“Where to, Mrs. Coker?” he asked.
“The Crystal Cup,” Nellie said.
Voilà!
It was peaceful in Hanover Terrace, even Kitty was quiet, although that was often a bad sign. These were ideal conditions for the creation of his magnum opus, and Ramsay was hammering on the Remington’s keys and shuttling its carriage with abandon, fuelled by nothing more than Lipton’s tea and a tin of cocaine throat pastilles that he’d cadged off one of the dancers at the Sphinx. He was no longer thinking—he was writing! It had come to him in a kind of coup de foudre—he should write a crime novel—a “murder mystery”—they were all the rage, after all. He had just finished reading the new Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and, yes, yes, it was very clever in its twisty-turny way, but Ramsay was aiming for something more real, more gritty.
A corpse was necessary to set the ball rolling, he thought. Someone pushed out of a window, perhaps. Defenestration, he had noticed, was popular in the crime novels of the day. A body lying mysteriously on a pavement. But whose body? And why?
And for a crime novel he would need a detective, one who would take his place in the pantheon of celebrated sleuths—Poe’s Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, even Christie’s Poirot. Ramsay did not want someone elegant or clever or well mannered—no, he wanted a Scotland Yard detective, someone who was jaded and well acquainted with the seamy side of life.
Write what you know. Betty had said that he didn’t know anything, but she was wrong, he did know something—he knew the Saturnalia that was London after dark, didn’t he? The streetwalkers, the dope, the gangs, the mad parties, the fancy dress, the nightclubs, the gambling, even the awful Bright Young Things—from the sordid to the glittering and everything in between. Given his profession, his detective would move unhindered between these worlds. And in a further lightning stroke of genius, Ramsay had finally found his title—The Age of Glitter. The whole fictional enterprise was spread out ahead of him like a shimmering woven tapestry!
Down to business. First of all, his detective should have something that marked him out as different, unique even. Perhaps one of those memorable characteristics or tics that they all seemed to have—a violin, a moustache and so on. Welsh! Ramsay couldn’t think of any Welsh detectives, couldn’t even think of anyone Welsh, for that matter, apart from Lloyd George, and even he hadn’t been born in that benighted country, had he?
And as God created Adam, so Ramsay created Jones.
Detective Chief Inspector George Jones—or “Jones the Policeman” as he was known back home in the Valleys where he came from （from whence he came?） was waiting on a platform in Paddington Station for the 5:05 from Taunton. He checked his pocket-watch. Police-issue pocket watch. （Did the police issue pocket-watches? Did it matter if they didn’t? It sounded right.） He checked his police-issue pocket-watch—his trusty police-issue pocket-watch. （Better.） The 5:05 was on time （NB—find out if there is a 5:05 from Taunton）， steaming slowly towards the platform. Jones smiled to himself
Why? Why is he smiling? And why, for that matter, would a master criminal have been in Taunton? Ramsay had chosen Taunton at random. Perhaps somewhere like Bristol or even Manchester would have more credibility as a hotbed of lawlessness? Birmingham certainly, the city’s gangs came down for the Derby and treated the Amethyst like Liberty Hall. He supposed he could decide later. He wondered if there was a Bradshaw’s anywhere in Hanover Terrace. It seemed unlikely. No one ever caught a train.
Jones smiled to himself because he was looking forward to confronting Reggie Dunn. As if on cue, the doors of the train opened and the passengers began to alight onto the platform. First-class carriage, Jones noted. Dunn, the reprobate head of a Soho crime racket, walked nonchalantly along the platform without a care in the world—strolled nonchalantly along the platform, unaware that his nemesis was waiting to greet him. “Hello, Reggie,” Jones said. “Been to the races?” （That sounded rather flat. Been up to mischief? Been up to no good?）
“Been up to your old tricks, Reggie?” （Better.） “How about we take a little walk and discuss—Discuss what? Creativity was surprisingly tiring. Ramsay yawned and lit a cigarette.
“Hello, Reggie,” Jones said. “Been up to your old tricks? How about we take a little walk and you can tell me all about what you did with Lady Lorchan’s diamonds?”
Excellent stuff! He lit a cigarette from the stub of the old one. He could hear the grandfather clock in the downstairs hall chiming. It was getting late, he should be setting off for the Sphinx soon, but really the place ran itself.