Free A Christmas Secret by Anne Perry Page B

not yet said enough for him to understand. It was unavoidable now. “You see …” What she had planned sounded ridiculous.
    â€œYes?”
    Genevieve also had stopped her work and was listening.
    Clarice felt the heat burn up her face. “You see, I don’t believe he died by accident,” she said. She hated the sound of her voice. It was wobbly and absurd. She cleared her throat. “I think someone hit him. He had injuries both on his face and on the back of his head. They may not have meant to kill him, but …” She was telling them too much. “… but there was someone else there, and they didn’t tell anyone.” She turned from Boscombe to Genevieve. “He was lying all by himself in the second cellar, but he had no lantern,” she went on. “Who’d go into a cellar without a lantern?”
    â€œNo one,” Genevieve said quietly. “But why would anyone quarrel with the Reverend Wynter? He was the nicest man …” She stopped.
    For a moment they all were silent: Clarice and Boscombe at the kitchen table, Genevieve standing with the bowl still in her arms.
    â€œDo you think it’s the money in the church accounts?” Boscombe asked finally, his face smooth, his eyes avoiding Genevieve’s. “Surely there’s hardly enough there to provoke a quarrel?”
    â€œNo,” Clarice agreed. “It’s only pennies missing, a shilling or two at the most. But it happened a lot of times, over six months or more.”
    Genevieve was looking at Boscombe; staring at him.
    Boscombe sat still, his back stiff.
    He knows,
Clarice thought, the conviction growing in her mind.
He knows the Reverend Wynter was putting the money back.
But had the vicar known who was taking it? Was that what he had been trying to find out all those months, and had at last succeeded? And was killed for? No, that was absurd. As she had said before, it was pennies!
    Boscombe was watching her, his face tense with concentration, waiting.
    â€œYou knew, didn’t you?” Clarice said very softly. “Is … is that why you stopped working with the Reverend Wynter? Because you knew he was protecting someone who …”
    His eyes were wide, his face almost comical with disbelief.
    â€œYou didn’t …,” she went on, answering her own question.
    â€œNo! Oh, I knew there were pennies missing here and there,” he assured her, shifting a little in his seat. “At first I thought it was just that the Reverend Wynter was a bit careless, or even that he wasn’t very good at his sums. Then I realized that in the end the figures were always exactly right, so he knew someone was taking bits and pieces. But I didn’t object to his dealing with it in his own way.”
    â€œDid he know who it was?” she asked.
    Boscombe smiled. “He didn’t tell me.”
    She knew he was speaking the literal truth, but there was a real truth, a more whole and honest one, that he was concealing. “But he knew,” she insisted. “As you did?”
    â€œNo, I didn’t. But even if I had, Mrs. Corde, I’m not sure that I would be free to tell you.”
    She leaned forward a little across the table, her elbows on its pale, scrubbed wood. “I think the Reverend Wynter was killed by someone, Mr. Boscombe. They may not have set out to, but they hit him, and when he was dead, or dying …” She saw him wince, but she went on. “… they dragged him into the farther cellar and took the lantern to go back upstairs, leaving him alone there in the dark, for days. It may not have anything to do with the money—it’s so small it’s meaningless. But it has to do with something!”
    Genevieve shivered. “If that’s true, John, then an awful thing has happened. Perhaps you should tell the Reverend Corde, even if you can’t tell Mrs. Corde.”
    He looked at