Someone brushed past Constance’s skirts—the man with the scared, small boy, who was still sniffing and wiping his tear-stained face on his sleeve while his father led him outside by his other hand.
An innocent casualty of the vicar’s fierce sermon, and certainly not the one he had been aiming for. But then, there were a few such innocent casualties of this whole business. In trying to keep them safe, Nolan had frightened some of the children and even put them at risk. And hadn’t Nell Dickie had her youngest with her when Mrs. Keaton accused her of stealing and threatened her with arrest? Mrs. Chadwick had been short with Richard Gimlet and delayed passing on his message.
Those circumstances were what had led Constance and Solomon to consider the children as the senders. Perhaps it had even been the effect of the injustices on the children that hadinspired Mavis, without her foreseeing that the vicar’s sermon would be quite so terrifying.
Even though the vicar’s sermons were frequently terrifying, by all accounts… Who would know that better than Mavis?
With unspecific unease, Constance thought of Mavis’s avid face listening to the vicar’s sermon, focused and surely in agreement. God knewshehad been judged too much…
So why was she judging Miss Mortimer? Or Mrs. Chadwick? She did not really fit as the judgmental spinster anxious to exert a little power…
Well, every situation, every person, was different.
But Mavis is obsessed with her own sin. Not with other people’s…
The expression on Nolan’s face bothered Constance. There had been no suspicion in it, none at all.
Am I wrong? Arewewrong?
Why had she been so certain? Because Mavis lived alone and could move freely at night, and so could deliver the letters more easily, and because she was a powerless spinster with a grudge, like the woman in the previous case the vicar had come across.
Only Mavis didn’t seem to bear any grudges. Rightly or wrongly, she accepted her sin and the scorn of the village as her due for falling… Was it Alice after all? Her mother’s only defender, furious with all those judgers with their own eyes full of “beams,” as the Bible put it?
Alice did not live alone. She seemed happy and proud of her position in the Raeburns’ household, and the only real opportunity she’d had to deliver one of the letters was when she had gone to the manor house in search of the vicar.
But even so, how could she have known in advance that she would have that opportunity? How could Mavis? Alice must have expected to go to the back door like all servants and never have got near the post in the front hall. To hand the letter overto one of the manor servants would have been to give herself or her mother away. Pure luck had left the front door open. And the maid polishing the mirror in the hall had said nothing about seeing Alice, only feeling the draft. Alice had waited outside.
Which brought Constance back to the drawing room guests. Mr. or Mrs. Raeburn? The vicar would have to be positively evil to preach a sermon like that against something he himself had done! He was not evil. Neither was his wife, although recalling the way she had monopolized Solomon, Constance considered the possibility with unkind relish before discarding it. No one at the vicarage lived alone.
Miss Fernie? The stealing proved her to be considerably subtler than Constance had initially given her credit for. But she had pushed Constance down the stairs for her sin. Not cut out print from a newspaper and sent her an anonymous letter. That was not her way.
Which left only the Chadwicks. The doctor, probably, had been too busy to attend a tea party, but Mrs. Chadwick and Sophie had almost certainly been there…
According to Peregrine Mortimer,“It was a Wednesday, when they all come bleating for free food.”
And Sophie had borne that out. “I take him to tea at Miss Mortimer’s every Wednesday.”
Constance’s heart gave a thump and seemed to stop.
She tightened her grip on Solomon’s hand so convulsively that he winced. Her thoughts and other people’s words and faces raced through her mind, fading out the vicar’s voice and those of the congregation as the ritual prayers continued.
I know who did it. This time I do know. The vicar has not been honest with us…
*
Abel Drayman cameto with the sound of voices in the next room and the sense of danger flexing his limbs. Though he felt awful—mixing gin and rum did that to a man—he sprang up from the bed with silent speed and didn’t even feel dizzy until he stood facing the door with his knife in his hand.
Then he did reel slightly, but at least he knew where he was—in one of the back bedrooms of his favorite brothel, where Rosie let him sleep sometimes. There were signs of her presence all around, half-full perfume bottles, skimpy gowns and underclothes. Her robe was not hanging on the rusty hook on the door, so she must be wearing that while she talked to her visitor in the next room.
“Look, I ain’t seen him,” Rosie whined more loudly. “You got no cause to come round here bothering my friends.”
“We’re not bothering your friends, are we, Rosie? Or you.”
Drayman’s flesh crawled. He knew a peeler when he heard one. Instinctively, his eyes sought the loose plank in the floor, beneath which he’d hidden his good fortune from Rosie’s prying eyes.
“I only want to know when you last saw Drayman.”
Drayman cursed beneath his breath. They knew his name, whether in connection with the thefts around the docks, or worse, the croaking of Herbert Chase. He had to get out of here. How long would Rosie be able to keep them out?
