The earlier chapel – Notre Dame de la Clarté – exhibited a notice saying that it had been ‘recoiled’ by some meddlesome bishop with too much time on his hands. Tichborne explained that this meant sort of re-consecrated and de-Romanized.

‘Drat it,’ he added petulantly.

The Jerusalem Chapel, however, displayed no such advertising matter and Tichborne said that it would do beautifully – almost certainly disused since they closed all the chantry-chapels after the Reformation thing in 1548, he told us.

‘Reelly?’ said Jock.

In the car going home we asked Jock whether it would be practicable to gain access to the chapel and dolmen by night in a clandestine fashion.

‘A doddle,’ he replied. ‘Just a doddle. The gate into the grounds isn’t worth opening, you can nip over it easy if your piles are better this week. Sorry, sir.’ (I was startled until I realized that ‘sir’ was meant for Tichborne – then I was a little piqued.) ‘That underground tomb,’ he went on, ‘has got a first-class padlock but the chain to it is no better than the common shit-house variety (beg pardon, sir) and a liddle old pair of wire-cutters will soon sort that out.’

‘Ah,’ said Tichborne, ‘but what about that formidable great iron lock to the chapel?’

Jock made a coarse noise by expelling air from between his closed lips.

‘That ain’t a formigal lock,’ he said contemptuously, ‘’t’ain’t even a Yale; it’s just big. I could open that bugger with me old … er, I could open that lock with any old bit of wire. No sweat.’

‘Jock,’ I said, ‘pray stop the car at the next decent inn or hostelry so that I may buy you a large and toothsome drink. “Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he stampeth out the corn” is what I say. So did Deuteronomy.’

‘XXV; 4,’ agreed Tichborne.

‘Reelly,’ said Jock.

That night, after dinner (I think it was Médaillons de Chevreuil S. Hubert au Purée de Marrons with a saucy little Chambertin on the side, unless it was a Friday, in which case Jock would have gone out to fetch fish and chips) that night, I say, I reminded Fr Tichborne about his interest in portable tape-recorders.

‘You were going to explain about portable tape-recorders,’ is how I put it to him.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘I believe I was. Yes, so I was.’

His childlike eyes flitted about wildly as he sipped at Johanna’s incomparable, inherited brandy: one got the impression that it was not quite his bag, as the children say nowadays.

‘I must apologize for this brandy,’ I said, flicking a glance at Johanna. ‘For my part I believe I’d rather have some of that Pastis stuff: could you face it? I dare say there’s some in the house …?’

A few gollups of Pastis later (it’s really just absinthe without the wormwood) he was relaxed and expansive.

‘Do you promise not to laugh?’ were his first words.