Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge said, his mind working at speed, “When you were playing night games outside the vicarage windows, to keep Sims silent, did you see Walsh dragging his chains to the garden shed?”

  “Why should I frighten Sims?” Edwin demanded. “I reserved that for Holston, who knew Father James too well. It was very likely Peter Henderson who hung about the vicarage, not me. But yes, I was coming back from Cley on my motorcycle when I saw Walsh hurrying toward the church.” He glanced at his watch. “Your time is up. It doesn’t matter to us what you do with the knowledge you have. The risk is yours. Your medical history might be of interest in certain quarters. And prospects for publication of Miss Trent’s manuscript may be unexpectedly limited. What else lurks in your future is, of course, unforeseeable.”

  “I spent four years in the trenches,” Rutledge answered contemptuously. “I daresay I shall survive the Sedgwick family. I’d set my house in order if I were you.”

  He turned to look one last time through the rain-streaked panes of the French doors and across the wet lawns of the lovely unseen gardens. Then he walked unmolested between Edwin and Arthur and over the threshold.

  CHAPTER 29

  BUT IT WAS ON THE THRESHOLD that Rutledge stopped, facing the elegant room and its three occupants. “Let me remind you, gentlemen, that there are many ways that a man can be judged. I leave you to the tender mercies of the Watchers out there in the dark. When you begin to feel them—and you will—you’ll start to turn on each other. It will happen. It’s only a matter of time.”

  A stolid wall of baneful resistance met him. Sedgwick was flushed now, a look of frustration and malevolence in his face. Arthur was resigned, his eyes on the carpet, but there was no remorse in his stance. Edwin, first looking from his father to his brother, turned on Rutledge a hungry glance. He was already bringing to bear a formidable determination.

  For an instant, Rutledge thought Edwin might be the first to break ranks.

  But the moment passed.

  Rutledge leaned against the closed door, feeling the cool rain, breathing in the damp, heavy air.

  It wasn’t finished yet.

  Concerted murder. It was, as Monsignor Holston had claimed, violent and primeval. This family cared for nothing but their power, their will. It had made them implacable, cold-blooded. Virginia Sedgwick had been doomed from the day her husband discovered he’d been deceived. Her family was to blame, too—for their selfishness in pushing a bewildered child into the ranks of Consuela Vanderbilt and Jennie Randolph: a fortune traded for a title, nevermind happiness.

  Hamish said, of the night, “I didna’ think they would let you go.”

  Rutledge answered, “They haven’t. They just didn’t want to dirty the carpets.”

  A voice out of the rain called tentatively, “Inspector Rutledge?”

  He had forgotten that May Trent was waiting in the motorcar.

  He found her shivering in her coat. “I’m so very glad to see you!” she exclaimed. “It’s been more than five minutes— I thought you weren’t coming at all.”

  “I was safe enough.”

  She laughed nervously. “It’s been frightful, out here in the dark. I’ve seen and heard all kinds of things! Mostly my overworked imagination, but that’s small comfort.”

  He turned the crank, and when he took his place beside her, behind the wheel, she said, “Where’s Peter? We aren’t going to leave him, are we? It’s a long, wet walk back to Osterley.”

  “Actually, he was outside the French windows. Just beyond the terrace. He knows where to meet me.”

  He waited. The rain dripped from the trees as the wind stirred them. And somewhere, they could hear what sounded like a woman crying. It was a peacock, out on the grounds, but May Trent caught his arm. “I’m frightened. More frightened than I was in there!”

  “You shouldn’t be. That was a very brave thing to do in there. Facing your demons in front of the Sedgwicks.”

  “I didn’t face any demons. I lied, for Father James’s sake,” she confessed. “Listening to what was being said, I suddenly realized what it was that he’d actually expected me to remember. I did it for him. I think he’d already guessed that she wasn’t on board. She couldn’t have been, could she, if she was already dead? Father James had talked to Herbert Baker by that time, and he was nearly sure. But he hoped I could give him proof—”

  Rutledge took out his watch, but couldn’t see the face in the darkness.

