"I knew Strowan Westwood quite well, once," Tewel began.

A very long time ago, Mergie Tewel had been a rookie copper as well as a rather shy and naive young male. Fresh out of the police academy, he had been bounced around various forces on the kind of short-term assignments intended to give the new recruits a varied taste of policing work in all its delights and dangers. In one of these assignments, he had been attached to the small squad investigating a death threat against Strowan Westwood, apparently made by a jilted lover who had inconveniently disappeared, at least as far as the police had been able to determine.

At this time, Westwood was already a famous stage player, featuring frequently in the theatre pages of the newspapers, not to mention the juicier gossip columns and the reports from the divorce courts. Tewel had been the junior copper assigned, by a whim of the officer in charge, to guarding the young actress through the long nights until her would-be attacker was tracked down and arrested.

Strowan became used to returning home in the company of a couple of police officers, flushed and revved-up after the excitement of another crowning success on stage and with the compliments and champagne from the after-show party still fizzing inside her. In that state, she would certainly not be ready for sleep. Instead, she would talk gaily and wittily to anybody who would sit still for long enough to listen and dressed, I had no doubt, in diaphanous dressing-gowns and revealing nightwear which left little to the imagination, especially the active imagination of a young and inexperienced Goblin.

His companion on these vigils was a taciturn and long-serving cop who would usually take his guard post outside the house. Tewel realised, with the experience of later years, that his senior colleague had simply found somewhere quiet and comfortable and taken a nap each evening, leaving the younger Tewel in the undeflected focus of Strowan Westwood's very considerable feminine charms.

The love-struck and gauche Tewel spent night after night listening attentively to Strowan's rather one-sided stream of conversation. As his self-confidence - which was never very high - grew he eventually became bold enough to chat back, to respond to her amusing and energetic character assassinations of her fellow actors and ex-lovers - often the same people - and to make a few barbed comments of his own.

And so he came to make the inevitable mistake of declaring his love for the famous actress, already many decades his senior and oh-so-very experienced in the ways of the world and affairs of the heart. At first she smiled kindly and tried gently to dissuade the misguided affection of the youngster, to explain that there could never be anything other than a genuine friendship between the two of them. He pressed his suit, and she laughed in his face; perhaps, Tewel realised with the benefit of hindsight, not from genuine amusement or a desire to hurt, but as an attempt to deflect the effects of juvenile infatuation without hurt or embarrassment.

Strowan's attempts to dampen the enthusiasm of the younger Tewel were unsuccessful. He made a crude lunge for her, which she batted away forcefully. But in those days, Mergie was equipped with a certain wiry tenacity. He grabbed her arms and attempted to press kisses on her face. She cried out, of course, shouting and screaming enough to rouse his senior colleague from his slumbers outside. The old cop rushed in, realised what was happening and grappled firmly with the overwrought youngster.

Later, of course, Tewel was embarrassed and hurt. Although Strowan very generously agreed not to press charges, the young copper was removed from his role and severely disciplined, and action which produced a stain on his permanent report which had affected his career even after all this time: he had only recently reached the rank of Detective Sergeant when a Goblin of his talent might have expected to be a Lieutenant at least.

Tewel buried himself in his work, fervently trying to undo his momentary lapse. Even so, he had expected never to hear from Strowan Westwood again and it had come as a considerable surprise to hear her voice on the telephone just a few weeks ago. He found it desperately uncomfortable to be invited to Lady Strowan's home, guided by Tibbermore of course, asked to investigate the disappearance of the necklace and, with even more fervour, asked to keep it out of the formal reports.

Perhaps Lady Strowan expected that, after all this time, Tewel would drop everything and work to her agenda. To her apparent surprise, he declared that he could not, in all probity, act as she wished. His professional ethics, honed on the edge of loneliness and disappointment over centuries, simply would not permit it. What he did do was to suggest that a Private Detective would be able to act with more discresion. Which was, of course, how I had been come to be engaged.

"And now she's dead," Tewel concluded morosely, "Gone forever. For a time, I had thought that it was your fault, Gask. But now I realise whose fault it was."

He paused, again inspecting the wall minutely.

"It was mine."

Part 66

Part 68