A Christmas Secret cn-4

by Anne Perry

  But whom would the Reverend Wynter go into the cellar with? What excuse had they given? To fetch coal for him, on the pretext that it was heavy? No it wasn’t, not very. Mrs. Wellbeloved normally did it herself. She was strong, but not like a man. And where was the coke scuttle to carry it in?

  Whoever it was had dragged the Reverend Wynter’s body from the bottom of the steps across the floor and into the other cellar, leaving the marks in the coal dust. Why? They had tried to scuff them out, but hadn’t entirely succeeded. Why make them in the first place? He was an old man, light-boned, frail. Why not carry him?

  Because the killer had not been strong enough to carry him. A weak man? Or a woman? Genevieve Boscombe? It was a sickening thought, but Genevieve had much to lose. A woman would do almost anything to protect her children. A bear, to protect her cubs, would kill indiscriminately.

  She turned around slowly and started climbing back up again, glad of the light from the hallway at the top. She reached it and was facing Mrs. Paget.

  “Sorry to startle you,” Mrs. Paget said with a smile. “I took the liberty of coming in. The door was unlocked; the Reverend Wynter always left it unlocked, too. And it’s bitter outside. That wind is cruel.”

  “Yes, of course.” Clarice felt as if she should apologize for being less than welcoming. After all, in a sense the vicarage belonged to the whole village, and Mrs. Paget had obliquely reminded her of that. “Please come in. It’s warmer in the kitchen. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Mrs. Paget said. “I brought you a bottle of elderflower wine. I thought it might be pleasant with your Christmas dinner. The vicar was very fond of it.” She held out a bottle with a red ribbon around its neck, the liquid in it shining clear, pale gold.

  “How very kind of you,” Clarice said. She blew out the flame in the lantern and set it on the hall shelf, then took the bottle. She led the way into the kitchen and pushed the kettle over onto the hob to boil again. Thank goodness today she had cake. She must not get the reputation for having nothing to offer visitors.

  Mrs. Paget made herself comfortable in one of the kitchen chairs. “I see you were down in the cellar again,” she remarked. “Not to get coal.” Her eyes wandered to the full coal and coke receptacles by the stove, then back to Clarice. “Hard for you that it happened right here.”

  Clarice was taken aback by her frankness. “Yes.”

  “I suppose you’re working out what happened?”

  Should she deny it? That would be pointless. It was obviously what she had been doing, and Mrs. Paget knew it. That, too, was clear in her bright brown eyes.

  “Trying to,” Clarice admitted.

  “Poor man. That was a terrible thing.” Mrs. Paget shook her head. “But vicars sometimes get to know secrets people can’t bear to have told. You be careful, Mrs. Corde. There’s wickedness in the village in places you wouldn’t think to look for it. You watch out for your husband. A pleasant face can very easily fool men. Some look harmless that aren’t.”

  Clarice decided to be just as blunt.

  “Indeed, Mrs. Paget.” She thought of the marks of dragging in the cellar floor. The vicar had trusted a woman he should not have, perhaps even trying to help her. “Do you have anyone in particular in mind?”

  Mrs. Paget hesitated again, but it was clear in the concentration of her expression that she was not offended at being asked.

  The kettle started to steam. Clarice warmed the teapot then placed the leaves in and poured on the water, setting it on the table to brew. She sat down opposite Mrs. Paget, still waiting for an answer.

  Instead Mrs. Paget asked another question. “What did you find down there?”

  Clarice was not sure how much she wanted to answer. “Nothing conclusive.”

  Mrs. Paget surprised her again. “No doubt you were disturbed by my coming. I’m sorry about that. I did call out, but not loud enough for you to hear downstairs. Perhaps there is something, if we looked properly. The poor man deserves justice, and that old fool Fitzpatrick isn’t going to do anything about it. I’ll come with you, if you like? Hold the lantern.”

  Clarice felt her stomach tighten, but she had no possible excuse to refuse. And she could not bring herself to tell Mrs. Paget a deliberate lie. For one thing, it could be too easily found out if anyone at all were to go down there, and what could she say? She needed to keep the evidence; it might be the only proof of what had happened. “Thank you. That would be a good idea. I didn’t really have time to look.”

