Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

  She looked from one to the other of the three men. “I didn’t know Father James had his own nightmare. I wasn’t much help to him, I’m afraid.” There was a faint quality of the child in her voice, begging forgiveness. “I didn’t understand how great his need was!”

  Rutledge sat down heavily, trying to bring himself back to the task at hand. He wished that the Vicar and May Trent had taken the train, and he could drive back to Osterley—or anywhere—all alone. Except for Hamish, who never left him alone.

  The Vicar said, into the silence, picking his words, “Virginia Sedgwick was a woman hungry for affection. I watched her—I was invited to several of the parties at Sedgwick Hall after she married Arthur. She believed her husband loved her. She most certainly loved him. But he was mad for racing; he lived in a world of fast machines and dangerous sport. As far as I could tell, he was oblivious to her dislike of living alone out in the middle of Yorkshire, where she had few neighbors and fewer friends. He expected her to find pleasure in running the house, as his mother had done—she was a well-known hostess, and quite clever at smoothing over her husband’s connections with trade. It never worked, their marriage. When I heard Virginia had left him and gone back to America, I was— glad it was over. I couldn’t bear to watch her suffer.”

  Rutledge, grateful for the change in subject, asked, “You spoke of friends. Were there any close friends she confided in?”

  “No.” As if to soften the harsh negative, Sims added, “She found it hard to find common ground with women of her own class, and was too friendly with the servants. They took advantage of her. That’s why she came to the vicarage to talk with me, using whatever flimsy excuse she could think of. Father James and I were safe, you see. Clergymen, not likely to take advantage. In any sense.”

  Intrigued, Rutledge asked, “What did she talk about?”

  “The flowers. The music. She liked music. Services for the family were usually held at the church on the grounds of the estate. She preferred Holy Trinity because it was so beautiful. She’d spend hours sitting in the nave polishing the benches or mending the cushions. I found her one day on a ladder, cleaning out the cobwebs around the stained-glass windows. Impeccably dressed, her gloves filthy—” He stopped. “They closed the house in East Sherham when Sedgwick went to London, and she was sent back to Yorkshire, then.”

  Monsignor Holston said, “Father James met her in London, just after she’d come to England. They served on some committee or other together. He said she was the happiest woman he’d ever seen. And he was the man she turned to when the marriage soured. She was a woman of strong faith, and he tried to bolster that. That’s one reason he wasn’t prepared to believe that she could turn her back on her husband and leave England. He always defended her, and it’s my feeling that he always hoped she might try to get in touch with him.”

  The Vicar said unexpectedly, “I thought it was better for her just to go. Father James and I quarreled over that. He wanted to find her, and I told him I’d have no part in it.”

  Hamish said, “Aye, it’s the difference in age between the two men. Both wanted to play knight, but no’ in the same fashion.”

  Rutledge silently agreed. It was that male vulnerability to their own protective instincts. To save the damsel from the dragon—the dragon, in this case, Arthur Sedgwick’s seeming indifference to his beautiful young wife—and somehow make her life better. Priest or layman, it didn’t matter. Each man had responded to Virginia Sedgwick.

  Monsignor Holston pushed his plate away. “There’s a more practical side, you know. It’s my understanding that she had a considerable inheritance, from a grandmother who had heavily invested in railroads among other things. What was the disposition of that, if she died? Or—if she just disappeared? And another question—why didn’t her family in America raise a hue and cry, when she went missing?”

  “No one could foresee that her ship would sink!” the Vicar said.

  “Father James told me in late 1912 that she wasn’t listed among the passengers,” Monsignor Holston replied. “That is, not until after the inquiry. Sedgwick hired someone to look into the matter for him, and he finally found her name. This would explain why Father James was so interested in what Miss Trent could tell him.”

  Rutledge said, “Why was there a problem?”

  “There was a record of her purchasing her fare, but none of her boarding the ship. Apparently there was some confusion over names.”

  May Trent said unexpectedly, “If I had wanted to get away, and money wasn’t an issue, I’d have paid my fare, and then taken another ship. Or no ship at all. Virginia Sedgwick could very well be alive and still in England.”

