Though Matthew took care to be quiet as he came along the rocks, he knew his presence had been noted. The reverend had glanced at him and then quickly away again without a word. Wade didn’t look much like the erudite minister of Trinity Church this morning. He wore gray breeches patched at the knees and a faded brown shirt with the sleeves rolled up. On his head was a shapeless beige cloth hat that had evidently seen many summer suns and rainshowers alike. His fishing clothes, Matthew thought. Beside the reverend was a scoopnet and a wicker basket to hold his catch.
Matthew stopped ten yards away from the man. Wade sat perfectly still, waiting for a bite.
“Good morning, sir,” said Matthew.
“Good morning, Matthew,” came the reply in a voice from which no hint of emotion could be read. Neither did he look in Matthew’s direction.
A silence stretched. A breath of wind furrowed the river and made the windmill’s vanes creak.
“I fear I’m not having much luck this morning,” Wade said at last. “Two small fellows, not sufficient for a pan. They fought so hard it seemed wrong to land them. I’m after a carp I’ve seen here before, but he always foxes me. Do you fish?”
“I haven’t for a long time.” He once caught fish to live on, in the rough days before he went to the orphanage.
“But you do catch things, don’t you?”
Matthew knew his meaning. “Yes sir, I do.”
“You’re a very intelligent young man. You wished to be a lawyer, Andrew tells me?”
“I did. More than anything, at one point. Now it hardly matters.”
Wade nodded, watching the floating red fly where his line met the river. “He says you’re very strong on the concept of justice. That’s to be commended. You’ve impressed me as a young man of high character, Matthew, and therefore I’m puzzled why you should wish to throw yourself into the low business of blackmail.” His head turned. His eyes were somber and dark-rimmed. Sleep must have been a stranger last night. “I’ve been expecting you, ever since Andrew told me. And to think that John is part of this, when he professed to love Constance and I came to regard him as dear as a son. What do you think that does to my heart, Matthew?”
“Do you really have a heart?”
Reverend Wade didn’t reply, but looked out again upon the river.
“I told Kippering an untruth. John Five doesn’t know anything about the girl. He came to me for help because Constance thought you were losing your mind. Did you think you could go out and about at night without her wondering sooner or later where you went? I followed you myself, to Polly Blossom’s. I saw what I would term a pitiful sight. And the last time you went out-just Tuesday night-Constance followed you.”
The reverend’s face had paled under the shapeless hat.
“She saw where you went. She saw Andrew Kippering come out and speak to you. Oh, she didn’t see his face, but I’m sure it was him. He is the go-between, isn’t he?”
There was yet no answer.
“Yes, he is,” Matthew went on, as a swirl of wind whipped around him. “I presume the money to keep Grace in that room comes from you and passes through Kippering? And his good relationship with Polly Blossom has convinced her to let the girl die in the house? Yes? I presume also that Madam Blossom was the first to discover that one of her doves was the daughter to the reverend of Trinty Church? Did Grace tell her, when she realized she was going to die?” He gave Wade a space to speak, but nothing came forth. “I’d think you might look upon Madam Blossom as a saint, because if anyone was going to blackmail anyone it would have started with her. What’s her reward for this? A place in Heaven for a woman who fears Hell?”
Wade lowered his head slightly, as if in an attitude of prayer. Then he said in a care-worn voice, “Madam Blossom is a businesswoman. Andrew framed the agreement as a matter of business. It’s what she understands.”
“I’m sure it also doesn’t hurt Madam Blossom to have a minister on her side. If, say, certain socially powerful members of the church might wish to shut her house down.”
“I’m sure,” Wade answered, his head still bent forward. “But I had no choice, Matthew. The upward path-the right path-was too dangerous. What I always have preached…I could not practice, when called upon. I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my days, and don’t think it will be easy.”
“But you’ll still be a reverend,” Matthew said. “Your daughter will be dead, without having heard her father’s forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness?” Wade looked at him with a mixture of incredulity and anger that passed across the minister’s face like a stormcloud. He cast aside his fishing-rod and stood up, his chest thrust out as if in readiness to fight the world. “Is that what you think she wants? It is not, sir! She has no shame and no regrets for the life she’s led!”
“Then what is it she wants?”
Wade ran a hand over his face. He looked as if he might sink down to the stones again, and lie there like a rag. He pulled in a deep breath and let it slowly out. “Always the impulsive child. The girl who must have all the attention. Who must wear the bows and bells, no matter what sin buys them. Do you know why she wishes to die in that house? She told Andrew she wants to die in a place where there’s music and laughter. As if the gaiety in that house isn’t forced through the teeth! And her lying in there, on that deathbed, with me standing outside on the street…” He shook his head.
“Weeping?” Matthew supplied.
“Yes, weeping!” The answer was harsh and the anger had returned. “Oh, when Andrew first told me what he’d found out from Madam Blossom, you should have seen me! I didn’t weep! I nearly cursed God and sent myself to Hell for it! What was in my mind might have cast me into eternal fire, but there it was and I had to deal with it! I thought first of Constance, and only her!”
“She doesn’t know?”
“That her elder sister is a whore? Certainly not. What was I to tell Constance? What was I to do?” He stared at nothing, his eyes dazed. “What am I to do?”
“I think that the situation will take care of itself soon enough. Isn’t that what you said to Constance?”
“Dr. Vanderbrocken tells me…that there is nothing he can do except try to keep her comfortable. She may have a week or two, he says, and how she’s holding on he doesn’t know.”
“She may be holding on,” Matthew said, “because she’s waiting for a visit from her father.”
“Me, go in that place? A man of God in a whorehouse? That would be the end of me in this town.” Wade’s expression was pained, and now he sank down to sit upon the boulder again. For a moment he watched the breeze moving across the hills, and then he said quietly, “I have wanted to go in. I have wanted to see her. To speak to her. To say…I don’t know what. But something to comfort her, or bring her some peace if that is possible. Evidently…when she arrived here in May she was sick, of course, but she hid her condition very well from Madam Blossom and Dr. Godwin as well. She always had a silver tongue, even as a child. I’m sure she talked her way right through that odious examination. Then, according to Andrew, the exertions of her…occupation…wore her down. She collapsed in that house, Dr. Godwin was summoned…and to keep from being thrown out into the street, she told Madam Blossom who she was. I presume Andrew was taken into confidence because of his credentials. As a lawyer, I mean, not as a whore-monger.”
Equally qualified in both areas, Matthew thought, but said nothing.
“An agreement was drawn up,” the reverend continued. “Andrew kept me informed of Grace’s condition, and as I understand he even went out after her a few times when she managed to talk someone into setting her loose. She particularly liked the Thorn Bush, he told me.”
Matthew had realized this: Kippering thought Matthew had seen the lawyer and Grace together inside the Thorn Bush on one of those occasions, instead of just staggering out the door that night, and had put together in his mind the idea that somehow Matthew, the sammy rooster, had discovered her identity.
“The night of Mr. Deverick’s murder,” Matthew said. “You were summoned by Dr. Vanderbrocken because Grace had taken a turn for the worse? And he feared Grace might die that night?”
“Yes.”
No wonder, then, that Wade had said he and the doctor were travelling to different destinations, Matthew thought. It would have been hard to explain to High Constable Lillehorne where they were going together on such an urgent mission.
