He lights the bedside lamp. Her sleeves are pulled up to the elbows and the bedspread is drenched with blood. She opened her veins with a scalpel and bled out where she lay, slipping into unconsciousness as her enfeebled heart fluttered to a stop.

While he’s examining the body, he hears a sound at the door. He opens it a crack and sees an anxious face: a woman of about fifty, wearing a dressing gown and slippers. ‘Are you the police?’ she asks.

‘Yes, madame.’

‘Thank God. I sent a message an hour ago. There’s blood coming through the ceiling.’

‘Thank you for your vigilance, madame. The other officers will be here shortly.’

Nicolas closes the door and slides the deadbolt across. Back in the bedroom, another examination of the scene shows what went wrong: Bessie propped an enamel basin underneath her arm to catch the blood, but must have overturned it in her death throes. She was hoping to be found in the morning by the maid. That’s to whom the brief note is addressed: My Dear Celeste.

The note is brief and businesslike, beginning with an apology, detailing the resolution of her financial affairs, and insisting that she be buried with her daughter. There’s no mention of Nicolas, Rachkovsky, or anything do with the Third Section’s work.

He pulls out Rachkovsky’s papers and reads them in the light of the bedside lamp, at first quickly, then, as his puzzlement deepens, with growing care. They’re hectographic copies of a document that’s been plagiarised from the book he had on his stag weekend: A Dialogue in Hell. That was a kind of broad-brush satire: arch-liberal Montesquieu and arch-cynic Machiavelli meet in hell and discuss politics. This has been altered and reconceived. In the place of Machiavelli there is a sinister figure called the Chief Rabbi. He speaks more or less the same lines as before, but this new draft has turned him into a paradigmatic Jew, boasting of his skill in manipulating Gentiles. It’s a crude, anti-Semitic smear, to no end that Nicolas can discern.

He thinks of Mulhouse: like many aspirant writers Nicolas has known, he talked a good game, but this – the padding, the arrhythmic sentences and ill-thought structure – betrays the lazy habits of a hack.

Rachkovsky wants this nonsense planted at the bedside, instead of the dying wishes of the woman Nicolas loves? He stuffs the sheets back in his pocket and blows out the lamp. Already, in his relatively short life, he’s faced much thornier dilemmas than this one.

‘Rachkovsky demanded total obedience.’

‘Come in, sit down. Close the door, would you?’ There’s no dear boy, no tea and chocolates this time. Every now and again, Rachkovsky loses it completely with one of his underlings. The office door closes. There’s the muffled sound of Rachkovsky going batshit; a chastened employee emerges twenty minutes later. Sometimes the whole performance is followed by a public reconciliation, an apology and even the gift of flowers.