“He is, isn’t he,” says a woman’s voice, laughing. “I can say so because he’s not mine. Stuart, do come here.”

The woman herself is no more than three yards away but hidden—no, not hidden exactly, but standing behind a coppiced hazel tree so she’s visible only in narrow slips and sections. I make out a slice of mackintosh, slick with rain, a swirl of blond hair. The dog hasn’t taken any notice of her. Not surprisingly, since her voice is good-humored, almost indulgent. In fact, her coaxing tone seems to encourage him into a deeper, more threatening bout of growling.

I take a few steps backward. Priests, like postmen, are twice shy.

“Don’t worry—he won’t bite.”

I glimpse a pair of laughing blue eyes through the leaves. She’s not taking this at all seriously.

“That’s what people always say!” I exclaim, rather more heatedly than I intended.

But she doesn’t respond. When she speaks again her voice is farther off, as if she’s calling back to me over her shoulder. “Don’t worry—Althea’s coming!” she calls blithely through the greenery. And then she disappears, a shadow moving through the trees with a long stride.

“Stuart! Stuart!”

Another voice penetrates the coppice, also female but this time elderly, hoarse, and carrying an unmistakable note of command. A tall, cadaverous being is working her way toward me on two canes, her legs encased in a pair of muddy scarlet flared trousers and her bony forearms escaping the unraveling sleeves of a man’s cardigan. The clothes alone tell me this is Lady Brock. The poorest women in Fulbrook darned their stockings and sleeves, cleaned their clothes of dirt, and I’m sure it’s the same here. It is simply that people of Lady Brock’s class know that their superiority is beyond question and so they don’t bother, preferring to flaunt their social prestige in every mud stain and fraying woolen hem. However I can also see she’s very old, underweight without a doubt, and leaning from the vertical in a way I recognize among many elderly whose spinal columns begin to erode in the sandstorms of age.

“Lady Brock? I’m James Acton. The new vicar.”

“Good Lord!” She limps a little closer. “The absolutely drenched new vicar. My dear man, why are you not in your car?” Without waiting for an answer she flings out a hand. “Althea Brock.”

The hand is thin-skinned, grape-hued here and there with minor bruises, and spotted with age. I take hold of it very gently.

“James Acton. How do you do.”

“Stuart, for the love of Christ, cease fire!” The dog is immediately mute. “Such a little monster,” Lady Brock says, into the dripping quiet. “Belonged to a friend of mine. Colonel Daventry, you’ll meet him soon enough. He can’t walk out anymore.”