`We were speaking a moment ago of your nephew.'
`Yes? Well, good God! What about him?'
'I'm afraid I must tell you that he is dead. He has just been found at the Tower of London. There is reason to believe that he was murdered.'
The foot of Sir William's glass rattled on the polished table-top. He did not move; his eyes were fixed steadily and rather glassily on Hadley, and he seemed to have stopped breathing. At last he said, with an effort.
`I–I have my, car here…. ‘
`There is also reason to believe,' Hadley went on, `that what we thought a practical joke has turned into murder.
Sir William, your nephew is wearing a golf suit. And on the head of his dead body, somebody has put your stolen top hat.'
3. The Body at Traitors' Gate
The Tower of London….
Over the White Tower flew the banner of the three Norman lions, when William the Conqueror reigned, and above the Thames its ramparts gleamed white with stone quarried at Caen. And on this spot, a thousand years before the Domesday Book, Roman sentinels cried the hours of the night from Divine Julius's Tower.'