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abruptly silent. The two people had come through the lych-gate and were now approaching them—a white-haired middle-aged man in a clerical collar, and what seemed to be a woman in her thirties with black-framed glasses and a severe bob cut. Oliver rapidly assumed the overly delighted expression that the English always exhibit when meeting members of the clergy.
    â€œOliver, my dear fellow, I heard you were in town,” cried the man, shaking Oliver’s hand and assuming the overly delighted expression that the clergy always exhibit when meeting members of their flock. “No chance of seeing you and your young lady in the pew for the morning service tomorrow, I don’t suppose? Probably not, eh? You youngsters don’t want to be bothered with all this religious mumbo-jumbo, and I can’t say I blame you for your better wisdoms, I’m sure.”
    Using the clergyman’s monologue as cover for a private rehearsal, Oliver did a creditable job of introducing the Reverend Gibeon Edwards, vicar of Synne, to his companions in more or less the right order. They were in turn introduced to the other newcomer, revealed as Mrs. Lesbia Weguelin, the church’s verger, before Edwards remarked that Culpepper was very tall and asked him if he played basketball.
    If you shaved Santa Claus and put him on a treadmill for a year or two, he’d probably shrink down to resemble the ever-genial Reverend Mr. Edwards. The vicar flattered himself on his skill at striking up an immediate rapport with anyone, even the fiercest critics of his calling. This usually took the form of swiftly conceding the other person’s point of view—so swiftly, it was often in advance of their saying anything at all. During a teatime chat with Oliver on an earlier visit, Edwards had preemptively pooh-poohed the biblical accounts of the nativity, the resurrection, and most of Jesus’s miracles, and then went on to list the many advantages of atheism, all before Oliver had opened his mouth to offer him a toasted tea cake. It was assumed by his parishioners that Edwards didn’t actually agree with these heretical positions, but by the time he’d finished ingratiating himself with his opposition—in a talk or in a sermon—he’d usually drifted so far from his own beliefs that there was no room to backtrack. This habit had earned him the nickname of Edwards the Concessor.
    The fact that the verger had not flinched when she was introduced suggested to Oliver either that she was a powerful personality who had learned to rise above the discomfiture of an ill-chosen Christian name or that she had no sense of humor. He suspected the latter. After a gruff “hello,” Lesbia made no further contributions to the conversation, but Oliver kept glancing at her, wondering if the crisp, flawless blue-black bob was actually a wig—Effie would know—and trying to get some measure of her features behind the thick-rimmed plastic frames, intense burgundy lipstick, and caked-on foundation. He had only the vaguest sense of a certain squareness of jaw and a self-confident nose.
    The group headed back toward Breedlove’s cottage, Edwards quizzing Culpepper about the likelihood that the late writer’s family would want a space in the churchyard, “suicide being no impediment to burial in sacred ground these days, not like that churlish priest in Hamlet , wittering on about Ophelia’s doubtful death. Indeed the courage of the suicide may well be thought of as an example to us all…was it not Camus who said it was the only truly serious philosophical problem, although I believe he came out against it ultimately, but then so many families choose cremation anyway, so it becomes a moot point, not to mention this new corpse-composting alternative, very interesting, if they take a green outlook, and who’s to blame them? Oh, about our stepladder…”
    Even the urbane Culpepper was momentarily