‘The Schechts are still hoping to meet Mr Chamberlain here, in our hotel. They’re still planning on bringing over what dignitaries they can from Berlin. They want to engineer peace – a peace with that monster in the Reichstag. There’s a war coming, Aubrey, and they’re using our hotel to help Britain choose a side that will keep her out of the way of the aggressors’ progress. Well, I want to be on the right side of history. I fought for Britain once. We both did. Look what it did to you, Aubrey. All of that will not be in vain. So I’ll fight them again, here in my hotel.’

For a time there was silence – until finally Aubrey asked, ‘Did you tell him . . . about me?’

Maynard reached over and took his hand. ‘I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. Raymond is a good soul, but if he were to know the real reason I’m in Mr Moorcock’s pocket, why, I’m not sure he’d understand. Much better, I think, that he thinks me a rabid man of principle, one of the last upstanding men.’ There was some element of joke in this; Aubrey laughed in return. ‘I can’t risk you, Aubrey. You need a roof over your head. You need somewhere warm and safe. And I need to be close to you. I won’t have you living in any less than this.’

Moorcock – that bastard . . . He’d appeared in the Candlelight Club one evening in ’32, while the sale of hotel stock to Lord Edgerton was still going through, and insisted on buying Maynard Charles a drink. He’d detailed his interest in certain guests at the Buckingham and had passed Maynard an envelope crammed with notes of various denominations. Maynard handed it straight back. But all that changed in the Christmas of 1932, when Mr Moorcock settled himself in the Pacific Suite for an evening – the bill settled, of course, by the Ministry itself – and, in the evening, placed a phone call to reception, requesting to have a private dinner with the hotel director himself. When Maynard Charles appeared in the Pacific, all it took were two words to change the complexion – and the very direction – of his life. ‘Park Suite,’ Mr Moorcock had intoned. ‘What do you think might happen, dear Maynard, were your new lord to realise what goes on in the Park Suite? Why, this sort of thing – appropriating hotel accommodation for your own illegal pleasures – might count as scandal, mightn’t it? How might that fall out for you, dear boy?’

From that moment he was theirs. There was nothing more important in this world than making sure Aubrey was tended to, that Aubrey had a safe place to live. Nothing more important than making sure Aubrey was loved.

‘You’ve done the right thing,’ said Aubrey, distant now as sleep came back to whisk him away. ‘By your very nature, Maynard Charles, you’ve done the right thing.’