“I beg to disagree.” He rocks back in his seat, enjoying himself. “I’ve seen so many like you. You’re one of a whole generation, all ex-services, who signed up for the priesthood at the end of the war, and what were you doing? Arming yourselves to fight another good fight. Think of theological college—all that cold water and discipline and ardent celibacy. Certain similarities to a military training camp, no?”

He’s not wrong: both places featured, in varying proportions, muddy cross-country runs and prayer. The prayers shorter and more fervent in the field of battle than in the pew.

“Actually, Archdeacon, I was ordained before the war. And by the end of 1945 I was married.”

“Of course you were. Girl you met in Egypt, I believe?”

His beady little eyes track over me. He doesn’t “believe”: he’s learned my file by heart, memorization being a tool of our trade, and so he’s simply prodding me now. I can’t think of anything I want to say about Yvette. Not now, not to him.

“Yes,” I reply. “My late wife was from Alexandria.”

There follows a tense silence while the instant coffee cools in the cups, the ginger biscuits soften in the humid late-summer air. From beyond the leaded window a pale sunbeam does what it can to make Frobisher’s bald head gleam. As far as I’m aware he hasn’t blinked.

“Archdeacon,” I say at last, “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

He stretches his lips into a broad grin. They have no shape, these lips, being the same thickness all the way along, and no color to distinguish them from the rest of his face. “My dear man. Nothing was further from my mind. Nevertheless here you are, all set to leave the West Country at rather short notice after, oh, it must be more than twenty years, just when all your work at your current parish is bearing fruit, and come here to Hampshire, to Upton, which for all—”

“Upton and Barrow End. I believe they’re quite particular about that.”

“—And Barrow End”—the grin becomes ferocious—“a community which, for all its good points, is hardly the most challenging environment. For a man of your experience, that is. And you’re not yet sixty.” He hunches forward, once more a pugilist. “Is it burnout? I mean, from what I’ve read about Fulbrook—the signs in pub doorways saying No Knives, goodness me—”

“In fact they’re pictures of knives with an X over the top. For the unlettered.”

“Well, there you are. I wouldn’t blame you for searching out a sleepy village to have a nice quiet breakdown in.”

“I assure you I’m not another Blakemore.”