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ago. She couldn’t recall much of what he’d said that day but she remembered the tall, heron-like figure and the chilly handshake.
    The second meeting was briefer but what he said was more memorable. He was seconding Peggy to MI5 for a month or two, he announced, on a very important assignment that was so confidential she would have to sign a special indoctrination form. She would learn more when she got to Thames House. The one thing Fane wanted to stress was that she should not forget where her loyalties lay. “Don’t go native on us,” said Fane sternly. “We wouldn’t look kindly on that.”
    This had taken some of the gloss off the excitement of her new posting, though Henry Boswell, her direct boss—a nice, well-meaning man, looking forward to his retirement—had tried his best to cheer her up. “It’s a marvellous opportunity,” he said, about her temporary move to the other side of the river, but she sensed he had no idea what it was all about.
    Peggy couldn’t help wondering why, if it were such an important job, Fane himself hadn’t briefed her on it. And why (Peggy was being honest with herself) they were lending MI5 someone so junior. Part of her wondered whether MI6 had already decided they did not need her particular skills and whether she was just a pawn in some personnel deal between the two services.
    But no, there was a real enough job to do. The following day at Thames House, Charles Wetherby had talked to her for over half an hour. He’d been friendly, and had answered all her questions seemingly very frankly. Wetherby had the rare ability to talk to someone as junior as Peggy as if she were his equal. After her session with him, she was no longer in any doubt about the importance, in Wetherby’s eyes, of what she was going to be doing.
    He had explained that Peggy would be working with Liz Carlyle, an experienced and extremely talented investigator, he said, who had particular skills in assessing people. Liz would be leading their two-man team and they would be working direct to him. He would be keeping Geoffrey Fane informed of what they were doing. As Wetherby explained the situation, Peggy began to understand why she had been chosen. She would be following the paper trail and supporting Liz as she made her investigations. This made perfect sense to Peggy. She knew and loved the world of print, fact, data, information—pick your own word, thought Peggy—that was what brought out her skills. It was her métier. She could disinter information which might seem meaningless and sterile to others, then, like a primitive fire maker blowing on a spark, bring it to life. Peggy saw drama where others saw dust.

    Peggy Kinsolving had been a shy, serious child, with freckles and round spectacles. A cheerful aunt had once called her Bobbity Bookworm and this had stuck in the family, so that from the age of seven, everybody called her Bobby. She had taken her nickname with her to her school, one of the few remaining Midlands grammar schools, and on to Oxford. At the end of three years’ hard work she had a good 2:1 in English and vague scholarly ambitions. There was not enough money in the family to support her through a DPhil so she left Oxford with no very clear idea of what to do next. At that stage of her life Peggy was certain of only two things: if you did your best and stuck at it, things would turn out well, and you should not put up with anything you didn’t like. Accordingly she had reverted firmly to the name Peggy.
    For want of any better idea Peggy had taken a post with a private library in Manchester. The understanding was that she would assist the readers half the time and the rest of the time was hers. But since only an average of five people a day made use of her services, she had been largely free to pursue her own research into the life and writings of a nineteenth-century Lancashire social reformer and novelist.