As for being “over a barrel”—if anyone gave off the aroma of being embroiled in some sort of ongoing and ill-defined trouble, it was Platt. Though I had not thought of his expulsion in years, the circumstances had been so diligently hushed up that it seemed likely he’d done something fairly serious, something that in less controlled circumstances might have involved the police: which in a weird way reassured me, in terms of trusting him to collect his cash and keep his mouth shut. Besides—it gladdened my heart to think of it—if anyone alive could high-hand or intimidate Lucius Reeve it was
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