Kim pushed a hand through his hair. “Harry was calling from the Symposium Club. It seems Chingford’s murdered one of the members.”

Chapter Two

Will had heard of the Symposium, one of London’s great gentlemen’s clubs, and even had a vague idea of what the outside looked like. He’d never been inside, because people like him were not welcome to set foot in those hallowed precincts, and in this case ‘people like him’ meant about ninety-nine per cent of the population.

The June evening was still light, but Kim’s face in the taxi-cab was shadowed and drawn.

“The chap who rang,” Will said, to break the silence. “Mitra? Do I know the name?”

“Harry took over Phoebe’s affairs after her father’s death. He’s a solicitor in his father’s firm, a very good one. He’s also Honorary Secretary at the Symposium, which is a Committee position—a voluntary responsibility taken on by members, rather than a paid post. I imagine the actual Secretary will find himself rather busy with a murder on the premises.”

“Is it certain?”

“It’s certainly a murder. Whether it was certainly Chingford is the question, I suppose, but Harry said it looks bad.”

Kim did not add, It must be a mistake, or Chingford couldn’t possibly have. Will had no siblings himself, but he was pretty sure you were meant to take their side in this sort of thing. “And what is it Mitra thinks you’ll do?”

“I suspect he’s hoping I can make it go away.”

“Does he know you were with the Private Bureau?”

“Mmm. It seems he doesn’t know that I was dismissed.”

“And you didn’t tell him.”

Kim didn’t trouble to respond. The taxi turned onto Pall Mall and pulled up by a building that looked more like the British Museum than anything else: huge, neoclassical, with columns and statues and a firmly closed doorway. Kim paid the driver and they hurried up the stairs.

The door opened, and they were greeted by an elderly, liveried man of some girth.

“Good evening, Lord Arthur,” he said, not moving out of the way. “Have you an appointment in the Strangers’ Room?”

“For God’s sake, Palgrave,” snapped a voice behind him. “Just let him in.”

The man moved back. Kim entered; Will followed at his heels, and found himself in magnificence.

The entrance hall was a gigantic, double-height space. It had a chandelier, and a glossy marble staircase that split and curved in two directions, and a glass whatsit at the top—cupola, some word like that—to let in the evening light, and oil paintings, and busts, and a red marble floor, and a lot of men in posh clothes, staring.