Anne Perry's Christmas Mysteries: Two Holiday Novels (26 page)

She gripped his hand across the table. “We didn’t know him,” she said urgently. “Perhaps we have imagined him the way we wanted him to be.”

“Everyone speaks well of him,” he pointed out, closing his fingers over hers.

“Well, they would!” she said, biting her lip. “He was a priest, and now he has died! Who is going to say he was brutal, a slimy betrayer of trust who blackmails the most vulnerable? They would only know it if they had been a victim themselves, and wished him dead, possibly murdered. Who would admit that?”

“No one,” he said miserably. “Please God, I hope you’re wrong. We’re wrong,” he corrected himself.

D
ominic went out again to visit one of the old gentlemen who was too frail to leave his house in the snow, and afraid of what the deepening winter would bring.

He stayed a little while, assuring Mr. Riddington of his care. Regardless of who the vicar of Cottisham should be, he would always have time for going to those who could not come to the church. Then after bidding him good-bye he walked along the lane toward the green in the dusk. Again he became aware of footsteps behind him. They seemed to be gaining on him, as though the person was keen to catch him up.

He stopped and turned. He saw the brisk figure of Mrs. Paget hurrying toward him, her breath a white vapor in the freezing air. She was dressed rather smartly with a russet-brown cape, and there was a flush in her cheeks.

“I’m glad to see you, Reverend Corde,” she said warmly as she reached him. “Have you been to see Mr. Riddington? Poor old soul can’t make it even to his front gate anymore. Afraid of slipping and breaking a leg. Very wise he stays in. Broken bone at his age can be nasty. Don’t let me hold you up. I’ll walk beside you.” Without waiting she started forward again, and he was left to keep step with her.

“Mrs. Blount next door drops in every day,” he told her.

“Not the same as having the vicar call.” Mrs. Paget shook her head. “No one else can comfort with the spiritual promises of the church.”

“Believe me, Mrs. Blount is a far better cook than I am,” he replied, keeping his balance on the uneven path with difficulty. “And there are times when a hot apple pie is more use than a sermon.”

“You may joke, Vicar,” she said seriously. “But there are dark things to fight against, darker than most folks are willing to admit.”

He was uncertain how to answer her. The wind was rising again. It whined in the branches above them, and little flurries of dry snow skittered over the ice.

“I know the truth,” she went on, her voice quiet but very clear. “The Reverend Wynter was murdered, wasn’t he? Please don’t try to spare me by denying it. It doesn’t help to close one’s eyes. That’s how evil flourishes, because we want to be kind and end up being cruel.”

He wanted to argue, but she was right. He asked her the question that filled his mind. “How do you know that, Mrs. Paget?”

Now it was she who was silent. They were out of the lane and starting across the open green. The pond was almost invisible: just a smooth white surface a little lower than the slope of the grass. The air was darkening, color staining the west with fire and the shadows growing so dense the houses blended into one another. He began to think she was not going to answer.

“The Reverend Wynter was here in Cottisham well over thirty years,” she said at last. “He knew a lot about people, sometimes things they’d rather no one did. He wouldn’t have told, of course. Priests don’t, do they.” It wasn’t really a question, but she stopped as if waiting for him to speak, her features indistinguishable in the shadows.

“No,” he replied. Was she trying to find a way to tell him that the Reverend Wynter had done infinitely worse than use his privileged knowledge to manipulate and extort? The darkness felt as if it were inside him as well as beyond in the sky and the black lace of the trees.

“But those that betray don’t trust anyone,” she said, looking straight ahead of her.

“Is that why you believe he was murdered, Mrs. Paget?” he asked. “Just that he knew people’s secrets? All priests do.”

“What are most village secrets?” she asked. “A few silly mistakes, a little spite. All things you can repent of.” Suddenly her voice dropped and became bitter. “Cottisham’s different. But here there are things that are against the law of God, and a priest can’t overlook or forgive them.”

“God can forgive all sins, Mrs. Paget,” he pointed out.

“After you’ve paid,” she said harshly. “Not while you’re still committing them, and the innocent are suffering. Don’t tell me that’s God’s way, ’cos it isn’t. I know that, and so do you, Vicar.”

“Yes,” he said a little tartly. “And the Reverend Wynter would have pointed that out to anyone who was continuing to do what was wrong.”

“Exactly,” she agreed, staring at him. “But what if that person didn’t want to stop? What if they weren’t going to stop, no matter what?”

He didn’t want to know, but he couldn’t avoid it simply because it was uncomfortable. If a priest refused to address sin, what use was he to anyone? He was here precisely to deal with weakness: physical or spiritual. He must face it, wherever it led him. He started to walk again, trusting his instincts though he could only dimly see the road.

“What you say is true, Mrs. Paget. But I imagine you expect me to do more than agree in theory?”

“You didn’t know the Reverend Wynter,” she said after another few steps. The emotion was carefully controlled in her voice now, and he could not see her face. It was dark all around them; only the yellow gleam of a few uncurtained windows shone warmly here and there, illuminating short distances, touching branches with gold and making the night beyond seem deeper. “He was a good man,” she went on. “He was brave and honest. He knew right from wrong, and he didn’t flinch from doing what he had to, even though he didn’t like it.”

“Did he know things about more than one person?” he asked. He was trying to evade the issue and he knew it. Perhaps she did, too.

