Now, according to my plans, you see, we should have been neatly arrested, charged with breaking and entering, and fined some five bob each the next day, giving enough details to enable the Jersey Evening Past to make it known to one and all – and particularly, of course, to the witchmaster rapist chap – that the Mass of St Sécaire had in fact been held, with him as the objective. I had, perhaps rather coyly, not made it perfectly clear to George and Sam that we should probably all have to spend the night in durance vile: that is to say, what you and I call ‘the nick’ – I don’t like to cause people premonitory pain, do you? – and of course they would not, in any case, have agreed to the notion.

As it turned out, neither Sam nor George had really pulled himself together before we arrived at the Cop-shop in Rouge Bouillon, nor did they fully understand that they were to be the involuntary guests of the Deputy Lieutenant and Commander-in-Chief of Jersey until they – we – were issued with two blankets apiece, a cup of cocoa and a capital piece of bread and dripping, which I for one was ready for. Luckily, there were plenty of cells – the tourist season had scarcely begun – so that I had one all to myself and was spared any recriminations which my friends might otherwise, in the heat of the moment, have thought fit to heap upon me. The infinitely kindly policeman-gaoler permitted me to keep my briefcase of pyjamas, sandwiches and Scotch, exacting only a token tribute from the last. I shall not pretend that I slept well but at least I brushed my teeth, unlike some I could name.

12

Where the dead red leaves of the years lie rotten,

The cold old crimes and the deeds thrown by,

The misconceived and the misbegotten,

I would find a sin to do ere I die,

Sure to dissolve and destroy me all through …

The Triumph of Time

We who assembled in the Commander’s office at half-past eight the next morning were but a moody crew. George and Sam seemed to be harbouring some petty resentment about the fact that I had had the simple foresight to pack my toothbrush and things. Perhaps, too, they just didn’t like being locked up: there are people like that.

George was stalking up and down, four paces to the left, four to the right, like the captain of a very small ship pacing whatever it is that master-mariners pace. He was snarling a string of names of influential people, all of whom, he made it clear, he was about to telephone, and in the order named. Sam sat in a sort of collapsed lump: like me, he is a lovely talker when he has had his pre-luncheon drinks, but not before, really.