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Chapters (50)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. The Grand Masquerade Ball
  5. Five Months Earlier . . .
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. September 1936
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. October 1936
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. November 1936
  30. Chapter Twenty-two
  31. December 1936
  32. Chapter Twenty-three
  33. Chapter Twenty-four
  34. Chapter Twenty-five
  35. Chapter Twenty-six
  36. Chapter Twenty-seven
  37. Chapter Twenty-eight
  38. Chapter Twenty-nine
  39. Chapter Thirty
  40. Chapter Thirty-one
  41. Chapter Thirty-two
  42. Chapter Thirty-three
  43. Chapter Thirty-four
  44. Chapter Thirty-five
  45. Epilogue
  46. A New Year
  47. Extract from Anton Du Beke’s next novel’
  48. Acknowledgements
  49. About the Author
  50. Letter from Author

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

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THIS MORNING, AS BILLY SIDLED in along Michaelmas Mews and through the passageway behind the reception hall, where the deputy night manager was compiling his list of the evening’s occurrences, he kept his head bowed down and scurried onward. He’d heard the concierges talking about Mr Simenon, and what he’d done to the poor girl caught sneaking in after hours, and in the week that had passed since then a kernel of guilt had been hardening in his breast. He’d brought Nancy Nettleton back to the doors of the Buckingham, ensured her safe passage across Soho after dark, and the moment he’d let her go (taking her coat no less!), she’d walked straight into the oldest trap of them all.

In the reception hall, Maynard Charles was attending to a new guest. Cormac E. Colby was fresh off the plane out of New York, but had arrived on the Buckingham steps with not a hair out of place. Billy stopped as he sidled by. Ordin-arily, guests arrived at the Buckingham trailing enough suitcases and trunks to make a boy like Billy believe they were transporting a small country behind them. Rupprecht, the Crown Prince of Bavaria, had been just like that – last week he’d appeared, a vision of old-world elegance, through the revolving doors and waited as a procession of servants and hangers-on brought through so many trunks, cases and smaller valises that the other guests must have thought he was here to fortify a castle. But Cormac E. Colby, with his slicked-back hair and pinstriped suit, arrived with only a small black leather bag and the golden pen with which he was now signing his name on the hotel manifest.

In his hands Billy held a brown paper envelope, brought to the staff door and delivered to him by name. The name on the front of the letter said RAYMOND in big black letters. That was all. There was no address, no surname, nothing else to indicate who it was for. But Billy knew only two Raymonds at the Buckingham Hotel – and Raymond Owen, the garage mechanic, was not the sort to receive mysterious letters before break of day. Besides, the first thing Billy had done upon receiving this letter was sneak into the kitchen behind the Queen Mary and steam the envelope open. It was there, lurking between the industrial pot wash and the roasting oven, that he first knew for certain this letter was for Raymond de Guise.