The Eye of God was not deceived. I sensed its inescapable malice-I had not evaded God. Worse still, I had corrupted this innocent little man; I had betrayed his confidence in the essential goodness of the world and its inhabitants. Reverend Blakeborough could hardly bear to look at me and his self-assurance, the impulsive kindness was gone from his manner, to be replaced by a look of bewildered confusion and betrayal. He did not repeat his invitation and he left by the next train.

After that events were random things, threaded across the chasm of my life like beads on a string. My studio was emptied and the oil painting of The Triumph of Death presented at the Academy. Dr Russell came and went, accompanied by several specialists who proceeded to disagree strongly over what had happened to my heart. What they did agree upon, however, was the fact that I would most likely never walk or move my left arm again, although I did regain some control over my right arm and my head. Tabby hovered anxiously over me with my medicine-I was taking chloral every two hours now and I would begin to shiver and sweat if the dose were not regularly administered. A gentleman from The Times came to visit and was summarily dismissed by Tabby.

And at night, as I lay in my bed, they came, my darling Erinyes, laughing softly in the dark, cold and triumphant, tender and merciless, their claws and teeth infinitely loving, banefully seductive. Together they explored the cavities of my brain, with a mother’s tenderness, tearing, slicing with exquisite delicacy…By day they were invisible, barbed gossamer beneath my skin, a mesh of finest steel tightening and contracting on to my heart’s bloody core. I prayed-or tried to pray-but God wanted none of my prayers. My suffering and guilt were tastier morsels. God fed well on Henry Chester.

A week, seven days of obscene delirium at the hands of my darling succubi. Like God, they were hungry; vicious now in their desperation.

I knew what they wanted, snapping at the leash, snarling and foaming for a glimpse of prey. I knew what they wanted. The story. My story. And I wanted to tell it.

I was between the rapacious thighs of my latest inamorata the day they arrested me.

Oh, it was all very genteel. The two constables waited politely while I got up, robed myself modestly in a Chinese silk dressing-gown and listened as the older of the two constables informed me, in a slightly apologetic tone, that I was under arrest for the murder of Euphemia Chester, and that the London Police Department would be grateful if I would accompany him to the station as soon as it was convenient.

I’ll admit that the comedy of the situation struck me forcibly. So Henry had revealed all, had he? Poor Henry! If there had not been the question of the money I might have laughed aloud; as it was, I think I carried off the situation in the grand manner. I smiled, turned to the girl (howling and attempting to veil her not inconsiderable charms with a sheet) and blew her a kiss, made a small bow to the constables, picked up my clothes and marched, Orientally silken, out of the room. I was enjoying myself.

I waited for a dreary hour in a Bow Street cell while officers discussed my imaginary crime outside the door-I passed the time cheating at patience (I had found a pack of cards in my coat pocket)-and when two officers, one cranelike and phlegmatic, the other short and choleric, finally came into my cell the floor was a mosaic of coloured squares. I smiled ingenuously at them.

‘Ah, gentlemen,’ I said cheerfully, ‘how nice to have company at last. Won’t you sit down? I’m afraid it’s rather bare, but, as you see…’ I gestured towards a bench in the corner.

‘Sergeant Merle, sir,’ said the tall officer, ‘and this here is Constable Hawkins…’

I’ll say this for the English police; they’re always respectful of class. Whatever a gentleman may have done he is still a gentleman, and gentry have certain rights. The right to eccentricity, for example: Sergeant Merle and his constable listened patiently as I explained the truth about my relationship with Effie, the business with Fanny and Marta, and finally our attempt to fake Effie’s death in the churchyard. The policemen remained stolid and unquestioning (Merle occasionally scribbling details into his little notebook) until I had finished my narrative, frozen into attitudes of respectful disinterest. Oh yes, I love the English police.

When I had finished, Sergeant Merle turned towards his subordinate and said something to him in a low voice; then he looked at me again.

‘So,’ he said with a frown of concentration, ‘you’re saying, sir, that although Mr Chester thought that Mrs Chester was dead-’

‘She was in fact alive. I see you have grasped the salient points of the narrative with stunning alacrity.’ The sergeant narrowed his eyes and I smiled sweetly at him.

‘And…have you any proof of this, sir?’

‘I saw her that night, sergeant; and on several later occasions at Crook Street. I know for a fact that Chester met her the night he suffered the attack. She was very much alive then.’

‘I see, sir.’

‘I strongly suggest, sergeant, that you send a man to Crook Street to question Fanny Miller and her ladies. You will find that Miss Miller will corroborate my story. Mrs Chester may even be there.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Failing that, you would doubtless find it useful to open the Isherwood vault in Highgate cemetery, where Mrs Chester was supposedly buried.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And after you have done those things, Sergeant Merle, I should be grateful if you would bear in mind the fact that, in spite of my natural delight in helping the police with their inquiries, I do have my own life to live, and would like to be allowed to continue living it as soon as possible.’ I smiled.

Merle’s frigid courtesy did not waver. ‘Just a formality, sir,’ he said.

Hours passed. From the window of my cell I saw the sky darken, and a warden came at about seven with a tray of food and a mug of coffee; at eight the warden returned, taking the tray with him. At ten I hammered on the door of my cell, demanding to know why I had not yet been released. The warden was courteous and impenetrable; he gave me a pillow and some blankets and advised me to sleep. After a while, I did.

I suppose I dreamed; I remember waking with cigar-smoke and the smell of brandy in my nostrils, my mind a blank, my perspective gone. It was almost dark except for the reddish light from the little lamp beside me on the bed; the walls were curtained in shadow, the window a blind eye on to the night.

There was a round table in the middle of the floor in front of me and, as my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I recognized it as one which I had had in my study at Oxford years ago. How odd to see it there, I thought vaguely to myself as I reached out a hand to touch the polished surface and the worn inlay around the side…How odd. And someone had been playing cards, I saw; all around the edge of the table, in a concentric pattern, there were cards, very white in the gloom, almost seeming to glow with a soft reflective quality, like snow…

I found myself standing, moving without thinking towards the table. A chair which had previously been tucked beneath it glided out and I sat down, my eyes fixed on the cards. No ordinary cards, these, I thought: each one had, painted in the centre, an ornate letter of the alphabet, intricately knotted into the card’s design in a baroque forest of leaves and scrollwork.

I frowned vaguely, wondering what kind of game I had joined. As I peered at the circle of cards, trying to discover whether this might be some complicated kind of patience, my eye caught a gleam of crystal reflected against the table’s surface. A discarded glass, still half full of brandy, glinted in the red light. As I looked up, I must have knocked the table, because the glass tilted and fell, spilling the drink in a wide, gleaming arc. A couple of cards were caught in its path and carried to the edge of the table in front of me. Drops of the dark liquid trickled on to my hand as I saw that the cards were the Knave of Hearts and the Queen of Spades: ‘Le beau valet de coeur et la dame de pique…’; the letters M and E.