David Roberts - Hollow Crown

D AVID R OBERTS worked in publishing for over thirty years before devoting his energies to writing full time. He is married and divides his time between London and Wiltshire.

Visit www.lordedwardcorinth.co.uk to find out more about David and the series.

Praise for David Roberts

A classic murder mystery with as complex a plot as one could hope for and a most engaging pair of amateur sleuths whom I look forward to encountering again in future novels.

Charles Osborne, author of
The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie

Roberts use of period detail... gives the tale terrific texture. I recommend this one heartily to history-mystery devotees.

Booklist

Dangerous Sea is taken from more elegant times than ours, when women retained their mystery and even murder held a certain charm. The plot is both intricate and enthralling, like Poirot on the high seas, and lovingly recorded by an author with a meticulous eye and a huge sense of fun.

Michael Dobbs, author of
Winstons War and Never Surrender

The plots are exciting and the central characters are engaging, they offer a fresh, a more accurate and a more telling picture of those less placid times.

Sherlock

Titles in this series
(listed in order)

Sweet Poison

Bones of the Buried

Hollow Crown

Dangerous Sea

The More Deceived

A Grave Man

The Quality of Mercy

Something Wicked

For Penelope
and in memory of Geoffrey

Constable & Robinson Ltd
3 The Lanchesters
162 Fulham Palace Road
LondonW6 9ER
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Constable,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2002

This paperback edition published by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2003

Copyright David Roberts 2002

The right of David Roberts to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication data is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-84119-774-6
eISBN 978-1-78033-421-9

Printed and bound in EU

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

For within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps death his court...

October to December
1936

Almost against his will, Lord Edward Corinth gazed up at the sleek, glassy building he was about to enter. It brought to mind, as no doubt the architect intended, one of the new ocean liners the Queen Mary, say, or the Normandie and it seemed to make every other building in Fleet Street appear dowdy and old-fashioned. It was the headquarters of Joe Weavers New Gazette and it stood for everything he had achieved. Lord Weaver, as he now was, had come to England from Canada during the war. With skilful use of his large fortune, he had made powerful friends in the world of politics and it is not too much to say that he was now in a position to make or break prime ministers. His great building, completed in 1931, and in front of which Edward now stood, was brash, brutal and several storeys higher than any of its neighbours.

After dark it was now nine oclock from where he was standing, it looked like a shining curtain, each pane of glass illuminated brilliantly from within. One might be forgiven, he thought wryly, for imagining that its transparency was a symbol of the veracity with which the New Gazette reported the news in its august columns, but, as he was well aware, for Lord Weaver truth was what he wanted it to be. The press lord, for all his bonhomie, was a man of secrets. If he wished to spare one of his friends or dependants the pain of reading in his newspaper the sordid details of their divorce proceedings, he would order his editor to deny his readers the pleasure of schadenfreude. If he wished to puff the prospects of some bright young man he had taken under his wing, he would paint such a portrait that even the man himself might have difficulty recognizing. For every favour there was, of course, a price to be paid. No money would change hands Lord Weaver had money to spare but from the men he would elicit information and through them exercise influence. The women were also a source of information and their influence extended beyond their husbands to their friends and lovers and it was said that, despite having a face like a wicked monkey, Weaver was himself to be found amongst the latter category more often than a casual observer would have thought likely.

And yet Lord Weaver was by no means a bad man. He loved his wife, considered himself a patriot and used what power he had in what he considered to be the best interests of his adopted country. He was a loyal friend, as Edward had reason to know, and he was generous when the whim took him absurdly, extravagantly, generous. But still, Edward bore in mind that, even when the tiger smiled, he was still a tiger.

As he stepped into the entrance hall Edward again hesitated. Its art deco opulence was almost oppressive. The designer a man called Robert Atkinson had intended to overwhelm the visitor with the power and energy of the New Gazette and its proprietor, and he had succeeded. It was no mere newspaper, Atkinson seemed to be saying, but a Great Enterprise, a Modern Miracle, a temple to the Zeitgeist. The floor was of inky marble veined with red and blue waves of colour which glowed and shimmered in the light of a huge chandelier. The ceiling was silver leaf, fan vaulted to summon up an image of the heavens, but the massive clock above the marble staircase reminded the visitor that time was money. Two shining bronze snakes, acting as banisters, hinted that there might be evil even in this paradise and Edward wondered if it really could be the designers sly joke. Weaver was clever enough not to have any statue or bust of himself in the entrance hall. No doubt after he was dead, that omission would be rectified, but for now he was content to be the newspaper.

Edward went over to a horseshoe desk rosewood and silver gilt and was greeted respectfully by a liveried flunkey and taken over to the gilded cage which would raise him by magic to the great mans private floor on the top of the building. Edward smiled to himself it really was too much. The porters frog-footman uniforms were certainly a mistake. He greeted by name the wizened little man who operated the lift. He at least was real an old soldier who had lost an arm on the Somme. He seemed to read Edwards thoughts for he winked at him as if they shared a private joke before whisking him heavenward.

Edward was in a foul mood. He had dined at his club and had by chance overheard some remarks which, because they were so apt, hurt him to the core. He had finished his cigar in the smoking room and was making his way towards the door when he saw the candidates book on a desk behind a screen and remembered he had promised to add his signature in support of a friends son who was up for election. As he turned over the pages, he heard the voice of the man with whom he had been chatting a few moments before. He must have believed Edward had left the smoking room and not realized he was still in earshot.