“And because we think there’s an evil magician operating in London and we think he may have been at Oxford—at the same time you were.” I looked at her. “You may even know him.”

“No. I would have smelled him,” she said. “Even as I can smell you now.”

“So what do I smell like?”

“Ambition, vanity, pride.” She shrugged. “Fried plantain and honeysuckle. Don’t ask me why.”

“Who were they?” I asked. “The practitioners at Oxford—I know you know.”

She tried to stop herself but in the end there are some varieties of information that are only fun if you tell them to someone else.

“There was a dining club. Do you know what that is?” she asked.

An excuse for students to gather together and get pissed, as far as I knew. The membership criteria were set at variable levels of exclusivity and expense. I doubted Tyburn had joined one and, had I gone to Oxford, I’m not sure I could have joined one if I’d wanted to.

It was called the Little Crocodiles, she told me. And it was boys only, and while it wasn’t exclusive to any one college it was mostly a Magdalen crowd. They were considered to be very dull, not aristocratic enough for the social climbers and not riotous enough for the aristos.

“Not my cup of tea,” said Tyburn. “But I remember running into a couple of members once at a party and catching that whiff.” She waved her hand in front of her nose. “Like I said, ambition, sweaty, like somebody who’s working too hard.”

“Do you remember their names?” I asked.

She did, because remembering who was who was part of who she was. She also had half a dozen other names of possible Little Crocodiles.

“And you’re sure the dining club were actively training?” I asked.

“I made a point of getting close enough to smell any member I could find,” she said. “I thought they were somehow related to Professor Postmartin and your boss. I assumed that this was their attempt to expand the influence of the Folly.”

She shook her wine bottle and poured the remaining half measure into her glass.

I judged that now would be an opportune moment to depart, so I thanked her, put away my notebook, and stood up.

“For fifty years they do nothing and then suddenly there’s you,” she said. “How did that happen?”

“You know what you smell like to me, Ty?” I said. “Brandy and cigars and old rope.”

“They hung Jonathan Wild at Tyburn,” she said. “For all that he thought himself the Thief Taker General of Great Britain.”

I didn’t answer that one because I felt getting out the front door intact was more important.