Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

And with that he was gone, leaving behind an air of contradiction that was the closest this Norwich priest could come to openness.

  CHAPTER 16

  NEEDING AIR TO CLEAR HIS MIND, Rutledge walked as far as the quay. He was trying to pin down what it was that disturbed him about Monsignor Holston’s vehement defense of his dead colleague and friend.

  It was the subtle way in which the investigation was being manipulated.

  Don’t look here—don’t look there. He didn’t do anything wrong, you needn’t explore that. Like a puppet master trying to untangle the strings of an obstreperous character who wouldn’t play his role properly.

  If it wasn’t the church—if it wasn’t the man—if it wasn’t the parish—if it was not a fall from moral grace— then the only explanation left was a theft.

  Or another crime that had been committed and that had never been exposed . . .

  Hamish said, “Whatever it was that worried Father James, it couldna’ ha’ been a murder—there hasna’ been one!”

  “Yes,” Rutledge said slowly. “All right, what if it’s true that the priest knew of a crime?” He remembered the Egyptian bas-relief at East Sherham Manor. The Watchers of Time. The baboons who saw all that men and the gods did, witnesses—but without the power to condemn or judge.

  What if the priest had become just such a witness? What if he had heard something that, bit by bit, had led him to knowledge that was dangerous? Like a bobby who walked the London streets, a priest knew his parishioners by name and face and nature. He knew the good in each person; he knew the temptations they faced. The needs and passions and hungers, the envy that drove some and the greed that drove others. He knew what they confessed to him, and what by observation he had grown to understand about them.

  It was an intriguing possibility—and for the first time, it brought together a good many of the seemingly disparate facts.

  Father James’s noticeable uneasiness before the murder, the unexplained sequence of actions in the priest’s study, and the seeming difficulty in finding a connection with anyone who might have a personal reason for killing him.

  “If he didna’ have any proof of what had been done, whatever the crime was, then he couldna’ go to the Inspector with suspicion. But someone might ha’ feared he would.”

  “Yes. Especially since Blevins was a member of his church. Secrets have more than one kind of power . . .”

  A very clever piecing together of a puzzle—that had destroyed Father James, in the end.

  The only question was: What crime had Father James stumbled over, and if the evidence of it had died with him, then where were the small signs of his knowledge that must surely have existed somewhere?

  Or had the killer found them when he overturned the study, and taken them away along with the bazaar funds that were kept in the desk?

  A few pounds that provided an apparent motive—but were just an opportune shield for the real motive.

  Hamish reminded him: The theft had sent Inspector Blevins off on a wild-goose chase that had yielded a suspect.

  “And Walsh could still be the man we’re after . . .”

  That would be irony, if he was.

  But how long had it taken Father James to weave together the strands of truth that had turned into knowledge?

  Begin with the bazaar, Hamish advised.

  “No, I’m going back to the study,” Rutledge told him.

  He set out for the police station to ask permission of Inspector Blevins.

  As before, Mrs. Wainer had no wish to accompany Rutledge upstairs.

  “I’ve come to believe that Inspector Blevins has found the man who did this terrible murder. He told me himself that the proof was clear, and I’ve had time now to think about it a little. I ought to admit that I was wrong about the revenge; it’s just prolonging the pain, and taking me nowhere. And so I’ve begun to box up Father James’s belongings, to send to his sister. If the Bishop names a new priest soon, the rectory should be ready for him. It’s my duty!”

  Rutledge glanced around the parlor. It seemed unchanged from his last visit. “What have you removed?”

  She looked down at her hands, her face torn. “I started with his old things in the garden shed, and then the kitchen entry. I find it hard to think about touching this parlor—or facing the upstairs—but I’ll manage. It’s the last task I’ll ever perform for him, you know. And I want to do it right.”

  “I do understand, Mrs. Wainer. I shan’t keep you long. I’d like to have a look at the framed photographs if I may, and I need to ask you if Father James stored any of his private papers in some other room of the house.”

