Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

  “It doesn’t matter,” she answered tonelessly, shrugging deeper into the folds of the shawl, her chin invisible. They rode in silence for a very long time. She hardly noticed when they passed her car and the farmer with his team, though Rutledge waved to him. And then she seemed to throw off some of the lethargy that wrapped her in bleak despair, as if the tea had finally helped.

  He thought she might be recovering a little of her usual strength, and was encouraged. When she turned to stare at him, he offered her a brief smile.

  She didn’t appear to see it.

  “You were in the War!” she said fiercely. “Tell me how to die!”

  He thought of all the men he’d watched die. And tried to shake off the dark cloud that settled over his spirits.

  “There’s no easy way,” he said bitterly. “Trust me. I know.”

  When they had reached the marshes, turning toward Osterley, Rutledge said in a neutral tone, as if discussing the weather, “What happened to the horse?”

  She turned to look at him. “What horse?” she asked, frowning. “I don’t remember a horse. . . .”

  Dr. Stephenson came at once in answer to Rutledge’s summons, and listened with concern as the Inspector explained what had happened to Priscilla Connaught. Then the doctor took the stairs up to her bedroom, where she lay with the shades down, her face turned to the wall.

  When he came down half an hour later, drying his hands on a pale yellow towel embroidered with white violets, he walked into the sun-bright parlor and took the chair by the window. The room was pretty, with walls of a very soft cream, accented by the deep blues of the upholstery and carpets, and a pale climbing rose entwined in the matching drapes. A woman’s room, and yet empty of the small treasures that usually adorned such an ornate mantelpiece or filled the polished tabletops. In a way it seemed to reflect Priscilla Connaught’s empty life. She had, over the years, collected nothing but misery.

  “That’s a nasty cut on her head. It could be serious—I’d not be surprised if there’s some concussion. Bruises,” Stephenson told Rutledge. “And a good many more will likely show up. She’s already sporting deep bruising on the shoulder and hip. But nothing appears to be broken. The ankle has been sprained, and I’ve taped that to reduce the swelling.”

  “The head injury. Serious enough to confuse her memory?”

  “I can’t say. The woman is suffering from more than the effects of the car running into the ditch—agitation and emotional collapse, to head the list. The sedative I’ve administered will keep her quiet for some hours, and we’ll see whether she’s calmer then.” He paused. “The right eye is turning black now. She won’t want to look into her mirror for awhile. And I took a stitch or two in another cut on her scalp. Bit of glass lifted a flap of skin and hair. I daresay she’ll have a headache for a day or so. I’ll find someone to sit with her. Ellen Baker should do, she’s gentle and has a way with her. High-strung women like Miss Connaught aren’t always the best of patients.”

  Rutledge said, “You may want to make another choice. She was looking for ways to kill herself. She ran into that ditch on purpose, from what I could learn, and she believes she’s killed a man.”

  Stephenson’s eyebrows rose. “Does she now! I could tell she’d been weeping. I didn’t know the rest of it, and she didn’t volunteer anything. Why does she want to kill herself? Because of this man Walsh? Doesn’t make any sense! Didn’t realize she even knew him!”

  Rutledge felt the fatigue burrowing deep into his very bones. “It has nothing to do with Walsh. Not directly. But there’s a strong sense of guilt. Real or fancied, I don’t know. I think she ought to be—watched.”

  “In that case, I’ll send for Mrs. Nutley. She’s had seven sons, all of whom have battled their way through life, and she’s nursed everything from broken bones to depression to drunken stupors. She’ll manage well enough.” He crossed the room to stand at the window, looking out at the marshes. “It’ll rain before dinner.” He turned back to Rutledge. “There’s a narrow line between love and hate sometimes, you know. And it can be crossed unwittingly.”

  “I can’t tell you what’s behind it. She’s—a very private person.” And he wasn’t prepared to break her confidences. Not yet.

  “That isn’t much help. I’d need to know what signs to look for!”

