In this excerpt from chapter thirty four of The Art of Misdirection, our cast of characters is travelling west, from London Paddington to the West Country of England.

I share it here because the speech by Howell tells you a great deal about his character - this anti-Sherlock Holmes who has used his extraordinary skills to commit extraordinary crimes - and it also tells you a great deal about how the other characters think of him. A liar? Perhaps. A fantasist? Certainly. But at times like these, when you are hurtling towards a terrifying confrontation, with nothing but your wits to save you from a grizzly end, is reality really what you want to hear? 

Chapter Thirty Four - Excerpt ...

We managed a compartment all to ourselves on the train, one of the little rooms with a door and a row of high frosted glass windows. I suspect Howell had bribed the conductor, or else the appearance of the group was enough to persuade other passengers to look elsewhere. On either side of the carriage there were benches that could comfortably accommodate the five of us and I was glad that the compartment would give us some degree of privacy. Howell, Darby, Harryboy, Maria—they had all made it and within minutes of the train leaving the platform, gathering speed and rumbling west, we had the door closed against the rest of the passengers and my nerves began to settle. I removed my coat and the misshapen hat Howell had given me and took a seat between Maria and the window.

“Are we to go over the plan again?” I asked Howell, who was sat opposite me.

He smiled. “Plan!” he said, though not unkindly. “Let’s just enjoy the journey, yes?”

He was right. In a few hours we’d be at the quarry and talking through scenarios now would do little to help us. There was simply no telling what we might find once we got inside the stores. Indeed, the stores, their contents and the factory could well be blown to smithereens by the time we arrived on the scene. If the train were delayed—an eventuality I considered quite likely should there be bomb damage further down the line—then we might well arrive to find nothing left worth saving.

The train departed the station. I took to staring out of the window while Howell held court, reminiscing for the benefit of the brothers and Maria.

I could have spit when Maria asked, quite innocently: “I hope you don’t think it terribly bold of me to ask, Mr Howell, but however did you become … I mean, how did you find yourself … in this particular line of work? You have spoken of your career on the stage. How did you move from that to … well, to this?”

It was the question Howell loved more than any other. He never passed up a chance to cultivate his own myth. Outside, the city quickly faded away, the roads and buildings parting to reveal trees and fields, as if all that green had merely been in hiding all along, and in the calm of the cabin, to the side-to-side rocking and the rush-rushing of the train, Howell’s words washed over me as he set the scene.

“Ah, well, you see … I did not graduate from stage to crime as much as I did the reverse. I was just a boy when my father returned home from the war in Afghanistan. I barely knew the man.” He always began this way, with talk of the war. It was a good tactic and drew them in from the off.

“I had been brought up by my aunt, and she, her little cottage, and the remote village we lived in were my entire world. I had never set foot in a big city, let alone London. I was a very shy little boy, spent all of my time with my head buried in one book or another. I became obsessed with the stories I read, exciting worlds of adventure and mystery. Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe. When my father reappeared and whisked me back to London I did not take it well. He was a stranger and I was terrified of him. He had injured his leg quite severely and he hobbled around looking lost in the morning, reeked of Whisky of an evening, and woke the house every nighttime with terrible dreams of being back in Kabul with ghazis taking potshots at him from the cliffs. When he wasn’t drunk or in a foul mood he tried his best to be kind and after a few months we had a fair measure of each other. I had learned when to stay out of his way but we both knew it was not an ideal arrangement. In an effort to get to know me, one day he asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. All the books I been reading had gone to my head. Before I knew it, it had slipped out … I said to him: ‘I want to be a great thief, Father. The greatest thief the world has ever known!’”

Howell stopped, let the audience think back to their own fathers. What a thing to say! Had I dared say such a thing in front of my own dad, why, I would have got the hiding of my life. Maria was leaning forward, her hand hovering in front of her mouth as if to catch any exclamation that might slip out. Harryboy let out a low grumbling chuckle.

Howell resumed. “Father went very quiet and I braced myself … but eventually he said: ‘How will you ever learn to be a great thief? One mistake and you will be locked up for the rest of your life!’ He was more right than he knew for that very week the maid had caught me practising, trying to pick the handkerchief from her pocket without her knowing, and she had given me a spanking. ‘Let me give it some thought,’ Father said and the next day he came to me and told me he had arranged for me to have piano lessons with one of the best teachers in all of London. ‘Piano lessons?’ I cried. ‘What good will they do me in my quest to be a great thief?’ ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Would you not agree that a great thief must have nimble fingers, in order to pick the smallest of pockets? What better way to train your fingers without raising any suspicion!’ Of course, I fell for it immediately and soon began my piano lessons. A month later he arranged for me to attend dance lessons as well. I protested: ‘Dance lessons? What good will dance lessons do me if I want to be a great thief?’ ‘Well,’ he said. ‘If you want to be a great thief you must be light on your feet, able to sneak into buildings without being seen. What better way to teach you without raising suspicion than dance lessons?’ I thought him very clever. I threw myself into my dance lessons, as I had the piano. Soon, oratory lessons followed, ‘so that you might talk your way out of any situation!’ then elocution, ‘so that you might blend in with the upper classes and have access to all their riches!’. After that, conjuring, ‘so you might learn the art of misdirection and mask your escape!’ and then watchmaking, ‘so you might have knowledge of intricate mechanisms and pick the most complicated of locks!’. On and on it went. Every night a different lesson with a different teacher. I tell you, I did not have a spare evening for nearly ten years! And so busy was I that I soon forgot all about my wish to be the greatest thief in the world. By the time I was fifteen I had been moulded into the perfect gentlemen. I could hold a party rapt with my sleight of hand, could fix watches that had not ticked in years, play Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto and dance a perfect waltz.”

Harryboy burst out laughing, his big body easing back into his seat and his hand slapping down gleefully onto his knee. “What ’appened then, Mr Howell?” he asked. “How comes you ended up on the rob like the rest of us?”

“Ah,” said Howell. “Now, that is a fascinating story.” He raised a finger, about to launch into it, when Darby piped up.

“Not this old tale again.” He lifted his hand up to his head, massaged his temples. “These fairy stories of yours, ach! They give me a headache.”

“Fairy stories?” Howell pretended to be offended. “How dare you! I’ll have you know that these many lessons formed the foundations of my criminal career.”

“Quite,” said Darby. “Though that does not explain why you have always been a hopeless dancer and you cannot play a note on the piano.”

“Ah, well … I am an old man now,” said Howell. “Time has not been kind. It has dulled some of my skills. It was all a very long time ago.”

There was a burst of laughter in the carriage.

The story was, of course, nonsense. Howell’s formative years had been far less poetic. Born in a lodging house on Dorset Street, a block away from Spitalfields Market, it was no surprise that he had turned to crime after spending his childhood in one of the most notorious areas of London. He would have been in his early twenties when Jack the Ripper haunted those very streets and gutted women that Howell had known personally. The miracle of his formative years had nothing to do with a cunning and creative father—for he had never known his father at all—it was simply that where others had been unable to lift their heads from their drunken stupors long enough to improve their lot, Howell had managed to make something of himself. 

Even if it were not an honest something.