A Christmas Secret Read online

  She had barely begun examining them when she was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Wellbeloved carrying two hard white cabbages and a string of very large onions. She looked extremely pleased with herself, stamping her feet and shedding snow everywhere.

  “Said as it would be cold. Tree fell over with the weight of it an’ the road south’s blocked.” She announced it as a personal victory. “ ’Less you want to go all ’round Abingdon an’ the like. An’ there’s no saying you can get through that, either. Could all be closed.”

  “Then we are very fortunate to have coal and food,” Clarice replied warmly.

  “Onions.” Mrs. Wellbeloved put them on the table. Not that anyone could have mistaken them for something else.

  “Thank you.” Clarice smiled at her. She already knew from the brief glance at the accounts she had taken that Mrs. Wellbeloved had done all the shopping for the vicar. She wanted to tell her of their discovery of the body in the cellar, but Fitzpatrick had asked them not to, and his implication had been clear enough. Still, Clarice felt guilty saying nothing. “That’s very kind of you,” she added.

  Mrs. Wellbeloved smiled, her face pink. She began to take off her overcoat and prepare to scrub the floor.

  It was half past eleven before Clarice could return to the ledger and read through it carefully. She had gone through it twice before she noticed the tiny anomalies. They were sometimes of a shilling or two, but more often just pennies. The mistakes seemed to be in the Reverend Wynter’s own money, which he accounted very carefully, as anyone on a church stipend had to. Clarice herself knew where every farthing went. The expression poor as a church mouse was not an idle one.

  The church accounts, including the donations signed for by John Boscombe until a few months ago, and more recently by a man named William Frazer, were accurate, then inaccurate, then accurate again. The final sum was always as it should be.

  Clarice could understand how people ended up chewing pencils. It made no sense. Why on earth would anyone steal tuppence, or even less? She was convinced it was not carelessness, because the same figures kept recurring in what she realized was a sequence. She placed them side by side, according to date, and then she saw the pattern. The few pence went missing from the church accounts, then from the Reverend Wynter’s personal account. Finally the church accounts were correct again. Someone was taking tiny amounts from the collection for the poor box, irregular and always very small. The Reverend Wynter was replacing them from his own money.

  But why? Would it not have been the right thing to do to find out who was the thief—if that was not too serious a word for such petty amounts? Might it be a child? Perhaps he did not want to have such an accusation made if it could become uglier than a simple question of family discipline.

  Whom could she ask? Perhaps William Frazer, who had taken over the bookkeeping, would know, or have an idea? He lived next to the village store, and even in this weather she could walk there quite easily. Of course she would not go across the green. One could barely see where the pond was, never mind avoid treading on the ice beneath the snow, and perhaps falling in.

  But Frazer had no idea. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Corde,” he said earnestly as she sat in the small, crowded room by his parlor fire, still shivering from her journey in the snow. The wind seemed to find its way through even the thickest cloak, and a hat was useless to protect the neck or ears. Now she was almost singeing at the front, and her back was still cold from the draft behind her.

  “Your records are immaculate,” she said as flatteringly as she could. “At the end of the day the money is always correct, but somewhere along the way a few pennies disappear, and then turn up again. It looks as if the Reverend Wynter made up the difference himself.”

  Frazer looked startled, his thin, bony face pale with anxiety. “Why on earth would he do such a thing?” he demanded. “John Boscombe never said anything to me, and he’s as honest as the day. Ask anyone. If there’d been any irregularities, he’d have told me.”

  “Perhaps if the Reverend Wynter knew who it was, he might have asked Mr. Boscombe not to say anything,” she suggested, puzzled herself.

  “Why would he do that?” Frazer’s voice was sharp, his big hands were clenched in his lap. “More like the old gentleman lost a few pence here and there.” He nodded. “Can happen to anyone. Got the wrong change by mistake, p’raps. Or dropped it in the street and couldn’t find it. Done that myself. Only pennies, you said?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Daresay you’ll keep better books yourself, being younger and seeing a good bit clearer. Should have had spectacles, maybe.”

  “Perhaps.” But she did not agree. She thanked him and went out into the bitter wind to walk all the way to John Boscombe’s house. In the summer there was a shortcut through the woods, when the stream was low and the stepping-stones clear. But the current was strong and deep now, and would pull a person under its dark surface like greedy hands.

  It was a long walk, but she found the man at home, kept from his work in the fields by the smothering snow.

  “Come in, come in!” he said warmly as he almost pulled her into the hallway and slammed the door against the wind behind her. “What a day! It’s going to be a hard Christmas if it goes on like this. You must be frozen. Let’s dust the snow off you before it thaws and gets you wet.” He suited the action to the word without waiting for her to agree, sending snow flying all over the hallway. Fortunately the floor was polished stone, so it would mop up well enough. “Come into the kitchen,” he invited, satisfied with his work and turning to lead the way. “Have some soup. Always keep a stockpot on the simmer this time of year. The children are out playing. They’ve built a snowman bigger than I am. Genny! New vicar’s wife is here!”

