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That New Year’s Eve at the Stork, Stuart and her boyfriend, Winchell’s colleague Art Arthur, found themselves seated at Edgar’s table for dinner. ‘The world heavyweight champion, Jim Braddock, was there, too,’ recalled Stuart, now in her seventies. ‘I remember there were jokes about race, and Hoover didn’t want to go on to the Cotton Club because Gene Krupa, the white jazz drummer, played with blacks there.

‘All the same, we did end up going to the Cotton Club, in an FBI limousine. I sat with Art in the backseat. Hoover and Tolson sat opposite us in those two little seats on hinges they have in limousines. And that was when I noticed they were holding hands – all the way to the club, I think. Just sitting there talking and holding hands with each other.

‘Hoover got furious after we did get to the Cotton Club. Because not only were there black and white musicians, there was a black and white couple dancing – a black man with a white woman. And Tolson, who had been getting drunk, said something like, “Well, I’d like to dance with you …” It was an awkward moment.

‘I didn’t really understand anything about homosexuality in those days,’ said Stuart. ‘I was so young, and those were different times. But I’d never seen two men holding hands. And I remember asking Art about it in the car on the way home that night. And he just said, “Oh, come on. You know,” or something like that. And then he told me they were queers or fairies – the sort of terms they used in those days.’

Like other lovers, Edgar and Clyde had their ups and downs. Edgar drove Clyde to the hospital, a month before the episode at the Stork, when he was taken ill with appendicitis. At the office, though, he fussed and fumed at Clyde like a nagging spouse. Why, Edgar asked in one memo, did he have to hold doors open for visitors, while Clyde and others ‘swept through as if members of the British Monarch’s Jubilee entourage?’

After the Stork Club episode, Luisa Stuart saw Edgar and Clyde several times at the Sunday brunches Winchell and his wife gave at their Manhattan apartment. ‘One Sunday,’ Stuart recalled, ‘Hoover – “Jedgar,” as we called him – showed up without Clyde, and said Clyde was sick. After he left, people said Clyde wasn’t really sick. They’d had a big fight. The word was that Hoover had found Clyde in bed with another man.’

One Christmas, Edgar, Clyde and Guy Hottel were staying at Miami’s Gulfstream Hotel. At the height of a tiff with Clyde, Edgar stormed into the bathroom and locked the door. Hottel had to force his way in, grab the Director by the shoulders and shake some sense into him.

The bathroom siege was also apparently triggered by jealousy – though not, on this occasion, over another male. Hottel, who was something of a ladies’ man, had asked Clyde to make up a foursome for the evening with him and two women. Clyde had accepted and Edgar, piqued at the prospect of being left alone, threw a tantrum.

‘One of Guy’s jobs,’ said his brother-in-law Chandler Brossard, ‘was to sort of calm Hoover down. He was an hysteric. And Guy would often have to stay with him half the night to calm him. One of the most powerful men in America would in effect be under house arrest. He and Clyde had to watch Hoover very carefully.’

9

‘But there’s a man in Washington

Whom not many women see,

Who’s as dark and as handsome

As a sheik of Arabie.’

Poem for J. Edgar Hoover, submitted by woman describing herself only as ‘Wisconsin Girl,’ 1940

Edgar had deeply ambivalent feelings about women, but he did not avoid their company. At times, perhaps, he made a point of being seen with women to dispel rumors that he was homosexual. Perhaps, too, Edgar wanted to prove to himself that he could sustain a heterosexual relationship – something he never really achieved. In the end, he was too crippled emotionally to forge a truly fulfilling link with anyone, even Clyde.

When they met, Edgar and Clyde had much in common. As Edgar was devoted to his mother, Annie, so Clyde doted on his mother. As time