“Tango expert. From South America, he claimed. Worked in the Cambridge Academy of Terpsichore or some such. ‘Madame Dorine’s’ to you and me. That’s Dorine with an I, not ee. She really is French. Ricardo was very popular with the ladies who passed through his hands every week. Not so much with the men in the ladies’ lives. Ooh dear! I was a DI in those days, and it was my case. I know who wanted him dead. Never able to prove it.”

“Are you going to confide or leave me floundering?”

“One of his devoted and impressionable partners was Lady Amelia Bullen, daughter of the Earl of Brancaster. An elopement with ‘Chiqui’ was planned shortly before someone decided enough was enough and had the lad topped.”

“Had him topped?”

“The father of the would-be bride had the strongest motive. The Right Honourable Earl.”

MacFarlane was the only man Redfyre knew who could convey a capital letter in speech.

“I watched him drink a celebratory glass of champagne in my presence when I went over to his family seat in the Godforsaken county of Norfolk to deliver the news. Gloating. Cackling. Not a pretty sight. He knew that I knew he’d procured a murder, and he didn’t give a shit! Friends in high legal places, don’t you know. He was covered every which way. There was no possibility that he could have attended to the matter personally—he’s stuck out there, miles from the nearest lemon and something of an invalid these days.” An expression of sly satisfaction betrayed the superintendent’s prejudice against all things aristocratic and all things rustic. “Copped one up the Khyber, I believe. Second Afghan bit of bother. Or would that be the third? All the same, I suppose, being shot at from the rocks by vicious tribal barmpots . . . And I took the precaution of putting one of my good-looking detective constables into the kitchens for a cup of tea and a slice of jam sponge while I was busy interviewing the master. The staff on these remote Norfolk estates do love a good natter. And Constable Beck was all charm. He’s with the Met now and doing well. He got out of them the information that the boss, the whole family and the staff were tucked up in bed from an early hour on the night Chiqui mounted his lion.”

“But he had the cash and the clout to order up a killing by other hands? And what other hands?”