A Christmas Secret by Anne Perry

may … he may wish us to remain a little longer.” She realized as she said the words how much she hoped that he would—a lot longer, perhaps always.
    It was ten minutes later with the doctor on his second cup of tea when Dominic came in, slamming the front door behind him and striding down the hall, shedding snow everywhere. “Clarice!” he called urgently, fear edging his voice sharply. “Clarice!”
    She came to the door immediately and almost ran into him. His coat was wet, his face whipped red by the cold, his eyes frightened. As soon as he saw her he was flooded with relief. “Someone told me you sent for the doctor urgently. What is it? Were they wrong?”
    She could not help smiling. It was wonderful, and still faintly surprising to her, that he should care so intensely. “I’m perfectly well,” she said, almost all the shiver gone out of her voice. “I went for coke in the cellar and the cat got into another cellar beyond. I found the vicar’s body. The poor man must have gone down there and had a heart attack. I felt the doctor was the best person to inform.” She met his eyes, looking to see if he understood what she had done.
    He was momentarily shocked. “Dead? The Reverend Wynter? You mean he has been down there all the time?”
    â€œYes. Don’t look like that,” she added gently. She touched his hand. “There was nothing we could have done for him.”
    The doctor drank the last of his tea and came into the hall.
    â€œFitzpatrick,” he said, introducing himself. “You must be the Reverend Corde. Sad thing to happen. So sorry your poor wife had to be the one to find him.” He shook his head. “But I’ll take care of all the details. Perhaps you’d just give me a hand to carry the poor old man up the steps, then I can fetch the blacksmith’s cart and have him taken away. My trap is rather too small, you know.”
    â€œYes, of course,” Dominic replied quickly, beginning to take off his heavy outdoor coat.
    It was an awkward job up the cellar stairs, and required both men, so Clarice walked in front of them with the lantern. On the way back up she moved ahead and laid a clean blanket on the kitchen table so they could put him down gently on it. As soon as it was accomplished, the doctor went to find the blacksmith.
    â€œI think I should clean him up a bit,” Clarice said very quietly. Her throat ached, and she found it hard to swallow.
    Dominic offered to do it, but she insisted. Laying out the dead was a job for women. She would wash the coal dust from his head and face and hands. She did it with hot, soapy water, very gently, as if he could still feel pain. He had had fine features, aquiline and sensitive, but they were hollow now, in death. There was a bad scrape on his nose, as if he had struck it falling—and yet they had found him on his back, and to reinforce that fact, there was a deep gash in the back of his head. He must have gone down hard.
    In straightening his legs, Clarice also noticed that his trousers were slightly torn at the shins, and the skin underneath abraded and bruised.
    â€œHow did he do that?” she said curiously.
    â€œIt happened before he died,” Dominic said quietly. “People don’t bruise after the heart stops. He must have stumbled as he went down the steps. Perhaps he wasn’t feeling very well even then.”
    â€œI wonder why he went down at all,” she said thoughtfully, pulling the fabric straight. “The buckets of coal and coke were all full.”
    â€œI expect Mrs. Wellbeloved filled them,” he pointed out.
    She looked at him almost apologetically. “If she’d gone down there, and he had the buckets with him, then why didn’t she find him?”
    â€œWhat are you suggesting, Clarice?”
    â€œI don’t know,” she admitted. “I just wondered why he went down there, and nobody