“Which presented us with a number of choices,” said Mrs. Bainbridge. “The first was to go straight to the police with everything we knew, of course, but the happiness of the royal family was at stake. There was no ensuring that the letters would stay secret, and without learning more, we might have been playing into the very hands of the man or men who had concocted this scheme in the first place.”

“Scheme? What scheme?” called out Torgos.

“We’re coming to that,” said Mrs. Bainbridge. “I read the letters. They described a torrid affair between Princess Alice and another man. They made for a convincing narrative, and cast much doubt on Prince Philip’s parentage.”

She paused and glanced around the room.

“And they were fakes,” she said vehemently, “as I am about to prove.”

She went over to the table holding the shoeboxes, removed the lid from one, and plucked out a cream-coloured piece of paper.

“They were written in German,” she said. “I am going to translate for the benefit of those who do not speak it.”

She cleared her throat, held the letter up to the firelight, and read.

My darling,

It was wrong of you to kiss me. It was wrong of me to let you. I cannot, cannot believe that I followed you to the roof while the others were dancing, but Andrea was so oblivious, and you were so kind. The touch of your hand on my waist as we danced was agony—that that, and mine on your shoulder and our other hands clasped were all the contact that we were allowed was a cruel jest. But then we slipped away and found ourselves high above the world, dancing on the roof, our bodies drawing ever closer, the strains of the music drifting up from the ballroom so far below. I could no more have withstood you in that moment than I could a hurricane.

She finished and looked around expectantly.

“Well?” she asked. “Don’t you see how that proves they weren’t written by Alice?”

“No,” called one of the spivs. “But I wouldn’t mind ’earing you read that one again!”

“Sir, you are a romantic underneath that mask,” she said as the raucous laughter of the man and his mates echoed through the room. “Here’s the thing: she claimed to have heard the music from inside the hotel several storeys below while she was being kissed on the rooftop. Neat trick—considering Princess Alice was deaf.”

There was silence in the room as she looked around. Sparks grinned in approval.

“There were other references of that nature,” said Mrs. Bainbridge. “Birds chirping in the trees, rushing cataracts, and the like. Either love made a miracle happen for a relatively short term, or these are forgeries.”

“When Mrs. Bainbridge told me this, I wanted a second opinion,” said Sparks. “As it happens, I know an excellent forger from my days with British Intelligence. I’m guessing many of you know him, too. We took some of the letters to him, and guess what? He said they were the genuine article!”