‘Tell me about the boast he made to you,’ he said. ‘When exactly was it?’

Having sworn that he’d do anything that his friend asked, Alan Kinnaird was having second thoughts. He hadn’t realised how much danger was involved. Seeing his hesitation, Harry Scattergood sought to dispel the doubts. His plan required an accomplice and Kinnaird was the only person he could trust. Instead of arguing with him, therefore, he took his friend on a short walk to a wall where reward notices were regularly pasted up. He pointed to the one relating to Sir Roger Mellanby’s murder. When he saw the amount on offer, Kinnaird’s jaw dropped.

‘We’d get all that?’ he asked.

‘It would be shared between us, Alan.’

‘But I’d be the one taking the biggest risk.’

‘There’s a way that risk can be eliminated,’ said Scattergood. ‘Put your faith in me. Have I ever let you down before?’

‘No, Harry.’

‘Does that mean you’ll help me?’

Kinnaird looked at the reward notice. ‘Yes,’ he promised. ‘I may be putting my head in a noose but, after all you’ve done for me, I’ll trust you to pull it out again.’

Charlotte was alone when her husband returned to the shooting gallery and he gave her a welcoming embrace and a kiss. When he’d released her from his grasp, Peter gave her a concise account of what he’d learnt during his time in Nottingham. He also mentioned his disappointing visit to the Home Office.

‘I’m not quite sure why,’ he confessed, ‘but I came away with a sense of failure.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was just this feeling I had in the pit of my stomach.’

‘You’ve always got on so well with the Home Secretary before,’ she said.

‘Perhaps I was expecting too much of him, Charlotte.’

‘Do you think he was dishonest?’

‘Not exactly,’ replied Peter, ‘but I sensed that there was a distinct limit to his honesty. He was politely evasive, and I’ve never seen that side of Viscount Sidmouth before. He greeted me as a friend, yet he began to look at me as an interloper.’

‘You must speak to Paul.’

‘I can’t wait to compare notes with him.’

‘He’s been talking to a Captain Golightly, who was a good friend of Mellanby. Paul asked him a blunt question. If the government decided that Mellanby was a serious problem, who would give the order to have him killed?’

‘What was Golightly’s answer?’

‘The Home Secretary.’

‘No,’ said Peter, ‘I can’t believe he’d sanction an assassination like that.’

‘Captain Golightly said that he had to be the chief suspect.’

‘Did he offer any other names?’

‘Yes, he did. One was a man who’d been injured in a duel with Sir Roger and had threatened to kill him. The other two were both politicians.’

‘Can you remember their names?’