Watchers of Time ir-5

by Charles Todd

  She had been dragged into one of the lifeboats, unconscious from a blow to the head. A blessing perhaps, with fractured ribs and a broken leg. Speculation was that she’d been struck by another boat while floating in the water. A sensation at first, for she had no name, and later of no interest to journalists hungry for fresh news. She must have remained in hospital in Ireland for some time, because there was a small cutting dated three weeks after the disaster, relating that this woman had been released and was returning to England, her leg still in a cast but healed sufficiently to travel. The article also contained a small and telling final paragraph.

  “Miss Trent, whom the doctors have pronounced fully recovered, has no memory of the tragedy, but says that she dreams at night about falling into black water. When interviewed by the shipping authorities, she could provide no new information about the collision or the subsequent actions of officers or passengers to save the doomed ship.”

  How well, Hamish asked with interest, did Father James know this woman before she came to Osterley? Titanic went down in April 1912 It was, Rutledge thought, a question to pursue.

  In the end, Rutledge went not to Inspector Blevins but to the Vicar of Holy Trinity as the most likely person to give him the truth.

  Mr. Sims had been sitting in his study, working on his sermon for the coming Sunday service, and he led Rutledge to the cluttered, book-filled room with the air of a man just released from prison.

  “You’d think,” he said ruefully, “that for a man of the Cloth, divine inspiration would pour forth like water from a holy spring. I’ve agonized over this week’s message for hours and still have no idea what I’m trying to say.”

  He looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept, shadows emphasizing the blueness of his eyes.

  “How is the painting coming?” Rutledge asked, for the smell of wet paint was still pervasive.

  “With greater speed than my persuasive powers. My sister is wary about changing schools this far into the year. Her children are sad to leave their friends. Her own friends are asking her if she’d be happy here in the Broads. I have run out of words for her, too.” The last was said on a sigh.

  When they were seated in the study, with its dark paneling and almost grimly Victorian austerity, Hamish said, “This is no’ a place of inspiration!”

  Rutledge had to agree. The gargoyles that surmounted the hearth, and the agony-stricken caryatids that supported it, two well-muscled monsters with their mouths twisted open with effort, were depressingly vivid.

  Catching his expression as he glanced at them, Sims smiled. “I find this room most useful when I’m discussing appropriate behavior in church with small boys. They can’t take their eyes off the figures, and it drives home my message quite well.”

  “I think I’d find it more comfortable writing with my back to them.” Rutledge’s voice was light. “Unless the subject was Judgment and Damnation.”

  Sims laughed outright. “It never occurred to me. This was the study of the Vicar before me, and I’ve tried to follow his example.”

  “Better, surely, to follow your own? There must be any number of rooms in this house that are more cheerful.”

  Sims nodded. “Actually, there is a small office I’m fond of. Now, tell me how I can help you with your problems? Any news on the man Blevins is holding?”

  “The police are still tracing his movements.” Rutledge gave the stock answer. He waited for a moment, and then asked, “You were there, when Father James left the bedside at Herbert Baker’s house?”

  “Yes. He came into the parlor and the Bakers offered him a cup of tea. He was tired, but he sat down and-in my opinion-made the family feel a little more comfortable about what Baker had done, in sending for a priest.”

  “Did he bring anything with him, that Baker might have given him? An envelope, a small package-” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “No. He had his small case with him. With consecrated wafers and wine. If there was something Baker had wanted him to have, it was small enough to fit in there. Or his pocket. Why? Does the family think anything is missing? I can’t believe-”

  “Nothing is missing,” Rutledge replied quickly. “I found myself wondering if perhaps Baker had given him a letter to post. It’s as likely an explanation as any for Baker’s whim.” He shrugged, as if it wasn’t important. “Put it down to curiosity-the besetting sin of a policeman’s mind. No, what actually brought me are these.”

  He had folded a half dozen of the cuttings to fit into his breast pocket, and now he took them out to hand to the Vicar. “Tell me what you make of these.”

