Anne Perry s Christmas Mysteries Page 0,84

prepared to."

"How very sad. What is it I can do to help now? I presume you cannot tell me the names of either the woman or her child?"

"I cannot tell you the name of the woman," Dominic agreed. "It has to be confidential. The name of the child I do not know, but I fear it may be someone who has returned to the village with a certain degree of retribution in her mind."

"Oh, dear! And killed poor Wynter because he was the vicar at the time, and did not do as she would have wished, or thought fair?"

"It seems possible," Dominic replied. That at least was true. The more he considered it, the more likely it became. The missing money and Wynter's quarrel with John Boscombe had already been explained.

Peter was waiting for an answer to his first question.

"You must be very careful," Dominic said softly. "If it is this woman who kills, then she does it with stealth, and skill. I think it may be someone nobody suspects."

"Why should she wish me any harm?" Peter's eyes widened. "When Wynter first came here, I was a child myself. In fact, I wasn't even in England. That is when my parents were living in the East, before...before my mother died." He looked down, and a faint color touched his cheeks.

"Did your father not return to England at all during that time?" Dominic asked.

Peter looked up sharply. The whole air of their conversation had altered. There was pain in his face, and anger. His body was stiff in the chair. "Exactly what is it you are asking, Corde?"

"She could not marry him because he was far beyond her social station," Dominic told him. "It seems in Cottisham that that's most likely to have been your father."

Peter's face paled to a sickly yellow, as if the blood had drained out of his skin. He was shaking when he spoke. "My father was devoted to my mother! It is monstrous that you should make such a revolting suggestion! Who is this woman? I demand to know who has...no...I apologize. I know you cannot tell me." His hands gripped the arms of his chair. "But she is a liar of the most vile sort. It is not true!"

Dominic was startled by the vehemence of his denial. It was not so very unusual that a man of wealth and position should produce a few illegitimate children. It made Dominic wonder if perhaps Peter himself might have quarreled with the Reverend Wynter over it. Was it conceivable that, charming as he was, generous, diligent in his duties, still his family pride was such that he would have struck out in rage at the suggestion that his father had begotten any child other than himself?

"You seem inexplicably angry at the thought, Sir Peter," Dominic said gently. "It does not threaten either your inheritance or your title, and it is no more than a remote possibility. I told you, in case you yourself were in some danger. Your flash of temper makes one wonder if perhaps this same suggestion was the cause of your difference with the Reverend Wynter, and you did not forgive him for making it."

Peter stared at him, and slowly the awful meaning of what he had said dawned on him. "God in heaven, man! Are you saying you think I murdered poor Wynter because he believed it was true my father begot this...this child? You can't!" He dragged in his breath, gulping, painfully, and then he started to laugh. It was a terrible sound, wrenched out of him with pain.

Dominic was appalled. He wanted to run away, leave this scene of naked emotion, but he must stay, find the truth, and then face it.

"Is that really absurd?" he said when Peter had gained some small measure of control.

Chapter Fifteen

"Yes! Yes, it is absurd!" Peter's voice rose to near hysteria. "My father could never have had an illegitimate child. Would to God he could have."

The words made no sense at all. Yet in the small discrepancies in what Peter had said of his parents a tiny glimmer of light appeared. "Why would you want that?" Dominic asked.

Peter leaned forward, his face beaded in sweat, eyes dark. "You know, don't you? Did Wynter leave something that you found? He swore to me he wouldn't, but what is his word worth, eh? What is yours worth, Reverend?"

"Why do you want your father to have begotten an illegitimate child?" Dominic asked again, his voice perfectly steady now.