Anne Perry s Christmas Mysteries Page 0,87

Paget surprised her again. "No doubt you were disturbed by my coming. I'm sorry about that. I did call out, but not loud enough for you to hear downstairs. Perhaps there is something, if we looked properly. The poor man deserves justice, and that old fool Fitzpatrick isn't going to do anything about it. I'll come with you, if you like? Hold the lantern."

Clarice felt her stomach tighten, but she had no possible excuse to refuse. And she could not bring herself to tell Mrs. Paget a deliberate lie. For one thing, it could be too easily found out if anyone at all were to go down there, and what could she say? She needed to keep the evidence; it might be the only proof of what had happened. "Thank you. That would be a good idea. I didn't really have time to look."

After tea and cake Clarice went gingerly down the steps again with Mrs. Paget behind her, holding the lantern. Of course they found exactly what Clarice had already seen. "That was where I found him." She pointed to the doorway of the second cellar.

"So he fell here," Mrs. Paget said quietly, pointing to the bottom of the steps. "And whoever it was dragged him there-" She indicated the marks. "-over to there."

"Yes, I think so."

Mrs. Paget studied the floor. "By the shoulders, from the look of it. And those are their own footmarks...unless they are yours?"

Clarice stared at the distinct mark of a boot well to the side of the tracks. "It might be Dr. Fitzpatrick's," she said with a frown.

"Going backward?" Mrs. Paget asked gently, her eyes bright. "Why would he do that, unless he was dragging something? And it looks a little small, don't you think?"

She was absolutely right. It was a woman's boot, or a boy's.

As if reading her thoughts, Mrs. Paget said the same thing. "Tommy Spriggs, one of the village boys, said he saw a woman hurrying away from here the day the vicar was last seen. He'll tell you, if you ask him. Hurrying she was."

"Who was it?"

"Ah, that he doesn't know. Could've been any grown woman who could walk rapidly and wasn't either very short or very tall."

"Can you take me to him?" Clarice asked.

"Of course I can." Mrs. Paget picked up her skirts to climb back up the stairs. "Good thing you came down here, Mrs. Corde. And a good thing you're not minded to let injustice go by, simply because it's easier and, I daresay, more comfortable."

***

In the evening Clarice told Dominic about it, and of finding Tommy Spriggs and confirming what Mrs. Paget had said.

"Had he any idea who she was?" Dominic asked.

"None at all. What he had told Mrs. Paget was all he knew," she answered. She looked at him, both fearing the same answer. Neither spoke it.

***

Christmas Eve dawned so cold the windows were blind with fresh snow, and even inside the air numbed fingers and toes. Outside all color was drowned: white earth, white sky. Even the black trees were mantled in white. Just a few filigree branches were hung with icicles here and there, though when it had thawed sufficiently for them to melt into daggers of ice was hard to say.

Blizzards blew in from the east, and through that cold-gripped world Genevieve Boscombe came to the door and asked to see Dominic.

The study fire wasn't lit, so he took her into the sitting room. He spent several moments poking the wood and coal until the fire caught a better hold and started to give a little more heat. Only when she sat down and he looked more closely at her eyes did he realize that no hearth in the world was going to assuage the cold inside her.

"I killed the Reverend Wynter," she said quietly. Her voice was flat, almost without emotion. "I lied to you when I said he wasn't going to do anything about John and me not being married. He was going to tell everyone, so all the village would know. I couldn't take that, not for my children."

Dominic was stunned. After what Clarice had told him the previous evening, they both knew it was horribly possible that Genevieve Boscombe was guilty. Even so, he could not easily believe it. He hated the thought. He had liked both of them. But then how good was he really at judging character any more deeply than the superficial qualities of humor or gentleness, good manners, the ability to see what is