  The Vicar unfolded them and began to sift through the cuttings. “They appear to be news articles of the ship that sank back in ’12.” He looked up, a question on his face, as if uncertain what Rutledge wanted from him. “Were they Baker’s?”

  “I shouldn’t think they have anything to do with Baker. No, I found them among Father James’s papers. And this-” He took the photograph from his pocket and passed it across the desk.

  Something changed in Sims’s expression. “How did you come by this?” His voice was carefully neutral.

  “Do you recognize the woman?”

  “No, I think you must tell me first how you came to have this!”

  “It was also in Father James’s possession. From what I’ve learned, just before his death he chose to add a codicil to his Will, leaving what I believe to be this photograph to someone-”

  The Vicar’s face had paled, as if the blood had rushed to his heart and left his skin without its natural ruddy color. “Not to me! He would never have bequeathed it to me! ” His voice was constricted by a tight throat. But he couldn’t take his eyes from what he held in both hands, as if it were a treasure-or a dangerous thing.

  Rutledge, watching him, said, “Why not? If you know the woman?”

  “I know- knew -her.”

  “Can you tell me her name?” He moved gently, carefully, keenly aware that he was trodding on very emotional ground.

  “She’s dead! Let her rest in peace. She had nothing to do with Father James-”

  “He never met her?” Rutledge deliberately took the words literally.

  “Of course he’d met her-but she wasn’t a member of his parish, she didn’t live in Osterley-” His words were disjointed, as if he spoke without thinking, responding to the tone of voice and not the sense of Rutledge’s questions.

  “Then she was a member of your parish.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  With an effort, the young Vicar handed the framed photograph back to Rutledge. It was an act of denial. As if by giving it back, he was absolved of any more questions about it.

  “You haven’t given me her name,” Rutledge reminded him.

  “Look,” Sims said, his eyes wretched with pain, “this is a personal matter. She had nothing to do with the priest or his church or his death. How could she have? She had nothing to do with me, not really. Not in the true sense. It’s been seven years-she’s been dead for seven years! Just-leave it, will you?”

  “I can’t. Until I’m satisfied that something Father James kept seven years and then felt was important enough to bequeath to someone in his Will, shortly before his murder, is not a matter of grave concern.” He chose the word purposefully. Not death. Murder. Violent and intentional murder.

  It brought Sims out of his shock. His face seemed to collapse, as if Rutledge had so completely broken down his defenses that he had nowhere left to turn. He had never been a forceful man, he had never had the strength of a Father James, and yet in his own fashion he did have the ability to face the truth.

  “For God’s sake-” he asked, “- did he leave it to me?” When Rutledge said nothing, he went on, “All right. If I tell you what you want to know, will you leave us both in peace? Just-leave us in peace!” He stopped, as if afraid he might say too much.

  “What was she to you, if you weren’t her priest?”

  Sims’s eyes went to the caryatids, the angui
shed figures howling in pain as they supported the heavy weight of the mantel. Rutledge thought, He knows how they feel-his burden is as heavy.

  Hamish said, “He was in love wi’ her. Let it be!”

  But Rutledge waited, forcing Sims to say what he did not want to say.

  “I-I cared about her, because she was in trouble. But there was nothing I could do to help. With all the might of the Church behind me, there was nothing I could do to help her! ”

  CHAPTER 17

  IN THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWED, RUTLEDGE gave Sims a space in which to collect himself.

  Then he asked, “What was her name? Victoria? Vera? Ver-”

  “I won’t give you her name,” the Vicar broke in wearily. “For God’s sake, man, have a little sense! She’s long dead, and you’ll only stir up what’s best forgotten. I gave that photograph to Father James myself, for safe-keeping. It was-it was part of a promise. And I kept it, that promise. I did what was asked of me while she was alive, and I tried to close the door once she was dead. I don’t know why he wished me to have it again. I thought perhaps he’d burned it years ago. But I never quite had the courage to ask. Who knows about this? Gifford? I’ll have to speak to him-”

  “Father James didn’t leave it to you,” Rutledge said finally. “But he did wish someone else to have it.”

