“No, just a wet one,” Chavasse told him. “So let’s get in out of the rain,” and he led the way across the road.

An hour later there was a knock at the drawing room door and in came Lucy, the apple of Jackson’s eye, a face on her like that of some ancient Egyptian princess, her hair tied in a velvet bow, neat in a black dress and apron.

“I’ve got him for you, Sir Paul. Lucky I had plenty of rice and vegetables in. He’s a nice man. I like him.” She stood back and Moro entered in his saffron robes. “I’ve got his raincoat and hat in the cloakroom,” she added, and left.

A glass in his hand, Chavasse was sitting in one of the armchairs beside the fire, which burned brightly.

“Come and sit down.”

“You are too kind.” Moro sat in the chair opposite him.

“I won’t offer you one of these.” Chavasse raised the glass. “It’s Bushmills Irish whiskey, the oldest in the world, some say, and invented by monks.”

“How enterprising.”

“You’re a long way from home,” Chavasse said.

“Not really. I left Tibet with other refugees when I was fifteen years of age. That was in 1975.”

“I see. And since then?”

“Three years with the Dalai Lama in India, then he arranged for me to go to Cambridge to your old college – Trinity. You were also at the Sorbonne. I too have studied there, but Harvard eluded me.”

“You certainly know a great deal about me,” Chavasse told him.

“Oh, yes,” Moro said calmly. “Your father was French.”

“Breton,” Chavasse said. “There is a difference.”

“Of course. Your mother was English. You had a unique gift for languages, which explains your studies at three of the world’s greatest universities. A Ph.D. at twenty-one, you returned to Cambridge to your own college, where they made you a Fellow at twenty-three. So there you were, at an exceptionally young age, set on an academic career at a great university.”

“And then?” Chavasse enquired.