Ten

L

estrade was no stranger to Fleet Street. He’d crossed its western end many years ago just as they were removing Temple Bar, when he’d swapped his City helmet for a Metropolitan one. Its eastern end was well known to him too, where the Fleet River ran under those mean streets and the locomotives of the LNER chugged in and out of Blackfriars. It was here that old Corner of the Yard and Lestrade had hunted for Blackfriars Dan. Half-way up Ludgate Hill, he’d met Mr Gladstone, the Grand Old Man, to whom Lestrade was on escort duty. And the posters on the walls of the urinals to the north-west of St Paul’s had been the first in the world to ask gentlemen whether they’d adjusted their dress before leaving. It was a question which was only ever likely to be relevant to a few – and most of them were well known in the not-as-other-patrons community.

The offices of the Daily Mail, that vast Empire of Truth created by Alfred Harmsworth – later Lord Northcliffe; later still, dead – stood about half-way along, on the left; or on the right, depending on which way you were facing.

Above the deafening roar of the presses, a spotty youth whose face looked all the more deathly under the green shade, showed Lestrade into the office temporarily assigned to Arthur Weigall. Little bits of Egypt were all over the place.

‘Lestrade!’ the rotund former Inspector of Antiquities was surprised to see the former Chief Superintendent.

‘Working on the Fahmy case?’

‘The Fahmy case?’

Lestrade tapped a finger on the Mail’s front page as he sat down. ‘Your leader,’ he said.

‘Where?’ Weigall was on his feet in a trice.

‘No,’ Lestrade explained. ‘Your leading article. On the Fahmy shooting at the Savoy.’

‘Oh, yes. Yes, of course. No.’ Weigall was fluster itself. ‘I thought you meant Lord Rothermere. He’s a stickler, you know. No, no.’ He tried to smile. ‘My brief is archaeology, remember. That’s all I’m paid to write about.’

‘And Madame Fahmy’s brief is Edward Marshall Hall,’ Lestrade said flatly. ‘He’ll have a field day with you.’

‘With me?’ Weigall continued to play the innocent. ‘Why me? God, it’s deucedly hot, isn’t it? Even after Egypt, I mean?’

‘It’ll get hotter at the Yard,’ Lestrade assured him.

‘Look, Lestrade,’ Weigall’s voice betrayed him, ‘it’s very nice to see you again, and I’m glad you’re over the worst of your Egyptian experiences, but I really am most frightfully busy . . .’

‘Tell me about the Savoy.’ Lestrade was playing with his Panama.

‘Er . . . the Savoy?’

‘It’s a hotel, Mr Weigall,’ the old Yard man smiled, ‘not a stone’s throw from here.’

‘Yes, yes. Oh, it’s been years. I think I had luncheon there once . . .’

Lestrade leaned towards his man, invading his space, crowding his conscience. ‘I think you had dinner there night before last.’

Weigall just blinked. ‘Now, look,’ he said. ‘You don’t have any jurisdiction here, do you? Any more than you had out in Egypt?’

‘None,’ smiled Lestrade, leaning back. He’d played the cat-and- mouse game before. ‘Except in so far as we all have jurisdiction – the right of citizen’s arrest.’

‘What can you possibly arrest me for?’ Weigall’s laugh was bordering on the hysterical. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘But you had dinner with the Fahmy Beys,’ Lestrade said quietly.

‘Nonsense!’ the Mail man snapped, getting up out of his swivel chair. ‘Who said I did?’

Lestrade looked his man in his dancing, dark eyes. ‘That really doesn’t matter, does it?’ he said. ‘Let’s just say that my source has no reason to lie, and his evidence puts you squarely in the frame.’

‘But she did it,’ Weigall almost screamed, waving the morning’s Mail around his office.

‘Who says so?’

‘Everybody!’ Weigall shouted. ‘Look,’ his finger jabbed the front page, ‘our Crime Correspondent, John Paulson. He’s nobody’s fool. Madame Fahmy has confessed.’

‘Isn’t it time you did, then?’ Lestrade asked him. Weigall stood there, silhouetted by the window, his jaw flexing. ‘Arthur?’ Lestrade got up from his chair and perched himself casually on the corner of the desk. ‘You know you’ll feel better if you do.’

There was a silence between them. They’d come through the Valley of the Kings together, the shooting galleries that were Shepheard’s Hotel and Cairo Airport. In an odd sort of way, they were blood brothers.

‘All right,’ Weigall sighed, closing his eyes. ‘All right. I was there.’

Lestrade sighed too, but his was the silent, internal sort. Never give a sucker an even break. He sat back down. ‘Tell Uncle Sholto all about it,’ he said.

‘I know the Fahmy Beys,’ the Mail man admitted. ‘I met him years ago when he was buying his title.’

‘Buying . . .?’ Lestrade was lost already. That didn’t bode well this early into a confession.

Weigall looked at his inquisitor. ‘You didn’t think the title was genuine, did you?’

‘No,’ Lestrade lied. ‘No, of course not. I’m just cross-referencing.’

‘No, Ali Kemal Fahmy Bey’s dad was an engineer. Exactly how the family came by quite such a lot of money I don’t know, but by giving a little of it to charity, they gave him the title of Prince. It’s the same over here. The New Year’s Honours List is littered with people who’ve given generously to the Conservative Party – you know, people like Ramsay Macdonald. Anyway, I got a telegram from Prince Fahmy.’