  Rutledge rubbed his face with his hands. “All I can tell you is that she went out last night”—was it only last night?—“to look for Walsh. She was—one of Father James’s flock, and afraid the man would escape justice. And somewhere between that time and dawn this morning, she believes she killed someone and she tried to kill herself.”

  “Went out on her own? I can’t see Blevins allowing that!”

  Rutledge was too close to exhaustion to fight a battle of wits with this very sharp man. “He didn’t know. Ask him yourself, if you like.” Whatever secrets Priscilla Connaught possessed, if the good doctor hadn’t stumbled over them in ten or twelve years, it was a salute to her deep and abiding need for privacy.

  But Dr. Stephenson’s curiosity was, quite frankly, aroused.

  “Then what did she say when you walked into the farmhouse?”

  “That someone was dead. And she’d tried to miss the horse. But later on she was confused about the horse, whether it was there at all.”

  It was a bald account. Rutledge left it at that.

  Dr. Stephenson grunted. “Well, the accident itself could have caused confusion between what she intended to do and what she did do.” He took out his watch and looked at it, sighing. “I’ve a long day ahead of me. I’ve had two men brought in with broken bones, and a woman hysterical enough to deliver prematurely. And that doesn’t count the scrapes and cuts and sprains from people wandering around in the dark most of the night! I’ll send my nurse to find Mrs. Nutley and see that Miss Connaught is cared for. If you’ll wait here for half an hour?”

  “How long do you think it will be before her mind is clear?”

  “Hard to say,” Stephenson replied, considering. “Wait until tomorrow before questioning her again. She may be making more sense by then.”

  When he was gone, Rutledge looked in on Priscilla Connaught and then sat in a chair in the room across the passage from hers. He intended to watch; instead, he fell heavily asleep.

  When Mrs. Nutley arrived, letting herself in quietly, he forced himself back to wakefulness. But it was hardly more than that. She clicked her tongue when she saw him. A motherly woman with a strong face and an awesome air of competence, she said, “If you know what’s best for you, you’ll get yourself in that spare bed over there and go back to sleep.”

  But there was still too much to be done.

  Blevins was working in his office when Rutledge walked through his door. He looked up with a sour expression and said, “I thought you’d be asleep by now. I wish to God I was.”

  “If I look as weary as you do, we’re both a fine pair of sleepwalkers.”

  “Matched set.” Blevins leaned back in his chair. “The doctor in Hurley tells me Walsh was probably kicked by the horse and died where he stood. The loose shoe fits rather roughly into the wound in his skull, even though it wasn’t the one that did the damage. The doctor’s not sure what the angle was, of course, when the kick was delivered. What matters was a luck of the strike. Delivered just exactly at the wrong place for any chance of survival. Death by misadventure.”

  Rutledge said easily, “Any sign of other injuries? A fall—running into something in the dark?”

  Blevins laughed. “You don’t give up, do you? London told me that, when I asked for you. All right, just for the hell of it, why should there be?”

  “The searchers seemed to have had a rough night of it,” Rutledge answered, taking the other chair and sitting down. He hadn’t had breakfast, he remembered. Only the sandwiches that Mrs. Barnett had put up for him when he’d gone to find Priscilla Connaught. “Does Walsh have any family? Have you notified anyone that he’s dead?”

  “T
here’s the scissor sharpener. I doubt he’d walk to the corner to help Walsh, now that he’s dead. What’s in it for him? With no real proof that he was the lookout while Walsh riffled the study, he’s home free.”

  “There’s Iris Kenneth. She might know if Walsh had any family.”

  “Yes. Well, do you want the task of going to London to fetch her? She’s not likely to come north on her own!”

  “I suppose you’re right. Still—”

  “If you’re on your way there,” Blevins said, watching Rutledge’s face, “you might do me the courtesy of calling on her yourself.”

  After a moment, Rutledge made a last effort to break through the emotional barriers that Inspector Blevins had set up.

  “Put aside your personal feelings about Walsh—and about the death of Father James. If you’d walked into the study of a stranger that morning, how would you have described the body lying by the window?”

