‘Number thirty-nine.’ Sandilands referred to his notes. ‘Yes. Here we are. Hopkirk took a statement from the butler, a Mr Jonas Warminster. The owner is a gentleman who goes by the even more fanciful name of Ingleby Mountfitchet. Hardly fits the description of a Sinn Fein sympathizer … Mr Mountfitchet, who is a bachelor, ex-army, had retired to bed with his cocoa when he was disturbed by the rumpus that broke out in the street below. The butler assured him that the noise was a car backfiring and his master went back to bed. Where, judging by the tightly closed shutters, he still remains … sleeping something off? Avoiding speaking to us? Yes, Wentworth. I agree. Further and better particulars required, I believe. We should run a check on Mr Mountfitchet. I’ll give instructions to that effect.’ Joe looked up from his notes and said with emphasis: ‘Don’t worry, by the way – basic slog-about police work goes on while we’re here, dancing about in the shrubbery.’

‘Glad to hear it, sir.’ Her response was automatic, her mind elsewhere. ‘Look, sir – no woman would risk ruining her evening shoes and clothes in this wilderness in normal circumstances. She’d walk around on the path.’

‘Meeting someone? Hiding from someone? Lying in wait?’ Sandilands suggested.

Lily stood up again, an object clasped carefully between finger and thumb. ‘Long enough to smoke a cigarette, anyway. There’s lipstick on this. That suggests waiting about. Ambushing? Setting up a diversion?’

Joe produced a paper evidence bag from his pocket and held it open to receive the stub. ‘Not an enthusiastic smoker, evidently. Only a few puffs taken before she threw it away. Interrupted by the arrival of the taxi?’

‘Who do you know who smokes Balkan Sobranie, Holmes?’ Lily asked, laughing at him. She seemed to have been suddenly ambushed by their ridiculous situation.

He answered the question with a grimace: ‘Ah! If only it were so simple in real life. Balkan Sobranie, eh? You’re right. That would reduce our smoker to a select club of about ten thousand émigré Russians and as many Londoners who think it the smart thing to do. Anyone from a grand duchess who screws one into a six-inch-long Fabergé holder to the girlfriend of a Soho waiter who’s decided to have a flirt with the bohemian style.’ He sighed. ‘Still – worth recording and preserving. Perhaps Miss Hampshire will be able to throw a little light? I must check the plans Hopkirk has for re-interviewing that lady.’

‘We’re thinking the same thing, sir? On the same lines as Lady Dedham herself? She was convinced it was a third gun that fired the finishing shot from across the road. And we’re looking at evidence of a third party present at the scene.’

Joe nodded. ‘Yes. Interesting that in all the noise and horror Cassandra picked out a third gun. A killer still at large? I’ll tell you – while you two were upstairs, Hopkirk read out to me over the telephone the initial report from the autopsy. Dr Spilsbury had interesting things to say …’ He took out a notebook and found his place. ‘I give you the salient bits … Hit, in the first instance, by two bullets fired one from the left and one from the right at a distance of no more than six feet. One narrowly missed the lung and crossed the body to lodge in the muscle under his left arm, the other shot penetrated a lung and would, ultimately, have caused death. The coup de grâce was delivered from farther afield and from a higher-calibre gun. Something in the order of a Browning. In the hands of a marksman, I’m inferring from the doc’s comments. Clean shot through the heart. He was dead in seconds.

‘The first two shots came from guns identified as Webleys. As issued by the British army. Thousands of those about on the quiet in London. Old soldiers sometimes fail to turn their weapons in. Conveniently “lose” them. They get used to having protection to hand and can’t bear to give them up. Who am I to blame them – I have an illicit Luger at home myself.’

‘Have you any idea of the distance?’ Lily asked. ‘Of the lethal shot?’

‘Spilsbury’s estimate from an examination of the wound would place the gunman at the edge of the road, right where the taxi was parked.’

‘By someone standing behind and using the motor for cover? Inside it and firing from a window? Or someone at the wheel?’

‘As you say. I think we’ve finished here for the time being, Wentworth. Right – what do you fancy next? Shall I take you to view the wounded at the hospital? I can offer you the butler or the driver, though he was still unconscious when last I heard.’

‘No, sir. I’d really like to have a word with the prisoners, if you can arrange it.’

Joe was taken aback by the request. He looked up and down the street to gain time and his gaze returned to hover inches over her head as he replied doubtfully: ‘I don’t think I can sanction that. No. Not sure it’s a good idea. We’ll leave the interrogation to those who have the skills. Hard nuts these two boyos, according to Hopkirk. All they would offer at Gerard Street was false names. Sean O’Brian and Sean O’Hara if you can believe!’

‘John Smith and John Jones, in other words?’

‘Exactly. No address or comment can be wrung out of them. In view of their intransigence, Hopkirk had them carted off to the Vine Street nick where the officers are more used to dealing with such cases.’

He didn’t think he could make it clearer. Lily, according to her file, was attached to the Vine Street nick. She could hardly be unaware of their reputation. She appeared to select her next remark carefully, her voice controlled. ‘Didn’t you say one of them had a bullet – a .22 from Lady Dedham’s gun – lodged in his back? Wouldn’t one expect him to have been conveyed to hospital for treatment?’

‘A doctor was called in to attend, of course,’ Joe replied briefly, uneasy with the conversation. ‘Anyway, whatever their condition, these are not types a young thing like yourself would want to engage with at any level. I’ve seen them. Brutal killers. Products of the gutter. You’d hardly understand what they were saying anyhow. They’re refusing to speak in English. Leave these things to the experts, Wentworth.’

The constable glowered at him in a silence that rather smacked of contempt. He leaned slightly sideways to look under the brim of her hat. He straightened, snorting and sighing theatrically. ‘I had a cat once that could pull exactly the same face. It got its own way once too often and now features at third on the left in my mother’s pets’ cemetery. Come on then! But on your own head …’

As soon as they’d settled into the back of the squad car Joe began to murmur entertaining nonsense about Vine Street: the West End police station located in a side road off Piccadilly. Notorious to some members of the public, celebrated to others, the view of those receiving attention here was coloured by the seriousness of the charges brought. And by the class and attitude of the miscreant. Drunk and disorderly aristocrats hauled in on Boat Race night would relive their adventures for years to come. The carousing in the cells in the company of like-minded toffs, all caught at a hazardous moment in their wild night out in the capital, led to the formation of new friendships. Over fifty years a certain camaraderie had developed among those who could boast they had survived a night in custody at Vine Street. Over the port, moustached old warriors recounted with a glee equal to that with which they told the stories of their conquests the tale of their night in clink … ‘So there I was, pissed as a newt, caught making mating calls to Landseer’s south-easterly lion in Trafalgar Square … as one does … Thought I was being jolly smart giving my name as the Duke of Wellington, Number One, London, when they chucked me into a cell with – would you believe it? – Field Marshal Haig, Kaiser Bill, Alfred the Great and Jack the Ripper! Of course, next morning Justice Peabody showed his decent side. Let us all off for a fiver each. Except for Kaiser Bill who got charged a tenner for “demonstrating unpatriotic sympathies in his choice of nomenclature”.’