“Exactly! I was made aware that this bastion of propriety, this pinnacle of academic excellence—my own alma mater, for God’s sake!—was decaying from the inside, of a condition that was set out to me as a cross between dry rot and the Black Death!”

Redfyre sympathised. He would have reacted in exactly the same way to the committee’s suggestion—with amusement and disbelief. He would have told them in clear terms what to do with their proposal. But, like the master, he was alarmed by the subsequent events and discoveries and in no mood for false bravado. Hindsight had shone its light into a very dark corner.

“So the upshot was that, though grumbling a protest, I agreed to take on the mastership for a term with the brief of digging about in the sewers of college life, uncovering any unpleasantness hidden away there, and after the requisite exorcism, presumably reburying the thing.” With a rueful shrug of his shoulders, he confessed: “In fact, I quite looked forward to playing the new broom. Making some changes in staff, checking out the financial health, quelling the internecine fighting that had been damaging the college for decades.” He sighed and admitted that a single term was a ludicrous suggestion. He was now approaching the end of his first year and nowhere near achieving his aims.

“The dining club, surprisingly, proved to be the least intractable of my problems. This trumpeted oh-so-secret society that was rumoured to be gnawing away at the very foundations of the college’s morality was no Hellfire Club. And was anything but secret! Indeed, the members themselves were the only people in college or town who were under the illusion that their doings were a secret. I was given no help with establishing the identities of the membership initially. Everyone discreetly denied any knowledge. So I attacked on another, less well-armoured front. The kitchens! These diners provided dinners, somewhere here in the college. And they damn well didn’t cook the food themselves!”

Redfyre smiled and nodded in approval.