  “The same way. An intruder had struck hard and fast, out of fear of being recognized. Matthew Walsh won’t be giving us the answer to why he did it—but I don’t suppose, in the scheme of things, it makes much difference. He ran. That’s guilt.”

  Rutledge said quietly, thinking it through, “The killer— Walsh, if you like—didn’t strike once, looking to buy time for an escape. He meant to kill.”

  “Yes. It was deliberate. Makes me sick to think about it!”

  “On the other hand, if there hadn’t been any money in the tin box in the desk—if it had been spent or given away by that time—how would you have decided on the motive for murder?”

  Blevins said impatiently, “The same way.”

  “No, you couldn’t have looked at it the same way! There was no money in the desk, nothing to draw a thief to the study. Nothing for Walsh or anyone like him to slip into the rectory to steal.”

  “You’re setting up a scene that didn’t exist! Walsh couldn’t know that, could he? See it my way for once! Walsh was desperate—this was his last hope of finding the sum he needed to finish paying for that bloody cart. He may have killed in a fury when he discovered the box was empty!”

  “If this had happened before the bazaar—” Rutledge began.

  “All right! Let’s take your position and examine it. A dead man and no tin box would tell me there was another reason, a personal reason, to kill that priest. But I knew Father James too well—and in all your questioning, you still haven’t answered that one, either!”

  Blevins, tired as he was, couldn’t make the leap of imagination. Hamish said, “You canna’ expect it from him. He was too close to the victim.”

  Rutledge took a deep breath, thinking, Hamish is right.

  “If Father James knew something that worried him— possibly involving a police matter—would he come to you with it?”

  “Of course he would! I’d be the first person he’d turn to,” Blevins answered with a lift of pride.

  But he hadn’t—and for the same reason: Father James, too, had known the Inspector’s limitations as a man and as a policeman.

  Rutledge said, “I hear there’s a chance that Monsignor Holston will replace Father James until a suitable choice can be made. I’m driving to Norwich later. Shall I tell him that Walsh has died?”

  “Suit yourself. I expect half the county has heard that by now. What’s taking you to Norwich?”

  Rutledge smiled. “A personal matter. By the way— who’ll be given the reward that Lord Sedgwick put up?”

  “Not the police,” Blevins said wryly. “And Lord Sedgwick ought to make that decision himself.”

  “I expect he will.” Rutledge rose from his chair. “Have you by any chance seen Miss Trent? I’d like to speak to her before I leave for Norwich.”

  “She went out last night, found herself badly frightened in the woods north of the church, and spent what was left of it at the vicarage. I stopped there to tell the Vicar that Walsh had been found. He thought she was still asleep.”

  “What frightened her?”

  “God knows. An owl probably, or a badger. Women have no business out in the middle of the night on their own.”

  “You’ve heard, I’m sure, that Priscilla Connaught was out looking for Walsh? Ran her car into a ditch and was lucky to survive with only a concussion.”

  “Yes, well, rather proves my point, doesn’t it?”

  Rutledge reached across the desk to shake Blevins’s hand. “If you’d like a last piece of advice, I’d wire Iris Kenneth if I were you. Save the ratepayers from burying Walsh in a pauper’s grave!”

  “I might, at that.” He thought about it. “Yes, I will!”

  Rutledge left, glad to step out into the sunshine. It had a grayness to it now that forecast rain later, as the doctor had suggested. After the early morning, it had never been a clear day. But even in this light the marshes seemed rich with color, and the wind moved through the grasses like a wraith.

  The walk from the police station to the vicarage seemed to stretch before Rutledge like the Great Wall of China, miles upon miles to travel on foot. His body rebelled at the thought. Hamish ridiculed him for his weakness.

  Ignoring his tormentor, he went back to the hotel and started the car.

  CHAPTER 24

  MR. SIMS OPENED THE VICARAGE DOOR warily, peering out at Rutledge shrouded in the heavy shadows cast by the trees along the drive.

  “What brings you here? Half the town is sound asleep after the long night. I understand Walsh has been found, and is dead.”

  “Yes, that’s true. On both counts.” Rutledge said it pleasantly. “I came to ask if Miss Trent is awake.”

