First World War

World War I is both a measure of age and a source of suspicion in the novel. Gerald Wade’s unexplained absence from England during the wartime years becomes a clue in Jimmy Thesiger’s inquiry, while Superintendent Battle later places the younger characters’ amateur intelligence work in a postwar culture drawn to danger, romance, and service.

A Measure of Age and Service

In conversation with Loraine Wade, Jimmy unexpectedly asks how old she had been during the war. She first says nine, then corrects herself to eight. Jimmy estimates that Gerald was about twenty, an age at which, as he observes, most young men fought. Loraine confirms that Gerald was not a soldier, but cannot explain why. The exchange makes the war a practical point of comparison: it turns a family memory into a question about Gerald’s past.

The contrast matters because Loraine’s answer offers no explanation, only an absence in what she knows. Jimmy, by contrast, has already pursued the detail. He tells her that Gerald was out of England from 1915 to 1918 and that no one seems to know exactly where he was. His suggestion that Gerald may have been in Germany is presented as a shrewd guess, not an established fact. Loraine responds with admiration for his deduction, a reaction that underscores how readily an obscure wartime gap can look like evidence when the larger mystery is still unresolved.

The Wartime Absence as a Clue

The novel does not settle the reason Gerald did not serve, nor does it confirm Jimmy’s suspicion about Germany. Instead, the dates give the uncertainty a precise shape: Gerald was away from England for the years 1915 through 1918, a period that overlaps with the war. Jimmy’s inquiry makes that absence newly legible, but not conclusive. The war functions less as a narrated military episode than as a historical frame against which the characters test Gerald’s unexplained movements.

That distinction preserves the clue’s ambiguity. Loraine can attest that her brother was not a soldier, and Jimmy can report what he has learned about his whereabouts, but neither fact alone explains the other. The gap between them keeps the wartime past open to suspicion without turning conjecture into proof.

A Postwar Appetite for Secret Work

When Battle later explains how the amateur group began, he traces it to young people wanting excitement. Gerald was the first to approach him with the idea of forming a band of amateur workers for secret-service activity. Battle warned that the work could be dangerous and made clear that anyone joining must accept that risk; Gerald’s friends were not deterred. The account gives Gerald another connection to secret work, distinct from the earlier question of where he had been during the war.

Battle describes the amateurs’ motives as a love of danger and an honest wish to serve their country. He contrasts their willingness to face real peril with the safety-minded habits of the period, while acknowledging that they have chosen melodramatic trappings. Their work is not merely play: Battle says the group has performed valuable work for his department, work that no one else could have done. In his account, the postwar appetite for adventure becomes a channel for useful service, though the danger he warned about remains real.

Secrecy, Institutions, and the War’s Afterlife

The war’s importance in the novel is therefore indirect but structural. It belongs to the characters’ recent past, supplies a standard by which Gerald’s age and non-service can be judged, and leaves behind a world in which amateur and professional secret work meet. Bundle approaches Scotland Yard believing it keeps lists of London’s secret societies; Battle confirms cautiously that the department tries to stay up to date. Later, he presents the amateurs as an unusual but effective resource for official work. The contrast is not simply between competence and incompetence: Bundle argues that, lacking the professionals’ knowledge and skill, she has the advantage of being able to work in the dark.

The same atmosphere of secrecy carries a sharper threat. At a meeting, Mosgorovsky says too much is becoming known about the organization and that suspected people must be silenced. He also asks about the letter Gerald wrote and the forthcoming inquest into Ronald Devereux’s death, showing how concealed operations and investigations converge. These are not presented as consequences of the war itself. Rather, they show the environment the novel associates with its postwar secret work: incomplete information, official scrutiny, amateur initiative, and mortal danger.