‘What am I going to do,’ said Caroline, ‘is I’m going to fly.’

I felt rather than heard a thump from inside the Intrepid Fox and caught the scent of candlewax.

‘That was Mum,’ said Caroline.

I motioned her to stand to one side of the doorway while I took the other.

‘It pays to be careful,’ I said.

There was the distant crash of breaking glass that was definitely not vestigium and then a series of high pitched barks.

‘Reynard?’ said Caroline.

I shrugged.

There was a sound like somebody running the tape of a Michael Bay action sequence backwards and something thumped into the door with enough force to make the frame rattle.

‘Nightingale,’ I said.

Then it went suspiciously quiet and we both tensed, and then forced ourselves to take deep breaths to clear our minds. Nothing fancy, I thought. Water balloon in the face and then knock him back into the arms of Nightingale, who would likely be just behind.

We waited what seemed like a long time while the congestion roared past and the carbon monoxide infiltrated our red blood cells – then the door opened and Nightingale stuck his head out.

‘You can come in now,’ he said. ‘We’ve got him.’

Reynard was not a happy fox as we manhandled him through the gloomy halls of Gothdom and out the front door to where Nightingale had left the blue Asbo, the Jag being a bit conspicuous, and plonked him in the back. Then, once he was sure Reynard was safely hand-cuffed, Nightingale cautioned him – using the proper modern caution, I noted.

To give him his due, Reynard looked like he was going to go for defiance – before suddenly deflating and dropping his chin onto his chest.

‘So where you taking him?’ I asked – while technically the Folly is a nick, it bears the same relationship to basic human rights legislation as Camp X-Ray.

‘Belgravia,’ said Nightingale and, smiling, held up an honest to god sky blue Metropolitan Police issue Evidence & Actions Book and flipped it open to the PERSONS CONCERNED/ARRESTED page to show me where Reynard Fossman’s name had been filled in in nice clear capitals.

I wondered what Reynard was going to ask to put in the self-defined ethnicity slot – there wasn’t enough room for ‘anthropomorphic fairy tale animal’.

‘Stephanopoulos said she wanted to be present for the interview,’ said Nightingale.

I glanced over to where Lady Helena and Caroline were standing, just within not-too-obvious eavesdropping distance.

‘And our friends?’

‘They’re waiting for Harold, who’s making haste from Oxford even as we speak,’ said Nightingale.

‘So you found it?’ I asked. If Harold Postmartin was abandoning his Oxford comforts it could only be for The Third Principia.

‘We’ve found something that might be it,’ he said. ‘With luck Harold can verify it.’

‘You seem to have everything sorted,’ I said.