You can tell it's supposed to be a serious enough headfuck when the vicar turns out to be an imposter and an agent of the Dark - the idea that a purported vicar could be a bad person disturbs the children and, in a 1965 world where clergy sex abuse scandals had yet to surface and churchgoing was much more central to British life, was probably the most disturbing bit of the book for a lot of readers on publication.

I hadn't really thought of how it was supposed to be/would have been for those readers. I also just did a reread of most of the books and to me the evil (fake) vicar seemed both perfectly natural and so blindingly obvious I didn't see how Jane could be so naive.