Anne Perry s Christmas Mysteries Page 0,78

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.

Chapter Fourteen

It 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,