This room had no expansive views of St James’s Park and was by no means luxuriously furnished. There was a rank of filing cabinets in battleship grey, a depressed-looking aspidistra on the windowsill and two upright chairs of a Dickensian age and character forlornly standing in front of a battered-looking desk. The surface of the desk was hardly visible beneath files heaped high in metal trays, a cigarette box, two telephones and several photographs in frames. The etiolated, grey-faced man who now rose from behind the desk was long in the chin, with drooping eyelids which made it difficult to see the colour of his eyes. He had long tapering fingers, yellowed with nicotine, bare except for a signet ring. Edward noticed the ring bore the design of a fish or possibly a dolphin. ‘Cigarette, Lord Edward?’ Lyall said when they had shaken hands and sat down. ‘They are Turkish – Murad.’ Edward shook his head. ‘Oh well, I’ll have one. My wife used to say I smoked too much but . .