  The impact of the Londoner’s words left Sims stunned. “Not to me? Merciful God!” He tried to absorb that, and then asked, “If not to me-then to whom?” When Rutledge didn’t answer immediately, Sims continued. “Look, you’ve got to tell me! That photograph could do unimaginable harm.”

  Rutledge said, “If that’s true-that a dead woman’s photograph could do such harm-I can’t imagine that Father James would have kept it, much less passed it on. He wasn’t, from all I’ve learned about him, either cruel or callous.”

  “But don’t you see? It was given to me. Out of simple fondness-a gesture that was meant in all innocence. That’s the trouble, it could be misconstrued-interpreted in another light. It would sully her memory, to no purpose. If you won’t tell me, I’ll go to Gifford myself-”

  Relenting, and at the same time testing the waters, Rutledge answered, “I can’t tell you. But if it matters, this was bequeathed to a woman, not a man.”

  Sims leaned back in his chair, a man emptied of all feelings. “Yes, that makes a kind of sense. Thank God!” And then he repeated silently, Thank God!, his lips moving without his knowledge, as if they uttered a prayer.

  Hamish’s first question came when the motorcar was turning through the vicarage gates into Trinity Lane. “He didna’ ask you who the woman was. He didna’ care.”

  “I think he cared-but he felt it was right-just-that she should have it.”

  “Which means he already kens the name of the woman.”

  “Or-thinks he does. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  Mrs. Barnett was crossing the lobby when Rutledge came into the hotel. He stopped her, and left a message for May Trent to give him a time and place where they could meet. He included the words Official Business.

  She was still out, Mrs. Barnett informed him as she took the folded sheet of notepaper and put it safely in the drawer of the reception desk. And might be staying the night with her friends.

  He didn’t think that was likely. May Trent was avoiding him.

  Rutledge went over the cuttings again, looking for any connection between May Trent and any other passenger on the ship and for anyone with a name beginning with V.

  But he found no guidance in the reports of the sinking, the survivors, the missing, or the dead. Nothing that leaped out at him as the answer he sought.

  He was on his way down the stairs to put in a call to the Yard, to ask Sergeant Gibson-who had an absolute gift for ferreting out information-to look into the shipping files at Lloyds and the White Star Line for women passengers whose Christian name began with a V. The first words out of the crusty old Sergeant’s mouth were likely to be “And are there any other miracles, sir, that you might require of me?”

  Instead he met Mrs. Barnett coming up to find him. “There’s a telephone call from the Yard, Inspector. It’s urgent.”

  He thanked her and followed her back to the narrow little office. “Rutledge here,” he said into the phone.

  Sergeant Wilkerson’s voice came down the line with the force of a foghorn. “That you, sir? I’ve got a bit of bad news. Or it might be good news, depending on one’s point of view!”

  “What is it, Sergeant?”

  “That Iris Kenneth we found dead in the river, sir. Well, it isn’t her after all. Iris Kenneth just walked in her landlady’s front door and like to’ve given the old biddy apoplexy on the spot. Thought she’d seen a ghost, she did. But it was a very angry ghost, who was soon threatening to have her up for theft for disposing of her personal property. Which the landlady, if you recall, sir, had already sold.”

  “Are you quite sure,” Rutledge said, “that the woman is truly Iris Kenneth? This time?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. There was quite a row, and the local station sent a pair of constables along to see what it was about. All the roomers living there swear that it’s Iris, but of course Mrs. Rollings is fit to be tied, claiming she never clapped eyes on this woman in her life! Well, stands to reason,” he added, suppressing a gleeful note in his voice. “She’s likely to be taken up on charges.”

  Rutledge thought, It must have been quite an entertaining scene. “Where has Iris been, did she tell you?”

  “By the time I arrived, there was some semblance of peace, and she confessed she’s been staying with friends in Cardiff, hoping for a part in some production there. In my opinion, she was short of money and ruralizing until something came up. At any rate, I took the liberty of contacting the Cardiff police, and they just sent word she’s telling the truth.”

