“Sentence?” his uncle harrumphed. “Not even in the same paragraph! Not in the same tome! Fanatically against all things female. Including their own mothers, I shouldn’t wonder. Perhaps especially their own mothers. Started off as a monkish establishment in the fourteenth century and has remained practically unchanged through dissolutions and purges into the twentieth. They’ve always had a reputation for remoteness and austerity, which they manage to offset by an extremely high academic standard. I’m amazed to hear my wife confess that she knew the last master.” He peered over his pince-nez at Hetty, affecting the expression of a wronged husband making his dreaded discovery. “She leads a life quite her own, you know.” The expression softened to one of surprise and pride. “Though I can’t imagine why one of those marble saints at Jude’s would have exchanged a word with my Hetty. Or where he would have stumbled across her. She’s exaggerating again—”

“No. I said I knew him. I didn’t say he liked me, Gerald. He didn’t. And the feeling was mutual. He was the most appalling old stick insect! He certainly took his time departing this world. The line between indisposition and death was blurred by the passage of about twenty years.”

“Many gentlemen turned their faces to the wall when Victoria snuffed it.” Gerald nodded.

“Well, you’re no use to me, Aunt. But it’s clear that at least one barrier has fallen in that establishment. I met a girl who was, um, taking a stroll in the master’s garden this morning.”

“What on earth were you doing there?”

“I wasn’t there. I was in the graveyard next door—the scene of the crime I told you about—looking over the wall and saw a strange girl dressed in purple, practising tango steps and singing to herself in Spanish. An exchange of views followed—I can scarcely call it a conversation. She said she was preparing for a May ball.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the Jude college ball,” Henrietta said knowledgeably. “I believe they’re still arguing about the suitability of including the quadrille on the dance card. If the tango is on the menu, you’d be looking at one of the large, go-ahead colleges. I know that a number of King’s men frequent the town’s dancing clubs. They could have decided to inject a bit of life into the usual run of veletas and fox-trots and hire a tango band from London. Johnny, why don’t you get hold of a ticket, ring up Earwig and invite her to go with you? She’s a very skilled little dancer, you know. She goes to classes every Friday evening with Madame Dorine at the Palais de Danse round the back of the Corn Exchange.”

“Good idea! Will you ring her, or shall I?” Redfyre asked, but his aunt was already scurrying to the telephone in the hall.