‘Inviting you to dinner?’

‘Yes. He wanted to discuss something.’

‘What?’

‘Buying the tomb.’

‘What?’ Lestrade’s eyes narrowed.

‘He wanted to buy the tomb.’

‘He was interested in archaeology?’

‘He was interested in possessions. That’s really, I suspect, why he married Marguerite.’

‘Why should he talk to you,’ Lestrade said, ‘about buying the tomb, I mean?’

‘Apparently, he’d tried Carter already. Carter had passed him upstairs to Lady Carnarvon.’

‘And she had said?’

‘“No”,’ Weigall quoted. ‘That was her exact word – “no”.’

‘Rather finite, I would have thought,’ Lestrade said.

‘Aha,’ Weigall shook his head. ‘You didn’t know Fahmy Bey. He was pumping me over dinner as to how he could get round Lady C.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

‘Well,’ Weigall frowned, ‘it was a little difficult. I mean, I work for Carter indirectly – loathe the man though I do – and he works for Lady C. Admittedly, the Prince promised to keep me on, in the role of Director in fact – and ten per cent of the profits.’

‘Sounds a good deal,’ Lestrade thought aloud.

‘Very good,’ Weigall agreed. ‘But there are some of us left, Lestrade, who have little things called principles.’

‘Ah,’ Lestrade smiled. ‘So you turned down Prince Ten Per Cent?’

‘Let’s just say I was less than enthusiastic.’

‘What of the dinner?’ Lestrade asked.

‘The dinner? Well, I had the Lobster Bisque, washed down with a very palatable Chablis . . .’

‘No, I mean the Fahmy Beys,’ the interrogator explained. ‘How did they behave?’

‘Oh, outrageously, as always,’ Weigall said in a matter-of-fact sort of way. ‘Whenever I’ve met them, it’s been the same. Totally incompatible. I told you, Fahmy wants possessions, not people. He’s got that crawling snake Ernani and that big black bugger Costa. People are chattels to Fahmy. To an extent, it’s the Egyptian way.’

‘Were they any worse than usual that night?’

‘It might have been the storm,’ Weigall wondered aloud, ‘but it certainly seemed so, yes. Certainly, I had a lap full of broccoli at one point which I assume was intended for him.’

‘Thrown by . . .?’

‘Her, yes.’

‘And what of your companion?’ Lestrade asked.

‘My . . .?’ There was a falsettoness about that word that Lestrade would not have expected to find in an adult male of Weigall’s maturity.

‘The lady you were with,’ he explained.

‘No, no.’ Weigall was the master of his larynx again. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.’

Lestrade smiled. ‘I’m afraid you’re lying, Mr Weigall,’ he said.

‘What?’ the Mail man snapped. ‘How dare you?’

‘Where do you live?’ Lestrade asked him.

‘Kensington,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘And Mrs Weigall?’

‘Hortense? Well, with me, of course.’

‘So, if I were to ask her . . .’

‘You can’t!’ The special correspondent’s reply was like greased lightning.

‘Why ever not?’ Lestrade’s eyes opened ever wider.

‘Because she’s not here,’ Weigall told him. ‘Her mother’s not well. She’s tending to the old goat in New York State.’

‘So,’ Lestrade said softly. ‘I assume we can rule out Mrs Weigall as your companion.’

‘I was alone,’ her husband insisted.

Lestrade stood up. ‘This John Paulson,’ he said. ‘The Mail’s Crime Correspondent – where would I find his office?’

‘Her name was Trixie Dilnot,’ Weigall suddenly volunteered. ‘Of the Ships in the Night Escort Agency. Lestrade.’ He was around his desk and practically draped over the ex-Yard man in the blinking of an eye.

‘Yes, Mr Weigall?’

‘This . . . this doesn’t have to come out, does it? I mean, I only had dinner with the woman. Honestly. It’s just that . . . well . . . Hortense can be . . . difficult.’

‘Difficult?’

Weigall shuddered. ‘Let’s just say . . .’ he felt his throat close and his lips dry, ‘let’s just say that she can do things with a kitchen cleaver that would bring tears to your eyes. For all she’s American and these are the roaring twenties, there’s a puritan streak in Hortense that’s terrifying. Surely, surely, Lestrade,’ and Weigall fumbled in his pocket for his wallet, ‘none of this is relevant. I’ll say again, “Madame Fahmy did it”.’

Lestrade’s fist clasped over Weigall’s, wrestling with his pound notes. ‘Please, Mr Weigall,’ he said. ‘Don’t compound the felony. Anyway, you couldn’t afford me. Where did you say the Ships in the Night Escort Agency was to be found?’

‘I didn’t,’ Weigall said, recognizing ruin when he faced it. ‘But it’s Number Thirty-five, Greek Street, Soho.’

‘Thank you, Mr Weigall,’ Lestrade said. ‘I’ll see myself out.’ He reached the door. ‘Oh, by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed your articles on our Egyptian adventure, but there’s a “t” in my name. It’s not silent, any more than it is in “harlot”.’ And he disappeared around the door.

Weigall collapsed into his chair, trying to decide whether the letter opener or a hearty leap from his office window should be his next logical step. He was still deliberating when Lestrade’s head popped back into view. ‘Your wife,’ he said.