  “I shouldn’t think so,” she answered doubtfully. “There’s the study and the bedroom, and a room just down the passage that’s always been used to hold parish books and the like. Accounts, for one thing, and the church records—baptisms, deaths, marriages. There’s a grand number of them now; the books fill two shelves.” It was said with pride.

  But these would be passed on to the incoming man. The public duty, and not the private life. “I’m sure they do. Can we begin with the parlor, perhaps? Show me, if you will, what belonged to Father James personally.”

  She began by the windows, picking up each photograph. “That’s the little house in Cumberland, over near Keswick, where he spent an entire week just before the War. It poured cats and ducks, and he couldn’t set foot out the door without a thorough drenching. He played backgammon until he was blind, he said. And here’s the young priest who was ordained with him. Father Austin. He died of the gassing in the War, poor soul . . .”

  Each of the photographs had a story, but none of them appeared to have special significance. Mrs. Wainer moved on to the small treasures. “He liked pipes, although he never smoked, and he collected more than a dozen,” she reminisced as she touched each one. “And over there is the walking stick, in that Chinese umbrella stand, that he carried with him to Wales and the Lake District. Westmorland. The stand belonged to a great-aunt, it was a wedding gift to her, and I’ll be shipping that along to his sister. And the clock on the mantel there—”

  There were books on the shelves that were Father James’s, his name inscribed in a fine copperplate hand, mixed among others that belonged in the rectory. Rutledge turned the pages briefly, but found nothing of interest tucked between the leaves.

  “Hardly secret vices and dark crimes,” Hamish mocked.

  When Rutledge turned to the stairs, the housekeeper said, as she had before, “Go on then. I’ll have a cup of tea ready, when you’ve done your work.” She had returned to the kitchen before he had reached the top step.

  He went first to the small room where the ledgers of church and rectory business transactions were kept, and where the heavy, bound books with Church Records on their spines stood on a separate pair of shelves.

  Looking through the ledgers first, Rutledge found, in various hands, the long list of repairs and improvements, wages and offerings that represented decades of activity. The roof of the rectory had been repaired after a storm in 1903, and there was a faded receipt in the rough, untutored hand of the man who had done the work. You could, Rutledge thought, identify with certainty every expenditure: when it was made, to whom, and for what purpose. And the name of the priest incumbent at the time. Every penny of income was noted, every payment of wages due. He found the entry, scrupulously made in Father James’s hand, of the sum earned at the bazaar: eleven pounds, three shillings, six pence. The last entry was wages paid to Mrs. Wainer, two days before the priest had died.

  The great volumes of church records listed the names of priests and sextons, altar boys and gravediggers over the years; a compendium of who had served God and in what capacity. Later pages recorded baptisms by date, with the name given the child, the sponsoring godparents, and the parents. By accident Rutledge came across the name “Blevins,” and found the Inspector’s own baptism: pages later, that of his first child. Among the marriages were Blevins’s, Mrs. Wainer’s, and ot
hers whose names Rutledge recognized.

  The deaths were more somber: George Peters, Aged Forty-seven Years, Three Months, and Four Days, died this Day of Grace, Sunday, Twenty-four August, in the year of Our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Forty-Eight, of a fall down a well shaft in Hunstanton on Saturday the twenty-third. And later on: Infant son of Mary and Henry Cuthbert, stillborn, this Fourteenth Day of March, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Two, laid to rest beside seven brothers and sisters. May God have Mercy on His Soul.

  It was the chronicle of life and death in a small village, perhaps the only mark many of these people had made in their short span on earth. He found it sad to read. Jocelyn Mercer, Aged Three Days short of Her Fourteenth Year, of Diphtheria . . . Roger Benning, Aged Five Years, Two Months, and Seven Days, of Cholera . . . The last volume ended with Seven July, Nineteen Twelve. The latest must, he thought, be kept in the church vestry.

  The room yielded nothing more of interest—it was, as he’d thought, a public room, where the church officers had as much right of access as the priest.

