DB._closeConnection() sets the connection's _db member to None now, under
protection of the lock it holds anyway.  At a deeper level, it's unclear
why _db keeps getting set and unset to begin with, but no time for that
now (and there are already XXX comments about it in the code).

Alas, I wasn't able to write a test that provoked the original bug in
finite time (it's a tiny timing hole), except via calling sleep() between
two lines that don't exist anymore.  Good enough.