Watchers of Time ir-5

by Charles Todd

  “I won’t keep you-” Rutledge began, but the housekeeper shook her head.

  “No. Come along back, if you don’t mind-she’s not well, and I don’t like leaving her alone too long!”

  He followed Mrs. Wainer down the passage to the kitchen. The woman at the table was swathed in shawls, as if she felt cold, her gnarled fingers closed around a cup of tea, and her clouded eyes turned toward the door. “That’s not Tommy,” she stated, regarding Rutledge with obvious suspicion.

  “Tommy Beeling is her grandson,” Mrs Wainer said in explanation to Rutledge. “No, Martha, it’s the policeman from London. Inspector Rutledge.”

  The old eyes sharpened. “Oh, aye.” Mrs. Beeling nodded her head almost regally, as if welcoming Rutledge to her own house. “The one come to find out who killed our priest.”

  Feeling as if he weren’t there, Rutledge bade her a good morning and then turned back to Mrs. Wainer.

  She was saying, “Tommy-that’s her grandson-drops her off here for a little visit, on his way to market. Martha used to speak to Father James for ten minutes or so, and then we’d have our tea here in the kitchen.” She gestured toward the kettle on the stove. “The water’s still hot, sir, if you’d care to have a cup. I could bring it to you in the parlor.”

  “Thank you, no. I do need to ask you a question, and then I’ll be on my way. If Mrs. Beeling doesn’t mind?”

  Martha Beeling didn’t. In point of fact, she was delighted to be a witness.

  Rutledge asked, “The photographs that Father James kept about the house. Do you recognize the people in all of them?”

  “As to recognizing, ” Mrs. Wainer said doubtfully, “no, I can’t say that. But I knew who most of them were. His parents, of course-his sister and her husband-the brother and sister that died-Monsignor Holston-friends from seminary. He’d point them out sometimes when I was dusting and say to me, ‘Ruth, I’ve just had a letter from John, there, and he’s taking up a church in Gloucestershire.’ Or he’d heard that one or another had gone to Rome or to Ireland. It was like family, you know, the way they kept up with each other.”

  “Was there a photograph of anyone whose name he never gave you? Someone he never identified for you?”

  “I wasn’t one to pry, sir! He told me what he wished to tell me, I never asked.” She bristled a little, as if he had questioned her integrity. “If you’re meaning that photograph that Mr. Gifford was looking for, I don’t know which it could be.”

  Hamish said, “You must tread wi’ care, yon lawyer willna’ wish for you to make too much of the bequest.”

  And not in front of the inquisitive Mrs. Beeling!

  Rutledge patiently explained, “I’m looking for information, you see. About Father James, about the people he knew-and trusted-and cared about. Not only the seminary and his family, but individuals as well. A soldier he’d befriended at the Front. A woman he’d known long before he became a priest. Nothing suspicious or doubtful, only a personal memory that he’d kept to himself.”

  “You’re welcome to see for yourself. The truth is, after Mr. Gifford left, I’ve thought about it a good bit, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

  He tried another possibility.

  “Do you know a Miss Trent?”

  “The lady at the hotel. Oh, yes, sir, she’s called on Father James a time or two. The man she was to marry, he was killed in the War, and she’s finishing the book he’d begun. As a memorial, so to speak. It’s all about what’s to be found in old churches-misericords, brasses, pew ends, baptismal panels, that sort of thing. Before he went off to France, her young man had written all the book except the chapter on Norfolk. As you’d expect, Father James knew the history of any number of the churches up here in the north, and was helping her.”

  Suddenly enlightened, Rutledge remembered that Lord Sedgwick had referred to May Trent as having a religious bent. He could understand why such a mistake had been made, if she spent so much of her time visiting churches.

  Mrs. Beeling spoke up. “You’re speaking of that pretty lady who was here to tea once when I came? Very kind she was, asking after my Tommy.” To Rutledge she said, “Tommy nearly lost a leg in the War. He still limps something fierce. The bones not knitting right.” And that carried her to a new train of thought. “You was the policeman in the motorcar t’other day, with Lord Sedgwick. Tommy was taking me to the doctor, and he said he saw the Inspector with His Lordship, but I took it to mean Inspector Blevins. And that made no sense at all!”

