‘But he was always called “Teddy”, Sin-jin Vas-ǝls was,’ Sir Christopher said, correcting John’s pronunciation of both Christian and family names. ‘And perfectly charming he was, old Teddy. Do let one see those. He had a terrible crush on Crystal, though I never knew how far things actually went between them.’
‘Right you are,’ John said, blushing deeply at his phonetic mistake, whilst upbraiding himself for not having remembered from Jo Leigh-Fiennes’s diaries that the Hon Sir St John Vascelles was known as ‘Teddy’.
‘We can keep these aside, if you like, to look over later on, but finally I wanted to show you these three letters,’ John changed course, hoping to jettison his pronunciation blunder. ‘Though they are all, obviously, from your brother to you, none of them, most unusually, is