  Hamish said quietly, “Or dead, having never left England.”

  Rutledge, pursuing that thought, asked, “In which case, if Herbert Baker changed his mind on his deathbed, and told Father James the truth about that journey from Yorkshire to King’s Lynn—or even what happened in King’s Lynn itself—it must have been very difficult for Father James to hold his tongue. And it’s quite possible, isn’t it, that someone doesn’t want the truth about Virginia Sedgwick to come out?”

  Monsignor Holston replied slowly, “I hadn’t considered that. But it explains why I’ve been uneasy since I saw Father James dead. If you are not a Catholic—if you don’t understand the sanctity of Confession—it would be natural to believe that Father James told me or even the Vicar here whatever he’d learned from Baker . . .”

  Sims spoke up suddenly, his face unhappy, eyes torn.

  “There’s another part of the story.”

  “Virginia Sedgwick was—a lovely child. I don’t think Arthur Sedgwick realized that when he met her in Richmond. She told me she was always surrounded by cousins, brothers, sisters—they seldom had the opportunity to be alone, she and Arthur. And in company, she was shy, she spoke softly, and she had the gift of listening. What’s more, her grandmother, worried about her future, had left her a fortune. Rich, beautiful—and not—not truly whole.”

  They stared at him. In his mind, Rutledge heard Lord Sedgwick’s dismissive words: “Attractive simpleton, that’s what she was.” Rutledge had taken it as hyperbole—but it was the truth.

  “They brought her to England for the wedding, you know,” Sims said wearily. “Her family. A very fashionable affair in London. I don’t think Arthur ever realized that she was—simple. Until they went away on their wedding journey. Her family had made certain they were never alone together.”

  May Trent asked, “How do you mean? Simple?”

  “Virginia—she’d had a fever as a small child. The family blamed it on that. They swore it wasn’t hereditary. But by that time Arthur was married to her, and he discovered that this very pretty, very sweet, very young bride was not simply modest and shy. Her mental development was retarded.”

  Rutledge said, “And he didn’t like the feeling of being cheated.”

  Sims agreed. “It may explain why he spent so much time in France, racing with his friends. Why he left Virginia behind in Yorkshire, isolated from his friends and from London Society. Reading between the lines, I gathered that this was the reason behind his brother Edwin’s frequent visits when Arthur was away. He was making damned sure that the simpleton didn’t fornicate with the servants or the stableboys, and produce a half-wit bastard who would inherit the family title!”

  Monsignor Holston, after much persuasion, agreed to return to Osterley with them and speak to Inspector Blevins.

  It had been a heated argument “I can’t see that it will do much good. So much of it is speculation,” the priest protested. “Father James is dead, Baker is dead—for all we know, Mrs. Sedgwick is dead. All we may succeed in proving is that the chauffeur, Baker, was cajoled into letting his passenger flee her husband, there in King’s Lynn. And there’s no crime in that.”

  Rutledge argued, “It isn’t a question of convincing Blevins. It’s a matter of strategy. If there is sufficient doubt, he must reopen his investigation.”
>
  “How will you begin?” May Trent asked.

  Turning to the Vicar, Rutledge asked him, “Think back. Herbert Baker was your sexton. Can you recall when Mrs. Baker was ill-enough to be placed in a sanitarium for her tuberculosis? You must have visited her then!”

  Sims rubbed his eyes. “She was very ill in November 1911, I think, and they didn’t expect her to live through the winter. With sanitarium care, she did.”

  “By the spring of 1912 then—when Mrs. Sedgwick went missing—Baker could see that continued care was essential to keeping his own wife alive?”

  “He never expected miracles,” Sims corrected Rutledge. “She was dying.”

  “Yes. She’d have been dead in November without that care. She survived two years with it. That mattered to a man who loved his wife very deeply.”

  Sims responded, “Herbert Baker was a decent man— loyal.”

  “How did he define loyalty?” Rutledge persisted. “If someone convinced him he was acting in Virginia Sedgwick’s best interests, would he shut his eyes?”

