Lou felt the blood drain from her face. ‘Who?’ she asked, more for Will’s benefit than hers.

‘It was the chap that married Sir Charles’ daughter. Lord George Caxton. When George’s father died at the beginning of 1919, George stepped into his shoes and went on the rampage. As you know, he even married Sir Charles’ daughter. What was her name again?’ Will consulted a notepad. Lou wanted to grab it from him. Charlotte! Her name is Charlotte!

‘Charlotte, her name’s Charlotte,’ Lou said. ‘But I don’t understand. How do you know all this about George Caxton?’

Will traced a fingertip down his notes. ‘It was the link between the Mandevilles and the Caxtons through Charlotte’s marriage that was the key I needed. I went forward in the newspapers to see what I could find out about both families after the deaths of Sir Charles and his daughter.’

He flicked to an article in the file. The typeface was different from the others, modern. ‘You have to jump forward decades, but this article explains everything. It wasn’t published until the 1980s, but it’s based on an investigation by a young journalist straight out of college in the 1960s. He wanted to make a name for himself as an investigative journalist and started digging into George Caxton’s history.

‘There had been rumours surrounding Caxton for decades with his dubious deals and less than salubrious associations. The young journalist began by looking into a fraud involving land deals in Africa. Once he started digging, he amassed a mountain of evidence linking Caxton to a whole host of dodgy deals. But where other men went to jail, Caxton always managed to wriggle off the hook. The journalist even found witnesses who implicated Caxton in the death of a fellow student way back in his student days at Cambridge. The journalist had been on the cusp of revealing all in a massive scoop in the sixties, when the editor, who’d promised to publish the story, got cold feet and pulled the plug. The journo went to other papers, but no editor would touch the story. Even in the sixties, the aristocracy had real power. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Caxtons didn’t have a stake in some of the papers or dirt on the editors. It wasn’t until the 1980s, after George Caxton died, that the journalist finally found an editor willing to break the story. By then, the papers were so full of corruption and scandal that the sting had gone out of the story of a crooked old Lord. It barely caused a ripple.’

Lou tried to piece together everything that Will was telling her but something was missing. ‘What has this got to do with Sir Charles?’ she asked.

‘Isn’t it obvious? Can’t you guess who the secret source for the story was? I’ll give you a clue; it begins with a C.’

‘Not George Caxton?’

‘Got it in one. He was the secret source who went to The Express to discredit Sir Charles way back in 1919. The young journalist doesn’t say how he found out. I suppose he had a source of his own. It looks like George waited until his father died before going to the press to blow the lid on Sir Charles’ Polish salt mine, throwing in the lie about the munitions investment for good measure.