“I know they are, Vicar, I just told you so. Robbed from the priory in Waltham, people say. When I was young they stood out properly. But the Reverend Blakemore, he wouldn’t allow anyone to come and clean and, well . . .” She shakes her head, then smiles again. “You did a terrific job in church yesterday. Goodness, that child can roar. The Suttons were ever so pleased, and so was I. You’ve kicked it off to a good start, I reckon. Now, poor Bailey’s still hungry.” She points at the bowl and spoon. “Go on, jump in the deep end while I have a look at your range. You got coal, I see.”

Bailey will eat from the spoon, his pink tongue darting cautiously in and out, but when I lower the spoon to the bowl he stares hopelessly at me without moving. It takes Lucy a couple of minutes to set a small fire in the firebox of the range. She shuts the firebox door, listens, opens it again. A cloud of smoke billows out. “Not drawing,” she says almost triumphantly, standing up and tugging at a lever at the base of the chimney. “Flue damper’s stuck, or broken. You might need a new one from Waltham Spares.”

“Seems a lot of trouble to heat a can of soup.”

Lucy agrees. “I remember my nan on her knees on a winter morning, feeding in bits of kindling and turning the air blue. I didn’t realize she even knew those words. When we went over to electric she thought she’d died and gone to heaven.” She laughs, and the laugh turns into a splutter. She coughs hoarsely for a moment or two. “I think it’s just Ellen and you left, now,” she adds when she can next speak.

“Ell—Ellen and I?” I clear my throat.

“In the village,” Lucy elaborates. “Still hanging on to your ranges. Ellen Parr, at Parr’s Mill. She’s wedded to that stove, anyway, swears by it for stewing apples and baking bread.”

“We met the other day,” I tell her. “Well, almost.” I explain my encounter outside Lady Brock’s lodge. “Lady Brock said it would be a . . . a rare sighting.”

“Yes.” Lucy Horne sighs. “She’s no churchgoer, not anymore. You can lead a horse to water, Vicar, but you cannot make her drink, is all I’ll say.”

I remember the figure I glimpsed that day. Tall, fair-haired, vanishing among the hazel trees. “I can’t imagine leading her anywhere she didn’t want to go.”