strange sendmail error msgs

["David Karlin" <funk48@travelin.com>]

Hello,
On my hamm system, I've been getting strange error msgs since installing
exim.  Strange, because they are sendmail msgs:

/usr/sbin/sendmail: error in loading shared libraries
libpcre.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I did dpkg -s sendmail, and found that it is purged, however, a
file called sendmail does, in fact, exist in /usr/sbin.

I did dpkg -s libpcre1 and this library appears to be installed and okay.

I have been running this box w/o mail for a number of months, however,
it did, for a brief time, have sendmail running on it.  I thought I'd
purged it (dpkg -s sendmail agrees).

So, if sendmail is purged (according to dpkg), why does /usr/sbin/sendmail
exist, and why is it sending me this msg?

TIA,

--David