The affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson has been one of Hollywood’s favorite tales — in films from Oscar-winning “The King’s Speech” to Madonna’s “W.E.” — but a new book exposes the story of Edward’s affair with a Parisian prostitute before he met Wallis. In 1917, Prince Edward, 23, was holed up at the Hotel Meurice (where Kanye West just recorded an album) and became smitten with Marguerite Alibert, a high-class demimondaine. “It was, of course, the lady’s performance in bed which was the most desirable and significant feature of the prince’s stay in Paris,” writes Andrew Rose in “The Woman Before Wallis: Prince Edward, the Paris Courtesan and the Perfect Murder.” Edward broke things off, and Alibert years later married Egyptian playboy Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey. But in an argument at the Savoy in London, Alibert murdered her new husband with a handgun. “Marguerite’s arrest posed some awkward questions for the prince’s people” about the couple’s involvement, says the book, out from Picador. The book further reveals that the prosecutor in the case approached the prince’s personal secretaries to “help keep the prince’s name out of the media.” Since trials at the time rarely lasted longer than a week, the royals were tipped off as to when the court date would take place so that, “the royal household could safely announce that the prince would visit his ranch in Alberta” for six weeks.