A jauntily alliterative title and the name of Tina Rath always guarantees a certain kind of story - witty, erudite, with interesting ideas. In this anthology of follies and grottoes hers is the lightest story, but still has a string in the tail.
A wealthy City type buys the eponymous run-down country estate and hired the best people to renovate and restore the house and its environs. Among the latter is a temple whose friezes, when restored, turn out to be more than a little lively. Lively as in extremely kinky, violent, and dangerous as soon as the sun goes down. Legend has it that one of those mysterious foreigners - possibly an Italian - was responsible for their creation back in the Georgian era. And some kind of bargain with the then-landowner was involved.
The first clever twist is that exorcism is out of the question - interfering with the national heritage, don't you know. So the obvious thing is to 'get a man in' i.e. an unlicensed exorcist. Enter 'Father' O'Flynn, who arrives in a rusty van and is as far from the conventional idea of a battler with Satan as you can imagine. He's the sort of exorcist who will tell you 'It'll be ready Thursday, squire, on me mother's grave'.
O'Flynn (not his real name) beings with him a team that proves to be less than qualified, in one very significant respect. However, the result of the botched ritual at least gives Fressingfold's new owner an interesting business opportunity. I first read this story many years ago (it first saw print in 1977), and it has stood the test of time.
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