I said he had been, but I was careful to keep it vague. Once you get them talking, witnesses like to tell you what you want to hear. It’s depressingly easy to lead them astray – just asks the inmates of any remand wing.

‘I did catering at Oxford College in the early nineties,’ she said. ‘I used to do silver service jobs to pay the bills. There was plenty of work around the colleges; they always seemed to be stuffing their faces for one reason or another.’

I nodded – Jeremy Beaumont-Jones had been at Oxford at that time.

‘I remember him because we did a couple of jobs for this dining club,’ she said. ‘And they were a bit odd, if you know what I mean?’

‘Scientology odd?’ asked Guleed. ‘Or My Little Pony odd?’

‘Our kind of odd,’ said Wanda, making a little swirling gesture with her hand that took in all three of us. Guleed frowned at that and gave me an accusing look.

‘Magic, right?’ I said.

Wanda gave me a small smile and tilted her head to one side.

‘Or are we talking fae?’ I asked, but I knew exactly who we were talking about.

‘Wizard stuff,’ said Wanda. ‘You know, spells and wheels and compasses.’

I rummaged around on the tablet until I found a student photograph of Jeremy Beaumont-Jones that I’d lifted off his Facebook Page.

‘Definitely him,’ said Wanda.

I found similarly youthful pictures of Martin Chorley and a couple of other suspected Little Crocodiles, but she didn’t recognise any of them. She did identify a contemporary picture of Geoffrey Wheatcroft, DPhil, former wizard, theology lecturer and the man stupid, or wicked, enough to teach magic outside the formal structure of the Folly.

‘That’s one of things that made them unusual,’ said Wanda. ‘He was there for a lot of the gigs.’

Wanda said it was important not to get carried away with mystique around the dining clubs.

‘It’s just like your average Saturday night in Reading city centre, only wrapped up in a ton of money,’ she said. ‘Well, most of them, anyway . . . not this lot – ah!’ She stopped and tapped the table. ‘Little Crocodiles,’ she said. ‘That’s what they were called.’

And since Geoffrey Wheatcroft turned up to most of the events, that at least kept the student projectile vomiting to a minimum. Although the wandering hands were still a nuisance.

‘Like Greenford disco all over again,’ she said.

‘How did you know they were doing magic?’ asked Guleed.

Because people were popping off spells all through dinner, especially lux which, as anyone will tell you, is the first spell you learn. And there was a drinking game where each contestant conjured a werelight and then saw how many shots they could knock back while keeping it up.