  If she was Iris Kenneth-who was the woman in the river? And what did the corpse have to do with Matthew Walsh?

  Hamish answered him. “Nothing at all.”

  Rutledge asked Wilkerson if he’d questioned Iris Kenneth about Walsh.

  “That I did, sir! And she tells me he’s a devious bastard who would strangle his own mother.” Wilkerson’s laughter boomed down the line, nearly deafening Rutledge. “She hasn’t had any decent work since he let her go, and if she could point to him being Jack the Ripper, she’d be happy to do it. It’s anger talking, in my view. Revenge. She doesn’t sound afraid of him, only furious with him. I asked her if he’d threatened her or hurt her in any way- showing his violent nature, so to speak. She swore he never touched her-she’d had a little knife to use on him if he had-but he’s a brute and a niggardly bastard, and selfish to boot.”

  A woman scorned.

  “If you learn anything about the other woman, let me know.”

  “She’s gone into a pauper’s grave,” Wilkerson replied. “There won’t be any more interest in that one. More’s the pity, but still, she won’t be the last. If something does come up, I’ll make sure you hear of it.”

  Rutledge asked for Sergeant Gibson, but was told that he was giving evidence in court for the next two days.

  Blevins took Rutledge’s news with a shrug. “We’re not making much headway, ourselves. An old Gypsy who scratches his living sharpening scissors and tinkering is not likely to hold the police in high regard. They’ve moved him along too many times, and treated him like a pariah. He won’t forgive that. And he’ll lie like a sailor to get his own back! It won’t matter to him whether Matthew Walsh killed a priest or not.”

  “Has this scissor sharpener-Bolton-ever been charged by the police? Other than rousting him as a public nuisance?”

  “Nothing that could be proved against him.” In frustration Blevins added, “They’re worthless, that lot.” Deserved or not, it was the general view of Gypsies: thieves and liars and heathen, filthy and secretive vagabonds. “Inspector Arnold, who first interviewed this man, is of the opinion that he’s probably up to his neck in this, which means he’l
l stay with his story for his own sake, not Walsh’s.”

  Rutledge said nothing.

  Blevins smiled ruefully. “Well, I’m glad of course for Iris Kenneth’s sake that she’s alive and safe, but it would have helped our case against Walsh if we could have charged him with her murder as well. Your Sergeant Wilkerson is sure, is he?”

  “The other roomers in that boardinghouse had no reason to lie.”

  “No.” He moved papers around on his desk and then said, “It has to be Walsh! There’s no one else it could have been.” His eyes, looking up suddenly, dared Rutledge to refute it.

  “He has the best motive for murder that we’ve found so far,” Rutledge answered neutrally. “That has to count for something. Will you tell Walsh, or shall I? That Iris Kenneth is alive?”

  “I’ll tell him.” There was resignation in Blevins’s voice. “We can’t charge him for the real drowning victim’s death, can we?” It wasn’t meant to be answered; it was no more than a reflection of his mood.

  “Ever hear Father James speak of an interest in ships?”

  “Ships? He was interested in the small boats around here. Handled the oars like a man used to the water. We’ve been out fishing a time or two, but he never said anything to me about ships. Why?”

  “I wondered, that’s all. I found some cuttings among his papers. They had to do with Titanic sinking.”

  “I’m not surprised. Shocking, the loss of life. We all felt it.”

  “Yes.” Rutledge let the silence lengthen before adding, “And Lusitania. Did he ever speak of her?”

  “I’m sure he was horrified, everyone was. What’s this in aid of?”

  “I don’t know,” Rutledge answered. “At the moment, very little.”

  Blevins grinned without humor. “You’re reaching, man!”

  At the dinner hour Rutledge found his place at the only table set. Mrs. Barnett said, “I’m afraid it’s rather lonely tonight. Thursdays often are.”

  Later, as she brought his main course, she informed him, “I’ve had no word from Miss Trent. Were you expecting her to join you for dinner?”