At any rate, somebody had been recently shriven of the sins set forth upon the paper—probably the previous Saturday—and the document had fluttered down unnoticed between the confession-box and the hassock, escaping the eye of the cleaner. And here it was—the tale that should have been told to none but God—lying open upon Mrs. Budge’s round mahogany table under the eye of a fellow-mortal.
To do Miss Climpson justice, she would probably have destroyed it instantly unread, if one sentence had not caught her eye:
“The lies I told for M. W.’s sake.”
At the same moment she realised that this was Vera Findlater’s handwriting, and it “came over her like a flash”—as she explained afterwards, exactly what the implication of the words was.
For a full half-hour Miss Climpson sat alone, struggling with her conscience. Her natural inquisitiveness said “Read”; her religious training said, “You must not read”; her sense of duty to Wimsey, who employed her, said, “Find out”; her own sense of decency said, “Do no such thing”; a dreadful, harsh voice muttered gratingly, “Murder is the question. Are you going to be the accomplice of Murder?” She felt like Lancelot Gobbo between conscience and the fiend—but which was the fiend and which was conscience?
“To speak the truth and boldly rebuke vice.”
Murder.
There was a real possibility now.
But was it a possibility? Perhaps she had read into the sentence more than it would bear.
In that case, was it not—almost—a duty to read further and free her mind from this horrible suspicion?
She would have liked to go to Mr. Tredgold and ask his advice. Probably he would tell her to burn the paper promptly and drive suspicion out of her mind with prayer and fasting.
She got up and began searching for the matchbox. It would be better to get rid of the thing quickly.
What, exactly, was she about to do?—To destroy the clue to the discovery of a Murder?
Whenever she thought of the word, it wrote itself upon her brain in large capitals, heavily underlined. Murder—like a police-bill.
Then she had an idea. Parker was a policeman—and probably also he had no particular feelings about the sacred secrecy of the Confessional. He had a Protestant appearance—or possibly he thought nothing of religion one way or the other. In any case, he would put his professional duty before everything. Why not send him the paper, without reading it, briefly explaining how she had come upon it? Then the responsibility would be his.
On consideration, however, Miss Climpson’s innate honesty scouted this scheme as Jesuitical. Secrecy was violated by this open publication as much as if she had read the thing—or more so. The old Adam, too, raised his head at this point, suggesting that if anybody was going to see the confession, she might just as well satisfy her own reasonable curiosity. Besides—suppose she was quite mistaken. After all, the “lies” might have nothing whatever to do with Mary Whittaker’s alibi. In that case, she would have betrayed another person’s secret wantonly, and to no purpose. If she did decide to show it, she was bound to read it first—in justice to all parties concerned.
Perhaps—if she just glanced at another word or two, she would see that it had nothing to do with—murder—and then she could destroy it and forget it. She knew that if she destroyed it unread she never would forget it, to the end of her life. She would always carry with her that grim suspicion. She would think of Mary Whittaker as—perhaps—a Murderess. When she looked into those hard blue eyes, she would be wondering what sort of expression they had when the soul behind them was plotting—murder. Of course, the suspicions had been there before, planted by Wimsey, but now they were her own suspicions. They crystallised—became real to her.
“What shall I do?”
She gave a quick, shamefaced glance at the paper again. This time she saw the word “London.”
Miss Climpson gave a kind of little gasp, like a person stepping under a cold shower-bath.
“Well,” said Miss Climpson, “if this is a sin I am going to do it, and may I be forgiven.”
With a red flush creeping over her cheeks as though she were stripping something naked, she turned her attention to the paper.
The jottings were brief and ambiguous. Parker might not have made much of them, but to Miss Climpson, trained in this kind of devotional shorthand, the story was clear as print.
“Jealousy”—the word was written large and underlined. Then there was a reference to a quarrel, to wicked accusations and angry words and to a preoccupation coming between the penitent’s soul and God. “Idol”—and a long dash.
From these few fossil bones, Miss Climpson had little difficulty in reconstructing one of those hateful and passionate “scenes” of slighted jealousy with which a woman-ridden life had made her only too familiar. “I do everything for you—you don’t care a bit for me—you treat me cruelly—you’re simply sick of me, that’s what it is!” And “Don’t be so ridiculous. Really, I can’t stand this. Oh, stop it, Vera! I hate being slobbered over.” Humiliating, degrading, exhausting, beastly scenes. Girls’ school, boardinghouse, Bloomsbury-flat scenes. Damnable selfishness wearying of its victim. Silly schwärmerei swamping all decent self-respect. Barren quarrels ending in shame and hatred.
“Beastly, bloodsucking woman,” said Miss