  “Shouldn’t we return to Osterley soon?”

  “It’s barely been a quarter of an hour. Give it a little longer.”

  “Give what a little longer?” she said, her gloved hands snuggled into her coat pockets for warmth.

  “I’m not sure.”

  It was nearly forty-five minutes later when Hamish, behind him, heard something. Rutledge stiffened, straining to catch the direction of the footfalls.

  Then Peter Henderson walked swiftly around the corner of the house and climbed into the rear seat. “He’s coming,” Henderson said.

  “Who’s coming?” May Trent asked. “It’s Edwin you’re waiting for, isn’t it?”

  Still they waited. And then the door of the house opened on a long rectangle of light that seemed to reach toward them. A man stepped out into the silvery path it made across the wet slate walk.

  He seemed relieved to find Rutledge there. He came to stand beside the motorcar, looking in at Rutledge, the rain falling harder now, like tears on his face.

  It was Arthur Sedgwick.

  He handed Rutledge the umbrella he’d left by the door. “I don’t want to hang,” he said after a moment. “But I’m the one who’ll die next. One way or another. My spine is wrecked; I won’t live to old age. I’ll never father a child. Edwin won’t wait very long for the title. He wants it too badly; he has for as far back as I can remember. And my father grieves for a man who raced like the wind, and never thought twice about danger and dying. That’s gone, too.”

  Rutledge said nothing.

  Arthur Sedgwick said, “Can you protect me? If I agree to testify against them?”

  “I can try.”

  “They tried to persuade me for the good of the family to take a pistol to my head. ‘Driven by despair over my back.’ Hush it up. Inspector Blevins doesn’t want Walsh resurrected. He wouldn’t dare to point a finger at us. My death would be a nine day wonder and then fade away.”

  He walked around the front of the motorcar and joined Henderson in the rear seat. Rutledge turned on the headlamps. The occupants of the car were ghostly in the reflected glow, after the pitch-black of the night.

  As Rutledge turned the wheel and started down the drive, Arthur said, “I’ve always hated those damned baboons in the garden. They stare at me as if they can look through the flesh and blood into my very soul. I could see them tonight, watching. I always know they’re there. I’d promised myself that when I inherited the title, I’d destroy that damned stone. But my father has always had some sort of superstitious regard for it, like the Chastains did.”

  They reached the gates and drove through.

  May Trent asked Rutledge, as if it had suddenly occurred to her, “But what’s going to happen now?”

  “You’ll see. I wish you’d stayed in Osterley. You wouldn’t have been dragged through this.”

  “It was not your choice,” she replied. “It was mine. I’d let Father James down once.”

  Rutledge pulled off the road in a wide patch of brush, the stiff dry fingers scratching against the paint, a shower of raindrops, dislodged from the branches, sprinkling down on the car. Then he drove deeper into the thickest shadows and switched off his headlamps. “Be very quiet.”

  In a few minutes a motorcar came flying down the road from the direction of the Sedgwick gates, roaring past them like a thunderbolt. It disappeared into the darkness. From what Rutledge could tell, there were two people in the front.

  Arthur Sedgwick said, “They’re hunting for me already.” There was a mixture of resigna
tion and despair in his voice. “There are weapons in the house. Shotguns—”

  Rutledge said, “No, they’re hunting me. But your turn will come. Where is your wife buried?”

  “In the marshes. I killed her, but I couldn’t bear to bury her there. Edwin did it for me. He goes out there in the boat from time to time, to be sure she’s still there.”

  Beside Rutledge, May Trent gasped.

  After a moment, Rutledge said, “Sedgwick, we’re taking you straight to Norwich. Henderson, as soon as we reach Osterley, I’d like you to find Monsignor Holston at the hotel and tell him to come to Holy Trinity. We’ll meet him there by the church. Ask Mrs. Barnett, if you will, to send my luggage on to London, and Miss Trent’s as well. Then go to the vicarage and stay there out of sight. Will you do that?”

  Henderson agreed.

  “And thank you,” Rutledge added. “For tonight’s help.”