  Sims said, “I expect she’s still asleep. But if you care to leave her a message?”

  “Would you mind looking in on her? It’s rather urgent.” His voice was still quite pleasant, but the edge of command had crept into its timbre.

  Sims was on the point of arguing when a door opened at the top of the stairs. May Trent stood there above them in a dressing gown far too large for her, her hair unbound and hanging in a dark stream down her back. She didn’t look as if she’d been asleep. The smudges under her eyes were as deep as Rutledge’s own.

  “I’m awake, Vicar,” she said. And then to Rutledge, “But hardly dressed to receive callers.”

  “A policeman isn’t ranked as a caller, Miss Trent. I understand you were frightened last night. What did you see or think you heard in the woods that brought you here in some haste? We’re trying to track Walsh’s movements.”

  “How did you know—” she began, and then realized that he’d tricked her. “Yes, all right,” she said after a moment. “If you’ll give me a little time to dress?”

  He agreed, and the Vicar led him into the kitchen at the back of the house. The curtains were still drawn. A dresser taller than he was stood against one wall. Dishes were piled in a pan of soapy water on a small table by the windows, and the remnants of breakfast were still on the stove—toast and sausages with fried eggs. A jar of marmalade and a dish of butter sat on the main table, next to three used teacups.

  “I was making fresh tea,” Sims told Rutledge, nodding to the kettle on the stove. “My guess is that you could use a cup! I’ve drunk my share this night.”

  Remembering what Hamish had said earlier that morning as he’d finished Mrs. Barnett’s provisions, Rutledge asked, “With a little whiskey, if you’ve got it.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Sims answered, opening a cupboard and taking out a fresh cup. “I’ll just go and fetch it.”

  “First, I’d like to hear how Miss Trent arrived last night.”

  “Nothing much to tell.” Sims peered into the sugar bowl. “I heard a knocking at the door, and I called down from a window to see who it was. Miss Trent said she’d got separated from her search party, and was uncomfortable about walking back to the hotel on her own. I let her in, telling her I’d just dress and then see to it that she got back to the hotel. But she asked for tea to warm her, and by the time I’d made it, she was sound asleep in her chair.
I left her there with a blanket over her, and sent her upstairs around six, when she woke up disoriented and still half asleep.”

  It was told smoothly, with enough detail to give it the air of truth.

  But even Hamish growled his disapproval.

  “Yes, that’s a fine tale for the gossips of Osterley!” Rutledge replied, taking the cup that Sims poured him.

  “It’s the truth—!” There was outrage in the Vicar’s voice.

  “Yes, I’m sure it is. But May Trent doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman easily frightened by noises in the woods, if she was out with a search party, and she came down that dark drive of yours when it would have been far wiser to hurry down the hill to the comparative safety of Water Street.” He paused. “After all, Walsh had been here just hours before. As far as she knew, he might still be hidden in the grounds, waiting until the hue and cry faded. No one thought to search the church tower, did they? Or all the rooms of the vicarage?”

  Hamish said, “It’s no’ an impossibility. . . .”

  “You’d have got her out of here, fast as you could, if you’d had any sense,” Rutledge said. “But what she came to tell you made you both decide to stay here.”

  Sims murmured, “I’ll just find the whiskey.”

  But before he could move, the kitchen door opened and May Trent came in. “You said it was urgent?” She wore her clothes, wrinkled from sleeping in the chair, like a badge of honor. Her eyes strayed to the teapot. Sims was already searching for another clean cup.

  She sat, accepted the tea he poured for her, added sugar, and sipped it as if it was warming her, her fingers around the bowl of the cup.

  They were, Rutledge thought sourly, as companionable as a long-married pair, while he had only a matter of hours to finish what he’d set out to do.

  “Get your coats, if you will. We’re driving to Norwich in five minutes.”

  May Trent regarded him suspiciously. “I’m exhausted. I’m not going to Norwich or anywhere else—only to bed. And quite frankly, so should you, Inspector. You don’t look as if you’re rested enough to undertake—”