  After tea and cake Clarice went gingerly down the steps again with Mrs. Paget behind her, holding the lantern. Of course they found exactly what Clarice had already seen. “That was where I found him.” She pointed to the doorway of the second cellar.

  “So he fell here,” Mrs. Paget said quietly, pointing to the bottom of the steps. “And whoever it was dragged him there—” She indicated the marks. “—over to there.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Mrs. Paget studied the floor. “By the shoulders, from the look of it. And those are their own footmarks…unless they are yours?”

  Clarice stared at the distinct mark of a boot well to the side of the tracks. “It might be Dr. Fitzpatrick’s,” she said with a frown.

  “Going backward?” Mrs. Paget asked gently, her eyes bright. “Why would he do that, unless he was dragging something? And it looks a little small, don’t you think?”

  She was absolutely right. It was a woman’s boot, or a boy’s.

  As if reading her thoughts, Mrs. Paget said the same thing. “Tommy Spriggs, one of the village boys, said he saw a woman hurrying away from here the day the vicar was last seen. He’ll tell you, if you ask him. Hurrying she was.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Ah, that he doesn’t know. Could’ve been any grown woman who could walk rapidly and wasn’t either very short or very tall.”

  “Can you take me to him?” Clarice asked.

  “Of course I can.” Mrs. Paget picked up her skirts to climb back up the stairs. “Good thing you came down here, Mrs. Corde. And a good thing you’re not minded to let injustice go by, simply because it’s easier and, I daresay, more comfortable.”

  I n the evening Clarice told Dominic about it, and of finding Tommy Spriggs and confirming what Mrs. Paget had said.

  “Had he any idea who she was?” Dominic asked.

  “None at all. What he had told Mrs. Paget was all he knew,” she answered. She looked at him, both fearing the same answer. Neither spoke it.

  C hristmas Eve dawned so cold the windows were blind with fresh snow, and even inside the air numbed fingers and toes. Outside all color was drowned: white earth, white sky. Even the black trees were mantled in white. Just a few filigree branches were hung with icicles here and there, though when it had thawed sufficiently for them to melt into daggers of ice was hard to say.

  Blizzards blew in from the east, and through that cold-gripped world Genevieve Boscombe came to the door and asked to see Dominic.

  The study fire wasn’t lit, so he took her into the sitting room. He spent several moments poking the wood and coal until the fire caught a better hold and started to give a little more heat. Only when she sat down and he looked more closely at her eyes did he realize that no hearth in the world was going to assuage the cold inside her.

  “I killed the Reverend Wynter,” she said quietly. Her voice was flat, almost without emotion. “I lied to you when I said he wasn’t going to do anything about John and me not being married. He was going to tell everyone, so all the village would know. I couldn’t take that, not for my children.”

  Dominic was stunned. After what Clarice had told him the previous evening, they both knew it was horribly possible that Genevieve Boscombe was guilty. Even so, he could not easily believe it. He hated the thought. He had liked both of them. But then how good was he really at judging character any more deeply than the superficial qualities of humor or gentleness, good manners, the ability to see what is be
autiful? And he sympathized with her. He well understood those who truly loved and could not bear to lose the warmth and purpose from their lives.

  “I did!” she repeated, as if he had not heard her. “It’s not a religious confession, Vicar. I expect you to tell the police so they can arrest me.” She sat with her back straight and her hands folded in her lap. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but there were no tears in them now. He thought she had probably done all her weeping, at least for the time being.

  “How did you do it, Mrs. Boscombe?” he asked, still reluctant to accept and looking for a way for her to be not totally at fault.

  She looked surprised, although it was visible as just a momentary flicker of the eyes. “I carried the coke scuttle down for him,” she replied. “I hit him with it. He fell, and I pulled him into the other cellar, so he wouldn’t be found too soon.”

  “But you knew he would be found sometime,” he said.

