A Christmas Secret (9 page)

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 the 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?”

“I'm afraid I have very hard news indeed,” Dominic replied. “I have been told not to break it yet, but—”

“You are not leaving?” Peter said in alarm.

“No. Not in the foreseeable future. I would like not to leave at all, but that is up to the bishop.” Dominic was startled by how passionately he meant that. He longed to stay here, to be his own master, free to succeed—or fail—on his own beliefs, not Spindlewood's.

“I don't understand,” Peter replied, confusion clear on his dark face.

As briefly as possible, Dominic told him what had happened, including Fitzpatrick's admonition to tell no one yet, and his own reasons for not obeying.

“Oh, dear,” Peter said quietly. He looked crushed. “I liked him enormously, you know.”

Dominic believed him; he did not even have to weigh it in his mind. The sorrow in Peter's face was real—a pain one could sense in the room almost like a third presence.

“The more I learn of him, the more I realize how much he was loved,” Dominic said gently. “I feel a loss myself, and I never even met him. That is why I intend to find out what happened. I don't know whom to trust, or where to begin.” He smiled ruefully, a trifle self-conscious. “I have a brother-in-law who is a policeman, a detective. Suddenly I appreciate how appallingly difficult his job is. I have no real authority to ask anyone questions. I am an outsider here, no matter how much I want to belong, but I feel a duty to find the truth of how the Reverend Wynter died.”

Peter frowned. “Do you not think perhaps it was an accident more than deliberate, and someone panicked, felt guilty for provoking a quarrel, and so denied it, even to themselves?” His voice dropped to little more than a whisper. “We can be at our ugliest when we are frightened. I have seen men act quite outside what one had believed their character to be.”

“Certainly,” Dominic agreed. “But there is a cowardice in that, and a certain brutality in allowing him to lie there undiscovered, which speaks of a terrible selfishness. I don't intend to allow that to go unaddressed. It … it would seem as if I were saying it doesn't matter, and it does.”

“Of course it does.” Peter lifted his eyes and met Dominic's levelly. “What can I do to help? I have no idea as to who could or would have done such a thing.”

“Or why?” Dominic asked.

Peter's mouth pinched very slightly. “Or why,” he conceded. He drew in his breath as if to add something, and then changed his mind and remained silent.

Dominic wondered what he had been going to say. That it must be a secret the Reverend Wynter had learned, possibly even by accident, but that someone cared about so passionately, with such fear of loss, that they had killed rather than risk it being known? It was the obvious thing, if a priest was murdered. Could Peter have failed to say this for any reason except that he knew, or feared, it was true?

His own secret, or someone else's?

What secret could the elegant, charming, and secure Peter Connaught care about enough to commit murder? Or who was the friend for whom he would condone such an act?

Anything? Anyone? The most ordinary countenance could hide stories of pain the outsider would never imagine. Peter had quarreled with Wynter himself to the point that, despite their very real affection, he had suddenly stopped calling at the vicarage, and Wynter had put away the chess set and apparently never played again.

Dominic considered challenging the man but decided not to, at least not yet. “I might be able to narrow it to some degree by knowing who called on him after the last time he was seen alive,” he said aloud.

Peter relaxed fractionally. The difference in his posture in the big chair was so slight, it was no more than an easing in the tiny wrinkles in the way his jacket lay. But Dominic was aware of it.

A log settled in the fireplace, sending up a shower of sparks. Peter stood up and added another, then waited a moment to make certain it was balanced. The flames reached higher to embrace it.

“That seems like a good idea,” he said, taking his seat again. “If I can help, I should be happy to. I might even be able to make some discreet inquiries myself.”

“I should be most grateful,” Dominic replied. He had no idea how far to trust him, but sometimes one could learn as much from a lie as from the truth. Even omissions could tell a person something. “Thank you,” he went on with warmth. “I hope that, as you say, it may turn out to be no worse than a grubby accident someone failed to report.”

Peter smiled. “A weakness not easy to forgive, but not impossible.”

Dominic remained another fifteen minutes, and then took his leave out into a fading afternoon, now even more bitterly cold. Some of the clouds had cleared away, and it had stopped snowing. The light was pale, with the amber of the fading sun low on the horizon. Shadows were growing longer. The edge of the wind cut like a blade, making his skin hurt and his eyes water.

His feet slipped a little on the ice as he trudged down the drive. Other than the thud of the mounded snow on the evergreens overbalancing onto the ground below, there was silence in the gathering gloom.

Beyond the trees the village lights shone yellow, making little golden smudges sparkling against the blue-gray of twilight. Someone opened a door onto a world of brilliance. A dog scampered out then back in again, and the light vanished.

Dominic's hands and feet were numb. Hunching his shoulders from the cold, he stopped for a moment to retie his scarf.

That was when he heard the footsteps behind him. He swung around, his breath catching in his throat from the icy air in his lungs. The figure was there, crossing the village green only a few yards away. She was bent, shivering, and very small. She stopped also, motionless, as if uncertain whether to try running away.

But who could run in the deep snow? And like Dominic, she was probably too stiff with cold even to try.

Dominic took a step toward her. “Are you looking for me?” he asked gently.