‘Always! Does it always, Bloxam?’ demanded his employer, fearfully. ‘Do you mean to say that no murders have ever been successfully concealed?’
‘Very few, sir, if any. They lie too heavy on the conscience for that. Why, isn’t Rayner a case in point? If any have been kept dark for ever it must be amongst Roman Catholics, for they can ease their consciences by confession, and, if they receive absolution, they are set at rest. They have such entire faith in the power of their priests to absolve them from their sins. I have a friend of that religion, and it’s wonderful how bright he seems after he’s been to confession, quite a different creature.’
‘But if a man were to confess a murder in the confessional, the priest would give him up to justice, surely?’ said Henry Hindes.
‘Oh, no, he wouldn’t, begging your pardon. My friend tells me that the secrets of the confessional are inviolate. No priest would dare reveal them, on penalty of being stripped of his cloth. What he hears there never passes his lips again, not even to another priest.’
‘I shouldn’t like to trust him, all the same,’ said Hindes; ‘human nature is subject to too many accidents. A priest might lose his brain and babble everything he had heard.’
‘I fancy, Mr Henry,’ replied Bloxam, laughing, ‘that he hears so many things, good, bad, and indifferent, that he forgets them as soon as he has heard them. And he doesn’t know the names of half his penitents. A Catholic may go to any confessor he likes. It is his director only that he does not change.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ said Hindes, indifferently.
‘Only what my friend tells me, sir,’ replied the cashier; ‘but Catholics seem to derive so much consolation from confession, that I often wonder the practice is not more largely used in other churches. Will you see the books now, Mr Henry?’
‘No, not now,’ replied Hindes, in a languid voice; ‘I’m awfully tired.’
‘But you did not see them last week, sir, and, if you’ll excuse my saying so, it is too long to let them run on without casting an eye over them.’