England is the novel’s political and investigative crossroads: a proposed restoration of the Herzoslovakian monarchy brings foreign interests into contact with its old royal secrets, while the country also becomes a refuge and hunting ground for King Victor. Chimneys, in particular, holds the concealed consequence of an earlier royal visit: a jewel that has never been recovered.

Political Setting

England’s government supports the Herzoslovakian effort to restore the monarchy and place Prince Michael on the throne. The plan is tied to finance as well as diplomacy: Prince Michael is prepared to grant concessions to Isaacstein and Co in exchange for a loan of roughly a million, which would help secure his restoration. The possibility that Count Stylptitch’s memoirs might be published threatens these arrangements, making their delivery deadline a matter of political urgency rather than merely a publisher’s concern.

The succession question sharpens the stakes when Prince Michael is murdered. George Lomax hesitantly identifies Prince Nicholas as the likely next heir; later, Superintendent Battle confirms that Nicholas Obolovitch, Michael’s first cousin, stands next in line. Nicholas is believed to be in the United States, raising money on his expected succession. England’s restoration negotiations therefore depend on a crown whose next claimant is absent and whose supposed death will prove to be part of a larger deception.

Royal Secrets at Chimneys

England’s connection to the royal past predates the current restoration scheme. Nicholas IV and Queen Varaga once visited the country as guests of the late Marquis of Caterham, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Varaga was received as a queen despite her concealed background as a music-hall performer and expert thief. After the royal couple were killed in a revolution, jewels that had passed into the hands of the crowd were traced to Paris; many of their principal stones had been replaced with paste. The substitution was attributed to King Victor, whose skill and audacity pointed to him as the planner.

The Koh-i-Noor did not leave England with Varaga. Battle explains that she hid it somewhere in the country, but its location remained unknown. He suspects that it may be concealed in the room at Chimneys where the conversation takes place, turning an English country house into the possible repository of a secret carried forward from the monarchy’s collapse. The jewel’s disappearance links the old royal visit to the present investigation without resolving where it was hidden.

Fugitive and False Heir

King Victor’s movements bring the political history into the contemporary English plot. He has recently been released from prison and evaded the French police, who believe he is in England and have notified the British authorities. His presence is a live investigative possibility, not just a remnant of the earlier jewel affair.

Battle later explains that Victor exploited reports that Prince Nicholas had died in the Congo. By reviving the supposedly dead prince’s identity, he raised a large sum from American investors on the promise of oil concessions, then fled when an accident exposed the fraud. He subsequently came to England, and Battle believes he was at Chimneys on the night Prince Michael died and again on the following night. England thus becomes the point where Victor’s financial impersonation, the murder investigation, and the succession crisis converge.

Investigation and Disclosure

The investigations at Chimneys show how uncertainty about events in England is managed through evidence and selective disclosure. When the crime is discovered, a middle window is found unlatched. Anthony Cade recognizes that this detail changes the possibilities: someone inside may have opened it after he left to suggest an outside intruder, or his own account may be false. Superintendent Battle responds by announcing that no one will leave the house until he has finished his inquiries.

Cade eventually tells Battle what he knows about the broader case, explaining that he had withheld information while Virginia Revel’s letters might implicate her. Once the letters are established as unrelated to her, he says, that concern no longer justifies his silence. Battle has meanwhile requested King Victor’s fingerprints and Bertillon measurements from France to test the identity of the man he is investigating. England is therefore not simply a backdrop for political intrigue: it is where competing identities and accounts are tested against documentary and physical evidence.

The Hidden Claimant

The English plot culminates in the revelation that the supposed heir is not an unknown figure abroad. When Isaacstein asks whether the same loan can be offered to Nicholas after Michael’s death, Anthony Cade says that Nicholas was indeed reported killed in the Congo—but clarifies that he himself spread the report. He identifies himself as Nicholas Sergius Alexander Ferdinand Obolovitch, explaining that he adopted the name Anthony Cade after leaving the Congo. This disclosure recasts England’s restoration negotiations: the claimant whom the conspirators believed absent has been among them, and the country that sheltered the intrigue becomes the place where his identity is finally declared.