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The second book, which the FBI had obtained by covert means in proof form, was more damaging. In a daring expose called simply John Edgar Hoover, award-winning reporter Hank Messick hinted at the dark truths behind Edgar’s compliant attitude toward organized crime. He highlighted, too, the relationship with Lewis Rosenstiel that placed Edgar close to top mobsters.

‘Besides,’ reads a de Tocqueville quotation on the flyleaf of the Messick book,

what is to be feared is not so much the immorality of the great as the fact that immorality may lead to greatness.

The Nash book would be found on Edgar’s night table after his death, and Messick’s book may have been in the house as well. Secret FBI intervention no longer cowed publishers. These books were going to be published whether Edgar liked it or not.

Edgar stayed at work until nearly six that last day, late by his standards, then went to Clyde’s apartment for dinner. He probably arrived home about 10:15 P.M., to be greeted by the two yapping Cairn terriers. Edgar liked to have a nightcap, a glass of his favorite bourbon, Jack Daniel’s Black Label, poured from a musical decanter. When raised from its rest, the decanter tinkled ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’ Edgar was fond of it.

If there was such a quiet moment that night, it was reportedly shattered by an unwelcome telephone call. Later, Helen Gandy would claim that, somewhere between ten and midnight, President Nixon called Edgar at home. His purpose, Gandy said, was to tell Edgar once and for all that he must quit. Afterward, Edgar phoned Clyde to talk about the call. Clyde subsequently told Gandy, and that is how the story survives.

If Gandy’s account is accurate, Edgar must have gone to bed feeling shattered. He would have walked into the hall, past the bust of himself waiting to greet visitors, past the pictures and inscriptions that spoke of fifty-nine years in government service; one showed him with a smiling Richard Nixon. Then he would have climbed the stairs, passing an oil painting of himself on the landing, to the master bedroom with its maplewood four-poster.

May 2, a Tuesday, began as a typical Washington spring day – too hot for comfort even in the early morning. Edgar’s black housekeeper, Annie Fields, always came up from her basement apartment to fix breakfast, and Edgar always came down to eat at 7:30 A. M. But today he did not.

The chauffeur reportedly arrived at 7:45, to be followed by his predecessor in the job, James Crawford. Crawford, one of the blacks Edgar had once elevated to agent rank to avoid accusations of discrimination, still worked on in retirement as handyman and gardener. He was there that morning by appointment with Edgar, to discuss where to plant some new rosebushes.

The Director, however, did not appear. As the servants waited, the dogs scurried about, eager for the morning ritual of scraps from the master’s table. Then it was 8:30, and the old retainers began to worry. There had been no sound from upstairs, not this morning.

Annie Fields, it is said, went upstairs to investigate. She knocked timorously at the bedroom door, then – answered only by silence – tried the door. It was unlocked, which was highly unusual.

The housekeeper saw Edgar’s body the moment she stepped into the room. It was dressed in pajama trousers, naked from the waist up, and lying beside the bed. She went no farther and ran downstairs to find Crawford, the longestserving member of the household staff. Crouched on the bedroom floor, holding the rigid, cold hand in his, Crawford knew at once that his boss was dead.

Crawford rushed to telephone first the doctor and then Clyde, the one other person he knew should be alerted at once. Clyde nearly missed the call. He was already out of the apartment, on his slow way to the limousine he assumed was about to arrive, when he realized he had forgotten something. So he came limping back, one leg dragging because of the strokes he had suffered, to hear the phone that was ringing and ringing.