“Only from the local paper. Oh, and the Daily Express, but when I told him it was the boiler, he lost all interest. He didn’t even take any photographs.”

Ernest asked if he could use the telephone in the rectory and put a call through to Lady Bracknell. “I’ll try to intercept the articles,” Bracknell said, “or at least the photographs, in the dailies from this end. You stop the one in the local paper and then ring me back. You’re certain it’s only the Mirror and the Express?”

“Yes,” Ernest said, but after he’d rung off he questioned the verger again, who insisted that only the two journalists had been there. Ernest told him to ring him if any other newspaper showed up, and gave him Lady Bracknell’s number. “And if any other reporters arrive, you’re not to let them take any photographs,” he said, and went to see the local paper’s editor, hoping he wouldn’t ask too many questions.

A vain hope. “But I don’t see how printing the story can be giving the enemy information when it’s nothing at all to do with the war,” the editor said. “This was a boiler explosion, not a bomb.”

“Yes,” Ernest said, “but giving the enemy accurate information about any destruction aids them in their propaganda efforts.”

“But you’ve put that it was destroyed by a V-2,” he said, frowning. “Don’t the Germans know where their rockets hit?”

They will if I don’t pull this off, he thought.

“And won’t saying the church was destroyed by a V-2 assist them in their propaganda efforts?”

“No, because we’ll be able to discredit it later, you see,” Ernest explained, and that actually seemed to satisfy him. To make sure, Ernest offered to set the type himself and then stayed to see the front page printed, which took forever. The paper’s printing press was even more prone to breakdowns than the Call’s. It was after two by the time he reported in.

“I had to threaten them,” Lady Bracknell said, “but I’ve managed to kill both the stories at the Mirror and the Express. But I couldn’t give them the new version, so I need you to run it in to Fleet Street.”

In to Fleet Street? That would take the rest of the day. “Can’t I phone it in? I was hoping to get the photo into some of the village weeklies today as well.”

“No, I want you to go to the Mirror and the Express in person to oversee things. I don’t want any muck-ups. It would only take a single story slipping through to ruin the whole scheme.”

Or for Home Secretary Morrison to realize what they were up to and order them to stop, and then he’d have no reason to be planting stories in the village papers. And it was entirely possible that the editor at the Mirror or the Express had agreed to hold the story but forgotten to tell the reporter. Or the typesetter. Which meant he’d better get in to Fleet Street as soon as possible. He hoped they didn’t prove as difficult as the Cricklewood paper.