  There was unexpected pride in Peter Henderson’s voice. “My pleasure. And I’ll keep my mouth shut, you can be sure.” He slipped out to crank the engine.

  They waited by the church, its towers high and black against the sky. Arthur Sedgwick was morosely silent, Rutledge tense and watchful.

  The bark of a fox was sharp and close. May Trent said quietly, “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

  “There’s no choice. The Yard has to make this arrest. If I leave it to Blevins, he’ll lose another prisoner. Arthur Sedgwick will be safest in Norwich.”

  Rain was falling hard again by the time a very wet and somber Monsignor Holston climbed into the seat Peter Henderson had vacated not ten minutes before.

  “You’d better get out of here,” the priest warned. “As fast as you can! Edwin is searching the town. Peter told me a little of what has happened. He’s already gone to ground. They’ll never know he was protecting your back outside their windows tonight. He’ll be safe enough.”

  The motor, rumbling quietly in the darkness, picked up a stronger note, and the motorcar drove down Trinity Lane to the main road and headed east, for the turning to Norwich.

  But it was a very long time before Rutledge stopped listening for the echo of another vehicle behind him. . . .

  If you enjoyed WATCHERS OF TIME, the fifth

  mystery in Charles Todd’s mesmerizing series featuring

  Inspector Rutledge, you won’t want to miss any of

  Todd’s superb novels.

  Turn the page for a tantalizing preview of

  A FEARSOME DOUBT

  Available in hardcover from Bantam Books.

  CHAPTER 1

  AUGUST 1912

  London

  THE PRISONER WAS STANDING IN THE dock, face strained, eyes on the foreman of the jury. His fingers gripped the wooden railing, white-knuckled, as he tried to hear the portly, gray-haired man in the jurors’ box reading the verdict. But the roaring in his ears as his heart pounded hard enough to suffocate him seemed to shut out the words. He swallowed hard, then leaned forward a little, concentrating on the juror’s lips.

  “—guilty on all charges—”

  The foreman’s voice rose on the last four words, as if he found them distasteful, his eyes furtively flicking towards the accused and away again. A greengrocer, he was not sympathetic to theft and murder.

  The prisoner’s face swung towards the judge as he lifted the black silk square and settled it neatly on his heavy white wig, prepared to pass sentence.

  “. . . taken from this place . . . hung by the neck . . .”

  The prisoner blanched, and turned in anguish towards his wife, seated in the gallery watching, her gloved hands clenched tightly in her lap.

  But she offered no comfort, staring straight ahead. Her face was closed and empty. He couldn’t look away. His sister, on the far side of his wife, was weeping into her handkerchief, hunched into her grief, but he hardly noticed. It was his wife’s coldness that riveted him.

  He thought, “She believes it now—”

  Inspector Ian Rutledge, the young officer from the Yard whose evidence had all but placed the rope around Ben Shaw’s throat, turned away and quietly left the courtroom.

  He did not enjoy sending any man to his death. Even this one, whose crimes had shocked London. At such a time he was always mindful of his father, a solicitor, who had held strong views on the subject of hanging.

  “I don’t believe in it. Still, the dead had no choice in their dying, did they? The murderer did. It’s on his own head, what becomes of him. He knew from the start what justice would be meted out to him. But he always expects to avoid it, doesn’t he? There’s an arrogance in that which disturbs me more than anything else—”

  Ben Shaw hadn’t been arrogant. Murder hadn’t set well on his conscience. Hanging might come as a relief, an end to nightmares. Who could say?

  Certainly not Rutledge himself—he had never taken a life. Would that alter his view of murder, would it in any way change his ability to understand a crime, or his attitude toward the killer? He thought not. It was the victim who had always called out to him, the voiceless dead, so often forgotten in the tumultuous courtroom battle of guilt versus innocence.

  It was said that Justice prevented Anarchy. Law established Order.

  Cold comfort to the elderly women Ben Shaw had strangled in their beds.

  Still, the silenced victims had not gone unheard in this courtroom . . .