“He might have known things about a lot of people,” she admitted. “But he knew that John and Genevieve Boscombe are living together in sin. He walked out on his first wife. Left her alone to fend for herself. Vicar never told a word, but I don’t come from Cottisham, and I know one or two other places as well. I recognized him.”

“And told the Reverend Wynter?” he asked, shivering a little.

“No, I didn’t,” she said stiffly. “But if I had, I’d have been doing those poor children a service.”

“Branding them as illegitimate?” he said, disbelief making his voice hard. “The scandal would ruin the parents and make them all outcasts. How is that a service, Mrs. Paget?” They crossed the road together, side by side.

“Only if the vicar told people,” she answered with exaggerated patience. “And he wouldn’t do that. You said so yourself.” There was triumph in her, but thin and shivery, full of hurt. “You haven’t been a vicar very long, have you,” she observed.

He felt the heat burn inside him, despite the bitter edge of the wind. “No. What do you suppose the Reverend Wynter intended to do?” He wanted to know for himself, but also because it might lead him toward whoever had killed Wynter.

“Face them,” she said simply. “Tell them they have to put things right. Go back and face Mrs. Boscombe, the real one, and care for her, make some restitution to her for what her husband did. Perhaps if he’s lucky, she’ll divorce him for his adultery with her that calls herself his wife now. If all that happens, then they can marry and make their children legitimate at last, by adoption or however it’s done. Not their fault, poor little souls.”

He felt an intense pity, more than she could have understood. His own first marriage had been less than happy, as he understood happiness now. He had not left his wife, but he had certainly betrayed her more than once. She may well have expected it, but that excused nothing. He still had a guilt to expiate, and he knew and accepted it. That certain knowledge made him far quicker to forgive others, to understand ugliness and stupidity and try to heal it rather than destroy the perpetrator.

“You are quite right,” he said to her gently. “That would be the correct thing to do, even if not the easiest.”

“He never lacked courage.” She kept walking at a steady, even pace into the wind. “Takes courage to be a priest, Reverend Corde. Can’t just go around being nice to people. Sometimes that isn’t the real help.”

“Yes, Mrs. Paget. I’m sure it isn’t,” he agreed.

“I’m home now. Good night, Vicar.”

“Mrs. Paget!” he said quickly. “You said the Reverend Wynter knew things about many people.”

“So he did,” she cut across him. “But it’s no good asking me what things they were, or who they were about, because I don’t know. I just knew that one because I knew. I’ve lived in other villages, too. Good night, Vicar.” This time she turned and walked away briskly up the path toward the nearest cottage.

“Good night, Mrs. Paget,” he said more to himself than to her.

I
t was not a good night. He knew that after supper he would have to go see John Boscombe and ask him if what he had been told was the truth, because he felt sure that was what the Reverend Wynter was doing before he died. He had racked his brains to find another alternative, all the time knowing that there was none. Clarice had offered to come with him, and he had refused. She had no part in it, and no chaperone was necessary. She would worry, he knew that, imagining all kinds of anger and distress, but that was the burden of a priest’s wife, and she did not ask to be relieved of it.

It was a hard walk to the Boscombes’ house. He did not dare take the shortcut through the woods, even if the stream was frozen. His arm ached from carrying the lantern and trying to hold it against the wind. He was welcomed in. The house was warm, although not as warm as the vicarage where they could afford to burn a little more coal.

“How nice to see you, Reverend Corde,” Boscombe said immediately. “It’s a terrible night for visiting. What brings you? No one ill or needing help?”

Dominic almost changed his mind. Maybe this was something the bishop should deal with, or whoever was given this living permanently. But if he evaded it, Clarice would despise him. Even now he could imagine her disappointment in him.

He followed Boscombe inside to the parlor, where Genevieve was sitting sewing. She was patching the sleeves of a jacket. She put it away quickly as if to welcome him, but he saw from the quick flush in her face that she was ashamed. Were they really paying blackmail to someone? The vicar? Please God, no.

Or to anyone else, perhaps from Boscombe’s home village? Even Mrs. Paget? But it was the Reverend Wynter who was dead. Mrs. Paget was very much alive.

“Genny, please get the vicar a cup of tea, or soup,” Boscombe requested. “Which would you like?”

How could Dominic accept the man’s hospitality, given out of their little, with what he had come to say? Guilt almost choked him. And who was he to blame a man for doing what he might so easily have done himself, had the temptation been there? Sarah was dead, however, and he was free to love Clarice as he wished, but due to luck, not virtue.

“No thank you, not yet,” he prevaricated. “But I would like to speak to you confidentially, Mr. Boscombe. I beg your pardon for that, on such an evening.”

“Don’t worry, Vicar,” Genevieve said quickly. “I have jobs to do in the kitchen. You just call when you’d like the soup.”

“What is it?” Boscombe asked as soon as the door was closed and they were alone. “You look very grave, Vicar. Not more money gone, is it? Or did you find out who took it? I think the Reverend Wynter was inclined to let it go, you know. He could always see the greater picture, the one that mattered.”

“Yes, I imagine he could,” Dominic answered. “It seems to me he thought past today’s embarrassment and saw the grief that could come in the future if present sins, however easy to understand, or even to sympathize with, were not put right.”

Boscombe’s face paled. His eyes were steady on Dominic’s face.

“I’m sorry,” Dominic said gently. “There is no record of your marriage in this parish. If I ask the bishop, will he find it in some other place?”