‘What?’ Weigall screamed. ‘Christ, no!’ And he buried his head in his hands.

‘Does your wife still bear the scars of her eye trouble?’ the old Yard man asked him.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The play you told me of,’ Lestrade reminded him. ‘The one at the amphitheatre back in 1909.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Weigall tried to concentrate. ‘What about it?’

‘You told me the fellahin believed that the gods in their wrath were stoning you all – that Hortense was struck in the eyes with the flail of Amon.’

‘No, no,’ Weigall frowned. ‘You’ve got that wrong,’ he said. ‘Hortense had stomach pains. It was Joe Linden Smith’s wife, Corinna. She had damaged eyes.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lestrade smiled. ‘So she did.’

Lestrade was no stranger to Greek Street. The opium dens and bordellos of his rookiehood had given way to night-clubs and escort agencies, but what they peddled had changed but little. The former were full of Bright Young Things in cravats and blazers and Americans driven three thousand miles for a drink by their ridiculous Volstead laws. The Ships in the Night Agency was housed on the third floor of a dingy little Victorian house that might have been built for the purpose. It had the offices of Women Against Syncopated Jazz on the first floor, the Soho branch of the Ancient Order of Rechabites on the second and more ways out than the Hippodrome.

‘Yes,’ Trixie Dilnot told him. ‘Mr Smith.’

‘Smith?’ Lestrade repeated.

‘That’s the name he gave,’ she said, filing her nails. Well, it was her lunch-break. ‘Needed an escort for dinner at the Savoy. He’d picked me up at seven for seven thirty.’

‘This was the night before last?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Pass me that wassname, will you, love? No, the other one. That’s right. Yeah, ’cos Monday it was His Royal Highness.’

‘The Prince of Wales?’ Lestrade blinked.

Trixie consulted her notebook. ‘Well,’ she chuckled. ‘It might say “Mr Smith”, but then, it would, wouldn’t it? No, it was him all right – flat cap, plus-fours, knitted jumper, silly dog under his arm. I said they wouldn’t let us in the Ritz looking like that, but would he listen? Not him as would. The manager took one look at him and said, “I don’t care whose son you are, you’re not bringing that dog in here”. Well, naturally, HRH thought he meant me and punched the bloke on the nose. I don’t know, these Royals! What’s the world coming to?’

‘Yes,’ Lestrade said. ‘But I’m actually more interested in Mr Smith Mark Two.’

‘Are you?’ Trixie looked at him under her false eyelashes. ‘Look, mate, I don’t wanna get personal, but I think you want the Rugger Club Escort Agency along at Number Sixty-nine. They cater for your sort.’

‘Tell me about Tuesday night’s Mr Smith.’ Lestrade refused to be ruffled.

‘Well, he was a boring old fart, really. Kept talking about Egypt and archaeology and stuff. I did put my hand on his knee at one point – all right, so we were in the lift at the time – but he had a one-track mind, so I gave up.’

‘You had dinner?’

‘Yeah, not a bad bash. I kept to the breaded plaice.’

‘Whose table were you at?’

‘One of the Savoy’s, I suppose.’ Trixie paused briefly in mid- file. ‘It was in the hotel dining-room, after all.’

‘No,’ Lestrade said. ‘I mean, who was with you?’

‘Some Egyptian bloke. Prince Whoever-he-said-he-was. Rubbish dancer. Had feet like steamrollers. Had wandering hands, too.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. He’d undone me bra three times and the band hadn’t even struck up by then.’

‘While you were sitting down, what did you talk about?’

‘Me? Nothing,’ Trixie told him. ‘Well, you see, in my line of work, there’s three topics really – the weather, how I lost my virginity and what sort of corporal punishment I like. It depends on the client as to which one I use.’

‘And on that night?’

‘Well, the blokes – Prince Not Very Charming and Mr Smith – they were talking archaeology all night. She – stuck up cow, she was; nice frock, though – didn’t speak English at all, so that was that. When I wasn’t dancing with His Nibs, I danced with his secretary. I ask you, what sort of bloke has a bloke for a secretary? Mind you, he was very interested in the sort of corporal punishment I like. Said his master would be delighted and was I free on Thursday?’

‘To which you replied?’

Trixie winked at Lestrade. ‘I told him “I’m never free”, ducky, and I’d have to consult my social calendar.’

‘Tell me, Miss Dilnot,’ Lestrade held his hand out while she peeled off an eyelash, ‘did anyone else join you at the dinner table? An American lady, perhaps?’

‘Nah.’ Trixie shook her head. ‘Only that band-leader blokey, came over to ask for any requests.’

‘What time did the party break up?’

‘Ooh,’ Trixie frowned, ‘now you’ve asked me. It must have been nearly one, ’cos I said to Mr Smith, “My place or yours?” and he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. Not that I mind, really. A night off you-know-what and three quid in my knickers; can’t be bad, can it? By the way,’ she leaned towards him, peeling off her other eyelash, ‘what’s your real name, Mr Lestrade?’

He winked at her. ‘Smith, of course,’ he told her.

‘I’ve had a woman on the phone today,’ Fanny said, pouring tea for them both.

