‘Anything you told me in confidence would be perfectly safe with me,’ he said. And that was true. He was a busybody, but not a gossip. He went on, ‘Of course, if anything is really troubling you, you should consult Canon Thorby. He is the uncrowned King of Walwyk. I don’t mean that unkindly. He’s actually very sensible and well-meaning. We meet on one or two committees.’

‘Canon Thorby . . .’ she said, and stopped, wondering if she was on the verge of being disloyal. ‘He does know the village and the people very well, naturally. But sometimes a stranger . . . It’s like families not noticing how one member has aged, or looks ill, and then someone else comes in and sees. Mostly we see what we are used to – or what we wish to.’

‘And what have you seen?’ he asked, going straight to the point.

She smiled at him, and he noticed that when she smiled, a delightful little crease, shaped like a half moon, appeared in her upper lip, and there was a tightening in each cheek which, once upon a time, had been the site of a dimple.

‘That’s my trouble,’ she said. ‘Even I am not sure.’

‘Suppose you tell me and see what I think.’

She was surprised to find what a thin, poor story it sounded, put into careful words, honestly confined to facts. Nothing really. She was miserably certain that she was being a bore. She mentioned the little wax doll, because that was, after all, a fact. And as she mentioned it she glanced at Mr Freeman. He was steadily, obviously staring at his coffee cup, avoiding her eye. A nice man, she thought; he didn’t want his amusement or scepticism to show in his eyes.

Actually, for Mr Freeman, time had run backward, fifty-eight or -nine years, and he was again what they had called him even then – the child being father to the man – ‘a little jug with big ears’; and he had learned that a child, by staying very still and looking sleepy, could often hear fascinating things. He was in his grandmother’s house at Catermarsh and it was the Michaelmas rent day, which his grandparents, old-fashioned as they were, always celebrated by giving their four or five tenants and their families a supper – roast geese, apple pie and cheese. The party was over; he had his head on his grandmother’s knee, and she stroked his hair as above him the grown-ups talked about strange goings-on over the river in Walwyk. He had understood almost nothing, but he had sensed the atmosphere, something dark and sinister and shivery, not entirely dismissed by his grandfather’s sturdy verdict of ‘Complete nonsense. Talk about heathen! We’re worse than heathen to give such things a moment’s thought!’