‘Certainly, certainly. Come along. Come along,’ said Mr Harris in the patient voice of vicarage hospitality. ‘Come along.’

He took them through a french window into a little faded red room where old dim photographs of young men in cassocks hung beside old dim photographs of famous cathedrals. The shelves were full of dusty volumes of sermons and the works of Mrs Humphry Ward, Charles Kingsley, Charlotte M. Yonge, Dickens and Sir Walter Scott. Between a commentary and an Imitation of Christ was a copy of The Martyrdom of Man, truculently solid. For Mr Harris had once been an earnest undergraduate and had faced things. It was a shabby, friendly old room.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ said Mr Harris.

He hurriedly gathered up from the chairs parish magazines, Church Times and seed catalogues. With his arms full of these papers, he wandered vaguely about his den.

Alleyn and Fox sat down on the horsehair chairs.

‘That’s right,’ said Mr Harris. He incontinently dropped all his papers on the floor and sat down.

‘Now, what can I have the pleasure—? Um?’

‘First, sir, I must tell you we are police officers.’

‘Dear me,’ said Mr Harris, ‘not young Hockley again, I hope. Are you sure it’s not my brother you want? The rector of Barbicon-Bramley? He’s been very interested in the case and he told me that if the poor lad was not charged he could find a post for him with some kind souls who are prepared to overlook—’

‘No, sir,’ interrupted Alleyn gently, ‘it’s you we want to see.’

‘But I’m retired,’ said Mr Harris opening his eyes very wide. ‘I’m quite retired, you know.’

‘I am going to ask you to go back to the days when you were rector of Falconbridge.’

‘Of Falconbridge!’ Mr Harris beamed at them. ‘Now this is really the greatest pleasure. You come from dear old Falconbridge! Let me see, I don’t recollect either of your faces though, of course, I have been retired now for fifteen years and I’m afraid my memory is not what it used to be. Now tell me your names.’

‘Mr Harris, we don’t come from Falconbridge, we are from Scotland Yard. My name is Alleyn and this is Inspector Fox.’

‘How do you do? I hope nothing has gone wrong in the dear old village,’ ejaculated Mr Harris anxiously. He suddenly remembered his panama hat and snatched it from his head revealing a shining pink pate with an aura of astonished white fluff.

‘No, no,’ said Alleyn hastily. ‘At least, not recently.’ He darted a venomous glance at Fox who was grinning broadly. ‘We are investigating a case, sir, and are anxious to trace a letter which we believe to have been lost in Falconbridge between seventeen and eighteen years ago.’

‘A letter! Dear me, I’m afraid if it was addressed to me there is very little hope of recovery. Only this morning I found I had mislaid a most important letter from a very dear old friend, Canon Worsley of All Saints, Chipton. It’s a most extraordinary thing where that letter has gone. I distinctly remember that I put it in the pocket of this jacket and—’