Anne Perry s Christmas Mysteries Page 0,64

it afterward.

She nearly said so. Then she saw his slender hand on the back of the chair, and realized that the knuckles were white. This was not the right time. But she was afraid there never would be a right time. The next sermon would be for Christmas. One pedestrian sermon now, safe and colorless, might be all it would take to lose the congregation's sympathy, and their hope.

"Don't quote," she said suddenly. "Don't use other people's words. Whatever they are, they'll have heard them before."

"People like repetition," he said with a bleak smile, his eyes dark with anxiety and the crushing weight of doubt Spindlewood had laid on him.

In that moment Clarice hated Spindlewood for what he had done with his mealy mouth and grudging, time-serving spirit. "Do you remember how terrible it was when Unity Bellwood was murdered, and how the police suspected all of us?" she said quietly.

"Of course!"

"Tell them what you said to me about courage then, and how it's the one virtue without which all others may be lost," she urged him. "You meant it! Say it to them."

He did so, passionately, eloquently, without repeating himself. She had no idea whether the congregants were impressed or not. They spoke politely to him afterward, even with warmth, but there was no ease among them. She and Dominic walked home through the snow in silence.

***

On Monday, the wind sliced in from the east like a whetted knife. Straight after breakfast Dominic set out to make his calls.

Clarice started where she had traditionally been told lay the root of all evil, although actually she thought it was far more likely to find its roots in selfishness-and perhaps self-righteousness, which was not such a different thing when one thought about it. Still, money was easier to measure, and she had ready access to the vicar's ledgers both from the church and from the household.

She had barely begun examining them when she was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Wellbeloved carrying two hard white cabbages and a string of very large onions. She looked extremely pleased with herself, stamping her feet and shedding snow everywhere.

"Said as it would be cold. Tree fell over with the weight of it an' the road south's blocked." She announced it as a personal victory. "'Less you want to go all 'round Abingdon an' the like. An' there's no saying you can get through that, either. Could all be closed."

"Then we are very fortunate to have coal and food," Clarice replied warmly.

"Onions." Mrs. Wellbeloved put them on the table. Not that anyone could have mistaken them for something else.

"Thank you." Clarice smiled at her. She already knew from the brief glance at the accounts she had taken that Mrs. Wellbeloved had done all the shopping for the vicar. She wanted to tell her of their discovery of the body in the cellar, but Fitzpatrick had asked them not to, and his implication had been clear enough. Still, Clarice felt guilty saying nothing. "That's very kind of you," she added.

Mrs. Wellbeloved smiled, her face pink. She began to take off her overcoat and prepare to scrub the floor.

It was half past eleven before Clarice could return to the ledger and read through it carefully. She had gone through it twice before she noticed the tiny anomalies. They were sometimes of a shilling or two, but more often just pennies. The mistakes seemed to be in the Reverend Wynter's own money, which he accounted very carefully, as anyone on a church stipend had to. Clarice herself knew where every farthing went. The expression poor as a church mouse was not an idle one.

The church accounts, including the donations signed for by John Boscombe until a few months ago, and more recently by a man named William Frazer, were accurate, then inaccurate, then accurate again. The final sum was always as it should be.

Clarice could understand how people ended up chewing pencils. It made no sense. Why on earth would anyone steal tuppence, or even less? She was convinced it was not carelessness, because the same figures kept recurring in what she realized was a sequence. She placed them side by side, according to date, and then she saw the pattern. The few pence went missing from the church accounts, then from the Reverend Wynter's personal account. Finally the church accounts were correct again. Someone was taking tiny amounts from the collection for the poor box, irregular and always very small. The Reverend Wynter was replacing them from