  Rutledge moved on to the study. From what Blevins had told him, Rutledge knew that Mrs. Wainer had restored the scattered papers and books and other belongings to their proper places. She wouldn’t allow the police to touch them.

  Rutledge thumbed through the books, studied the photographs on the table by the hearth and on the mantel. They were a record of friends and family over the years, of journeys to Wales, of the great Fells in the Lake District. He even lifted the cushions of the settle.

  This room was in some respects another public place, where Father James counseled his parish or talked to young couples on the brink of marriage or heard the grieving words of widows and parents and children. Where the deacons came and discussed church affairs. Where any person might wait, and with natural curiosity, look around him. Hence even the flimsy lock on the desk, perhaps . . .

  Hamish said, “But the Titanic cuttings were here, on the desk, when the doctor saw them.”

  “Yes, that’s true. He walked in while Father James was examining them, most likely.” Rutledge searched through the desk with care. Nothing of interest. And no photographs, framed or otherwise. Just as the solicitor had said.

  Moving on to the bedroom, Rutledge felt his usual sense of distaste. He disliked what he was about to do, hating the need to violate the privacy of the dead. But murder victims lost not only their lives and their dignity but their innermost thoughts and secrets, secrets they would have preferred to deal with, if they’d been warned they were about to die.

  He himself was careful not to preserve any record of the voice in his head. There was no diary entry, no letter, not even a conversation with a friend that would distress his sister, Frances, after he was gone. Only the private files in Dr. Fleming’s office, and Fleming could be depended upon to leave them sealed.

  “Was that what fashed Baker?” Hamish asked. “He couldna’ rise from his bed, and he couldna’ ask the Vicar to look into a drawer or burn a letter.”

  It was something to consider. It would, indeed, explain why Father James had wanted to be so certain of Baker’s state of mind before he carried out whatever instructions he may have been given. For instance, burning an old love letter . . .

  Rutledge searched through the priest’s meager belongings, the clothing in the wardrobe and the church robes folded in the chest at the foot of the bed. Relieved to find nothing of consequence there, he stood in the middle of the room, thinking.

  Hamish said, “It was no’ a verra’ guid idea after all—”

  Rutledge replied absently, “The frustrating part of the search is not knowing what I’m after. Or if it exists in any recognizable fashion.”

  Monsignor Holston’s words came back to him: If you come to me with the truth, and I recognize it, I’ll tell you so.

  There were other rooms on the first floor. But opening the doors confirmed what Rutledge expected: bedchambers made up for guests, with nothing in them of a personal nature and all of them scrupulously clean.

  “You couldna’ hide a wee mouse in here,” Hamish commented as Rutledge closed the last of the doors.

  He climbed the narrow, uncarpeted flight of stairs to the top floor. Rooms here had been designed for servants— small and without character, unfurnished for the most part, or cluttered with the collected debris of several generations. Lamps, iron bedsteads, rusted coal scuttles, a wardrobe with one door warped on its hinges, chairs with caned seats that had never been mended, chipped mirrors, and the like. Even a broken window sash leaned against an inside wall next to two rakes whose bamboo handles had splintered.

  A few of the odds and ends appeared to have been used year after year for bazaars, including a small cart, half a dozen umbrellas and long wooden tables, boxes of signs and ribbons, and the kit of clown’s makeup that Father James must have favored for entertaining the children.

  There was also, near the top of the steps, where Rutledge would have expected to find such things, a small traveling trunk and a valise that bore the priest’s name on the labels. Cheap, conservative, and well worn.

  Running probing fingers through the jumble of belongings stored in the trunk, he came across the corners of an envelope, fairly large and rather thick, but unevenly so, as if there were several things stuffed inside. Lifting out the assortment of hats and gloves and hiking boots that lay on top, he picked up the packet, testing its weight in his hands. It had been neither hidden away nor in plain sight.

  Letters from Father James’s dead sister Judith? Or the ones he had written to her, with that enigmatic reference to the Giant?