‘That’s not possible, surely.’ Her husband was reading the obituary in The Times of Prince Fahmy Bey, courtesy of Percy Merton, formerly their man in Egypt and soon to be so again.

‘Miss Marie Corelli, no less,’ Fanny beamed. ‘You know, the novelist.’

‘Do I?’ Lestrade muttered, dunking his toast into his tea. ‘Oh, yes. Raddled old trout, prosecuted for hoarding food during the war.’

‘Oh, I’m sure that was all a misunderstanding. Sholto . . .’

‘Sorry, dearest.’ He surfaced from the paper. ‘What?’

Fanny looked at the man she loved, then she folded her napkin and laid it carefully on the table cloth.

‘What’s the matter?’ He took her hand.

‘Oh . . .’ she fluttered, as though to dismiss it.

‘Don’t “oh” me,’ he warned. ‘I know you too well, Fanny Lestrade. We’ve been together now . . . how long is it?’

She hit him with her buttered toast. ‘Not so long that you should have forgotten,’ she said.

‘Quite.’ He wiped his ear with his napkin. ‘But long enough for me to know when something’s wrong. Now, what is it?’

She bit her lip. She felt the tears start. It was tearing at her heart and had been since that mad, terrible day of the Cup Final when they’d brought his Emma home. She’d kept it from him; for the best of reasons, it was true, but she’d kept it, nevertheless. It had become an albatross round her neck. In the event, she didn’t have to say anything.

‘It’s Emma, isn’t it?’ he said.

Fanny nodded, feeling her eyes hot and wet.

‘Something about her wound,’ he went on, still holding her hand. ‘Something about her walking . . .’

‘She can’t, Sholto,’ Fanny sobbed and she fell into his arms.

He held her for a moment, then lifted her head. ‘What do you mean?’ he frowned, ‘can’t?’

The doctor said’, she sniffed, ‘the knife has probably damaged her spinal cord. It’s half real and half in her mind, he says. She tells me she has no feeling in her legs.’

He stood up, letting her arms fall. ‘You should have told me,’ he said slowly.

Fanny was nodding, looking up at him, at the parchment face, the dark-circled eyes. ‘Oh, Sholto,’ she sobbed, ‘what shall we do?’

She saw his head lift, his shoulders set. ‘What we’ve always done,’ he said. ‘We’ll manage.’ And he left the room.

There was something in his stride, something in the way he carried himself, that frightened her. She hadn’t often seen her husband go into action, but when she had, she’d had the same feeling. It was the feeling she’d got when he was still at the Yard, facing anarchists’ bullets or maniacs’ knives. An empty feeling of terror and loneliness. She heard him bound up the stairs, two at a time. It was as well she didn’t hear him resting at the top. Briefly, he braced himself outside Emma’s room, then Fanny was aware of her door crashing back and half closing.

‘Daddy . . .?’ she heard her stepdaughter say.

Fanny heard her husband’s voice too, but it didn’t sound like her Sholto at all.

‘Have I ever told you’, she heard him ask as her foot trod the first stair, ‘about my oldest memory?’

‘No,’ Emma said. ‘I don’t think . . .’

‘They told me later it was the day the Light Brigade charged,’ her father said. ‘I was nine months old. And I took my first step.’

‘Gosh.’ Emma tried to lighten the mood. She’d never seen her father look so serious. ‘That’s early.’

‘You know why I did it?’ Fanny, on the fourth stair now, her heart in her mouth, heard him ask.

‘No.’ Emma’s voice was small, distant.

‘Curiosity,’ Lestrade said. ‘The will to do it. I don’t remember, but I’d presumably been flopping about all over Pimlico before that day. It was night, actually. It was sixty-eight years ago, but I can still remember it as if it was yesterday. I can smell my mother’s hands, warm and red and wet from the washing she took in. And I can see my old dad . . .’

Emma was trying to smile, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t because her old dad wasn’t.

‘. . . You’d have liked him, Emma,’ he went on, backing to the window. ‘I can see the buttons on his tunic and the letters on his collar, flashing in the firelight. Of course, I couldn’t read them then, but I wanted to touch them. Had to touch them. As if . . . as if they were life itself.’

Fanny noticed that their bedroom door was ajar too. Yet she’d closed it just before tea. Madison was shopping in the village. That meant that Sholto must have gone in for something. She saw too that their wardrobe door was open wide. And she knew what it was. ‘Here, Emma,’ she heard her husband say. ‘My old tunic. The old H Division. Whitechapel. Two point eight square miles of hell. Come on, Emma Lestrade. This is life. Here. Not stuck in that bed feeling sorry for yourself. Here. Now. Come and get it!’ He was shouting at her, shaking the tunic like a matador’s red cape.

She shook in the bed, her eyes blinking back the tears. ‘Daddy,’ she said, ‘I can’t. I can’t.’

‘Emma,’ Fanny heard her husband growl, ‘you can. You will. Now stand up!’

Fanny staggered back against the flock of the wall, the pounding in her heart almost painful. She’d never heard her husband yell like that, not in this house, not anywhere. She listened as the bedsprings jerked, the bedclothes being thrown back. She heard a silence she’d never heard in her life before.

‘Come on, Emma,’ Lestrade said. ‘You can do it. That’s it. That’s it. Good girl. Come and get it. Come on. Life. Life. Come . . .’ but he never finished his sentence, because there was a sudden scream that filled Fanny’s heart.

