'Before that, you had offered – what a loving gesture! – to find out what Xanthos was up to. Persuaded your husband he could trust no one else. That put you in the perfect position to relay Xanthos's instructions to Jan the Builder. You weren't doing this nonsense to find out what he was planning. The Tsar would be murdered, war would break out and Ravenscliff would get the blame – but quietly, no publicity. Xanthos would take over his companies. Then you and he would marry . . .'

She hit me, so hard that I was dizzy with the pain and my nose began to bleed profusely. And when I say hit, I don't mean some dainty slap about the face, such as an irate female might deliver. I mean punched, with her fist. And, having hit me, she hit me again, even harder. Then stood over me, eyes blazing with cold fury, teeth clenched. She stood over me, breathing hard. I really thought I was about to die.

Instead, she marched to the door, pulled it open and turned round.

'How dare you talk to me like that?' she spat. 'Who do you think you are?'

I couldn't talk. I gasped through the bedsheet, which I was having to use as an impromptu bandage. The pain was so great it even overwhelmed the pain of my wound. It occurred to me that saying what I had, all alone in a room with her, had not been the cleverest thing to do. Being punched on the nose was getting off quite lightly, really. Others had not been so lucky.

'You have come to your conclusions. I will not argue against them. I told you I loved my husband. You disregard all of that. And now you are going to run to Henry Cort?'

I shook my head.

'Why not? Why not? That is what a good Englishman should do, isn't it?'

I shook my head again.

'Why not?'

'Because you're all as bad as each other. I don't want anything to do with any of you. I've had enough.'

I half-expected a cold, sneering contempt, icy disdain. It wasn't there. She gave me one last look, one of those dark hypnotic glances she did so well, and I almost failed to notice the way she turned away swiftly so I could not see her face, almost as if to hide tears. She was always a good actor.

I never saw Elizabeth again, in any of her guises. She left Cowes that day, I was told, and soon enough closed down her house in St James's Square and crossed to the Continent, where she lived for the rest of her life. Ravenscliff's will was settled and, as he had calculated, by the time his ships were nearing completion, the Government was persuaded that they were needed. He had been right all along; the battleships were in place in August 1914, and joined the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow, guarding the North Sea against the German threat across the water. I am sure I was not alone in thinking that the cause of the war had a certain familiar style to it.

If so, then no responsibility for events in Sarajevo attached to Theodore Xanthos. Ravenscliff's companies prospered during the war, but did so without the salesman's assistance, as he met a tragic end, falling under the wheels of an Underground train at Oxford Circus late one Friday evening a month or so after I got back from Cowes. It was, as his only obituary mentioned, singularly unfortunate, as it was probably the only time Xanthos had ever even been in an Underground station. The other managers continued in their jobs, so I assumed they had been given a clean bill of health.

When I was well enough – my landlady loved my invalid status and fed me little but beef tea and seed cake for a month – I decided to go travelling at long last. The bank in Sloane Square wrote me an almost reverential letter to say that the sum of £2,380 had been deposited in my account, and that they would be pleased – in fact they were positively salivating – to hear my instructions. They also cashed the cheque from Mr Xanthos.

I felt I had earned every penny, so I kept it all. I travelled the world for a few years, visiting the marvels of the Empire I had read about but never dreamed I would see with my own eyes. I wrote a book of travel memoirs which was politely enough received, and was turned down for military service in 1914 on the grounds of my injury. I was briefly hurt to my patriotic heart by this, but as the news of the war rolled in, I was hard put to suppress the feeling that being shot by Lady Ravenscliff was in fact the luckiest thing that had ever happened to me. Then I went back to work as a journalist, covering campaigns in Africa and later in the Near East. Later, after my marriage and the birth of my first son, and as I had a pleasant-enough voice, I became a pioneer of radio news, a job which brought me a small measure of fame, and which was the reason I was accosted at her funeral nearly half a century later.

Thus my story; even then, at the moment I last cast eyes on that captivating woman, I knew I had only grasped part of what had transpired. I did not feel inclined to revisit the matter, though. People like Cort and the Ravenscliffs had taken up enough of my energies and nearly killed me, although I was not so foolish as to forget that the encounter had transformed my life, and for the better. I was a free man afterwards, my horizons lifted, my ambitions transformed. But the more I travelled, the more able I was to forget about them all. And I succeeded for very many years, until I was accosted at a funeral, and a large package, meticulously wrapped in brown paper, with the address of Henderson, Lansbury, Fenton, 58 The Strand, was delivered to my door.

PART TWO

Woodside Cottage,

Wick Rissington

Gloucestershire

June 1943

Dear Braddock,

You may be surprised to get this package – if you ever do. I apologise for the melodrama; however, having been the custodian of these documents for many years, I now have to consider what to do with them. My doctors inform me that this is now a matter of some urgency. I considered that a bonfire might be best, but could not bring myself to such an act of immolation. Thus, I pass on the responsibility to you.

I am dying, whereas our mutual acquaintance is, I understand, in rude health and has found happiness in her latter years. I do not wish to disturb that, and not merely because I continue to act faithfully on the instructions of John Stone. Accordingly, I have instructed my solicitor, Mr Henderson (whom you may recall), not to pass this on to you until she also has died. I leave it to him to determine what course to take should she outlive you as well – as she may well do; she is, as you recall, a tough woman.

There are two bundles: one is an account of my early life – you would be astonished if you knew how many spies are authors manqué – in which she figures somewhat. I wrote it in 1900 when I returned to England after living abroad, and I could never bring myself to amend it in the light of later information.

The other contains those papers by John Stone which you so earnestly sought when you were in his wife's employ. I apologise for not having enlightened you about them, but I hope you will fully understand my reasoning when you have read them. Mine will shed light on a woman I consider to have been the most remarkable I have ever known. I hope your reading will at least go some way to modifying your opinion of her, which, I was sorry to learn, was ultimately quite unfavourable. I fully accept that your opinion of me will be even less so if you read this; I do not pretend it shows me in anything other than an unpleasant light.

Your account of the events you took part in was impeccable, except that you failed to understand how intense was the love between John Stone and his wife; this one element, however, changes everything. I fear that your prejudices then may have prevented you from taking it sufficiently seriously.

I have followed your career with great interest in recent years and taken much pleasure in hearing your reports on the radio. Only the belief that you would not have been overjoyed to hear from me has prevented me from renewing our brief acquaintance.