“A round table with the Swindon Society of Bowdlerizers. They’re anxious that ‘certain passages’ be removed from ‘certain books’ in order that they can ‘shine with greater luster’ and be made more suitable for family audiences.”

“Which books in particular?”

Duffy handed me a list.

“Wanda Does Wantage?” I read, “There’d be nothing left except nine prepositions, six colons and a noun.”

“I think that’s the point.”

I handed the list back. “Tell me,” I said, “did the previous chief librarian really vanish without a trace?”

“Not entirely,” said Duffy, passing me a photograph of a concrete monorail support somewhere on the Wantage branch line.

“We were sent this.”

I stared at the photograph. “Did you tell the police?”

“They said it was nothing and that people get sent pictures of concrete monorail supports all the time.”

“Do they?”

“No, not really. Can I schedule the budget meeting for Thursday morning first thing? The city council wants to reassign some of our financial resources.”

“Any particular reason?”

“We’ve got generous funding not only because it’s sensible and right and true and just and proper but because we’ve been doing all SO-27’s work for the past thirteen years. But now that Detective Smalls is taking over the Literary Detectives, much of our budget will be reassigned to her.”

“Is this important?”

“Funding’s about the most important thing there is.”

“I suppose you should, then.”

I stared at the huge amount of meetings I still had to attend on my schedule.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “I’ll just turn up tomorrow morning and start having meetings until my brain turns to jelly. Then we’ll stop and I’ll hide for a bit, then do some more while thinking of other things, then forget it all by the evening, and we’ll do pretty much the same thing again the day after—and rely on subordinates and assistants to deal with actually running the place.”

“Thank goodness for that,” said Duffy with a sigh of relief. “I was worried you had no experience of running a large public department.”

There was a knock at the door, and a tall, fastidious-looking man appeared. “Am I disturbing anything?”

It was James Finisterre.

“Jim!”

We embraced, and he held my hands in his.

“Great to have you on board. We need some safe hands in the boardroom. Duffy looking after you well?”

“He has been exemplary.”