So this, then, was Monsignor Constantine.

‘I’m so sorry, Monsignor,’ Father Dom said. ‘I can’t think how such a thing could have happened. Thank heavens no one was hurt.’ He turned to Bryce and me. ‘You two are all right? You know, I think Miss Simon looks a little pale. I’ll just take her off to see the nurse, if that’s all right with you, Susannah. The rest of you children get on to class now. Everyone is all right. It was just an accident. Run along, now.’

Amazingly, people did as he said. Father Dominic had that kind of way about him. You just sort of had to do what he said. Thank God he used his powers for good instead of evil!

I wish the same could have been said of the monsignor. He stood in the suddenly empty corridor, staring down at the piece of wood. Anybody could tell just to look at it that it wasn’t the least bit rotten. The wood wasn’t new by any means, but it was perfectly dry.

‘I’m having those bird nests removed, Dominic,’ the monsignor said bitterly. ‘All of them. We simply can’t take these kinds of risks. Supposing one of the tourists had been standing here? Or, God forbid, the archbishop. He’s coming next month, you know. What if Archbishop Rivera had been standing here and this beam had fallen? What then, Dominic?’

The nuns who’d come out, hearing all the ruckus, cast looks of such reproof at poor Father Dominic that I nearly said something. I opened my mouth to do so, in fact, but Father Dom tightened his grip on my arm and started marching me away. ‘Of course,’ he called. ‘You’re quite right. I’ll get the custodial staff right on it, Monsignor. We couldn’t have the archbishop injured. No, indeed.’

‘God, what a pus-head!’ I said, as soon as we were safely behind the closed door to the principal’s office. ‘Is he kidding, thinking a couple of birds could do that?’

Father Dominic had gone straight across the room to a small cabinet in which there were a number of trophies and plaques – teaching awards, I found out later. Before he’d been reassigned by the diocese to an administrative position, Father Dominic had been a popular and much-loved teacher of biology. He reached behind one of the awards and drew out a packet of cigarettes.

‘I’m not sure it isn’t a bit sacrilegious, Susannah,’ he said, looking down at the red and white pack, ‘to refer to a monsignor in the Catholic Church as a pus-head.’

‘Good thing I’m not Catholic, then,’ I said. ‘And you can smoke one of those if you want to.’ I nodded at the cigarettes in his hand. ‘I won’t tell.’

He looked down longingly at the pack for a minute more, then heaved this big sigh, and put them back where he’d found them. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Thank you, but I’d better not.’

Jeez. Maybe it was a good thing I’d never really gotten the hang of the smoking thing.