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intertwined lives, fellow army officers,
fellow investigators, now fellow authors. Johnny Fitzgerald could not see his friend being pushed in his wheelchair along the Promenade des Anglais on the Mediterranean sea front in his old age
without having carried out one more major investigation. Powerscourt’s Last Case. Johnny had often thought about that. Maybe even Powerscourt’s Last Stand. Was this Corpse on the
Nevskii Prospekt that final mission?
    Lady Lucy too was perturbed. She sensed – no, if she was honest with herself, she knew that her husband would love to carry out this investigation. He had turned it down because of her and
the promise she had exacted from him in Positano. She wondered if she should release him from his vows.
    And Powerscourt? To be fair, even he would have said that he didn’t know what he really felt about the offer. Flattered, yes. To be sought out more than two years after he had stopped
investigating was no mean tribute to his powers. Part of him felt, as Ulysses said in Tennyson’s poem that brought him back from the dead, that he did not like rusting unburnished, not to
shine in use. But he had given Lucy his word on that hotel balcony in Positano. He could not go back on it now.
    ‘There’s only one thing I’m sure of,’ he said, pouring himself a glass of wine and smiling at his wife and his friend. ‘Beanpole is the advance guard, the
voltigeurs, the skirmishers in Napoleon’s army, if you like. He may have failed. But he won’t be the last. They’ll come back. And next time they’ll bring the cavalry. Maybe
the heavy artillery.’
    Powerscourt would have been surprised to learn that Sir Jeremiah Reddaway was not unduly upset by his reception in Markham Square. For he had not expected success at the very
first attempt. He felt now like a general in charge of some mighty siege operation. The siege train has been battering the walls for weeks. An infantry attempt to break through has failed. The
general will simply have to continue his bombardment and plan his next attack. The main reason Reddaway had opened the assault himself was that he wanted to have a look at Powerscourt in person, to
get a feel of the man. Now he had no doubt that Powerscourt was the right choice for the task ahead, if only he could be persuaded to take it on. Sir Jeremiah merely widened his net in the quest
for the key or the trigger that would change Powerscourt’s mind. Powerscourt’s old tutor in Cambridge was contacted. Charles Augustus Pugh, a barrister who had been closely and
critically involved in one of Powerscourt’s cases, reported that he had been approached by some person from the Foreign Office wearing the most vulgar shirt Pugh had ever seen. ‘Fellow
tried to pump me for information about you, Francis, so I sent him packing. I couldn’t have looked at that shirt for another second in any case,’ his note to Powerscourt said. Even
Johnny Fitzgerald told the Powerscourts that some chap he had known years before had tried to get him drunk at an expensive restaurant in South Kensington. His contact also worked for the Foreign
Office and, Johnny announced happily, had to be carried senseless from the table by two waiters while he, Johnny, walked home unaided and pinned the rather large bill on to the man’s suit as
he lay stretched across the pavement. As a final touch, Johnny said, he bumped into two policemen at the end of the street and reported that a drunk was lying on the pavement further down and
obstructing the King’s Highway.
    Two days after the meeting with Sir Jeremiah a rather nervous Lady Lucy spoke to her husband after breakfast. Powerscourt was feeling cheerful that morning. The day before he had delivered the
proofs to his publisher and he was looking forward to resuming work on his second cathedral volume.
    ‘Francis,’ Lady Lucy began, ‘I’ve just had a note. It’s from one of my relations.’
    ‘What of it, my love?’ said Powerscourt.