Anne Perry - A Christmas Secret

Were any of their children conceived or born out of wedlock? That would be scandalous, but not irrevocable. Why would the Reverend Wynter concern himself with it? It might be a sin in the eyes of the church, but it was over and done with now. Surely a confession and absolution would deal with it.

She could find out. She had only to go to the church itself, which was next door across the strip of grass and up the path through the graveyard. The church records would be there in the vestry: marriages, christenings, and burials. Boscombe had said Genevieve grew up here. She would have been married here, too.

Very carefully she finished the final shirt. She put both irons to cool and carried the shirts upstairs. Clarice felt rather grubby, searching the parish records for someone else’s secrets, but sometimes one could feel grubby doing what was necessary to get to the truth. And if she found she was wrong, so much the better.

She put on her outdoor boots again and her heavy cape, then picked up the keys and went out. The snow was almost up to her knees in places where the land was low and it had drifted. The bare honeysuckle vine on the lych-gate was sparkling with icicles, and the path through the gravestones was slippery. The sky was ragged now, with patches of hard light making the expanse of the village green difficult to look at. The snow glared achingly white. She wondered if someone had fed the ducks. She should make sure, should take them something herself.

The church was bitterly cold inside. The stained-glass window with its pictures of Christ walking on the water cast patches of blue and green and gold light on the floor. The robe of St. Peter in the boat was the only warm color: a splash of wine. How many people down the centuries had brought their joys and their griefs here, made promises, prayed for forgiveness, or poured out their thanks?

She hurried to where the parish record books were kept. She unlocked the cupboard and found the one most likely to contain the baptism of the Boscombes’ oldest child. She skimmed through a couple of years’ worth of entries before finding it. It was a swift job, since the village was small: just four or five hundred people. Then she started to go backward, looking for John and Genevieve’s marriage. She went through ten years but didn’t find it. Twenty-three years before the birth of their first child, she came across Genevieve’s own baptism. Even more carefully she moved forward. There were baptisms of two sisters of Genevieve, then the burial of both her parents. The sisters’ marriages were recorded, but not baptisms of any children. Presumably they had moved to wherever their husbands lived.

Then Genevieve’s children were baptized, but Clarice could find no reference to her marriage.

Of course they could have been married somewhere else, but the ugly thought kept intruding into Clarice’s mind that perhaps they had not been married at all. Why would that be? The only reason she could think of was that something had prevented it. The obvious thing would be that one of them was already married. If it were Genevieve, the whole village would probably know; therefore, it must be John.

Had the Reverend Wynter somehow found that out?

She closed the book and replaced it, locking the cupboard door. She walked back through the icy vestry and outside into the freezing world again. It glittered sharp on daggers of water from the earlier thaw, now hanging from every black branch.

Her feet crunched on the surface. There were gray clouds looming in from the west, fat-bellied with more snow. Little shivers of wind stirred the topmost branches.

W hen Dominic returned at lunchtime, she told him what she had found.

“She could have been married somewhere else,” he said, taking a fresh piece of bread and another slice of cold mutton. “Perhaps in his village. He might have had elderly parents who couldn’t travel, for example.”

She passed him the rich, sharp pickle. “Possibly. But the Boscombes are in some kind of hardship. There are lots of small signs of it, if you look.”

He smiled with a touch of sadness, and she saw the mounting pain in his eyes. They were not in that situation themselves, but it was not too far ahead of them if he remained a curate much longer. She regretted having said it, yet she could not deny the evidence she had seen in the Boscombes’ house. Perhaps avoiding the subject of poverty was in a way making it worse, as if it were a secret too shameful to acknowledge.

“People do fall on harder times without there being a dark secret,” he pointed out ruefully.

“I know.” She poured him more tea although he had not asked for it. One of her pleasures was to notice his needs and meet them before he said anything. “It’s just a little piece of information. But I think it fits in with the missing pennies in the ledgers, the fact that John Boscombe suddenly resigned from his position in the church, and that they are both afraid of something. None of which would matter if the Reverend Wynter were not dead. But he is, and at least for now, this is your village.” Then she corrected herself. “Our village.”

He frowned. “Why would their not being married, and the vicar knowing that, have anything to do with financial hard times or the petty thefts from the collection? That doesn’t make any sense.”

She struggled through the confusion in her own mind. “I think he knew about the petty thefts before giving up his job keeping the books. He was close enough to the vicar that they trusted each other. Then something happened, and John Boscombe left. They still go to church, as everyone does, but that’s all. Could mean their sudden tightening of circumstances dates from that time, too. With children you can go through sheets quickly. You’ll wash them every other week, perhaps give them a little rubbing. Middles can wear thin. Best to trim them before they actually tear.”

“And what caused the hardship?” he asked. “The Reverend Wynter was blackmailing them, so they paid for half a year, and then they killed him?”

She blinked. “No! No, I don’t believe that. But maybe if the Reverend Wynter found out, so did someone else. That’s possible, isn’t it?”

He considered for a moment, staring at his cup, but without reaching for it. “Yes,” he said finally. “Who would that be?”

“His first wife,” she said without hesitation. “Or, really, his only wife.”

“Why didn’t she come forward and accuse him openly, if he deserted her?”

“Oh, Dominic!” she said in exasperation. “Don’t be so otherworldly. Much better to ask him for money to keep quiet about it than admit to everyone that he ran away from her to be with someone else. Except that if Genevieve doesn’t know, or didn’t at the time, then he probably ran away just because she was ghastly.”

He tried to hide a smile, and failed. “Clarice, you don’t just run away because your husband or wife is appalling, or there would hardly be a married person in England living at home.”

She raised her eyebrows very high. “Thank you. I hadn’t thought of running away…yet.”

He shook his head. “I’m so glad,” he said drily. “It’s cold out there. Do you really think the Boscombes have a secret?”

She wrinkled her nose.

“Yes. And I really do think it could have to do with their marriage. That is the only thing of sufficient importance to them that they might fight very hard to protect it.” She met his eyes and hoped he could see in hers that she understood the Boscombes perfectly. She, too, would have fought with every weapon she had to protect her marriage. For her, too, it was the most precious thing she had.