'Last October, he went up to the shipyard in Northumberland and stayed for nearly a week. He often did this; every year I think he spent about ten weeks away, going round one plant or another. Sometimes there was a good reason; a huge decision on investment, problems with a contract, or something like that. Other times there was no reason at all. He simply wanted to be there, and smell the smell, as he put it. He spent as much time on the factory floor as he did in the offices, spent time talking to the men, and stood, watching. He believed you could tell the health of a company by the way it looked and felt. You didn't need to see the books.'

'Did you ever go with him?'

'Not often. But then he didn't often come with me on my trips either. Each of us to our own particular universe. He was happy in his, I in mine. There were some things we could not share. And he needed to be without distractions. He would say that the factories would talk to him, and he had to listen. Sometimes, they would say one thing, the accounts another. Then he would become curious, and stay until he was satisfied. This time he came back perplexed. All had been well, he said. The yard was happy, the operations were smoothly run. They had recently finished a gigantic project to dig out new dock which involved dredging a large part of the river itself so ships could be launched more easily. The cost of Dreadnoughts is so astounding that I was always amazed by his ability to contemplate it. It didn't bother John at all. For him, large sums of money were just small sums, with more noughts on the end. Something was either a wise investment or not. Whether it was for one thousand pounds or one million did not alter the principle.

'All was well. He was satisfied. Apart from one small thing. One of the accounting clerks had been dismissed for peculation. A small amount of money, nothing more than twenty pounds, completely insignificant. But he had been a young man, full of promise, who had been earmarked by one of the managers as someone who could be trained up and given a great deal of responsibility in years to come. The manager felt to blame, that his assessment of the young man's character had been at fault. He had decided not to bring charges, but mentioned it to my husband.

'Most people in John's position, I am sure, would not have bothered about it. All companies mislay a certain amount of money; it is considered inevitable. John thought differently. He had spent years developing his organisation and wanted to achieve perfection. It did not matter to him whether it was twenty pounds or twenty thousand or even two shillings; it should not have been possible, and if twenty pounds could disappear, maybe twenty thousand could too.

'So he looked further and came to the conclusion that this was not the only time such a thing had happened, although he could not discover many details. But he did find out where they were going to, an address in East London which only a small amount of investigation revealed was occupied by this man known as Jan the Builder.

'What infuriated John was that he could not discover how these payments were being authorised. The man responsible clammed up and refused to say anything at all. So he decided to tackle the problem from the other end. And that was where I came in.'

'Yes,' I said. We had now got to the point – the only point, if truth be known, which interested me. Embezzlement and failures in accountancy procedures were all very well, but I was still fixated on the eyes of Jenny the Red, staring icily in a meeting hall. 'Why did you come in?'

'Perfectly simple. I offered, and he accepted my offer. Not willingly or readily, but I am quite persuasive. You find it all perplexing, no doubt. That is because you know nothing of me apart from what you see. You think of me as a pampered lady, used to gliding through a ball or a dinner party, but quite unfitted for real life. Too delicate and refined, shocked even at the vulgarity of a middle-class hotel. Is that correct?'

I tried to protest and say nothing of the sort but, in essence, it was an accurate summary.

'As I say, you know nothing of me. I have a long name of impeccable lineage but that covers a multitude of things. Hungarian aristocrats are not necessarily wealthy or pampered. I was neither. John could not send one of his people to get close to this group; they would have been spotted easily. These payments were coming from inside his companies, and so he felt unwilling to trust anyone connected with them. He needed someone who could be convincing, and whom he could trust. He did not for a moment think of using me.

'I decided to do it. I go to Baden for the waters every autumn – indulgent of me, I know, but I find it pleasant to talk German again – and when I was there I began to read about anarchism and Marxism and revolutionary politics – very interesting, by the way. Then I borrowed the identity of a German revolutionary whom the German police had executed in secret. An accidental fall down the stairs. It was convenient for them – and lucrative – to let it be known that she had been released and had gone into exile. Xanthos organised it for me; I suppose money changed hands in his usual fashion. I studied the clothes and the mannerisms, the way of talking. I went on to Hamburg, then travelled back on a tramp steamer to London. I arrived as Jenny the Red, brutal, uncompromising, more ardent than most men. I got to know these people and they slowly began to trust me in a way they would never have done a man, or someone English. No one John could have found would have been anywhere near as convincing.'

I gaped, at her story and the pride with which she told it. It was so astounding it was ridiculous. It was all very well to lay claim to a hard and poor childhood, with nothing but a book of genealogy to burn for winter warmth, but I still did not easily credit it.

'Your husband allowed you to do this?'

'No. He expressly forbade it.'

'So . . .'

'Nobody gives me orders, Mr Braddock,' she said, sounding not a little like Jenny the Red. 'Certainly not John. When I proposed the idea, it was only a light-hearted suggestion. His opposition made me determined to see if it could be done. We were quite often apart; an absence of a couple of months was quite simple. I was established in my new identity well before he even discovered that I had gone against his wishes and, as I had been successful and was determined to continue whatever he said, there wasn't a great deal he could do except accept my help.'

'But why did you want to?'

She shrugged. 'Because.'

'Because what?'

'I wanted to. Perhaps I was a little bored. I will get little sympathy from you if I say that the life I lead has its dull side.'

'None at all.'

'But it does, nonetheless. Most of the people I know are content to while away their lives playing bridge and going to house parties. I have little taste for such things, which is why I have to go to Paris or Italy for stimulation. John generally understood and let me come and go as I pleased. He let me do this for him, however reluctantly, because he trusted me and knew he could not stop me. I was never really able to do much to help him, beyond the things you do as a wife.'

I shook my head, to try and knock all the contradictory thoughts out of it so we could get on. So, Elizabeth, Lady Ravenscliff, née Countess Elizabeth Hadik-Barkoczy von Futak uns Szala, transformed herself into Jenny the Red, revolutionary anarchist of Frankfurt. Repeat that sentence and see how easily you believe it. Then you will grasp my difficulties.

'Let us say, just for a moment, that I find all this credible,' I said, 'which I don't. What did you discover?'

'I discovered, in brief,' she said, evidently amused, 'that Jan the Builder was part of this group which called itself the International Brotherhood of Socialists, who are, in fact, little more than criminals. Fanatical, of course; they are deeply embittered about the fate of their country, which doesn't exist at the moment. But they use their anger to justify whatever they want to do, and that includes murder, robbery and extortion. They are violent, suspicious and, for the most part not very intelligent. Only Jan is clever, but he is also the most violent of them all. He mixes his ardour with cunning and ruthlessness. He is quite a magnetic character. Women fall all over him.'