  Sims said, “He’d never harm her!”

  “But would Arthur Sedgwick feel the same way?”

  The argument had ended there.

  It was crowded in the car, and Hamish, in the rear seat with the two men, was restless and not in the best of moods.

  Rutledge drove like an automaton, beyond exhaustion. May Trent sat in the seat beside him, head bowed, lost in her own thoughts. Once she turned to him and asked, “If Virginia Sedgwick was—simple—how did she manage to elude Baker, find her way to London, and arrange to sail on the next ship leaving for America?”

  Sims answered, leaning forward with one hand on the back of her seat. “It’s what worried Father James. Why he feared she might be dead. God knows, Arthur received plenty of sympathy. He could have married again any time, an eligible young widower with more money than he knew what to do with, and no children to share in it? But he’d been burned once. He stayed clear of any entanglements.”

  “And what did you think?” Rutledge asked him.

  There was a long silence. “I thought perhaps Edwin Sedgwick had engineered her flight. I was jealous. I had wanted her to turn to me. I wanted to be the shining knight on the white horse who rescued her. I sat there alone in the vicarage and told myself that she’d been more clever than I knew. And I asked myself what she’d given Edwin in return. I’m not very proud of it. But it’s the truth.”

  Monsignor Holston added unexpectedly, “She’s never been declared dead, you know. It was all kept very quiet. Father James wrote to her family in America. They swore Virginia hadn’t come home. They’d agreed with Lord Sedgwick’s decision to hire people to look for her and were satisfied that it was very possible she had been lost at sea. But Father James was convinced early on that if she had arrived safely, they would have sent her back.”

  Hamish added, “It doesna’ seem that her ain family cares o’wer much what happened. They were eager enough to palm her off on an unsuspecting suitor.”

  Sims swore. “To hurt her would be like hurting a child!”

  May Trent said, “I shudder to think—it was so wild that night, when we went down. She’d have had no idea, what to do—” She stopped, waited until her voice was steady again, and went on. “But there had been a great deal of talk about the ship. She might have been attracted to the idea of sailing home on a famous ship. It would have made it easier for her to plan. . . .”

  “Then what did Herbert Baker Confess?” Rutledge asked. “If he’d only helped her to find a train to London, he didn’t share in the guilt of her death.”

  Hamish said morosely, “We’re back to who paid for the care of his ill wife?”

  Baker had even asked the Vicar if it was possible to love someone too much—

  The question was, if one of the Sedgwicks had plotted Virginia’s disappearance, which one had it been? Arthur? Edwin? Or Lord Sedgwick himself?

  Rutledge could feel the weariness that dragged at him like an anchor.

  When the story got out that Herbert Baker had sent for a priest as well as the Vicar, had someone been terrified that the past would come back to life if the priest delved too deeply in it?

  It was a strong enough motive for murder. If you’d killed before.

  When they neared Osterley, a low mist hung over the marshes and the dips and twists of the road, the verges vanishing and reappearing like links in a chain. The dampness in the air sometimes produced a passing squall.

  Rutledge stopped again at the Randal farm, unwilling to leave that loose end unraveled. Over the protests of his weary passengers, he got out and went to hammer on the door.

  A ragged and battered figure came stomping around the corner of the house, yelling obscenities.

  Rutledge stared.

  Randal was bloody from a dozen cuts and scratches on his face and hands. Bruises marked his jawline and his left arm was held close to his body.

  “The mare’s run into the ground, damn you, and that bitch done her best to kill me! I’m flipping lucky to be able to walk!” The farmer’s anger was a live thing, too long pent up. He kicked out at the corner of the house, then kicked again. “I’ll be seeing that solicitor in the town. I’ll be wanting somebody to pay for last night’s piece of work!”

  Rutledge said, “Walsh is dead. The mare killed him.”

  “Good on her! So the constable told me when I rode home by way of West Sherham. It serves the bastard right, and I hope he rots in hell where he belongs, the son—”

  He looked up and saw the woman in the car in the drive. “Is that the bitch—” He started forward.

