“This Dr Henry Staunton who has no known place of birth is a very common figure in genealogical work for people from the New World. But we can usually find the origin of such people, if we sift the parish records, wills, records of Chancery and Exchequer, and Manor Court Rolls. That takes a long time and runs into money. So we start with the obvious, hoping for a lucky hit. Of course, as your father thinks, he may be a Staunton of Longbridge in Warwickshire, but there are also Stauntons of Nottingham, Leicester, Lincolnshire, and Somerset, all of a quality that would please your father. But sometimes we can take a short cut. Was your grandfather an educated man?”

“He was a doctor. I wouldn’t call him a man of wide cultivation.”

“Good. That’s often a help. I mean, such people often retain some individuality under the professional veneer. Perhaps he said some things that stuck in your mind? Used unusual words that might be county dialect words? Do you recall anything like that?”

I pondered. “Once he told my sister, Caroline, she had a tongue sharp enough to shave an urchin. I’ve repeated it to her often.”

“Oh, that’s quite helpful. He did use some dialect words then. But urchin as a word for the common hedgehog is very widespread in country districts. Can you think of anything more unusual?”

I was beginning to respect Pledger-Brown. I had always thought an urchin was a boy you didn’t like, and could never figure out why Grandfather would want to shave one. I thought further.

“I do just remember that he called some of his old patients who stuck with him, and were valetudinarians, ‘my old wallowcrops.’ Is that of any use? Could he have made the word up?”

“Few simple people make up words. ‘Wallowcrop’; I’ll make a note of that and see what I can discover. Meanwhile keep thinking about him, will you? And I’ll come again when I have a better idea what to do.”

Think about Grandfather Staunton, powerful but dim in my past. A man, it seemed to me now, with a mind like a morgue in which a variety of defunct ideas lay on slabs, kept cold to defer decay. A man who knew nothing about health, but could identify a number of diseases. A man whose medical knowledge belonged to a time when people talked about The System and had spasms and believed in the efficacy of strong, clean smells, such as oil of peppermint, as charms against infection. A man who never doubted that spankings were good for children, and once soundly walloped both Caroline and me because we had put Eno’s Fruit Salts in the bottom of Granny’s chamber-pot, hoping she would have a fantod when it foamed. A furious teetotaller, malignantly contemptuous of what he called “booze-artists” and never fully reconciled to my father when he discovered that Father drank wines and spirits but had contumaciously failed thereby to become a booze-artist. A man whom I could only recall as gloomy, heavy, and dull, but pleased with his wealth and unaffectedly scornful of those who had not the wit or craft to equal it; preachers were excepted as being a class apart, and sacred, but needing frequent guidance from practical men in the conduct of their churches. In short, a nasty old village moneybags.