Groups of cohomological codimension one

Abstract

We show that if $H$ is an almost normal subgroup of $G$ such that both $H$ and $G$ are of type $VFP$ and vcd($G$) = vcd($H$) + 1, then $G$ is the fundamental group of a graph of groups in which all vertex and edge groups are commensurable to $H$. We also investigate almost normal subgroups of one-relator groups and duality groups.