"I never imagined that someone with no practical experience of knifework was," he says, in the matter-of-fact tone he occasionally uses where someone else would go soothing. "And practical experience of knifework in a personage, especially of the childhood sort that generally leads to this sort of thing, would not have gone unremarked. However, why pick the matter up again now, unless you have a new lead? I know you've other projects."