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Back One Enchanted Evening Save as PDF
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

The bus took him over the river, glittering and black, and into the warrens and winding streets of the south. As they went, Billy took the envelope out of the folds of his coat and stared at the name on the front. NOELLE ARCHER. His fingers toyed with the seam, but he had no need to open it. No, he thought with a wry smile, no need to open it at all. I already know what’s inside.

Ordinarily, Billy had no qualms about opening the letters he was asked to ferry around the Buckingham – or, like now, further afield. Jobs had perks. Raymond de Guise got his visits from his own personal tailor, a man by the name of Ernestine who owned one of the most prestigious shops on Savile Row. Hélène Marchmont had access to the safe Mr Charles kept, filled with diamond pins, necklaces encrusted with sapphires, and all manner of other expensive jewellery. Even the bright-eyed new chambermaid – Nancy Nettleton, was that her name? – had her room in the staff quarters and, if she was canny enough, her choice of leftovers from the room service trolleys left sitting untouched in the suites. Billy Brogan’s chief perk was knowledge. It brought a certain kind of pride to know who was doing what, who’d been disciplined for breaching Buckingham rules, who was meeting whom in the vacant rooms of an evening and taking full advantage of the lux-urious satin sheets only the most important guests were allowed.

There was no address on the envelope but, some time later, Billy stood outside one of the old railwayman’s terraces on Brixton Hill. There were lights on in the windows of the terrace. He could hear music as well – not music like he was accustomed to, but trumpets and clarinets all the same. Somebody was rehearsing here, but they were putting up a din quite unlike the things Billy had heard in the Buckingham Hotel, faster and looser and more . . . experimental? Was that the word?

There was another sound too. Behind that door, a baby was crying. Somebody cried out in exasperation and, with muttered apologies, the music came to an end.

Billy took it as his cue. He slipped the envelope under the door – and then, rapping on the wood as he turned, took flight up the road.

Chapter Five

Chapter Five

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ON THE SIXTH STOREY OF the Buckingham Hotel, where crown princes and Texan oil barons rubbed shoulders in the burgundy halls, there was one door through which no chambermaid was ever permitted to pass.