  “I didn’t think. I don’t remember.” And she refused to say anything further, merely requesting that he report her to the constable so she could be arrested.

  There was, in effect, no constable, only the blacksmith who was appointed to represent the law in the village. She insisted on going with him. After much protest, the blacksmith locked her in the large, warm storeroom next to the forge.

  Dominic went straight to tell John Boscombe what had happened, trudging through the snow. He was cold inside and out, even when he stood in Boscombe’s kitchen in front of him.

  “She only said it to protect me!” Boscombe said frantically. His face was haggard, his eyes wild. “Where is she? I’ll reason with her. I was the one who killed the vicar. I quarreled with him because he wanted me to get straight with the law, and the church.” His voice was rising in pitch, rising desperately. “I had an accident in the summer. Could have been killed. Was then the vicar told me that if I had been, my family would get nothing, not even the house, because they weren’t legal. Genny and the children would be thrown onto charity, and folks might not be that kind to them, seeing I still had a wife alive that I’d never sorted things with.”

  “I see,” Dominic said quietly. “And did you believe that the Reverend Wynter would have forced you to do this, whatever the cost to you?”

  Boscombe hesitated.

  “Did you?” Dominic insisted.

  “I was afraid he would.” Boscombe evaded a direct answer. His eyes were angry, challenging. “That’s why I did it. Genny’s innocent. She didn’t even know I was already married when she—” He stopped.

  “Agreed to live with you without marriage?” Dominic asked.

  Boscombe was caught. To deny it would suggest Genevieve did not care about marriage, and that was obviously ridiculous.

  “Was the vicar blackmailing you?” Dominic asked.

  “Good God, no!” Boscombe was appalled, but a tide of color swept up his face.

  Dominic guessed the reason.

  “Then who is?” he said. “I don’t believe you killed the Reverend Wynter, nor did Genevieve. But you are each afraid that the other did, so there must be a terrible reason why it could be so. Someone is threatening you. Who is it?”

  Boscombe’s face was wretched—eyes full of shame.

  “My wife. She’s here in Cottisham. She’s asking money every week. She’ll bleed us dry.”

  All the jumbled pieces were beginning to make sense at last.

  “But she’s still alive, isn’t she?” Dominic said gently. “Why would you kill the Reverend Wynter, and not her? Why would either of you?”

  Slowly the darkness melted from Boscombe’s face and he straightened his shoulders, leaning forward a little as if to rise. “It wasn’t Genevieve! It was Maribelle! The vicar wouldn’t have forced us to do the right thing, only helped us, but if we did, then Maribelle would get nothing! And he knew what she was doing! He wanted it all out, just like you did!”

  “Maribelle?” Dominic asked, although by now he was certain he knew. His blood chilled at the thought of her alone with Clarice in the cellar where she had killed the Reverend Wynter, but there was no time to stare into nightmares now.

  “Maribelle Paget was my first wife,” Boscombe admitted. “And a crueler woman never trod the earth.”

  “Come.” Dominic stood up. “We must go and face her.”

  “But Genevieve—”

  “She’s safe. We have other things to do first. She thinks you did it, and she won’t back down from her confession until we’ve proved otherwise.”

  A fter Dominic had left with Genevieve Boscombe, Clarice stood in the kitchen staring out of the window at the snow on the apple tree, going over and over in her mind what Mrs. Paget had said in the cellar. The impression would not leave her that Mrs. Paget had expected to find the footprint where it was, almost as if she had known it was there. She had read the drag marks without hesitation, knowing what they were. How did she do that so accurately? Why did she assume that the woman seen leaving the vicarage in the wind and snow had had anything to do with the vicar’s death? She could have been anyone. She had even known at which step he had fallen. She had stopped at it instinctively.

  Clarice turned from the window. Taking her cape from the hook in the hall, she wound it around herself and set off in the snow toward the Boscombes’ house. She must tell Dominic immediately that neither John nor Genevieve was guilty. She was afraid John Boscombe might panic, even fight Dominic when he heard what had happened, and do something that in itself would condemn him.