  Genevieve Boscombe stood in the middle of the kitchen with her hands in a big bowl of flour and pastry. She was smiling, but she did not make any move to stop what she was doing. “Welcome,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll not shake your hand or I’ll have you covered. John’ll get you a dish of soup. It’s just barley and bones, but it’s hot.” There was a faint flush of defiance in her cheeks, from more than just the exertion of rolling the pastry.

  One was not defensive unless one was vulnerable. Clarice knew that from experience. She was conscious of her own clumsiness, where her sisters and her mother had been graceful. The comparison, even made in what was intended as humor, had sometimes hurt her sharply. Once or twice when she had fancied herself in love, she had felt it even more.

  She smiled at Mrs. Boscombe, deliberately avoiding looking around the kitchen, though she had noticed that the good linen sheets over the airing rail had been carefully cut down the worn-out middle then turned to be joined at the sides—to give them longer life. The china on the dresser was good, but a few pieces were chipped, one or two even broken and glued very carefully together. They had had money and were now making do and mending. Even Genevieve’s dress indicated the same thing. It was of good quality but had been up-to-date ten years ago.

  “Thank you. I would like that very much.” She thought of adding something about barley being very light and pleasing, and decided not to; it would so easily sound patronizing. “Actually I called because I hoped Mr. Boscombe might be able to help me with a little of the church bookkeeping,” she said hastily. “I do so much wish to be accurate. I tried Mr. Frazer, but he was unable to offer any assistance.”

  “What is the difficulty, Mrs. Corde?” Boscombe said with concern.

  Boscombe served the barley soup into a blue-and-white bowl and set it on the table in front of Clarice, who thanked him. Suddenly she realized how difficult it was to explain her problem without lying, at least by implication.

  Boscombe was waiting, eyes wide.

  She must speak. “I…I was going through the Reverend Wynter’s account books and I found certain…”

  He was staring at her, something in his look darkening.

  She could think of nothing to excuse
what she had done, except the truth. Fitzpatrick had no authority to order her silence. Everyone would have to know at some time, perhaps even by tomorrow. She plunged in. “The Reverend Wynter is dead,” she said very quietly, sadness overwhelming her. “We found his body quite by chance…in the second cellar. I went for coal and the cat followed me down. I…” She looked at him and saw the shock in his face, followed immediately by a terrible regret. He turned to look at Genevieve, then back at Clarice.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said a little huskily. “What happened? I…I hadn’t heard.”

  “No one has,” she said quietly. “Dr. Fitzpatrick asked us not to tell anyone until the bishop has been informed, but…” This was the difficult part. “But we disagree upon what happened. However, I would be grateful if you would not let people know that I told you, at least not yet.”

  “Of course not,” he agreed. “That is why you were going through the account books?” He still seemed puzzled, but there was an inexplicable sense of relief in him, as if this wasn’t what he had feared.

  “Yes.” She knew she had not yet said enough for him to understand. It was unavoidable now. “You see…” What she had planned sounded ridiculous.

  “Yes?”

  Genevieve also had stopped her work and was listening.

  Clarice felt the heat burn up her face. “You see, I don’t believe he died by accident,” she said. She hated the sound of her voice. It was wobbly and absurd. She cleared her throat. “I think someone hit him. He had injuries both on his face and on the back of his head. They may not have meant to kill him, but…” She was telling them too much. “…but there was someone else there, and they didn’t tell anyone.” She turned from Boscombe to Genevieve. “He was lying all by himself in the second cellar, but he had no lantern,” she went on. “Who’d go into a cellar without a lantern?”

  “No one,” Genevieve said quietly. “But why would anyone quarrel with the Reverend Wynter? He was the nicest man…” She stopped.

  For a moment they all were silent: Clarice and Boscombe at the kitchen table, Genevieve standing with the bowl still in her arms.

  “Do you think it’s the money in the church accounts?” Boscombe asked finally, his face smooth, his eyes avoiding Genevieve’s. “Surely there’s hardly enough there to provoke a quarrel?”

  “No,” Clarice agreed. “It’s only pennies missing, a shilling or two at the most. But it happened a lot of times, over six months or more.”

  Genevieve was looking at Boscombe; staring at him.

  Boscombe sat still, his back stiff.

  He knows, Clarice thought, the conviction growing in her mind. He knows the Reverend Wynter was putting the money back. But had the vicar known who was taking it? Was that what he had been trying to find out all those months, and had at last succeeded? And was killed for? No, that was absurd. As she had said before, it was pennies!

  Boscombe was watching her, his face tense with concentration, waiting.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” Clarice said very softly. “Is…is that why you stopped working with the Reverend Wynter? Because you knew he was protecting someone who…”

  His eyes were wide, his face almost comical with disbelief.

  “You didn’t…,” she went on, answering her own question.

  “No! Oh, I knew there were pennies missing here and there,” he assured her, shifting a little in his seat. “At first I thought it was just that the Reverend Wynter was a bit careless, or even that he wasn’t very good at his sums. Then I realized that in the end the figures were always exactly right, so he knew someone was taking bits and pieces. But I didn’t object to his dealing with it in his own way.”

  “Did he know who it was?” she asked.

  Boscombe smiled. “He didn’t tell me.”