She ran up the stairs that remained, three at a time, and flew into Emma’s room. There was a tattered old police tunic on the floor, its collar numbers still bright in the afternoon sun. And a girl and an old man stood by the window, holding each other and crying.

‘She did it, Fanny,’ he said, grinning rather stupidly through the tears. ‘My little girl did it.’ He was kissing Emma’s hair again and again; she was wrapping herself in his arms supported fully on her own feet.

Fanny dashed over to them and they wrapped their arms around her too. ‘You both did it.’ she cried. ‘You and your little girl.’

Sir Edward Marshall Hall had seen some strange sights in his time, but the one before him now was the strangest.

‘Er . . . I rang the bell,’ he said. ‘And knocked. I’m not intruding, am I?’

They sat together in Lestrade’s study, the greatest defence lawyer in the country and the world’s second greatest detective. Outside in the summer sun of early evening Fanny and Emma were hobbling around like schoolgirls as the feeling came back to Emma’s legs and Fanny marked out a hopscotch pitch.

‘You mustn’t mind them, Sir Edward,’ Lestrade said, drying his eyes again on the curtains. ‘It’s been a rather peculiar afternoon.’

‘Not as peculiar as my morning,’ Marshall Hall assured him.

‘Oh? Can I offer you tea, by the way?’

‘No, thank you,’ the lawyer said. ‘What I have to impart is too serious for such an insipid beverage. Got any brandy?’

‘Of course.’ Lestrade poured for them both, glancing up every now and again as Fanny and Emma cackled anew at some sudden hilarity in the rhododendron bushes.

‘Do I have your full attention?’ Marshall Hall asked. ‘It’s about the Fahmy Bey case.’

‘You have my full attention,’ Lestrade assured him.

‘I won’t beat about the bush, Lestrade,’ although the Lestrade women clearly were, ‘I’m putting my career on the line visiting you like this.’

‘I’m all ears, Sir Edward,’ Lestrade confessed.

‘I wouldn’t normally break a client’s confidentiality and talk to the opposition,’ Marshall Hall assured him.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Lestrade said. He knew the rules of the game as well as anyone.

‘The question is.’ the lawyer closed to his man, ‘can I trust you, ex-Detective Chief Superintendent?’

‘As far as I can trust you.’ Lestrade leaned in to him. ‘Besides, I don’t know about opposition; aren’t we both on the same side – in the search for truth, that is?’

Slowly, the glimmer of a smile broke over the flat, regular features. ‘Good answer, Lestrade,’ he said. ‘Very well. My client has told me a tale so fanciful . . . Well, it’s nonsense, of course. I can’t use it in court.’

‘How fanciful?’ Lestrade asked.

‘More fanciful than a British jury can stomach,’ Marshall Hall told him. ‘My French, as you know, is second to none, but lest I miss a nuance here, a je ne sais quoi there, I have employed a French lady, herself a lawyer, to act as second interpreter for me. We have elicited from Marguerite Fahmy the following fantastic story and I, with all my vast powers of cross-examination, cannot shake her from it.’

‘I remain a gog,’ Lestrade said, his glass untouched.

‘As you will have gathered from others by now, no doubt, dinner on the night in question was a stormy affair in more senses than one.’

‘Indeed,’ Lestrade nodded. ‘The broccoli.’

‘Quite. At a little before one thirty, the Fahmys said goodbye to their guests . . .’

‘Arthur Weigall and Trixie Dilnot.’

‘Really?’ Marshall Hall made a hurried note of that. ‘And then retired. They were both in a pretty foul mood. She remained in her evening gown. He undressed, cleaned his teeth, put on his pyjamas and walked the dog.’

‘Walked the dog?’

‘Just along the fourth-floor corridor, you understand.’

‘Ah.’

‘When he returned, she asked him for money to go to Paris for her operation.’

‘For her piles?’

‘Really?’ Marshall Hall made another note. ‘Then, he made an indecent proposal.’

‘Really?’ It was Lestrade’s turn to pose that question, though he didn’t bother making notes.

‘Something else I can’t expect a British jury to stomach,’ Marshall Hall said.

‘Er . . . how indecent?’ Lestrade persisted, sensing, rightly, that he could cope with a great deal that a British jury could not.

‘As Madame Fahmy put it to me.’ Marshall Hall answered, ‘“I will do anything for love, Sir Edward, but I won’t do that.”’

‘Ah.’

‘Anyway, she wasn’t having any. And therefore, conversely, neither was he. Which meant in turn, of course, that she wasn’t either – any money, that is. She hit him.’

‘And?’

‘He hit her, grabbing her seconds later round the throat.’

‘Upon which?’

‘Upon which he dashed out of the room, although quite why I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, and collided with Cabin, the night porter.’

‘Then she came out,’ Lestrade took up the tale as he understood it, ‘rabbiting away in French, presumably. And then the dog came out . . .’

‘. . . barking mad.’ Marshall Hall filled him in.

‘I’ve heard nothing new,’ Lestrade felt bound to tell him.

‘So far, no,’ Marshall Hall nodded, pausing in mid-brief for a swig of Lestrade’s brandy. ‘But here, my dear ex-Chief Superintendent, all common sense and probability fly utterly out of the window.’ They both glanced across to where Fanny and Emma were playing leapfrog over the croquet hoops.

