Comfortable with each other, sharing a common history, they had found in one another a companionship that had few boundaries. Stephenson could count most of them as his patients, and his wife had sat on committees of one sort or another with every one of the women-church bazaars, flower arrangements, food baskets for the poor, spring fetes, charity cases, visiting the sick, welcoming newcomers to Osterley, and generally forming an ad hoc social group that was as small as it was select.

He couldn’t have said afterward how the subject arose. Someone asked a question, another guest expanded on it, and a wife raised a laugh by adding her own views. Stephenson found himself picking up the thread, and the next thing he knew, he was telling the story of a dying patient who had wanted to hedge his bets in the next life by seeing both the Vicar and the priest.

One of the guests leaned forward. “Was that old Baker? My wife remarked to me that she’d seen Father James walking out of Baker’s front door one night in a pouring rain, saying good-bye to young Martin on the step. I told her she must have been mistaken-Baker was sexton for seventeen years at Holy Trinity!”

Richard Cullen said, “Had the right idea, though, didn’t he? Who was it that said Paris was worth a Mass?”

That dissolved into a debate over whether it was Henri IV and progressed to a recital of the opening lines of “The Vicar of Bray.” Herbert Baker had been forgotten once more.

It was late in the evening on the second of October when Father James returned to the Victorian Gothic house that served as St. Anne’s rectory. He let himself in through the unlocked kitchen door, grateful for the lamp still burning on the small table by the window, and sniffed appreciatively at the lingering aroma of bacon. He crossed the room to peer into the oven. His dinner was sitting on the rack in a covered dish. Lifting the lid, he saw that the contents were a little dry but certainly still delicious. There were onions as well, and what appeared to be a Scotch egg.