Jock turned on his heel and clumped towards the door.

‘Oh, and you could bring his corporal in, too?’

Jock ground to a halt and looked over his shoulder in a dangerous sort of way.

‘’Is wot?’

‘It’s in a string bag,’ I explained blandly. It made my day, it really did, although I knew I’d pay for it.

Johanna insisted on seeing the corporal and although Tichborne blushed and demurred she got her way. She usually does.

‘You see,’ said Tichborne anxiously as he unrolled the cloth, ‘one can’t use the consecrated corporal – for one thing it might put off the sort of person we’re hoping to, er, invoke, and for another it would be rude, simply; I mean, I always believe in extending common courtesy to what I might call the Other Side, even though one has to be a bit horrid about Them during the actual ceremony. Do you follow me?’

We made guarded noises.

‘Moreover, this sort of Mass used to be performed on the, er, person of a young person, so to speak, but we’ve found that using a corporal depicting such a young person in the appropriate attitude serves just as well. I mean, I do speak from some experience.’

The cloth was now unfurled and spread out on the sofa-table. I must say that even I found it a little startling: the appropriate attitude of the young person certainly seemed to speak from experience, to use Tichborne’s phrase, and the embroidress had been explicit to the last prick of her needle, if I may coin another. Both Tichborne and I cast worried glances at the gently-nurtured Johanna.

‘Wow!’ she exclaimed politely, ‘that is really out of sight!’ (She only uses Americanisms defensively.) For my part, I wished heartily that the thing were out of sight, lest Jock should come in. (Most brutal criminals are prudes, did you know? Of course you did, forgive me.)

‘You can say that again, sister,’ I growled, falling into her vernacular. She looked at me strangely, perhaps admiring my gift of tongues.

‘You mean the “Wow”,’ she asked, ‘or the other bit?’

‘Never mind.’

‘But this lovely needlework must have cost a fortune, Father Tichborne,’ she resumed, ‘wherever did you get it made?’

‘As a matter of fact I did it myself,’ he said, crimson with shame and vanity. ‘It took ages, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘Working from life, evidently?’ I put in.

‘Well, no, more from memory, really.’

It seemed a good point at which to end that conversation. As we rolled the corporal up George arrived to inspect Fr Tichborne. Introduced, he made the civilizedest noises he could muster, giving the impression that, in his view, the only good Papist was an unfrocked Papist.

Tichborne gained a little ground by asking him about his regiment but lost it all again by saying that he himself had been a chaplain with the Free French.