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while.’
    Hardcastle nodded. ‘At least we’re better off than the Germans,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard that they’re eating cats and dogs over there, and they’re making their bread from potato peelings and sawdust.’
    Alice stopped what she was doing. ‘Is that true, Ernie?’ she asked. ‘Oh, those poor people.’
    â€˜Poor people be damned,’ said Hardcastle vehemently. ‘They shouldn’t have started it by marching into Belgium.’
    â€˜Yes, I know all about that,’ said Alice, who was an avid reader of the
Daily Mail
, ‘but just think of the poor children. They didn’t have anything to with the war.’
    Hardcastle knew better than to argue with his wife, and changed the subject. ‘Talking of which, where are our children this evening?’ He always referred to their offspring as children, even though Kitty was twenty-two, Maud twenty and young Walter had just turned eighteen.
    â€˜Kitty’s got the back shift on the buses, Maud’s gone out with her young man, and Wally’s gone to the Bioscope in Vauxhall Bridge Road with a pal of his to see some film about cowboys and Indians.’
    â€˜It’s time Kitty gave up that job on the buses. It’s too dangerous.’ It was something that Hardcastle frequently said.
    â€˜Well, you try to talk her out of it, Ernie, but I doubt you’ll have any better luck than me.’
    Hardcastle knew that to be true. Kitty Hardcastle was a headstrong young woman and had taken a job as a conductorette with the London General Omnibus Company to relieve a man to fight. But despite his own attempts to dissuade her, nothing would convince her to change her mind.
    â€˜And what’s this about Maud having a young man?’ demanded Hardcastle. ‘I didn’t know anything about that.’
    â€˜Well, you’re never here to find out, Ernie, are you?’ said Alice accusingly. ‘She met a young army lieutenant who she was nursing, and they’ve got quite keen on each other.’ Maud had been nursing at one of the large houses in Mayfair that had been given over to the care of wounded officers. ‘When he’d recovered, he was posted to Armoury Barracks in Hoxton training young soldiers, and he invited her out to the theatre tonight. They’ve been walking out for quite some time now.’
    â€˜An officer, eh?’ Hardcastle was impressed. ‘It’s a shame Kitty can’t find someone like that. The last I heard she was going out with a City copper, of all people.’ He was unreasonably critical of the City of London Police, and regarded it as little less than impertinence that they should have responsibility for a solitary square mile in the centre of the Metropolitan Police District.
    It was not until Tuesday morning that Hardcastle received a message from Dr Spilsbury requesting his attendance at St Mary’s Hospital.
    â€˜I’ve just completed my examination of this fellow’s cadaver, Hardcastle,’ said Spilsbury. ‘It was a single gunshot to the back of the head that did for him.’
    â€˜I take it you’ve recovered the round, Doctor Spilsbury.’
    â€˜There it is.’ The pathologist pointed his forceps at a bullet resting in an enamel kidney-shaped bowl on a side bench. ‘I’d estimate the age of this man to have been in the late thirties.’
    â€˜You’re absolutely right, Doctor. He was born on the twenty-third of July 1879, and I was told that he was unlikely to be fit for the army,’ said Hardcastle, repeating the information he had received from Frank Harvey, Ronald Parker’s manager at the gas company.
    â€˜I can certainly confirm that for you, Inspector. He most certainly was not fit. He suffered from pulmonary emphysema and that would have precluded him from service in the army or navy.’
    â€˜He wouldn’t have passed a tribunal to assess his physical