'He should be ashamed of himself,' I said weakly.

'Oh, he is,' Cort said. 'He really is. He took some persuading to write that.'

'And why did he?'

'Because I was able to convince him that a near assassination of the Tsar on English soil would not be good for our standing in the world.

And, of course, the prospect of a foreign posting, on the strong recommendation of the Foreign Office . . .'

'Why did Elizabeth shoot me?'

'Another interesting question,' Cort said thoughtfully. 'She says you got in the way. You hurled yourself heroically on the assassin, but not quickly enough to prevent him from bringing his gun to bear on his target. She decided it was too risky to be squeamish, so shot you both, just to be on the safe side. She killed Jan the builder, so you may consider yourself fortunate. The question I have not yet managed to settle in my mind, though, is who is responsible for all this.'

'Don't you know?' I was lying down again, staring at the ceiling, so heard his words without being able to see his face. It was curious; it was more like a conversation with myself. And as long as I talked to myself, as quietly as I liked, I found it easy enough to speak. Cort picked up his chair and moved closer to the bed.

'I was working on the assumption,' he said, 'that Ravenscliff had organised it in order to make the need for his battleships a little more pressing. But if so, why did his wife stop it – and in such a dramatic fashion? And so we come to you.'

'Me? It has nothing to do with me at all.'

'Of course not! No. I was merely hoping you might be able to shed a little light on matters.'

'Why don't you ask Lady Ravenscliff?'

'Well, as she has recently shot two people, I'm not sure her word is so very reliable. Even more difficult, of course, is the fact that she claims she has been acting under the belief that I was responsible for it all.'

'Why?'

'She has a long memory,' he said cryptically. 'It is of no importance. But there you are, you see. She thinks I was responsible, I think she was. You, on the other hand – the victim, the innocent bystander, so to speak – may be considered objective. So am I right that John Stone really was behind it all and wanted the blame to fall on the Germans?'

'Why do you think that?'

Cort shrugged. 'John Stone felt betrayed. He had been persuaded to launch a private venture building battleships and was facing severe difficulties because the Government would not place the orders he had been promised. He therefore decided to organise an international crisis which would generate the orders he needed.'

'Who persuaded him to build the ships?'

'A group of concerned citizens. Influential ones, I might say, who felt that the Government's naval policy was disastrously misguided.'

'But the Government was elected . . . Oh, never mind.' It was true. I really didn't care.

'As I was saying,' he continued, 'I hoped you might provide some nugget of information which would allow me . . .'

That did it. A nugget. It was all anyone expected of me. Some fragment, the significance of which I did not even realise. Only someone like Cort would understand its importance. I was too dim-witted to grasp it myself.

'It was nothing to do with Ravenscliff,' I said, still quietly but deliberately so now, speaking softly to make him bend ever closer so he could hear me.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes. It looks like it was, I know. The Tsar dies, the assassins are arrested or killed, their homes are raided by the police and – surprise surprise – they find documents indicating that they had been paid by the Bank of Hamburg. An outrageous plot by the Germans, just the sort of thing you would expect of such barbarians.

'The Russians would be outraged and would declare a war of revenge. The French would follow, and the British might join in. Whatever the result, Ravenscliff would benefit. He owned shares in all the major armaments companies, and controlled many of them. He would also sell his battleships at a good price.

'But, if anyone had looked closer, they would have spotted Ravenscliff's hand behind it all. The Bank of Hamburg was his personal bank in Germany. The payments were authorised by the Beswick Shipyard. He would have come under heavy suspicion.

'Would it have made any difference? Could the Government possibly have admitted that one of their citizens had done such a thing? Or would they have buried the information?'

'Are you asking me?' Cort said. 'Or is that rhetoric?'

'I'm asking.'

'Publicly I imagine it would have been covered over. I can't imagine any government admitting something like that. Certainly, that would have been my recommendation. Privately, however, I think not.'

'Precisely. Ever so quietly, Ravenscliff would have been removed. What would it have been? Falling under a train? A heart attack?'

Cort shrugged.

I continued. 'The trouble is that Ravenscliff died before this scheme took place, and he was not behaving like someone hatching a dastardly plot to embroil the Continent in war. Far from it; he was trying desperately to find out what was going on. He had learned that there was something strange taking place inside his company; honest young men were turning into thieves; payments were being made without authorisation. But that could not happen. Everything had to be authorised. Which meant that someone, someone fairly senior, must be authorising them. But he did not know who. All he knew was that it wasn't him.'

I stopped here and tried to turn, but could not. Cort lifted my head, and helped me sip some water from a glass on the little table beside the bed. He did it surprisingly gently. It made me feel safe. A dangerous feeling.

'So, instead of the usual means a man like him had of dealing with such matters, he turned to the only person he knew he could trust absolutely: his wife. She tried to find out the truth, and did so, up to a point. She established the money was going to Jan the Builder but until the very last moment, did not know why. It was a close-run thing.

'When Ravenscliff died, there was a battle for control of Rialto. On the one hand, Barings was buying up shares – was it you who organised this?'

He nodded.

'On the other, so was someone else. Theodore Xanthos tried to take advantage of his employer's death, and was thwarted only by Barings and you. Then he tried to organise a shareholders' revolt, but was blocked again, because the estate was in limbo. Ravenscliff had tangled up his will to buy time in case of his death – something which he must have foreseen, or at least considered as a possibility.

'Xanthos also tried to distract Ravenscliff by attacking the one thing he held more dear than his companies. He lit upon the witch-woman in Germany and brought her over to England. She, I think, was attempting to blackmail Lady Ravenscliff. She told me she had had affairs; the witch-woman was the sort who would find out about them.'

Cort smiled appreciatively. At least, I think that's what it was.

'Did you kill her?' I asked.

'Me?' Cort asked. 'Why do you ask that?'

'You took all her papers. That was you, wasn't it?'

'That's true. I didn't want anything to fall into the hands of someone like you by accident. But there was nothing of interest. You have a very odd notion about me, Mr Braddock. I think you must have been listening to Lady Ravenscliff too much.'

'Nobody likes you very much.'

'I am wounded,' he said, and almost looked as though he meant it.

'Why did you threaten poor Mr Seyd?'

He looked displeased. 'Poor Mr Seyd, as you call him, has been in the pay of Germany for years,' he said. 'You don't think he started investigating Rialto by chance, do you?'

I stared blankly at him.

'So who did kill her?'

He shrugged. 'I have learned over the years to concentrate on essentials. I suggest you do the same.' He had a quiet, gentle voice, I thought. Entirely reasonable.