"Automobile accident when I was ten. The gas tank blew up. My mother died and I was left looking like this. It's better now. I've had surgery twice. Back then, the church was my salvation, literally. I was baptized when I was twelve, dedicating my life to Jesus. Who else would have me? Certainly not Jean Timberlake."

"Were you interested in her?"

"Sure, I was. I was seventeen years old and doomed to be a virgin for life. My bad luck. Good looks ranked high with her because she was so beautiful herself. After that came money, power... sex, of course. I thought about her incessantly. She was so completely venal."

"But not with you?"

He went back to his work, sliding pills into the trough. "Unfortunately not."

"Who, then?"

The lips curved up again in that nearly beatific smile. "Well, let's see now. How much trouble should I make?"

I shrugged, watching him carefully. "Just tell me the truth. What else can you do?"

"I could keep my mouth shut, which is what I've done to date."

"Maybe it's time to speak up," I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

"Who was she involved with?"

His smile finally disappeared. "The Right Reverend Haws. What a pal he turned out to be. He knew I lusted after her, so he counseled me in matters of purity and self-control. He never mentioned what he did with her himself."

I stared at him. "Are you sure of that?"

"She worked at the church, cleaning Sunday-school rooms. Wednesdays at four o'clock before choir practice started, he would pull his pants down around his knees and lie back across his desk while she worked on him. I used to watch from the vestry... Mrs. Haws, our dear June, suffers from a peculiar stigmata that originated just about that time. Resistant to treatment. I know because I fill the prescriptions, one right after the other. Amusing, don't you think?"

A chill rippled down my back. The image was vivid, his tone matter-of-fact. "Who else is aware of this?"

"No one, as far as I know."

"You never mentioned it to anybody at the time?"

"Nobody asked, and I've since left the church. It turned out not to be the kind of comfort I was hoping for."