  “Why not?” Rutledge asked.

  “His Lordship’s far above taking up Inspector Blevins. Proud man, like his father. And he was as mean as they come! My grandmother was parlor maid to the Chastains, that lived in the hall before the first Lord Sedgwick took it over. When she married the coachman, they was given a grace-and-favor cottage in the village, for life. No such thing when I married my Ted. Head gardener, Ted was, and the old lord-Ralph, this ’un’s father-he knew the gatehouse cottage was coming open, and he never said a word. But this ’un’s wife, she tried to make up for it, and was kind enough to give me a brooch to wear on my wedding day.” The old woman fumbled in her shawls, and held out a lovely little enameled brooch, a hunting scene of hounds and horsemen over a fence after the fox. “That’s an American hunt, that is. Not one of ours. See the fence? Wood railings! You can tell by the fence!” She had remembered exactly what she’d been told about the little brooch, and it was a prized possession, one she wore when calling on friends.

  Rutledge admired it, and she beamed with pleasure. Then, as class-conscious in her own way as any member of the aristocracy, she added spitefully, “They both married Americans, you know. The present lord and his son Arthur. Couldn’t find no titled English lady that would have them, smelling as they did of London trade. It wasn’t old money, you see.” She glanced at Mrs. Wainer’s pursed lips. “Well, I should say the present lord found himself a well-born bride over there, and she was very kind. Died of her appendix, she did. Mr. Arthur’s was a love match, they tell me. He went one summer to visit his cousins on his mother’s side and fell in love with one of them.” She ended triumphantly, “ And I met that one, too. A pretty little thing, shy as a violet. But Ralph’s wife-Charlotte, I think her name was-was long dead when he was given the title. Just as well; they say she was no better than she ought to be. A Londoner, she was.”

  Mrs. Wainer threw an apologetic glance at Rutledge, and said, “Now, then, Martha, let me warm up your tea!” She rinsed the pot and turned to lift the kettle, pouring the steaming water over fresh leaves.

  But Mrs. Beeling was delighted with a new audience. “Arthur’s wife is the one that drowned. On that ship that went down. She ran off from Arthur, they say, though no one knows quite why, except that he was away in France racing whenever he could and she must have been lonely, out in the middle of nowhere like she was!”

  “Here, in East Sherham?” Rutledge asked, encouraging her.

  “Lord love you, not here. They lived over to Yorkshire, where Arthur had bought a house after the marriage. He never got along with his brother, Edwin. I wondered if Edwin didn’t care for his sister-in-law more than he should. The story was, he’d head to Yorkshire on that motorcycle of his, as soon as Arthur set out for France. Both were motorcycle mad one time or another. Noisy, smelly machines, to my mind. Edwin still has one; I’ve seen it.”

  Mrs. Wainer brought the fresh pot of tea and added more small cakes to a plate. “Now, you help yourself, Martha, and I’ll just see the Inspector out.”

  Mrs. Beeling was still enjoying herself. “I don’t quite know why he took you up in his car,” she added, returning to more recent events, perplexed. “Unless it was to hand over the reward money he put up for Father James’s murderer.”

  “As far as I know, there’s been no reward given to anyone,” Rutledge said.

  She nodded sagely. “I’m of two minds about yon Strong Man. I was at the bazaar, and he never exchanged more than a word with Father James,
and him decorated like a clown-”

  “But he was in this house in the afternoon,” Mrs. Wainer said earnestly. “I found the Strong Man wandering about inside this house !” She cast a resigned glance in Rutledge’s direction. “That’s what alerted Inspector Blevins to look for him.”

  “Yes, and a dozen other people were in here as well. I saw Lord Sedgwick’s son come to have a lie-down, when his back was paining him. I asked him if I might bring him a glass of water, and he said thank you but no. There was also the doctor’s wife, to put a plaster on Mrs. Cullen’s cut finger, and-”

  “The Sedgwicks were at the bazaar?” Rutledge asked, although he knew they were. But Mrs. Beeling seemed to have perfect recall.

