An undersized mahogany desk sat beneath two narrow mullioned windows. Bookshelves held a variety of entertaining volumes and several bound decades of Punch. An ormolu clock ticked on the overmantel of the fireplace, near which a comfortable reading chair was drawn. It had always been an altogether welcoming site at the end of a tiring day.

Waiting for Webberly’s secretary to track down the superintendent and wondering what both of them were doing at New Scotland Yard on a winter weekend, Lynley gazed out the window at the expansive garden below. His mother was there, a tall slim fi gure buttoned into a heavy pea jacket with an American baseball cap covering her sandy hair. She was involved in a discussion with one of the gardeners, a fact which prevented her from noticing that her retriever had fallen upon a glove she had dropped and was treating it as a midmorning snack. Lynley smiled as his mother caught sight of the dog. She shrieked and wrestled the glove away.

When Webberly’s voice crackled over the line, it sounded as if he had come to the phone on a run. “We’ve a dicey situation,” the superintendent announced with no prefatory remarks. “Some Drury Laners, a corpse, and the local police acting as if it’s an outbreak of the bubonic plague. They put in a call to their local CID, Strathclyde. Strathclyde won’t touch it. It’s ours.”

“Strathclyde?” Lynley repeated blankly. “But that’s in Scotland.”

He was stating the obvious to his commanding officer. Scotland had its own police force. Rarely did they call for assistance from the Yard. Even when they did so, the complexities of Scottish law made it difficult for the London police to work there effectively and impossible for them to take part in any subsequent court prosecutions. Something wasn’t right. Lynley felt suspicion nag, but he temporised with: