Book excerpt: A blackmailer is stalking the bishop—can he survive the threat of being outed? Why is there a body in the flower bed? And can Lavinia Birtle-Figgins really be as dippy as she seems? These and other imponderables immerse the Reverend Francis Oughterard in a fresh web of danger and subterfuge, while his animal "minders," Maurice and Bouncer, try their best to make sense of all this human bedlam.