  “Osterley doesn’t have a lord, you see,” Mrs. Beeling explained graciously, “though there’s always been good blood here. The Cullens and the Giffords and so on. But there’s no title. Still, the family does try to make an appearance on special days, and that’s as it should be.” She nodded. The Sedgwicks were not old money, but they were still money. “As for Arthur, he’s in terrible pain, they say, but he can get about. He’d come down for the fete and stayed on for that Herbert Baker’s funeral.”

  “He was at Herbert Baker’s funeral?” The garrulous old woman had given Rutledge more information in a quarter of an hour than anyone else had done in several days of asking questions.

  “Of course he was. Herbert Baker had been his father’s coachman, and then driven Arthur’s wife about in the motorcar until her death.”

  Rutledge turned to Mrs. Wainer and said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on the offer of a cup of tea.”

  She wasn’t pleased to serve him in the kitchen. And as it turned out, he wasted the next quarter of an hour.

  Whatever her sources were for the gossip she had freely dispensed, Rutledge discovered that Mrs. Beeling had nothing more of interest to tell him, except that she most certainly had her own opinion on why Herbert Baker had seen two priests shortly before he died.

  “When you’re old, things begin to prey on your mind,” she told him affably, as if from personal knowledge. “You wake up in the night, dwelling on what was done or left undone. And it seems far worse in the darkness than it ever was in the light, until you take to brooding on it, more often than’s good for you. You take to worrying that it’s too late to make amends. I know myself, sometimes it weighs heavily on me, the things I’ve said and done. There’s nights when my bones are aching and I can’t sleep, and I’d even bow down to those heathen idols that His Lordship has in his garden, if I thought it might clear my mind!”

  The Watchers of Time.

  Rutledge said, “But what had Herbert Baker done, that made him send for the Vicar and the priest?”

  “Who’s to say? But I heard he’s the one who let Arthur’s wife step out of the motorcar in King’s Lynn, and then went off to get himself drunk while she was speaking with the shopkeepers about a birthday party. Only she never visited the shops. She went instead to the station and took the next train to London, and disappeared. Until the ship went down, and they discovered the poor lady had been aboard!”

  It made sense. Hamish, listening to the nuances behind the words, agreed. Guilt might have tormented Herbert Baker-who had the gift of loyalty. Not a sin of commission, but instead failure to do one’s duty for a single hour. His drinking couldn’t have set in motion any of the events that had followed. All the same, he might have bitterly blamed himself for them.

  If-if-if. If I had been there-if I hadn’t been drinking- if I had minded my duty…

  Was that what lay on a dying man’s conscience, driving him to try to buy himself absolution in two faiths?

  CHAPTER 14

  RUTLEDGE, DRIVING BACK TO THE HOTEL, told himself that Herbert Baker was proving to be a dead end. But the bequeathed photograph was still elusive…

  He braked to a slow pace behind a wain piled high with hay.

  Rutledge was beginning to wonder if the killer hadn’t taken it with him. Did that explain the ransacking of the desk? But what would Walsh-or his accomplice, for that matter-want with a photograph? How would they have known it even existed, and what earthly value did it have? And if it did have value, why had Father James made a sudden decision to leave it to May Trent?

  Why-when he could have given it to her on the same day he’d brought that carefully crafted paragraph into the solicitor’s office and asked to add a codicil to his Will?

  The wain reached the turning for Gull Street and the Sherham Road and began to swing wide to plod around the sharp corner. Abruptly-without any warning- Rutledge found himself locked in an angry exchange with Hamish.

  It had nothing to do with the discussion in the rectory kitchen. Not directly. It was instead an accusing and angry personal indictment.

  “I canna’ ken why ye’re sae keen on proving yon Inspector wrong! Are you sae certain the Strong Man is innocent? When you walk away fra’ this town, you’ll leave behind raw wounds that willna’ heal as swiftly as yon hole in your chest! It’s a cruel thing, to stir up secrets to no purpose! Ye were sae set on Herbert Baker’s Confession as the key to this death, and now the auld woman has explained why it wasna’ any sich thing!”

  “There are too many questions about Walsh. If he killed the priest, it had nothing to do with the bazaar money. I’d wager a month’s pay on that! And I can’t go over Blevins’s head and ask the War Office for information about where Walsh served. But that will have to be dealt with one way or another, before we can discuss guilt or innocence.”

