Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [159]
Clitheridge found his tongue again. “He was not having a seizure,” he said indignantly. “He was lunging after me, trying to grasp hold of me and force me to take the money, all of it! There were thousands of pounds! And he wanted me to hear his confession. I was—I was mortified with embarrassment. I have never seen anything so—so—so horrifying in my life.”
“What in God’s name did you do?” Lutterworth demanded.
“I—er—” Clitheridge swallowed convulsively. “I—I ran! I simply fled out of that ghastly room, through the French windows—and across the garden—all the way back to the vicarage.”
“And told Lally, who promptly covered up for you—as usual,” Shaw finished. “Leaving Theophilus to fall into a seizure and die all by himself—clutching the money. Very Christian!” Still, honesty moderated contempt. “Not that you could have saved him—”
Clitheridge had collapsed within himself, guilty, hideously embarrassed and overcome with failure. Only Lally took any notice of him, and she patted him absently as she would a child.
“But all the money—?” Prudence demanded. She was confused and appalled. “What was all the money for? It doesn’t make sense. He didn’t keep money at home. And what happened to it?”
“I put it back in the bank, where it came from,” Shaw answered her.
Angeline was on the edge of tears.
“But what was it for? Why would poor Theophilus take all his money out of the bank? Did he really mean to give it all to the church? How noble of him! How like him!” She swallowed hard. “How like Papa too! Stephen—you should have done as he wished. It was very wrong of you to put it back in the bank. Of course I understand why—so Prudence and Clemency could inherit it all, not just the house and the investments—but it was still very wrong of you.”
“God Almighty!” Shaw shouted. “You idiot woman! Theophilus wanted to give it to the church to buy his salvation! It was blood money! It came from slum tenements—every penny of it wrung out of the poor, the keepers of brothels, the distilling in gin mills, the masters of sweatshops and the sellers of opium in narrow little dormitories where addicts lie in rows and smoke themselves into oblivion. That’s where the Worlingham money comes from. The old bishop bled every drop of it out of Lisbon Street, and God knows how many others like it—and built this damn great palace of complacency for himself and his family.”
Angeline held both her hands to her mouth, knuckles white, tears running down her face. Celeste did not even look at her. They were quite separate in their overwhelming shock and the ruin of their world. She stood strong-faced, staring into some distance beyond everyone present, hatred and an immense, intolerable anger hardening inside her.
“Theophilus knew it,” Shaw went on relentlessly. “And in the end when he thought he was dying it terrified the hell out of him. He tried to give it back—and it was too late. I didn’t know it then—I didn’t even know that ass Clitheridge had been there, or what the money was for. I simply put it in the bank because it was Theophilus’s, and shouldn’t be left lying around. I only discovered where it came from when Clemency did—and told me. She gave it all away in shame—and to make whatever reparation she could—”
“That’s a lie! Satan speaks in your mouth!” Josiah Hatch lunged forward, his face scarlet, his hands outstretched like talons to grip Shaw by the throat and choke the life out of him, and stop his terrible words forever. “You blasphemer! You deserve to die—I don’t know why God has not struck you down. Except that He uses us poor men to do His work.” Already he had carried Shaw to the ground with the fierceness of his attack and his own despair.
Pitt charged through the crowd, which was standing motionless and aghast. He thrust them aside, men and women alike, and grasped at Hatch’s shoulders, trying to pull him back, but Hatch had the strength of devotion, even martyrdom if need be.
Pitt was shouting at him, but he knew even as he