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either his private life or the little bursts of publicity that had erupted around the various recent murder cases he had helped the police solve. The bishop wanted something from Max, as he had made clear on the telephone. It was a situation so rare as to be both flattering and alarming.
    So Max showered and quickly changed back into his cassock—the one with the egg on it, the lesser of the two evils on offer to him that day. He threw the Land Rover into high gear and set off for Monkslip Cathedral, the seat of Max’s spiritual and temporal leader, the Bishop of Monkslip. Along the way he left the torn cassock for repairs at the Stitch in Time.
    *   *   *
    â€œI think you might have some food on your cassock,” observed the Right Reverend Bishop Nigel St. Stephen.
    â€œYes, I do apologize,” said Max. “I tried to wash it off, but I’m afraid I made things rather worse. It was the only one I had available…”
    â€œYour housekeeper … my secretary did mention she seemed a bit vague on the phone.”
    â€œMrs. Hooser gets rather overwhelmed,” said Max. In fact she was unsatisfactory in every conceivable way as a housekeeper, but even worse as a mother to two small children. It was for Tom and Tildy Ann’s sake that Max was willing to put up with quite a lot from Mrs. Hooser. The vicarage gave them somewhere to go and be reasonably well-supervised when they were let out of school.
    Max looked around at the spacious headquarters office of the Bishop of Monkslip. The bishop’s office was like a Shangri-la to Max, with all its spiffy new computer equipment twinkling in the sunlight admitted by ancient mullioned windows. The bishop’s screen saver rotated a series of photos of Monkslip Cathedral as it appeared in all seasons. The credenza where slumbered a high-speed printer also held a photo of the bishop’s wife and four daughters, but it was an updated version from the one Max had seen before. In this image, the eldest daughter, her gamine face peering as through a forest of curly auburn hair, looked to be of an age to go to university. Max commented on it.
    â€œShe is going into the theater,” the bishop informed him, “and has applied to the RADA in London. I find it all rather disquieting. I don’t know where she gets this show-biz gene from.”
    Max started to point out that the church with its pomp and circumstance, not to mention its costumes, was not without a theatrical element, but thought better of it.
    â€œI was hoping she would choose a more stable profession,” the bishop went on. “The thing of it is, she has real talent. If you’d seen her in Troilus and Cressida you’d have been amazed. My little girl! I just don’t want to see her go into a profession where rejection is so much a part of the game.”
    â€œThe urge to protect her must be overwhelming,” said Max. He was thinking of his and Awena’s unborn child, due in mid-September, an event he anticipated with equal parts stark alarm and unbridled happiness. What would he do to protect his child? What wouldn’t he do?
    â€œIt is a constant battle between wanting to let her fight her own battles and wanting to send her off to a nunnery where she might be safe. Might being the operative word. Which brings me to the reason I asked you here, Max. Thank you for being willing to drop everything at a moment’s notice.”
    â€œYour secretary indicated it was important.”
    â€œIt is. Whether it is urgent, I’m not certain. I hope not.”
    *   *   *
    â€œFinancial shenanigans?” said Max. “In a nunnery?”
    Five minutes later, the bishop was still filling Max in on why he’d been summoned to Monkslip Cathedral. He’d begun with an introduction to what he thought were the key pieces in an emerging puzzle.
    â€œI’m afraid so,” said the bishop. “At