‘No,’ said Jonesy while going through his pockets, ‘but this was probably the reason they were trying to break in.’

She handed Toccata a small book she’d found entitled Gibbons’ Pocket Philatelist. A bus ticket was marking the page devoted to the stamps printed during Lloyd-George’s premiership.

‘They were after a stamp,’ said Toccata with a sigh. She slapped the Villain around the face. He groaned, blinked and sat up. One eye was milky and blind, the other bloodshot. He wasn’t much older than me.

‘You’d break our truce for a stamp?’ she asked in English.

The young Villain looked at her, then the rest of us.

‘It’s the 2d Lloyd-George Mauve,’ he said, ‘with the Anglesey cancellation. The only one in the world. But in answer to your question: yes, I should jolly well say so. Well worth it. Clearly, you have a woefully poor grasp of the value and excitement of stamp collecting. Where’s Father?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘If you don’t answer truthfully,’ snorted the Villain, ‘you might find me irked, and you wouldn’t like me when I’m irked. Devilry may ensue. Now, again: where’s Father?’

‘Same answer as last time,’ said Toccata. ‘Heading home is my guess.’

‘If you’ve harmed a hair on his head, Janus, there’ll be retribution of the blood-spilling variety – and with no apologies for absence.’

‘I’ve a better idea,’ said Jonesy, ‘why don’t you just piss off home, you odious little maggot?’

The Villain got up, looked at us all in turn, told us he had ‘never been so insulted in his life’ and walked off into the gathering dusk.

‘Did you get the other fella?’ asked Fodder once the Villain was lost to view.

‘He was got,’ I said slowly, ‘but I’m not sure by who.’

‘Whom,’ said Toccata, correcting me, ‘not sure by whom. What did he mean when he called me “Janus”?’

We all shook our heads and mumbled that we had no idea.

Toccata’s Sno-Trac had been parked next to the main entrance of the museum, and now that the snowstorm had abated, we could see the headlight cluster as eight circles of light shining through the gloom. The Villain’s carefully folded clothes were still lying where they’d been found, and Toccata examined them with interest while the others stood silently by.

‘He was going to kidnap me into domestic service,’ I said, ‘working up from the scullery to become a pastry chef. Then there was a giggle in the air and the Winter took him.’

‘Took him?’

‘I think so. I didn’t see anything. I was unconscious.’

They all exchanged glances, their expressions making quite clear that they thought I was involved.

‘What did the Villain look like?’ asked Toccata, pulling a wallet from the pocket of his folded jacket.

‘He had a scar across his eye,’ I said, ‘bad teeth, about fifty, weather-beaten, no nose, monocle.’