‘Madame Fahmy – Marguerite’, Marshall Hall continued, ‘grabbed hubby’s gun.’

‘The Browning automatic.’

‘Which she can’t fire.’

‘It was a bitch mechanically,’ Lestrade agreed.

‘Marguerite knows nothing about guns. The cover was jammed and she tried to shake out the bullet. When that didn’t work, she squeezed the trigger. A bullet whizzed out through the open window.’

‘And then?’

‘Then, not understanding an automatic’s mechanism, she assumed the thing was empty. Whereas you and I know the next bullet had clicked into the firing position. She turned it on hubby, who was still hopping mad and screaming at her and . . .’

‘. . . shot and killed him.’

‘No.’

‘No?’ Lestrade’s left eyebrow rose. Then, on a moment’s reflection. ‘Well, she would say that, wouldn’t she?’

‘Lestrade,’ Marshall Hall said. ‘May I remind you who I am?’ The lawyer produced an envelope from his inside pocket.

‘What’s this?’ Lestrade said.

‘It’s an envelope, Lestrade,’ Marshall Hall explained as patiently as he knew how. ‘Be so good as to read it.’

Lestrade did.

‘Aloud, please.’

‘“The Greatest Lawyer on Earth”.’

‘Quite,’ Marshall Hall beamed. ‘A coquettish little device, but a useful one.’

‘Someone thinks highly of you,’ Lestrade said.

‘Everyone thinks highly of me, Lestrade,’ Marshall Hall put him right. ‘But I fear you are missing the point. What, likewise, is missing from that envelope?’

‘Er . . . the address?’

‘Exactly. I wrote it to myself,’ the lawyer confessed. ‘With no address. And still, it reached me at my chambers. Now that’s the measure of my brilliance, Lestrade.’

Lestrade refused to be impressed. ‘So you have a fan in the GPO,’ he shrugged.

‘The point I am making’, Marshall Hall persisted, ‘is that I’ve interviewed more clients than a dog has fleas. And I have never, repeat never, Lestrade, come across one I believe more totally than I do Marguerite Fahmy Bey.’

‘All right,’ Lestrade was prepared to play along, ‘so she didn’t shoot him. Who did?’

‘Person unknown.’ Marshall Hall sat back.

‘Pardon?’

‘Where was Fahmy Bey when he was shot?’ the lawyer asked.

‘In the suite doorway,’ Lestrade said. ‘Standing next to . . . ah . . .’

Marshall Hall positively beamed. It was an unnerving experience. ‘The lift,’ he said.

‘Don’t tell me.’ Lestrade covered his face, seeing Macclesfield’s case being blown sky high.

‘I fear I must,’ Marshall Hall said. ‘Marguerite was pointing the gun when there were three shots fired from behind her. Over her right shoulder. All of them hit the Prince and he dropped like a brick.’

‘There was someone in the lift,’ Lestrade said. ‘Of course.’

‘But Cabin, the night porter . . .’

‘Turned at the sound of the first shot, yes. Remember that corridor on the fourth floor? I do, I’ve spent the last hour before luncheon walking up and down it. There’s a kink half-way along. The lift is three quarters on. From where he was standing, Cabin couldn’t possibly have seen the lift doors; whether they were open or closed; if anyone was standing there.’

‘But he’d have heard the lift moving, surely?’

‘In a perfect world, yes,’ Marshall Hall conceded. ‘But he’d just seen a man shot in front of him. And a woman holding a gun. Given that situation, I wonder how many of us would hear the whirrings of a lift?’

‘True,’ Lestrade nodded.

‘Besides, it didn’t move. Not for a while.’

‘What?’

‘Fahmy Bey had been shot with a Browning. The exact same gun that Marguerite owned.’

‘So?’

‘So that wasn’t enough, was it? Even an average forensic scientist could discover that the bullets didn’t match. And Robert Churchill would certainly elicit that – probably in seconds.’

‘What are you saying?’ Lestrade asked.

‘I’m saying that our friend in the lift switched weapons. Oh, it probably wasn’t part of the original plan, but it fell into his lap, so to speak. In the shock of what she thought she’d done, Marguerite dropped the weapon. While she was being hysterical, cradling the dying man in her arms and Cabin was chasing his own posterior in panic, chummy calmly snatched up Marguerite’s pistol, substituted his own and nipped back inside the lift again.’

‘But her prints.’ Lestrade clicked his fingers. ‘Madame Fahmy’s prints were all over the gun.’

‘Of course they were,’ Marshall Hall leaned back, ‘because she picked it up again. We have the testimony of Arthur Mariani, the Night Manager, for that. He it was who took it off her.’

‘I see,’ said Lestrade.

‘I’m glad you do,’ said Marshall Hall, rising and crossing to the window. The women were still there, laughing and pushing each other as the shadows lengthened and the croquet hoops became little white ghosts in the gloom. ‘Because I can’t use any of it.’

‘The great British jury?’ Lestrade asked.

‘Of course. No, I’ll pursue the line that Marguerite did it.’

‘Er . . . I’m sorry, Sir Edward.’ Lestrade frowned. ‘I was under the distinct impression that you were the defending counsel in this case.’

