I shake my head. “I meant Frobisher. Though I’d love to have met Mr. Blakemore. His story is really quite . . .” I can’t think of an adjective, and in the pause decide I don’t want one. It’s not fair on Blakemore.

Lady Brock is sighing. “Of course. Your trade. Everyone’s worthy of your attention, all the time. I don’t know how you do it, any of you.” She motions toward the rather cramped space she’s made on the sofa, incorporating into this ushering gesture a flourish of mild exasperation, a sort of benign despair at—what? Clergymen in general, perhaps.

“It’s true that we persist.” I sit down. “Often persistence is all we’ve got.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Let’s have some tea. And turn that fire on. One bar, mind. I’m not made of cash.”

Rejecting help, she brings two mugs of tea, one in each knotty hand. “Aren’t mugs super? All those years of cups teetering on saucers. I’d never manage now.”

When we’re seated I say, “I’m aware that you haven’t got much time . . .”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.”

“I thought you were going out to look at some wooden baskets.”

“That was just to get rid of you, if you turned out to be—”

“A crasher.”

A frieze of riveted dentition. The work that has gone into preserving those old teeth. In a way I admire her, refusing to give in to porcelain. “So.” She leans forward. “How are you finding the place? When will the light of civilization shine once more upon that ghastly old heap of a vicarage?”

I give an uneasy laugh. “Not for a while yet. It’s freezing and the ground floor is kippered with pipe smoke. But I’ve made a start. And my son’s going to knit me a sweater, which should help against the cold.”

Lady Brock smiles. Her top lip is oddly protuberant, reminding me of some kind of fish. “How absolutely marvelous!”

“Tom’s been knitting since he was a boy. His mother died, you see, and the woman I employed to look after him if I was called out in the evenings—she taught him.”

“How did she die, his mother?”

“Leukemia.”

She hisses, shaking her head. “Ah, that is hard.”

“Yes. Well, he’s twenty now, Tom. Quite old enough to boss me around. He’s told me to get rid of our furniture. I brought it all from the old house, you see. I can see his point. My sofa’s a wreck, the cushions have lost half their stuffing. My wife used them to play catch with Tom when he was very small . . .”