  CHAPTER 2

  5 NOVEMBER 1919

  Marling, Kent

  THE BONFIRE HAD BEEN PILED HIGH with the debris from a dozen gardens and enough twigs and dead boughs to outlast the Guy. The celebrants were gathered about the square, talking and laughing as if the gruesome spectacle they were about to witness was far more exciting than frightening. The match had yet to be tossed into the pyre, but two men in flowing wigs and faded satin coats awaited for the signal. Their sober faces were flushed with wine and duty. The taller leaned towards his companion and said in a low voice, “All this hair itches like the very devil!”

  “Yes, well, at least your shirt fits! All this lace will end up strangling me, wait and see! I’m ready to kill whoever thought up this charade.”

  “Won’t be long now.”

  It was the close of Guy Fawkes Day, and tonight the stuffed effigy of a traitor was about to be paraded around the village square and then thrown into the flames.

  Bonfires were a long-standing English tradition, marking the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when the real Guy Fawkes had been caught with his co-conspirators attempting to blow up Parliament and King James with it.

  A macabre way of reminding schoolchildren, as they went round their villages and towns collecting pennies to buy Roman candles, what becomes of traitors.

  As a rule it was a family affair, held in the back garden, the fire as fat or sparse as the family could manage, the Guy dressed in cast off clothes stuffed with straw. In too many households during four and a half years of war the celebration had dwindled to a token affair, the dearth of able bodied men and the hardships of families struggling to survive without them making the effort increasingly a burden. The village of Marling had decided to revive the custom with a public flourish.

  Ian Rutledge had given his share of pennies to the local children this morning, while Hamish, in his head, disparaged the whole affair. “It’s no’ a Scottish tradition, to waste guid firewood. It’s too hard to come by.”

  Remembering the barren, stone-scarred mountains where Hamish had grown up, Rutledge said, “When in Rome . . .”

  “If ye came for Hogmany, now, a good fire on the hearth was hospitality after a long ride in the cold.”

  Rutledge knew the Scottish holiday, the last day of the year when the children demanded gift cakes and the whisky flowed freely—and not necessarily whisky upon which any tax had been paid. He had commanded Scottish troops in the war, and they had brought their traditions as well as their traditional courage with them. He had turned a blind eye on more than one occasion, the policeman subverted by the compassion he fe
lt for his homesick men—many little more than boys—trying to forget how short their lives were destined to be by remembering home.

  Tonight, 5 November, he wasn’t on duty in London, he was standing among the revelers in an attractive village high on the Downs and beside him was the widow of a friend who had died in the Great War. She had invited him to come down for the occasion. “You must, Ian! It will do both of us a world of good. It’s time to put the war behind us, and try to rebuild our lives. . . .”

  He had no life to rebuild, but she did, and Frances, his sister, had urged him to accept the invitation. “Elizabeth has mourned for two years. It won’t bring Richard back, will it? I think we should encourage her, if she’s ready to shut the door on all that. And it will do you good as well, to see more of old friends. You’ve buried yourself in your work for months now!” The last accusing. And then Frances had added hastily, “No, I’m not matchmaking. She would do as much for either of us, if we were in need, and you know that as well as I do.”

  It was true. Elizabeth was one of the most generous people Rutledge knew. Richard Mayhew had been very fortunate in his choice of wife.

  She was a slim woman in her late twenties, with sparkling dark eyes and a wry sense of humor. Her presence was brightness and warmth and a belief that life could be good. It was—almost—contagious.

  And just now, he was in need of warmth and brightness, to chase away other shadows . . .

  Clinging to his arm in the press of people, Elizabeth was saying, “Richard loved all this, you know. He loved tradition and the . . .”

  Rutledge lost the thread of her words as the Guy, flamboyant in dress and hanging from a long pole, was brought into the square and carried triumphantly around the unlit fire. A deafening shout of approval rose, and as Rutledge glimpsed the painted mockery of a face, its wild eyes and flaring nostrils, the grinning mouth, the bits of someone’s wig straggling about the ears, he had to laugh. What was lost in talent had been made up in exuberance.