  She knew he was speaking the literal truth, but there was a real truth, a more whole and honest one, that he was concealing. “But he knew,” she insisted. “As you did?”

  “No, I didn’t. But even if I had, Mrs. Corde, I’m not sure that I would be free to tell you.”

  She leaned forward a little across the table, her elbows on its pale, scrubbed wood. “I think the Reverend Wynter was killed by someone, Mr. Boscombe. They may not have set out to, but they hit him, and when he was dead, or dying…” She saw him wince, but she went on. “…they dragged him into the farther cellar and took the lantern to go back upstairs, leaving him alone there in the dark, for days. It may not have anything to do with the money—it’s so small it’s meaningless. But it has to do with something!”

  Genevieve shivered. “If that’s true, John, then an awful thing has happened. Perhaps you should tell the Reverend Corde, even if you can’t tell Mrs. Corde.”

  He looked at her at last. “The Reverend Wynter knew,” he admitted. “At least I believe he did, but it was something else, something bigger behind it, and he wanted to know what that was. The greater sin.”

  “Do you suppose he found out?” Clarice asked him.

  He bit his lip. Now his face was pale. They were talking about something so dark it had caused the death of a good man, and perhaps the damnation of another.

  “I prefer to think not,” he said slowly. “At least for as long as I can think it.”

  “But, John…” Genevieve began, and then her voice trailed away.

  “I don’t know,” he said again. “And that’s the truth.”

  Clarice could draw no more from him. She thanked them both and left as the children trooped in from the garden, bright-faced, eyes dancing, skin glowing from the exertion. In the sudden confines of the warm kitchen with its scrubbed table and floor, its familiar, precious, but mismatched china, and the smell of drying linen and herbs, their voices were louder than they realized. Violence seemed like an offensive word—and utterly inappropriate.

  It was early afternoon when Dominic decided to call again at the manor house. He had to put his trust in someone, or else simply abandon the idea of finding out exactly how the Reverend Wynter had died. It still seemed an absurd idea that anyone could have killed him.

  It was below freezing, even at this hour, and his feet crunched on the snow. He walked as quickly as he could, his mind also racing. The decision he made now could affect the rest of his life, and—of more urgent importance to him—Clarice’s life also. She had given up much to marry him, and he wanted passionately that she should never regret that. He found to his surprise that as he learned to know her better with each passing month, he loved her more. She had an honesty of mind that was brighter, more translucent than any he had imagined. He kept thinking he knew her, and then she said or did something that surprised him. She made him laugh, even when he did not want to. She never complained about the lack of money, or about the small, grubby accommodations she had to make to poverty or Spindlewood’s petty officiousness.

  Then she would blow up with temper over an injustice, and put into irretrievable words exactly what he had been thinking, only been wise enough not to say. Or was that cowardly enough? Or was he simply older and more acquainted with the infinite possibilities of failure?

  He did not want to disappoint her. She was still so much in love with him. He could see it in her eyes, the sudden flush to her skin if she caught him looking at her with his own emotions too naked in his face. Could he ever live up to what she thought of him? Sometimes being handsome was not a blessing. It led people—women—to hope for more from one than one could live up to; it ignited dreams that were too big for the reality of what any man could be.

  The manor house loomed up ahead, rising out of the virgin snow as the dark trees of the driveway parted. That was a dream in stone. Did Peter Connaught ever feel the weight of past glory crushing him? Did the ghosts expect too much?

  Was Clarice building a drama of murder out of a simple domestic tragedy, weaving together facts into a picture that would create sorrow and injustice, not solve it?

  Dominic thought again with a shiver of his earlier acquaintance with her family, and t
he murder of Unity Bellwood. He had been a curate staying in her father’s house to further his studies. The Reverend Ramsay Parmenter had been a good mentor, but a conventional man of passionately orthodox views. When Unity Bellwood, modern-thinking, pregnant, and unmarried, was pushed down a stairway to her death, the Reverend Parmenter became a major suspect.

  But it was Clarice’s beautiful, selfish, and deadly mother who had been at the core of it with her obsessive fantasy that Dominic was as much in love with her as she was with him.

  It had been a time of grief, shock, and fear for the whole family. Clarice had been the bravest of them, the most willing to see and face the dreadful truth, whatever the pain, or the price.

  He lengthened his stride. He would believe her this time. Better to have pursued it and been proven wrong than to run away into blind comfort. That would lie between them always.

  He reached the great oak front door and pulled the bell. It was beginning to snow again, huge white flakes falling like petals.

  The door opened, and the butler welcomed him in. Sir Peter was in his office, but he appeared within moments, smiling, offering tea and crumpets, apologizing because he thought there was almost certainly no cake.

  “We should have mince pies,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll make sure we have them next time you come.”

  “Just tea would be excellent, thank you,” Dominic answered, following Peter’s elegant figure into the huge withdrawing room. “And a little of your time.” The warmth engulfed him like an embrace. The dog in front of the hearth stood up and stretched luxuriously, then padded over to see who he was and make sure he should be allowed in.

  “What can I do for you?” Peter asked when they were seated. “How are you settling in?”