“I can think of more attractive and more accurate ways of expressing it. But yes, why not? They will both have an entrée into university life once they’re settled. They could be of use to us. I shall introduce them to Suzannah and Earwig, and they will judge general ability, identify particular skills and connections and advise as to deployment.”

“Great Heavens! It’s like taking a briefing from the head of MI5!” Redfyre smiled in a vain attempt to hide his irritation. “What are you, Aunt? Special advisor to M?”

“No, but she is pretty chummy with K!” The voice rumbled up from the depths of Gerald’s buttoned leather armchair. “Vernon Kell. Since last month, we should say Colonel Kell, don’t you know. State security wallah. Runs the show. Very much in favour of the police—you ought to know that—and a fan of Sherlock Holmes. Hetty knows his wife . . . Constance, is it? Pretty little thing, she used to be. Has had a lot to put up with. All that China business . . . Puts a strain on a marriage, that sort of thing.” He went back to his snoring.

“Ah,” Redfyre said, subdued. “Another sheet in your CID file I have not been granted sight of, Aunt?”

He was teasing about the file. It did not exist, at least as far as he was aware. As he was the officer who had discovered the existence of his aunt’s clandestine guerrilla women’s group, he would surely have been asked to initiate such a document. And he would have been left chewing his pencil at the first line. For a start, he would never have been able to come up with a title for such an amorphous, anonymous gang of shape-shifters; it was hard to grasp the essence of a unit whose members had smartly chosen not to give themselves a name. And to go on, he could have written nothing intelligible about their activities and organisation. What were they? A secret suffragist society? Political pressure group? He knew what MacFarlane’s comment would have been on viewing a draft of such a report: A mob of underemployed, overprivileged trouble-seekers. Now the older ones have got the vote, they’ll turn their attention to some other cause . . . banning things: beer, betting, dog-racing, St. Bruno’s Rough Shag and anything else they think men are fond of.