  “I canna’ see how a photograph is important.”

  “It may not be. That’s a part of police work, too-to eliminate the variables.”

  “And when the photograph also turns into a wild-goose chase, ye’ll go back to London?”

  Rutledge said nothing. The wain lumbered into the turn, top-heavy and awkward. Two young boys along the road shouted at the driver, and began to run after him, as if trying to overtake the wain, their laughter spilling out like silver threads. The team of great Norfolk horses pulling the wain ignored the rowdy pair, heads down and shoulders into their harness. Rutledge watched them, concentrating on shutting out the voice in his head.

  But Hamish was not to be put off.

  “You willna’ see it, but ye’re running from yoursel’. You couldna’ find peace in your sister’s house, you couldna’ find peace in your flat, and then you couldna’ find peace at the Yard. And ye willna’ leave Norfolk, because there’s nowhere else to go. You’re afraid because in hospital you discovered a fierce will to live -”

  Rutledge answered grimly, “I’ve been shot before-”

  “Aye, that’s as may be! Piddling wounds that didna’ require more than bandaging at the aid station or a dram of whiskey! This was verra’ different. It left its mark. Why are ye sae afraid of living? ”

  Rutledge realized that the motorcar had not moved, and the wain was nearly out of sight down the Sherham Road. He drove on past the intersection and pulled into a tiny lane that ran between two houses. There he put the gears in neutral, set the brake, and leaned back to rub his hands over his face as if to erase the emotion there.

  It was something he had tried to shut out from Hamish. But the Scot, used to burrowing deep into his secrets, had ferreted it out.

  In truth, it had little to do with Scotland…

  On the night of his second surgery, he had heard the doctors telling Frances that the odds were against him; he might not survive going under the knife. “Too close to be sure,” one of them had said, and he had listened to Frances’s voice in his drugged state halfway between consciousness and sleep.

  “He won’t leave me alone,” she said fiercely. “He won’t.”

  And then someone had leaned over his bed, hovering in what appeared to be a mist but was only the anesthetic taking hold. At the time it had given the white hair and the kind face an insubstantial air, as if half dreamed.

  “There’s nothing to fear, son. W
hatever happens. But if you want to live-He’ll listen. Be sure of it.” The South Country voice speaking softly in Rutledge’s ear was confident, serene.

  After that, the darkness had come down, and there had been no pain, only peace. It was not until many hours later that Rutledge had come back, in worse pain, to wakefulness.

  It had startled him, to find himself alive. And he had been terrified that he’d begged to live, when he had no right… no right at all.

  Much later, Frances had brought the corpulent little clergyman in to meet him. The doctors, Rutledge learned, had sent for the man to offer comfort to her if her brother died. In the light of day, Mr. Crosson was neither insubstantial nor half dreamed, but a practical and straightforward rector who regarded the patient with sharp blue eyes and said, “Well, then, Mr. Rutledge. I’m glad to see you know your own mind!”

  It was far from the solace that Mr. Crosson had intended. Instead it had shaken Rutledge as deeply as the lines of sleeplessness on Frances’s face. And it confused him as well; all his energies for so very long had been concentrated on dying and to live was something he wasn’t- couldn’t be-prepared for.

  “Oh, aye, was that it, then?” Hamish asked derisively. “Most men would ha’ been glad to live to see an end to the case. You went to hospital and buried your head in sand! You went back to work to bury your head in sand. And you stay here in Norfolk to bury it again.”

  “What do you want from me?” Rutledge said tiredly. Listening to gulls call from the direction of the harbor, he tried to defend his answer. But their wild laughter distracted him. “You know that Blevins needs to sort out this murder.”

  “Oh, aye, a training program for the local constabulary, is it?”

  Rutledge nearly lost his temper, but Hamish got there before him.

  “Ye’re the man with a fine understanding of people, they say. Can ye no’ understand yoursel’? D’ye think I wanted ye to die? No, like yon Connaught woman, I havena’ any wish for you to die. No’ until I’m ready! In France God wouldna’ have you, and He doesna’ want you now. But I do!”