‘So I am,’ Marshall Hall yawned. ‘I’ll put that slimy tove Ernani on the stand and imply that he is not as other secretaries. That he and his master and that black chappie connived to lead poor Marguerite a terrible dance.’ He suddenly crouched by the casement, an evil glint in his eyes. ‘Picture’, he growled, ‘the wily Oriental, ready to spring on this defenceless creature. She, innocent and abandoned, sold into white slavery and subjected to unspeakable and unnatural vice. He was abnormal and a brute with the vilest of vile tempers and a filthy, perverted taste. Why was this woman afraid?’ He suddenly straightened, pacing Lestrade’s carpet as though it were Number One Court at the Bailey. ‘Was she afraid of the hirelings of this man who would do her to death? The curse of this case is the atmosphere which we cannot understand – the Eastern feeling of possession of the woman . . .’ his face was a livid crimson in the half light ‘. . . the Turk in his harem, this man who was entitled to have four wives if he liked, for chattels . . . it is something almost unintelligible, something we cannot deal with.’

‘Sir Edward . . .’

‘Imagine,’ the greatest lawyer in the world was in full flight, ‘the effects of that storm on a woman of nervous temperament who had been living such a life – terrified, abused, beaten, degraded . . .’

‘But . . .’

‘In sheer desperation – as he crouched for the last time, crouched like an animal, retired for the last time to get a bound forward – she turned the pistol and put it to his face and to her horror, the thing went off.’

Marshall Hall’s face fell, his right hand came down and he visibly slumped into the corner before ‘coming to’, as it were. ‘Then, I’ll probably drop the gun, invoke the sunshine streaming in through the window – you know how it does in Number One Court – and ask for an acquittal.’

‘And an Oscar?’ sighed Lestrade, only now coming out of the great web of magic that Marshall Hall had woven.

‘Oh, I expect there’ll be the usual howls of protest from the Egyptian government,’ the lawyer yawned, flopping down into his chair again. ‘But what’s that in the scheme of things? We certainly made the buggers back down at Tel-el-Kebir – or was it Omdurman?’

Actually it was neither, but it wasn’t Lestrade’s place to say so.

‘No.’ Marshall Hall finished his brandy. ‘I just thought you ought to know, as someone who is attached, but vicariously, to the Yard, what really happened. Oh, and you might be interested in this.’

He rummaged again in his inside pocket and produced another envelope. This one was addressed clearly enough, to Madame Fahmy Bey, c/o the Savoy Hotel.

‘It’s in French,’ Lestrade realized.

‘Of course,’ Marshall Hall said. ‘That’s the language the lady speaks.’ He snatched it back from Lestrade. ‘It says – and I quote – “Do not return to Egypt. A journey means a possible accident, poison in a flower, a subtle weapon which is neither seen nor heard.”’

‘Poison?’ Lestrade repeated. ‘That’s a far cry from a Browning automatic.’

‘Not a far cry from a few deaths in the Valley of the Kings, though, is it, Lestrade?’ Marshall Hall raised an eyebrow.

‘You’ve been reading the Mail again.’ Lestrade clicked his tongue, shaking his head.

‘Only mine and Madame Fahmy’s,’ the lawyer said.

‘May I keep this?’ Lestrade asked.

‘Of course,’ said Marshall Hall. ‘I’ve never seen it, have I, ex-Chief Superintendent? No, I’ll stick with the wronged wife ploy. I’d like twelve women on the jury, but old Percy Clarke will never wear that. He might, however, settle for three . . . Well,’ the lawyer heard Lestrade’s grandmother striking from the hall, ‘I must away. Thanks for the brandy.’

‘Thanks for the information,’ Lestrade said.

‘Look, Lestrade.’ Marshall Hall was staring out of the window. ‘Those women . . .’

‘Don’t worry about them.’ Lestrade beamed. ‘Touch of the sun, that’s all. I’ll see you out.’

Marie Corelli, it transpired, had a theory. Lestrade knew that. The hoi polloi of Fleet Street knew that. But the lady had been so insistent and so mysterious and had, after all, got Lestrade’s home number from somewhere, that he felt – well, actually, Fanny felt – that he ought to go. When the persistent lady said Stratford, that was fine. Lestrade caught a Circle Line and off he went. Having paced the length and breadth of the old K Division all morning, he eventually asked a policeman. It was perhaps lucky for Lestrade that he’d met the only genuine reader on the Force.

‘No, sir,’ the constable had told him. ‘If it’s Miss Corelli you’re after, you’re looking for Stratford-upon-Avon, not Stratford-at-Bow. It’s up a bit and across a bit from here. I’ve got all her books, you know; from The Romance of Two Worlds to The Secret Power. Rattling good reads they are too. I think The Murder of Delicia is my favourite – but then, it would be, wouldn’t it? Have a nice day.’ And he saluted and was gone.

The municipal borough and market town of Stratford-upon-Avon is pleasantly situated on the river of the same name twenty-four miles south-east of Birmingham. The Americans had intruded even this far into the leafy heart of the country, claiming, somewhat spuriously, that John Harvard’s mother hailed from there. Another American, G.W. Childs, had erected a fountain for reasons best known to himself, in the Memorial Park.

