Archie got up and walked slowly over to the windows, hands thrust deep into blazer pockets. ‘I suppose that you have, naturally, read Count Prokesch’s own accounts of this period? They seem pretty clear and comprehensive to me … unemotional.’

Grottorosso had been rustling softly among the papers in his slender attache case and looked up. ‘Of course! The “handsome ensign”, as he was called. Yes, I have a great many notes here. The very first one is so charming, don’t you think? May I read it it you?’

‘Please.’

‘At the dinner where he first met l’Aiglon he writes: “I had a presentiment such as takes hold of an adolescent when he happens for the first time to meet the girl to whom he is going to lose his heart.” I find that infinitely moving … don’t you?’

Archie coughed.

‘And this, from l’Aiglon’s own lips, so he insists: “Remain with me! Sacrifice your future to me, remain with me! We were made to understand each other …”.’ He riffled the papers, sighed, slid them carefully back into the case. ‘Such a tragic destiny, to die so young, alone, abandoned, trapped in the stinking room at Schönbrunn while his disgusting mother spent her time in the streets of Vienna buying presents for her lovers! How desperately he must have needed love, don’t you think?’ He replaced the case beside him, threaded his fingers together, looked sadly up at Archie now behind his desk. ‘Ah. How sad it all is. I come here hoping for your approbation and all I do is to raise your indignation. I am deeply shamed.’

Archie shrugged. Patted the fat script on the desk. ‘Difficult to read these things. It’s just … that implied relationship; unnecessary, ugly. Not true. But if you say it won’t be like that, well, what can I say? You know it better than I, the cinema thing, I mean. Always muck up history, the cinema, take dreadful liberties …’ He smiled grimly. ‘But I can’t stop you, can I, even if I wanted to?’

‘No,’ said Grottorosso. ‘You can’t, Sir Charles. I am sad that you are unhappy, but I assure you that it is entirely in your mind; nothing objectionable in the least is intended, or will be made, of that I can assure you.’

‘Poor l’Aiglon,’ said Archie. ‘He was acted by a woman in the theatre, you know that, I suppose? Sarah Bernhardt, French woman. Wooden leg. I ask you.’

‘I shall not do that.’

‘No, must think of your cinema audience, what? All those women you speak of. You’ll have some Yankee chap, I have no doubt, Film Star fellow … for the what you called it, the Box Office? Right?’