  Rutledge in three long strides caught Tom Randal’s arm and held him back. “No. It’s someone else. The Vicar is with her.”

  Randal peered at the motorcar. “That ’ee, Vicar?” he called.

  “Yes, hello, Tom. What’s happened to you, man!”

  Randal shook his head. “I was run down by a crazed woman in a motorcar, that’s what happened! Damned near killed me, she did, and of a purpose, too! Drove straight over me, after frightening the gelding half to death! It took me a quarter of an hour to catch him!”

  He turned back to Rutledge, still furious. “I’m in no fit state to ride into Osterley. I’d take it as a favor if you’d see that a constable pays me a call out here. You owe me that. I’ve a claim to lay against the police and against that bitch. And I’ll be calling on the solicitor in the morning!”

  “You ought to see Dr. Stephenson—”

  “I’ll live. And you can tell that damned fool Blevins if he’d been better at his job, I wouldn’t have two horses in my stable that aren’t fit for work and won’t be for another week! Who’s going to help me do mine, I ask you!”

  He turned and kicked savagely at the house a third time before stalking around the corner, muttering imprecations under his breath.

  It was hard to feel sorry for the old curmudgeon, but Rutledge could sympathize. Tom Randal had been caught up in something over which he had no control, and Priscilla Connaught had shown him no mercy.

  He walked back to the car. It would be just as well to send Dr. Stephenson out to make a call, he thought. When the fury and the sense of being wronged faded, Randal would be hurting rather badly.

  At least, he thought, bending to turn the crank, Priscilla Connaught hadn’t killed the man.

  Rutledge left the Vicar at his front door. Sims looked up at the dark shadows of his house, and turned, as if half afraid to go in. Then, with resolution, he unlocked the door and closed it behind him.

  Holston, on the other hand, refused to spend the night in St. Anne’s rectory. “It’s bad enough by daylight, but with the mists swirling about it and the churchyard, I’d just as soon be in a well-lighted hotel!” he said wryly.

  And so Rutledge pulled into the hotel yard and delivered the remainder of his passengers into the care of Mrs. Barnett, who welcomed them with the news that dinner could be warmed if they cared to dine.

 
; Rutledge, standing in the dark outside the door, could feel the fatigue moving through him like a sluggish stream. But he turned and went instead to The Pelican for his meal.

  Betsy, the barmaid, who came to ask what he’d have as Rutledge took the last seat in the crowded common room, was buoyant. “We’re doing a fine business tonight,” she informed him. “Everyone slept away the day, and now they’re eager for company and gossip.” She looked around her, pleased, then remembered what the cause of her good fortune was. Her mood shifted. “They tell me, though, that the man is dead. Still, it’s a swifter way to go than a hanging, any day!”

  “What are people saying about Walsh? Do they believe he killed Father James?” Rutledge asked, curious.

  “Well, of course, he must have done! He escaped, didn’t he? Inspector Blevins was here no more than half an hour ago, and saying that he’d spoken to the Chief Constable in Norwich. Everyone’s relieved that the police have done their best. Even though there’s to be no trial.”

  Looking around her once more, she waited expectantly for his order.

  The death of Walsh, he thought, had been papered over. Justice had been served. Perhaps it was true. He was beyond caring. He ordered an ale and a serving of the stew, and Betsy brought him a covered dish of warmed bread from this morning’s baking and a slab of butter.

  Hamish said, “Ye ken, you’ll no’ make any headway against what Blevins has been saying. And they’re eager to believe him. There’s the sticking point. It was no’ one of his friends or neighbors who killed the priest, and no’ one of theirs. That’s what matters. They can go to bed this night and no’ be worried about being murdered in their sleep.”

  There was an outburst of laughter from a group by the window. Every head turned to look. Rutledge could see the general mood was relief, and it bordered on the hysterical.

  Hamish was right. Order had been restored, their own sturdy faith that no one from Osterley could be guilty of such a heinous crime had been upheld. But a stubborn refusal to go against his own better judgment made Rutledge argue with his nemesis.