It was neither of these edifices that Lestrade had journeyed north to find, however, but Mason Croft, the home of one of the most read and least loved writers in history. Arriving by the back gate, he did happen to catch sight of what appeared to be three or four tons of granulated sugar, care of Messrs Tate and Lyle, piled high in the great novelist’s back passage.

‘I do intend to make jam with it all, you know,’ a hideous old bat shrieked at him. ‘To be distributed among the poor, together with a free copy of one of my books. Are you from the council, you vulgar little man?’

‘No, Madam,’ Lestrade told her. ‘I’m from Scotland Yard.’

‘Ah.’ She clapped her hands gleefully. ‘Would you be Chief Superintendent Lestrade?’

‘Ex-Chief Superintendent,’ he corrected her. She looked a litigious old bat, as well as a hideous one, and he didn’t want to risk being caught impersonating a police officer.

‘Tsk, tsk.’ she scolded, leading him by the arm. ‘One’s former glories always stay with one. I, for instance, haven’t written anything truly great, I will confess, since last Thursday, but the memory lingers on.’

‘Would you be Marie Corelli?’ He thought he’d better check.

‘If I had my time all over again, you mean? Oh yes,’ she nodded sagely, leading him towards the river that ran, sluggish and brown, at the bottom of her garden, ‘yes, there’s no one in the world that I would rather be. I often think I’ve been me before, you know. Signor Esparto!’ She clapped her hands and a sour-looking little Italian glided out from under a trailing willow, a striped shirt over his upper body and a beret on his head. In his hands he held a long pole and under his carefully balanced feet, an ornate, gilded gondola cut through the water.

The great writer leaned to Lestrade. ‘This is Signor Esparto,’ she whispered. ‘He used to be a grass to the Warwickshire Constabulary, but I reformed him and now he gondoles for me only.’

The little Italian twisted his left foot and the boat slid to a halt beside Miss Corelli’s little jetty.

‘Come with me,’ she said to Lestrade. ‘In my gondola.’

He helped her in with the aid of the gondolier and wobbled aboard himself. After the de Havilland Hercules, the slender, badly-balanced craft held no terrors for him. After all, should there be a mishap, he could always swim for it. Had he fallen out of the de Havilland, however, flying might have been problematical.

‘Eyesore, isn’t it?’ She scowled at a large white and brick-red building to her right.

‘Er . . . yes,’ he agreed. ‘What is it?’

‘The locals refer to it as the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.’ She waved her talented right arm at it. ‘I call it a brewer’s vat, for obvious reasons. Well, if I confide that it was designed by two no-hopers called Dodgshun and Unsworth, I suspect that that will speak for itself. George Bernard Shaw has intimated to me, in one of his saner moments, that although he would not himself burn the place down, he would certainly send a telegram of congratulation to anybody who did.’

‘Fascinating as this discussion on theatrical architecture is, Miss Corelli, I am a very busy man and you did mention something about a solution to the recent deaths in Egypt.’

‘Ah, yes, indeed. Turn right here, Signor Esparto, I want to lob a brick at the mayor’s house.’

Lestrade lowered himself still further in the boat and pulled his Panama down over his eyes.

‘It’s poison,’ she said triumphantly, as though she’d just solved the riddle of the universe.

‘Yes, Madam,’ Lestrade couldn’t believe it, ‘I had got that far myself.’

‘Had you?’ The ancient writer blinked. ‘Oh. Oh, well, why didn’t you say so?’

‘I didn’t exactly have the opportunity,’ Lestrade said. ‘I believe you spoke to my wife.’

‘Well,’ she trilled, ‘you could have telephoned me back. You have my number.’

‘I certainly have, Madam,’ Lestrade scowled. ‘I have also come rather a long way for no purpose whatsoever.’

‘I would hardly say that,’ Miss Corelli gasped. ‘You have spent the last few minutes in the company of greatness.’

‘What sort of poison?’ Lestrade ignored her.

‘Arsenic,’ she chortled. ‘Obviously.’

‘Obviously,’ Lestrade growled. ‘Signor Esparto, can you turn this thing round? I have a train to catch.’

‘Do as he says, Signor,’ Miss Corelli snapped. ‘If you’re not interested in my solving murders for you, that’s your loss. I have plenty of other things to do. I was up to my eyes researching Ralph Holinshed when you pestered me . . .’

‘Who?’ Lestrade sat upright.

‘Ralph Holinshed.’ the great researcher repeated.

‘Who’s he?’

‘Was he, Chief Superintendent.’ Miss Corelli corrected him. ‘He’s dead.’

‘Not poisoned, was he?’ Lestrade was suddenly all attention.

‘I really don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve never thought about it. Ralph or Raphael Holinshed was an English chronicler. He worked for a printer employed by Good Queen Bess. Shakespeare drew heavily on his histories . . . Mr Lestrade, you’ve gone rather a strange colour.’

‘Miss Corelli.’ Lestrade knelt up in the boat. ‘May I be permitted to say that I believe you are probably the greatest writer in the his- tory of the world.’ And he planted a kiss on the old bat’s forehead.

‘Oh,’ Miss Corelli blushed. ‘How nice of you to say so. What marvellous taste you have. And what jocund company you’re in. Both the late Mr Gladstone and the late Oscar Wilde have said as much; though neither of them, for different reasons, ever, as far as I can recollect, kissed me on the forehead.’

Lestrade could believe that.