  Inspector Blevins would be pleased if they were!

  Rutledge sat down on the dusty floorboards, his elbows resting on his bent knees, and held the envelope upright between his spread feet.

  There were no identifying marks—it hadn’t been mailed and there was no name on the outside.

  As he opened the flap and looked in, Rutledge said “Ah!” in almost a sigh. A fat collection of cuttings met his eye. Drawing them out, careful not to lose one, he could already see that they were newspaper and magazine accounts of the sinking of a ship that was unsinkable.

  Sorting through them at random, he noted that certain developments had been clipped together—the publicity over departure, the tragedy, the search for bodies, reports from Ireland, editorial reflections on the tragic loss of life, lists of the dead and missing, accounts of the ensuing inquiry—as if Father James had carefully cataloged each new addition to his accumulating data. In the margins were handwritten notes, referring the reader from one article to another.

  Dr. Stephenson was right—this had all the hallmarks of an obsession, not a passing fancy. Too much work had been done to coordinate all the information. Photographs from news accounts ranged from smiling Society figures boarding the great liner to pitiable corpses lying in plain wooden coffins in Ireland, eyes half shut and faces flaccid.

  It was, in all conscience, Rutledge thought, a gruesome collection.

  He looked down into the trunk to see what else might have been stored there, then ran his fingers again through the oddments of belongings that had formed the bottom layer. A frame came to light, one edge caught in a knitted scarf. Rutledge retrieved it and turned it over.

  A young woman standing beside a horse, her face bright in the sun, smiled up at him, her hair shiningly fair. Judging from the lovely hat in one hand and the stylishness of the dress she wore, she was well-to-do.

  But who was she? Was this the photograph that Father James had left to May Trent? There was no resemblance between the two women. Nor was there any to Priscilla Connaught. Rutledge hadn’t met most of the other women in Osterley. Frederick Gifford’s dead wife? The doctor’s daughter? Someone from the priest’s youth?

  “Look on the reverse,” Hamish suggested. And Rutledge took the back out of the frame to remove the photograph. There was a date: 10 July, 1911. And he words, lightly inscribed, so as not to mar the face. Gratefully, V.


  V. Victoria sprang to mind. It had been a popular girls’ name throughout the late Queen’s reign. As Mary was now, in honor of the present Queen. Vera? Vivian. Veronica. Virginia. Verity. Violet?

  He ran out of possibilities.

  Still, Blevins could perhaps help him there. Or Mrs. Wainer.

  On the other hand—

  Hamish said it for him. “I wouldna’ be in haste to show it.”

  Getting to his feet, Rutledge found a flat leather case lying in a corner of the room, a coating of dust covering it, and a cobweb linking it to the frame of the bottomless chair beside it. The grip was broken at one end, but it would do.

  Rutledge looked around him a last time at the “waste not, want not” philosophy of householders who store in their upper floors and attics the ruined furnishings and venerable treasures they couldn’t quite bring themselves to throw away. In the event it’s ever needed. And most of it lay there still, forgotten and unwanted, from generation to generation. Judging by the dust and cobwebs, even Mrs. Wainer seldom ventured up here. . . .

  He wondered if Father James had kept that in mind when he stored the clippings and the photograph in his trunk. Or if that was where they were generally kept.

  Rutledge shook the dust from the leather case, sneezing heavily, and discovered that there was a mouse hole in one corner of the leather. Human flotsam and jetsam, Hamish pointed out, sometimes served other creatures well.

  Smiling at that, Rutledge set the cuttings and the photograph inside, closed the flap, and looked into the small trunk a last time—even stretching his fingers inside the torn corner of the lining on the right side—before deciding that he had the lot. He carefully repacked the clothing before going down the attic stairs.

  When Rutledge walked through to the kitchen, the housekeeper was standing at the back door, in the midst of a lively conversation with the coal man. His apron, black with coal dust, matched the color of his eyes, and the bulbous nose matched the heavy chest that spread out from wide, muscular shoulders.