A Christmas Secret (16 page)

“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.”

After 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 thrashing. 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.

The usual Watch Night service was not held, in deference to the death of Maribelle Paget. However, word rapidly spread of exactly how it had come about, if not why. Nor did anyone mention that she was really Maribelle Boscombe.

But in the morning every man, woman, and child was in the village church to celebrate Christmas Day. Even old Mr. Riddington was there, wrapped in a blanket and warmed with liberal doses of blackberry wine.

The bells rang out over the snow, carrying the message of joy across fields and woodlands, from spire to spire throughout the land. Inside the organ played the old favorites, and the voices sang—for once—in total unison.

Dominic went to the pulpit and spoke simply, passionately, knowing that what he said was true.

“Christmas is the time when we give gifts, most especially to children. Many have spent long hours making them, carefully and with love, putting into them the best that they have. There are dolls, toy trains, a wooden whistle, a new dress, painted bricks.”

He saw nods and smiles.

He leaned forward over the pulpit rail. “We are the children of God, every one of us, and nearly nineteen hundred years ago He gave us the greatest of all the gifts He has, greater even than life. He gave us hope: a way back from every mistake we have made, no matter how small or how large, how ugly or how incredibly stupid, or how shameful. There is no corner of hell secret enough or deep enough for there to be no path back, if we are willing to climb up. It may be hard, and steep, but there is light ahead, and freedom.”

Deliberately he did not look at Sybil Towers or Peter Connaught; nor did he look at the Boscombes with their children, or Mrs. Wellbeloved or Mr. Riddington. Only once did he glance at Clarice and saw the pride and the joy in her. It was all the reward he ever wanted.

“Do not deny the gift,” he said. “Accept it for yourself, and for all others. That is what Christmas is: everlasting hope, a way forward to the best in ourselves and all that we can become.”

“Amen!” the congregation replied. Then again, with passion, they rose to their feet one by one. “Amen!”

Above them the bells pealed out across the land.

To all those who
would like to start again

BY ANNE PERRY

(
published by The Random House Publishing Group
)

F
EATURING
W
ILLIAM
M
ONK

The Face of a Stranger

A Dangerous Mourning

Defend and Betray

A Sudden, Fearful Death

The Sins of the Wolf

Cain His Brother

A Breach of Promise

The Twisted Root

Slaves of Obsession

Funeral in Blue

Death of a Stranger

The Shifting Tide

Dark Assassin

F
EATURING
C
HARLOTTE AND
T
HOMAS
P
ITT

The Cater Street Hangman

Callander Square

Paragon Walk

Resurrection Row

Bluegate Fields

Rutland Place

Death in the Devil's Acre

Cardington Crescent

Silence in Hanover Close

Bethlehem Road

Farriers' Lane

Hyde Park Headsman

Traitors Gate

Pentecost Alley

Ashworth Hall

Brunswick Gardens

Bedford Square

Half Moon Street

The Whitechapel Conspiracy

Southampton Row

Seven Dials

Long Spoon Lane

T
HE
W
ORLD
W
AR
I N
OVELS

No Graves As Yet

Shoulder the Sky

At Some Disputed Barricade

T
HE
C
HRISTMAS
N
OVELS

A Christmas Journey

A Christmas Visitor

A Christmas Guest

A Christmas Secret