Anne Perry s Christmas Mysteries Page 0,60

off his heavy outdoor coat.

It was an awkward job up the cellar stairs, and required both men, so Clarice walked in front of them with the lantern. On the way back up she moved ahead and laid a clean blanket on the kitchen table so they could put him down gently on it. As soon as it was accomplished, the doctor went to find the blacksmith.

"I think I should clean him up a bit," Clarice said very quietly. Her throat ached, and she found it hard to swallow.

Dominic offered to do it, but she insisted. Laying out the dead was a job for women. She would wash the coal dust from his head and face and hands. She did it with hot, soapy water, very gently, as if he could still feel pain. He had had fine features, aquiline and sensitive, but they were hollow now, in death. There was a bad scrape on his nose, as if he had struck it falling-and yet they had found him on his back, and to reinforce that fact, there was a deep gash in the back of his head. He must have gone down hard.

In straightening his legs, Clarice also noticed that his trousers were slightly torn at the shins, and the skin underneath abraded and bruised.

"How did he do that?" she said curiously.

"It happened before he died," Dominic said quietly. "People don't bruise after the heart stops. He must have stumbled as he went down the steps. Perhaps he wasn't feeling very well even then."

"I wonder why he went down at all," she said thoughtfully, pulling the fabric straight. "The buckets of coal and coke were all full."

"I expect Mrs. Wellbeloved filled them," he pointed out.

She looked at him almost apologetically. "If she'd gone down there, and he had the buckets with him, then why didn't she find him?"

"What are you suggesting, Clarice?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "I just wondered why he went down there, and nobody knew."

"They thought he had gone away on holiday," he answered. "We all did."

She frowned. "Why? Why did the bishop think he was going on holiday?"

"Because he wrote and told him," Dominic said.

She said nothing. Something made her more than sad, but she wasn't sure what it was.

There was a voice at the door, calling out urgently. Dominic turned and went back to the hall. "What is it? Can I help?"

"Oh, Vicar!" It was a man's voice, deep and unfamiliar. "Poor Mrs. Hapgood's had bad news, and she's that upset, I don't know what to do for her. Can you come? Dreadful state she's in, poor thing."

Dominic hesitated, turning back toward Clarice.

She knew how much it mattered; this was their chance to prove they could do everything that a parish needed. "Yes, of course you can," she said firmly. There was no need to tell this man that the Reverend Wynter was dead. He had his own griefs to aid first. "There's nothing here I can't take care of."

"Oh, bless you, ma'am!" the man in the hall said fervently. "This way, Vicar."

The doctor came back with the blacksmith and his cart, and the two men carried the body out quickly and discreetly, wrapped in a blanket. After they had gone Clarice went back to the kitchen and washed the few dishes they had used, her mind whirling. There was something wrong. She could not put her finger on it standing here at the bench. She would have to go down to the cellar again, and yet she was reluctant to. It was more than the cold or even the memory of what she had found.

"Come on, Harry," she said briskly. "Come, keep me company." She relit the lantern and the dog, surprisingly, obeyed her. It was the very first time he had done as she'd asked. Together they went to the door and opened it. She went first down the steps, very carefully, and he followed behind. A little more than halfway he stopped and sniffed.

"What is it?" she said, gulping, her hand swaying so the light gyrated around the walls.

Harry sniffed again and looked up at her.

Chapter Eleven

Swallowing hard, she retraced her steps up to him and bent to examine what he'd spotted. It was a very small piece of fabric, no more than a few threads caught in a splinter of the wood. At first she thought how odd it was that the dog had noticed it; then she saw the smear of blood. It wasn't much darker than the coal-smudged steps