Dr. Zemenides was a Cypriot teacher who decided to become a marriage broker. He accepted a £10 fee from fellow-Cypriot Theodosios Petrou to find Petrou a bride with a £200 dowry. But when no bride was forthcoming, the potential bridegroom asked for his money back.

“I borrowed it from a friend anyway,” he said, “and he wants it back.”

The marriage-broker, however, had only £5 left, which he handed over, explaining lamely, “I spent the rest.”

Petrou, a waiter at the chic Monico restaurant in Piccadilly Circus, simmered with fury. Finally, so it was said, he went to Zemenides’ Hampstead lodgings on Monday, January 2nd, 1933, and shot him dead. Wrongly said, in fact, because at the Old Bailey where he was tried for murder the waiter produced a cast-iron alibi which proved that whoever it was who killed Dr. Zemenides it wasn’t Theodosios Petrou