  There was no time to waste. She took the shortcut along the path through the trees. The stream would be frozen over and safe to cross. The Boscombes’ house was only just beyond.

  The crust on the snow was hard. For a moment it bore her weight, then cracked and pitched her off balance. The icy breath of the wind sighed in the branches, blowing clumps of heavy snow onto the ground. Two or three fell close to her, distracting her attention. She was almost upon the three figures before she saw them, dark and blurred in the colorless landscape. It was Dominic and John Boscombe facing Mrs. Paget.

  Clarice stopped abruptly. The stream was to her right, identifiable now only as a winding strip of level ground between the banks.

  They must all have seen her, but it was Mrs. Paget, ten feet closer, who moved first. She plunged forward through the deep snow, flailing her arms, crossing the ground with extraordinary speed. She reached Clarice in moments, her face contorted with fury.

  Clarice stepped back, but not quickly enough. Mrs. Paget grasped hold of her, fingers like a vise, pulling her toward the stream, dragging her along. She had no time to think. She struggled, but her fists struck only the other woman’s heavy cloak.

  Dominic was shouting something, but another avalanche from above drowned his words. The snow was melting.

  Now they were on the flat icy surface of the stream itself, where it was easier to move.

  “It won’t hold you!” Mrs. Paget shouted back at the man, triumph loud and high in her voice. “Step onto it, too, and we’ll all go down!” She turned back to Clarice. “Struggle too hard and you’ll crack the ice under us, clever vicar’s wife! Believe me, the cold under there will kill you!”

  Clarice stopped moving instantly.

  “Good,” Mrs. Paget said with satisfaction. “Now come with me, slowly, carefully. When we get to the far side, I might let you go. And then I might not. They’re too heavy to come after us. Nothing they can do.” She pulled again, hard, and Clarice nearly fell.

  Boscombe and Dominic stopped at the brink, aware that their weight would break the ice.

  Mrs. Paget laughed with a high, vicious sound. She yanked on Clarice’s arm and started forward again. Clarice did all she could to resist, but her feet had no purchase on the ice. She heard it before she realized what it was: a sharp sound, like a shot, then another, more like ripping cotton.

  Mrs. Paget screamed, grabbing at Clarice and clinging to her hand so hard, Clarice cried out in pain. Mrs. Paget had fallen down on her back, legs th
rashing. The ice swayed and tipped, the cracks in it fanning out, the black water swirling over it, as cold as death. Her big cloak imprisoned her in its folds.

  Clarice felt the water with a shock that almost took the air from her lungs. The cold was unbelievable. She could not even cry out.

  Dominic started out across the ice, calling her, heedless of the danger to himself. Boscombe was in the churning ice floes of the shallows, knee-deep, then waist-deep, his whole body outstretched to hold on to Dominic’s arm.

  Clarice was paralyzed with the cold, her hand still gripped by Mrs. Paget’s like a small animal caught in the jaws of a trap.

  Dominic seized her other hand, pulling hard, but Mrs. Paget would not let go. If she drowned, Clarice would drown with her.

  Dominic reached past her. There was a piece of branch in his hand. He swung out hard, striking Mrs. Paget’s fingers with a force enough to break the bone. She shrieked once, drawing the black water into her lungs, and then she was gone, sucked into the current as it swept under the unbroken ice, carrying her away.

  Dominic and Boscombe dragged Clarice out. She was almost unconscious, and shuddering so violently she could barely breathe. She saw lights in the gloom and heard voices, then drifted into a kind of sleep.

  She woke with someone rubbing her hands and arms, then her legs. Someone else put hot tea between her lips, and she swallowed it awkwardly. It hit her stomach like fire and made her choke.

  Then she saw Dominic, his face white with fear.

  “Don’t be so silly,” she whispered hoarsely. “I’m not going to drown. I was just…detecting…”

  He laughed, but there were tears in his eyes and on his cheeks.

  “Of course you were,” he agreed. “You have to hear my Christmas sermon.”

  There were murmurs of assent, and more tea, and then it all faded into a blur, distant and happy and full of kindness.