“A simple résumé, but it’ll do. Though I wish the British who’ve loved their pastoral heroes since Cincinnatus hadn’t stuck that label on the Boers! ‘Plucky little countryfolk, defending their homeland in arms against our own mighty empire . . . We should teach them their place, but understand and be generous in victory!’ Huh. I blame the foreign correspondents working for the press at home for encouraging that attitude. They were there for the story, the blood, the high drama. They were never there with their notebooks when we relieved farm after farm, settlement after settlement, town after town and set free the thousands of starving native Africans the bloody Boers kept as slaves.”

“I believe most gentlemen of the press were even-handed, considering the intricacies. They reported from the battlefields but also from the field hospitals, both Boer and British. They told the unvarnished truth about Kimberley when they were at last able to enter the city. Some had survived well, their complaints largely about the lack of choice on the lunch menu at the Ritz; others had not. No African babies survived. You can’t feed babies on horsemeat, and Africans were at the end of the queue for provisions. The misdeeds and inhumanity were not glossed over. People back here at home were aware—and deeply concerned.”

The prisoner had heard all this before. His eyes narrowed and he sighed with affected boredom. “There you go! Armchair generals, armchair editors and now armchair policemen. The people didn’t know the half of it! Their views were formed by heavily edited accounts from newspapers with axes to grind, financial backers to keep sweet and papers to sell. Thank God for people like Emily Hobhouse and Churchill’s aunt Sarah, who were on the spot, saw things they weren’t supposed to see and had the courage and tenacity to stand up and shout it from the rooftops! The rooftops of Fleet Street! I salute those ladies!” He collected himself. “I see. You’ve just winkled out another bit of information about Richard Dunne. Socialist? Tick. Bleeding-heart liberal? Tick. Suffragist? Tick. Activist? Tick—”

“Leader of men? Tick. Storyteller? Oh yes. I want to hear how your merry band extricated itself from the problem of the third man! You were telling me how it could happen that a rider from Kimberley managed to get out of town and make it the many miles down to your bend in the Old Muddy.”

The captain grunted. “Storytelling? Well, at least it’s not a chargeable offence yet, as long as it’s the truth, I suppose. And—hear this, Inspector—I’m one for telling the truth.”

“And I’m one for knowing it when I hear it,” Redfyre said.