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In the course of calming Monroe, however, Robert followed his brother into her embrace. ‘It wasn’t Bobby’s intention,’ Lawford is quoted as having said, ‘but they became lovers and spent the night in our guest bedroom. Almost immediately the affair got very heavy …’ Soon, Lawford said, Monroe was saying ‘she was in love with Bobby and that he had promised to marry her. It was as if she could no longer tell the difference between Bobby and Jack.’

A number of witnesses, and the surviving phone records, support the gist of Lawford’s account. They also support his statement that Robert in turn soon tried to distance himself. He did so too late, however, to avoid being drawn into Monroe’s psychiatric collapse. And too late to avoid falling into a double trap – the surveillance ordered by the criminals, Giancana and Hoffa, and the web spun by Edgar.

Edgar knew early on. On June 27, according to Monroe’s housekeeper, Robert Kennedy arrived at the actress’ home alone, ‘driving a Cadillac convertible.’ A memorandum from the Los Angeles Agent in Charge, William Simon, landed on Edgar’s desk within days. ‘I remember it coming in. I was shocked,’ recalled Cartha DeLoach. ‘Simon reported that Bobby was borrowing his Cadillac convertible for the purpose of going to see Marilyn Monroe.’ From now on, agent sources say, the Attorney General’s California comings and goings were effectively under Bureau surveillance.

During the June visit, heavily censored FBI documents indicate, Monroe had lunch with the Attorney General at Peter Lawford’s house. Their conversation included a discussion about ‘the morality of atomic testing.’ At that critical time in the Cold War, anything Robert Kennedy said about such matters would have been of interest to Communist Intelligence. For Edgar, aware that Monroe had numerous left-wing friends, the development meant that his gratuitous snooping could now be justified as an authentic security concern.

On Saturday, August 4, Monroe was found dead. The autopsy report gave the cause of death as ‘acute barbiturate poisoning due to ingestion of overdose,’ and the Coroner decided it was ‘probably’ suicide. Others have theorized that the overdose was not taken by mouth but administered by someone else – perhaps by injection, perhaps rectally.

Sam Giancana’s half brother Chuck claimed in 1992 that the Chicago mobster had Monroe murdered in precisely that fashion. ‘By murdering her,’ he said, ‘Bobby Kennedy’s affair with the starlet would be exposed … It might be possible to depose the rulers of Camelot.’

Whether Giancana had a hand in the death or not, the evidence suggests the account given to the public was untrue. There are unresolved questions, above all, about Robert Kennedy’s behavior that weekend.

The Attorney General was in California at the time, to address the American Bar Association and to vacation with his family. A good deal of information suggests Kennedy flew to Los Angeles on August 4 for a showdown with Monroe. According to Lawford, who reportedly admitted accompanying his brother-in-law to Monroe’s house, there was an ugly quarrel. ‘Marilyn,’ he said, ‘allowed how first thing Monday morning she was going to call a press conference and tell the world about the treatment she had suffered at the hands of the Kennedy brothers. Bobby became livid. In no uncertain terms he told her she was going to have to leave both Jack and himself alone – no more telephone calls, no letters, nothing.’

The alleged row supposedly ended with hysteria from Monroe, a struggle in which she was subdued, then an urgent call for help to her psychiatrist, Dr Ralph Greenson. Dr Greenson did come over, believed he had calmed Monroe down and went off to dinner.

It was he, according to the official account, who would be summoned by the housekeeper in the early hours of the following morning to find Monroe dead in bed. Yet statements by police officers, ambulance men, the housekeeper, doctors and others suggest the following scenario: After desperate calls by Monroe to the Lawford