“I don’t much like the word ‘informant,’ Johnny, though I accept that it has a place in your policeman’s vocabulary—along with ‘snitch,’ perhaps. Rosamund is an intelligent young woman, alert to the problems and injustices of her times. If she seeks out or welcomes the company of like-minded, public-spirited ladies, we will listen, support and advise her. Her father, Cornelius, was judged the ideal man to perform the diagnosis and excision of the rot that had set in at a fine establishment. Now you’ve met him, I’m sure you agree with that judgement. And he was most ably assisted by his daughter, who managed to—”

He used her hesitation to supply mischievously: “Infiltrate? Or does that have an uncomfortable flavour of ‘plod parlance,’ too, Hetty?”

“You might say ‘act as a stool-pigeon’ for greater accuracy, if you don’t despise the vernacular. But I do. I was about to say, ‘manage to get close to and distract one of the reprobates.’ We women do not falter when it comes to a little deception, Johnny.”

“I can’t make my mind up, Aunt, whether your actions cut off and exposed past disgraceful behaviour or led to further bloody crimes.”

“Certainly the first. Our involvement had foremost, and you ought to know this, a political motive. Honestly, Johnny, I had no idea about the other entanglement and won’t be held responsible in any way. That appalling South African war business you stepped into with both feet? Lost loot, ambition, revenge, defenestrations . . . dear me! For a while, I thought I was reviewing the Tory monthly digest.” She dismissed a summer of gut-wrenching work with her tone. Then she went on, suddenly earnest, “We’ve lived through dangerous times, these last few years. You, of all men, are well placed to know how near to the edge we’ve stepped—”

“Aunt, I felt the cliff edge crumbling under my foot.”

“Then you would agree that this is no time to tolerate the demoralising philosophies that are being fomented in our seats of learning? The very places like Jude’s and Trinity, which have always produced our brightest and most adventurous young men, are under clandestine attack from the barbarian in the east. And I can tell you, because it has at last been reported in our national newspapers, that the new communist empire, now rapidly building, is injecting vast amounts of cash into our universities and our press, as well as our unions and factories. This is not the time for our exhausted country to take its eyes off the ball, Johnny.”

Looking with affection at the earnest, wise old face, Redfyre wondered whether to plunge into a string of comforting phrases praising the resilience of the young, stressing their need to experience argument, exhilaration, conviction and—yes—deception, to be able to judge what truly had value. And the absolute necessity for free and true speech in all this.