Snake Bite

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Dedicated to Mike Elliott, Keith Garland, Derek Rothwell, Angus Martin, Lynn Martinez (or Lynn Furby, as she was then), Paula Fountain and (most especially) Sonia Morrish — the people who helped me survive the years 1982 to 1985 with some modicum of sanity. Thanks for being there.

Dedicated also to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Guy Ritchie, for keeping the legend alive on the big and small screens.

And with grateful acknowledgements to the skill and diplomacy of Sally Oliphant, who has worked above and beyond the call of duty to keep me sane and focused through bad times, and Polly Nolan, who managed to cut 12,000 words out of my first draft (including several hundred needless uses of the word ‘just’) and improved it immeasurably.

The corridors and rooms of the Diogenes Club are, perhaps, the quietest places in the whole of London. Nobody who enters is allowed to speak — except within the Strangers’ Room, and only then when the door is firmly closed. The staff who work there — the footmen and the waiters — have padded cloth attached to the soles of their shoes so that they can move silently, and the newspapers which the club members read are printed specially for the Diogenes on a paper that does not rustle when it is folded. Any member who clears his throat or blows his nose more than three times in a month is given a written warning. Three written warnings lead to expulsion from the club.

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