EVEN for seasoned detectives in 1956, the discovery was a grisly one.

The bodies of three women – a mother, her daughter and her sister – lay where they had been slaughtered, at a house in the respectable middle-class suburb of Burnside on Glasgow’s south side.

All had been shot.

Discerning the killer’s (or killers’) motive – if there was one – would have to wait; a ballistics analysis quickly identified the precise weapon used.

Police records showed at least one registered owner of such a gun, living relatively close to the murder scene: Geoffrey Boothroyd, of Regent Park Square in Strathbungo.

Boothroyd, a gun enthusiast and collector, who had built a shooting range in the basement of his home, had only recently married and his new wife was not best pleased to open the door to find police flashing their warrant cards and demanding to speak to her husband.

Did he own a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver? Yes, replied Boothroyd, he did. Could he show it to them? No, he could not. And why not?

Boothroyd explained that he had lent the gun to a friend – an author of spy novels called Ian Fleming.

The relationship between the two men had been initiated four months earlier, when Boothroyd, a fan of Fleming’s James Bond novels, had written to the author to offer some advice on his hero’s weapon of choice.

Bond’s trusty .25 Beretta, which had seen him through four novels thus far, was, in Boothroyd’s opinion, “really a lady’s gun, and not a really nice lady at that”. It would hardly be the sort of weapon carried by a secret agent, particularly one with a licence to kill, he suggested. Boothroyd offered suggestions of other guns that might serve Bond better in his forthcoming adventures, among them the .38 Smith & Wesson, which he described as “a real man-stopper”.

Or perhaps Bond would fare better with a Walther PPK semi-automatic with a 7.65mm calibre, Boothroyd suggested.

Fleming was initially appalled that he might have given his character an unsuitable weapon. Nevertheless, Boothroyd’s advice was warmly welcomed by the author, who prided himself on getting technical details in his stories correct, particularly when it came to hardware.

When Boothroyd got in touch, Fleming was editing From Russia With Love, in which Bond is nearly killed by an agent of SMERSH after his Beretta snags on his clothing as he tries to draw it. Fleming informed Boothroyd that, assuming he could come up with the plot for a follow-up novel, he would ensure that Boothroyd’s advice on an alternative weapon would be passed on to Bond through his secret service bosses.

In the meantime, Fleming still had to approve the cover artwork for From Russia With Love, the centrepiece of which would be a revolver crossed with a rose. Having tried in vain to find a Beretta, would Boothroyd be willing to lend him a .38 Smith & Wesson for the artist to use instead?

Boothroyd agreed, and duly sent off the package to the author in London. By the time the murder detectives came knocking on Boothroyd’s door, he had received Fleming’s telegram acknowledging receipt, which established his innocence of the crime. It was later discovered that the murders of Marion Watt, her daughter Vivienne and her sister Margaret Brown had been carried out by one of Scotland’s most infamous serial killers, Peter Manuel.

Fleming repaid his correspondent with literary and movie immortality. He gave the name of Major Boothroyd to the service armourer who, in Dr No, provides Bond (against the agent’s wishes) with a Walther PPK. Fleming had rejected Boothroyd’s advice to equip Bond with a Smith & Wesson for fear the hammer might cause the same snagging problems as had the Beretta.

Fleming was so grateful to the Glaswegian gunman that not only did he offer to pay him for his advice, he promised to recommend him as an adviser to any film company that might adapt his novels for the big screen. The author was true to his word and Boothroyd served as an adviser during the production of the first Bond movie, Dr No, in 1962, in which the scene where Major Boothroyd’s advice to Bond on his choice of gun is faithfully lifted from the novel.

Boothroyd thus became part of the Bond canon; although “the armourer” was later called Q in the movies, the character, played by Desmond Llewellyn, was still being referred to as Major Boothroyd as late as The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977.

In 1961 Fleming and Boothroyd finally met, in Glasgow, at an event organised by Scottish Television. Newspaper coverage of the event pictured the two men facing off in a “duel”, pistols at the ready. Their correspondence continued until Fleming’s death in 1964, after which Boothroyd was invited by his British publishers, Jonathan Cape, to add his expertise to the editing of Fleming’s final Bond novel, The Man With The Golden Gun.

Boothroyd survived Fleming by

37 years, dying in 2001. Manuel was hanged in Barlinnie prison in 1958.

Details of Fleming’s correspondence with his Glasgow weapons expert are included in “The Man With The Golden Typewriter: Ian Fleming’s James Bond Letters”, edited by the Bond author’s nephew, Fergus Fleming and published by Bloomsbury.