Fludd, sir, wrote a lot of nonsense because he wished to explain things that couldn’t be accounted for at the time. But essentially—I mean about the real essence of things—he knew much, much more than the scientists of today, who no longer even laugh at his theories. I don’t know what your opinion is, but nowadays we know a great deal about the microscopic detail. Those people knew rather more about the whole—the great interconnectedness of things—which can’t be weighed on scales and cut into slices like ham.”

The fervour in his eyes was certainly un-English. The subject was clearly close to his heart.

Then he was overcome with embarrassment. He smiled, and assumed a more casual tone.

“Yes, Fludd is a bit of an obsession with me.”

At that moment a pretty girl joined us, and chatted away at great length, rather inanely, while the Earl, with true good breeding, generously encouraged her. I writhed with frustration, desperate to resume the conversation. Nothing interests me more than the way people relate emotionally to the abstract—why Mr X is a convinced Anglo-Catholic and Miss Y is devoted to Gastropoda. And why an Earl should be so enthusiastic about someone so distant and thoroughly dead as Fludd—that justly-forgotten quack and sorcerer—was a particularly interesting question.

But once again, Lady Malmsbury-Croft descended on me, and this time her blunderings proved less inspired. She led me to a distinguished old dame who would not have looked out of place in a museum and who quizzed me about animal rights in Romania. My protests were in vain: she insisted on regaling me with shocking examples from her last visit to Armenia. Apparently some lapdogs had become separated from their owner and been forced to fend for themselves.

Luckily a friend of mine, Fred Walker, suddenly appeared before us, with a sleekly-groomed young man in tow. He seated this person beside the lady, gathered me up and whisked me away. The old dowager failed to notice the change.

“Who is this Earl?” I asked him.

“You don’t know him? Why, he’s the one genuinely interesting person in the room. Owen Pendragon, Earl of Gwynedd. A thoroughly fascinating crank—just the chap for you.”

“So what’s his story?”

Gossip was one of Fred’s strong points.

“Well, then—this is years ago now—he had a mistress, a woman of rather dubious reputation, as you will see. She began her career in Dublin, walking the streets. He was going to marry her—people were quite outraged—but she had second thoughts, dumped him and married an old millionaire called Roscoe. Roscoe was the Earl’s father’s best friend.

“The amusing bit in all this,” he went on, “is that the Earl is otherwise a convinced, if rather quixotic, aristocrat. The story goes that while he was up at Oxford he joined a society that was so exclusive there were only three men in the entire university of sufficient rank to belong. Then the other two went down, and he stayed on as the one and only member. For two years he pondered who to take on as Vice-President, but couldn’t find anyone. Finally he went down himself and the society folded. For similar reasons, he has never once set foot in the House of Lords.”

“I’m sorry, Fred, but I don’t see anything special in this. Your stories are usually a lot better. From a man with a head like that, I expected something much more interesting. For an aristocrat to marry a woman of the lowest class is only natural. His social rank is enough for two.”

“True, János. But that’s not why I described him as an odd character.