It takes us another ten minutes to load the sandbags. I stow six paraffin stoves along with their fuel in the front of the cab and set off back to the village. It’s a small flatbed lorry but still its weight drags me to the outer corner of the downward bends and I crash the gears with nearly every change. Yvette would be rolling her eyes. Soon I’m back in the village and churning once more along the flooded side of the green. There’s a Land Rover in front of me. I hoot my horn and come alongside, leaning over to wind down the window.

“Morning, Vicar,” says Lucy Horne from the passenger seat of the Land Rover. “Bloomin’ heck.”

Bloomin’ heck indeed. “I wonder if you could assist?” I ask her. “Church Walk is nearly under.”

The driver answers. It’s a woman, her face shadowed in the interior of the vehicle. It seems she knows who I am, because she says, “We’ll follow you, Reverend.”

We drive down to the bottom of Church Walk. The water looks wicked here; the house at this far end is the lowest. I jump down from the cab with a splash and labor, far more gingerly now, into the middle of the road. My boots have an inch or so to spare. This is not true of the house steps. In the time I’ve spent to-and-froing and parlaying with the wretched Matthew Dodds, the water’s now brimming at the top.

The Land Rover door is open now. The driver alights with barely a ripple and approaches me through the flood. Her stride is long and easy and seemingly in slight slow motion because of the weight of the water. The flood wouldn’t dare trip her up, though. It capers tamely, cravenly around her legs—she’s in denims, mostly hidden by a pair of waders that rise a long way above her knees. As she walks her blond hair starts to come loose from a bun and fall around her face. There must be too much of it to stay in the bun, or it’s too smooth, or both. She shouldn’t try to put her hair up in the first place. She should really let it all down.

I’m certain that she is the woman I glimpsed on that rainy day outside Lady Brock’s house. Ellen Parr, widow of Selwyn Parr the miller. Fellow owner of a coal-fed kitchen stove. Calm, smiling, and about to speak, but I forestall her.

“We don’t have much time.”

Well done, Acton. No hint of manners or even basic friendliness. First class.

She appears not to notice. “You’re right.”

We’re distracted by a yelp from the direction of the vehicles. Lucy is creeping through the flood toward the cab of the lorry, the water threatening to overflow her boots with every step.