Events in Africa in the next few years were such as to keep me occupied. I worked for Rhodes’ British South Africa Company for a time, was partly instrumental in arranging the treaty with King Lobengula to enable the Matabele lands beyond the Limpopo to be exploited. My personal affairs prospered at times; at other times I seemed to be heading for disaster. Only quick thinking and a large measure of good luck enabled me to end up in 1895 with even more money than I had had in ’88. It also seemed time to return to England, take a well-earned rest and look up Elaine and her husband. They were my only relations; by this time I should be an uncle several times over.

I arrived in London in March 1895. I took rooms in a hotel and began to make enquiries. And ran into a stone wall.

Milne-Thompson was no longer at the address that had been on the last letter Elaine had sent me, the one in which she had told me of our parents’ deaths.

I remembered he had been something in the stock exchange. At first I drew a blank, one or two of my attempts meeting with professed ignorance or downright evasiveness. By dint of perseverance I finally found someone there who would answer my questions.

Milne-Thompson’s grandfather had died in 1891 and left a considerable fortune to his grandson. He had resigned from the stock exchange, set himself up in great style. My informant told me that as far as he knew Milne-Thompson had proceeded to gamble away within two years every penny he possessed, plunging deeply into every vice available in London. By mid-1893 he was at the end of the line financially, physically and mentally, his excesses having alienated him from any friends he once possessed. He had then committed suicide, drowning himself – in Brighton, my informant thought.

Naturally I asked about Elaine. My informant was unbearably vague about her – yes, if he remembered correctly, Milne-Thompson had been married at one time but that was as far as his knowledge went.

My next step was to consult the London papers of that year. The few accounts I found were damnably brief. The account of the inquest – with its verdict of suicide – gave only the sketchiest summary of Milne-Thompson’s life. His marriage was mentioned – ‘married Elaine Cavendish, only daughter of the late Colonel Edward Cavendish’ but gave no mention of her there­after. It certainly did not refer to her as being called to give evidence or even make reference to her as his widow. The creepy impression I received was that the Milne-Thompsons were totally unimportant to the world, that now the formalities of the law had been completed, they would be dismissed and forgotten.