Fanny stood up. ‘The doctor’s explicit instructions were to let Emma sleep. You need a bit of kip too, Sholto, after all that nonsense on the white horse.’ And she pushed him out of the room.

‘Fanny,’ Emma called to her and she doubled back.

‘Yes, darling.’ She smoothed the girl’s soft cheek.

‘He doesn’t know, does he?’ she whispered. ‘How bad it is, I mean?’

Fanny Lestrade felt the tears starting again, as she’d felt them in the morning when the doctor had told the women that Emma might never walk again. ‘No.’ She tried to smile. ‘He doesn’t know.’

She felt Emma relax and the girl who was everything in the world to them both turned her face to the wall.