“Good Lord. You think me such a vandal?” said Dunstan.

He even does indignation better than me, thought Mig.

“I don’t know what you may be capable of. If not burned, then you’ll certainly have taken care to hide it so well that no one will ever be able to discover it as evidence of your crime.”

This sounded so forced and bombastic even to himself that he could not blame the old man for the flicker of amusement that touched his thin lips.

“Ah, the pleasures of being outraged! I remember them well though nowadays I enjoy them but rarely, having been warned by my medical advisor that undue excitation could rapidly summon me to a far more terrible judgment than any you can pass.”

Does undue excitation cover your lunchtime siestas with Mrs. Collipepper? Mig wondered. A slow smile spread across Dunstan’s face as though he heard the thought, and Mig felt himself flushing once more.

Forcing himself to speak calmly, he said, “There is no witness present and I assure you I haven’t come along equipped with a hidden recorder. So perhaps at the least you would do me the kindness of telling me what the Jolley document contained.”

“My dear young man, what do you take me for? You are as entitled to view the document as I am entitled to see the one you purloined. You’re quite right. I have hidden it, but, à la Poe, in plain view.”

He picked up a transparent protective folder from the desk.

“Here it is. Not hugely significant in the great scheme of things, in fact only of any real interest to those directly concerned, such as our two families. Take a look. I would value your opinion.”

He put the open folder into Mig’s hand.

Anyone who trumped you so effortlessly at every turn, you either had to hate or to admire, thought Mig ruefully. He hadn’t yet made up his mind.

He opened the folder and began to read.

Sam Flood moved at a pace which came close to being a trot down the center of the road leading from St. Ylf’s to the Stranger House.

She was a missile in search of a target but not yet able to read the code in which its program was written.

After he’d finished speaking, Swinebank had broken the eye contact maintained throughout his story, turned away, and looked down at the memorial inscription.

Sam remained stock-still for what felt like an age. She had seen the look on the man’s face before he turned. Shame had been there, and regret; but also huge relief that at last he had unburdened himself of his corrosive secret.

Deep resentment that he should be finding ease in what was causing her so much pain restored her movement in the form of an anger whose force set her body shaking.

“And that’s it?” she burst out. “Nearly half a century for your second silence, and now you’re starting in on your third?”

Swinebank turned back and looked at her helplessly.

“What more can I say? Ask me anything you like, I’ll try to answer. I’ve got no excuses to offer. Not for myself anyway. Just heartfelt apology. To you above all. And your family. And to my parishioners. I’ve let them down too. All these years they’ve felt they shared the blame for the death of the best man they ever knew. He came among us for a while but we weren’t anywhere near good enough to keep him here, that’s what they think, that’s why they clammed up when you started asking questions about someone called Sam Flood.”

Suddenly Sam was sick to death of hearing about her namesake.

“Sam Flood, saintly Sam, that’s all I ever hear from you people!” she said. “You think it was his tender bloody heart trying to cope with all the wickedness he saw that made him top himself, don’t you? Well, you’d better get disenchanted! It was a lot closer to home than that. It was catching his best mate screwing his best girl that tipped him over. Yeah, something as banal and commonplace as that. Sexual betrayal. If you’re a Latin lover, you kill them both! If you’re an English curate, you kill yourself! Either way you don’t end up getting canonized!”

She realized Swinebank was looking at her in amazement. She’d let out Edie and Thor’s secret without thinking. But so what? They were both adults, they could take it. It was time for all of Illthwaite’s sordid little secrets to see the light of day.

She went on with undiminished force.

“He was a grown man, he could make choices. It’s my gran who’s the only real victim here. She was just a kid. She got raped and nobody noticed. She got posted off like a fucking parcel to the other side of the world and nobody gave a toss. And when she got there, she got treated worse than shit, and still not a single hand was lifted to defend her. That’s what you should be feeling guilty about. I can survive living in a world where some nutty parson tops himself. It’s living in a world where what happened to kids like my gran can happen that makes me want to spew my guts!”

“I don’t understand,” said Swinebank. “What are you saying?”

He was looking bewildered, but there was something else there too.

Sam thought, I’ve given the bastard hope. He’s thinking, maybe Saint Sam’s death wasn’t his fault after all!

She forced herself to think rationally. Make sure you’ve got all the equations worked out on the board before you let go.

She said, “Why didn’t you tell anyone you’d seen Edie in Flood’s room?”

He said, “I did. I told Dunstan Woollass.”

“Woollass? Not your father?”

He laughed. There was no humor in it, a little sadness, a lot of bitterness.

“I told him the story about going out to play and having an accident. When he came to see me in the hospital next day, he told me that Sam was dead. He said he expected the police would want to interview me and he asked if I had anything else to say. I said no. That’s where my father got his ministry wrong. He made himself more terrifying than God. But after he’d gone, Mr. Woollass came to see me. It was easy talking to him, especially as he knew all about everything…”

“How? How did he know?”

“Gerry had told him. Once I realized he knew what had happened, it all came out. When I ended by saying it was me who was responsible for Sam killing himself, he was marvelous. He said there must have been things going on in Sam’s mind we didn’t know about. He said that all men have secrets they want to keep. Like me, like my secret. Some men were strong and could keep them and lead a good life even if their secret was bad. My secret wasn’t very bad, he said. I’d just been a witness. Gerry had been punished, both his father on earth and his Father in heaven had seen to that. And Pam had been taken care of. As for the Gowders, he’d deal with them. It wasn’t my secret that had made the curate kill himself. It was his own.”

“He said that?” Sam was puzzled. Intrigued too. This old guy she still hadn’t met seemed to hover over everything that went on in Illthwaite. Maybe he was indeed the heavenly as well as the earthly father! “And did he give any hint what the curate’s own secret might have been?”

Swinebank said, “He said he didn’t know, no one could truly know another man’s thoughts. But it must have had something to do with not being as good as he wanted to be, as other people thought he was. I’d told him about seeing Edie there, and he said it probably had something to do with this. Sex was one of the most pleasurable routes to hell, he said, but it got you there just the same. But now poor Sam was dead and beyond our judgment. And unless Edie herself came forward and told about her visit to the vicarage, it would be a kindness to her, and a help to Sam’s memory, for me not to say anything about it. Edie kept quiet, so I did too. God forgive me for being so weak.”

He looked so pathetic that Sam’s scornful rejoinder died in her throat. He’d been eleven years old, terrified by his father, soft-soaped by Dunstan Woollass. They were the real villains who got little Pam Galley out of their hair by parceling her off to Oz.