“Let’s work the thing out. Sixteen years ago he was still an Englishman, an officer in Her Majesty’s Navy. Now he’s a German. At some time between this and then, I suppose, he came to grief—disgrace, flight, exile. When did it happen?”
“They’ve been here three years; von Brüning said so.”
“It was long before that. She has talked German from a child. What’s her age, do you think—nineteen or twenty?”
“About that.”
“Say she was four when this book was published. The crash must have come not long after.”
“And they’ve been hiding in Germany since.
“Is this a well-known book?”
“I never saw another copy; picked this up on a second-hand bookstall for threepence.”
“She looked at it, you say?”
“Yes, I’m certain of it.”