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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

‘Nancy, if ever you need someone to talk to, somebody who knows what it’s like to not belong, to have to work it all out for his self, well, you come straight here. You’re not alone in the Buckingham Hotel. I came up the same way as you did. I came here to make my own way in the world. So you’ll never be alone here. You see, you got me.’

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

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THE NEXT MORNING, BILLY BROGAN was up before dawn, breakfasted before his brothers and sisters scrambled out of bed, and out of the door even before his father was off to Billingsgate for the day. Crossing London before dawn broke, you could fool yourself into thinking the city was yours alone. A lone street sweeper walked over the bridge at Westminster; Piccadilly seemed eerily silent; even as he walked into Mayfair, the city seemed to sleep. It was only in the Buckingham Hotel itself that time didn’t stop. The night managers had worked feverishly through the smallest hours. When Billy crept in through the staff entrance, he heard porters hurrying back and forth across the reception hall. Mr Simenon, the head concierge, was lurking by the guest lifts. He had a vampiric look about him, thought Billy with a sly grin, remembering the posters for a picture show: VAMPIRES OF PRAGUE! Mr Simenon looked as if he might have joined the thespians on that billboard very well. He was long and lean, with a nose as hooked as a beak; his face was drawn and the black lines around his eyes were surely the sign of a dark enchantment.

‘What have you got for me?’ Billy chirruped, delighted at the way the head concierge startled at him coming close.

‘Brogan,’ Mr Simenon seethed, ‘you’re late. I was expecting you at dawn.’

‘Been up all night, have you, sir?’

Mr Simenon raised a hand and cuffed Billy around the ear. ‘That’s for your cheek,’ he spat, ‘and this is for your duty.’

Billy found a small roll of pound notes being pressed into his hands. With expert ease, he slipped it into a back pocket.

‘On with you, Brogan. Hurry now before Mr Charles realises you’re gone.’

*

The first light of morning was casting its rays across London when Billy emerged from the fine townhouses of Mayfair and made his way across Regent Street in the shadow of the day’s first trolleybus. When London awoke, it did so as suddenly as the ogres Billy told his rabble of brothers and sisters about at bedtime each night – but, for now, calmness remained.