Experience caused Miss Mayfield to doubt that; good chaps did not become inspectors. Inspectors were all cranks – at least in Alchester. They didn’t wish you to teach a child to write a decent letter and address an envelope properly; they wanted more self-expression, something called Free Drama or Eurhythmics; they had almost religious attachments to some unusual form of handwriting, script, or italic; they thought history could be taught by the making of a puppet theatre, geography by the installation of a rain gauge, and that disciplinary problems could all be solved by the setting up of a class committee before which the behaviour of the teacher could be criticized as freely as that of the most disturbing element in the class. None of these quirks – some of which Mr Culpeper must share in order to have reached his present rank – seemed to Miss Mayfield to contribute to good chappery’.

However, within five minutes of meeting Mr Culpeper she was willing to forgive him his profession. He was the exception which proved the rule. He was a good-looking man, in his forties, with dark hair and dancing brown eyes; and he was a gentleman, Miss Mayfield concluded in her old-fashioned way. She remembered that Matthew Arnold had been a school inspector.

They chatted easily for half an hour, and then she was able to bring up the matter of the eleven-plus examination, and was pleased to hear Mr Culpeper say:

‘It’s a thing I feel strongly about. Every child should take it, even those at the most expensive prep schools; it’s a safeguard against a change of circumstances. I don’t think Canon Thorby is at all averse to the idea, but Mrs Westleton was dead against it. I think she feared that a Walwyk eleven-year-old might fail to pass and that the failure would reflect on her. It was an odd thing; she was here for many years, immensely popular – you could almost say well beloved – but she was, personally, most unconfident and insecure, I once broached the subject of the eleven-plus to her and she was so upset that I promised Canon Thorby never to mention it again. I’m so glad you brought it up.’

‘Well, you see, there is a case . . .’ and she told him about Mrs Baines’s wish to leave Walwyk and the problem it evoked regarding Sydney’s future.