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happened?’
    ‘Oh, didn’t you pick that up? Ricketts was throwing a dart at Lloyd George just as the door opened, and unfortunately he missed the old reprobate completely and hit you instead.’ He neighed. ‘An amusing instance of mistaken identity, n’est pas ?’
    Amiss, who was feeling slightly queasy, tried not to sound querulous. ‘Still not with you, I’m afraid. Firing a dart at Lloyd George?’
    Lambie Crump sighed. ‘Ah, me. Of course, I haven’t yet explained the playroom to you. Come along and see it now.’ He neighed. ‘It’s safe now, I think, but just in case, I’ll go ahead of you.’
    ‘Excuse me, sir. You might wish to replace the dart.’ Tozer presented Lambie Crump with the offending article, now wiped clean of Amiss’s blood, and bowed as they left the dining room and moved into a room of modest size, wallpapered with portraits and photographs. Most were riddled with holes.
    ‘We puncture our enemies here,’ explained his host. ‘Our founder thought it a valuable form of catharsis.’
    Amiss easily identified Napoleon, Gladstone and – just beside the door – Lloyd George. ‘Willie, why is Lloyd George the largest target? Because of what he did to the House of Lords?’
    ‘And death duties. Worst damage ever done to the landed interest.’
    As Amiss tried to place a balding man with a large double chin, Lambie Crump explained: ‘Charles James Fox. One of our chief villains.’
    ‘Because he was in favour of the French Revolution and fell out with Edmund Burke?’
    Lambie Crump nodded approvingly. ‘Precisely. Among other offences. Such as believing the people were right.’
    ‘And is that Bismarck?’ asked Amiss hesitantly.
    ‘Correct. Up there beside the Kaiser, Hitler and Chancellor Kohl. We’re not too keen here on imperialistic Germans. Or imperialist anyone else for that matter.’
    ‘Except us, I presume,’ offered Amiss.
    ‘Well, yes. Obviously of course except us. And the United States, if they’d do it properly. But they’re simply not up to it. Look at Vietnam. No idea how to run that war.’
    Amiss, who had little time for armchair generals, moved to another wall. ‘Not much here from the early part of the century, is there? I see Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair along with a couple of Liberals, but I can’t see anyone from the first half of the century except Lloyd George.’
    ‘We’ve replaced them,’ said Lambie Crump. ‘We keep the nineteenth-century portraits for reasons of tradition, but you don’t get people wishing to vent their feelings on Asquith these days. You’ll find several pockmarked portraits in the attic which have been replaced by these blown-up photographs of our more recent enemies.’ He neighed. ‘There are some areas where modernity has its place, you know. One cannot afford to be slack in identifying contemporary scoundrels.’
    ‘There aren’t yet many holes in that photograph of our present government.’
    Lambie Crump shook his head. ‘I fear Ricketts and – just very occasionally – Henry Potbury are the only members of staff who now keep up this tradition. Potbury usually misses, and it has to be admitted that Ricketts is rather mired in the past. Apart from Lloyd George, whom his predecessor taught him to hate, he mostly aims his darts at Clement Attlee.’
    ‘So this place no longer fulfils its traditional purpose, which I presume – on the Japanese principle – is of stress relief.’
    ‘Come again?’
    ‘I understand Japanese companymen relieve their feelings by throwing missiles at pictures of their seniors.’
    ‘Really. Can’t comment on that. The Wrangler isn’t very interested in the Nipponese. Or in Chinamen for that matter. Oriental preoccupations seem so… so… grubbily materialistic these days, don’t you think?’
    He looked put out. ‘What you have just said assists in making the playroom idea repellent as well as increasingly pointless. One must confess that were it not for Ricketts