‘I quite understand. Oh dear me, you do look troubled. Sit down and tell me everything.’

‘This afternoon we were fitting on the costumes for our scenes at the Fête, and when it was Ethel Rigby’s turn, I found . . .’

‘That you’d run out of material? Dear Miss Mayfield, let that be the least of your worries. I told you to hire what was needed.’

‘Ethel Rigby,’ Miss Mayfield said in a dogged voice, ‘had had, very recently, a really savage beating.’

‘What? Ethel Rigby?’

‘Ethel Rigby. And I think I should tell you that I have, before this, been told that her grandmother ill-treats her.’

‘Old Phoebe Rigby ill-treat Ethel! Miss Mayfield, that is palpable nonsense; there isn’t a more doting, indulgent . . .’ He sought for some final, clinching adjective.

‘I know. I’ve heard all that, Canon Thorby. And I know it looks that way. The girl herself connives to maintain that impression. But I can’t believe it, not after what I saw this afternoon.’

‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘we can soon settle the truth of this. I’ll go straight round there and see for myself. You can come with me or not, just as you prefer.’

‘I’ll come. I’m the one who made the accusation.’

There’s probably some – I won’t say reason; physical violence is never reasonable, but some justification. Though there again I must admit that Ethel never struck me as a girl who needed chastisement. If Reeve, now, took a stick to that baggage Juliet, nobody could blame him; Ethel always seems a bit spiritless; but, of course, how they seem in public and how they behave at home are very different things.’

‘Nothing,’ said Miss Mayfield flatly, ‘could possibly have earned a girl such a thrashing.’

‘Dear me, as bad as that?’ He looked at her sideways from his greater height. ‘You’ll excuse me asking this, won’t you – is this your first brush with this kind of thing?’

‘Not quite . . .’ She told him about the cases in Alchester, adding, ‘Africans are extremely indulgent to their children when they are young, but they have some . . . some very brutal customs, which I had to learn to live with. I’m not unduly squeamish.’

‘No, of course. I was forgetting. You have such a delicate, Dresden-china air, you know; one thinks of you as having been in a glass cabinet all your life. And I suppose the very reverse is true.’

Mrs Rigby said, ‘Good evening, sir,’ and then, with greatly diminished cordiality, ‘Good evening, Miss,’ and ushered them into the parlour, She knows why we are here, Miss Mayfield thought; and was glad of the Canon’s support.

The old woman, having seen them seated, sat down herself on one of the hard straight chairs and folded her hands in her lap.

Canon Thorby, maintaining an easy and affable manner, went straight to the point.