‘A wide-spread and pardonable error, Mortdecai. First, you see, by the time of the great witch-hunts of the seventeenth century – best-known because they were politically inspired you see, for there was a sort of suggestion of confrontation between the High Church and Papist Cavaliers, who, oddly, were supposed to more or less tolerate the Old Religion (perhaps they knew how to use it?) and the Puritans, who chose to see witchcraft as an extension of Rome; by this time, I say, the serious witches had gone very thoroughly underground and the only ones left on the surface were a few old crones practising a little Goëtic magic to help their friendly neighbours and to smarten up their petty persecutors.

‘Now, the rules of witch-finding were that a witch always had a devil’s nipple, by which she could give suck to her Familiar. They used to tie the poor old biddies up and watch them, certain that when the Familiar became hungry it would come around for its rations. Most old ladies, to this day, own a pussy-cat – and most old ladies tend to have a wart or a mole or two, this is common knowledge. You see? Moreover, there is an ancient confusion here, for the word “cat” used also to mean a stick, such as witches might ride on. (Perhaps you played “tip-cat” as a child? No?) In short, you may be sure that the toad, not the cat, is the most popular and effective familiar. “Was” perhaps I should say. Or rather “was deemed to be”,’ he ended lamely. The warmth of his defence of the toad led me to suspect uneasily that a close search of his quarters would pretty certainly reveal a comfortable vivarium somewhere, bursting with the little batrachians.

‘Well, John,’ I said heavily, ‘that’s all quite riveting and I’m more than grateful for the insight you have supplied into the way this awful chap’s mind works and so forth, but now I feel we should be thinking about remedies and things, don’t you? I mean, to you it’s an entrancing piece of living folk-lore, no doubt, but over there in Jersey two of my good friends’ wives have been horribly assaulted and one of them, if I’m not mistaken, is in jeopardy of grave mental illness. I mean, conversation of old customs and so on I’m all for, and I’d be the first to join a society for preserving the Piddle-Hinton Cruddy Dance etc., but you wouldn’t actually subscribe to a fund for the preservation of the practice of thuggee, would you? To my mind, this Johnny should be stopped. Or am I being old-fashioned?’

‘Oh Mortdecai, Mortdecai,’ he said-how funny it sounded, sort of hyphenated – ‘you were always impatient with things of the spirit. I remember you were rusticated in your second year, were you not, for – ’

‘Yes.’

‘And again in your last year for – ’