Watchers of Time ir-5

by Charles Todd

  “Which is another way of saying, perhaps, that I believe you yourself have not yet come to face the truth.”

  The priest sighed.

  “It isn’t a matter of truth,” he replied, turning for a moment to look out the window at the rain. “It’s a matter of faith. Sometimes there’s a feeling one can’t shake off. Have you ever experienced such a thing?” When Rutledge nodded, he went on, “Try as hard as I will, I can’t ignore that primeval response-that sense of danger-of fear for myself, as well as for Father James. I asked the Bishop to send for Scotland Yard because my instincts tell me it was the right thing to do. What if there is more here than meets the eye? What if this murder is beyond the experience and training of the local people to investigate fully? What if the killer is able to outwit them, and we see no one brought to justice?” He paused, then said in a strained voice, “It’s likely that I’ll be sent as the interim pastor at St. Anne’s, until a replacement can be found. I don’t want to be the next victim!”

  CHAPTER 4

  RUTLEDGE STARED AT THE PRIEST, HIS mind working swiftly as he weighed what had been said-and what had not.

  “You’ve been afraid from the beginning, haven’t you, that Father James was not killed for money? For the sake of argument, what if you’re right? What if the theft was no more than a cloud of confusion, to mislead the police? If you’re worried about being the next victim, the only conclusion I can draw is that you’ve been told something-”

  Monsignor Holston interrupted, his voice earnest. “I was in that room, before they’d taken Father James away. And there was violence in the presence of his body. Violence that went unexplained. And it spilled over on me! Do you understand what I am trying to say? What if this murderer isn’t satisfied that it’s finished? Or has your profession inured you to death, Inspector? Perhaps it’s out of fashion-after the slaughter of thousands in the War- to put the death of any man-even a priest!-down to an unspeakable act?”

  “They are both unspeakable acts, murder and war,” Rutledge answered grimly. “I haven’t become inured to either of them. You’re describing the force of the crime, I think, not the motivation.”

  Monsignor Holston shook his head. “No. It was something in that room. The policemen were about, the lamps lit, the spirit of the man long since departed, the body cold, even-but the lingering sense of violence was frightful.” He paused. “As a priest I have no key to unlock the mind of this murderer. But I fear it, and in doing so, I fail the man who has just taken a life. And in failing him, I have failed God.” He set his teacup aside.

  Rutledge said, “If you’ve sent for Scotland Yard to restore your faith in your God, we aren’t trained for that.”

  “No, it isn’t what I need from you. I need your intelligence and your knowledge of how or why such a crime is committed. I want to be sure that the man the police take into custody this week-next week-next year-is the culprit. It will be easy, I think, to find people who might have been needy enough to steal. And put the blame on them. I want to be absolutely sure it isn’t misplaced!”

  The priest had failed to answer the question directly.

  “He’s as slippery as a fish,” Hamish warned.

  “You’re a trained and intelligent man yourself, Monsignor. Surely you’ve taken the question a step further. If it wasn’t something Father James knew-or had told you- then it must be something in that rectory that the killer was searching for. And if he failed to find it, you must feel fairly certain that he’ll come back to try again. If you’re there, he won’t let your presence stand in his way, just as he didn’t spare Father James. What in heaven’s name could Father James have kept there that would be worth one priest’s life, and perhaps two? What could have put him at such risk?”

  “If I knew the answer to that,” Monsignor Holston said in resignation, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d have told Inspector Blevins at once!”

  “Then I’m left with the original police supposition that this was a breaking-and-entering gone wrong. And the people in Osterley can handle that. If I’m to present a case to my superiors that calls for the Yard’s intervention, I’ve got to persuade them that there is very good reason to think the Yard’s time is well spent here. Yes, the fact that the victim is a priest naturally weighs with them, or I wouldn’t have been sent to Norwich in the first place. But the rule of thumb is that the local constabulary often knows more about the people they need to interview than an outsider could, and are therefore more likely to spot the killer.”

  “I have given you all the information that it’s in my power to give you,” Monsignor Holston replied, his austere face clouded with doubt. “I can’t tell you more than that-I wish I knew more! And I won’t lie to you, either. I will say this: Father James was a very good man. Sober and hardworking. A man of faith and deep convictions. I have a duty to him. If his murderer can be found, I want him found.”

  Hamish said, “A priest could be killed for what he knows.”

  It was true…

  Rutledge, finishing his tea, shook his head as he was offered more and set his empty cup on the tray. “There’s another avenue we haven’t really explored. A clergyman learns to cope with a variety of responsibilities, some of them rather onerous. There’s always the chance that what happened to Father James is in some way related to his duties. And in taking them over, you may put yourself at risk as well. Someone may believe you will come to know more than you safely should.”

  “It’s always possible, of course. The truth is, a clergyman can often make quite good guesses about what’s going on in his parish. And he’s often privy to confidences-never mind what he’s told in the confessional. But in that confessional, he may learn the whole story. A husband is unfaithful to his wife, a clerk has cheated his employer, someone has spread a lie that hurt others, a child was not fathered by the man who believes it’s his. That’s the reason the words uttered in the confessional are a sacred trust. It must be a place where a person tells the truth and unburdens his soul before God. We believe in this sacrament, and we protect it with our silence. Father James wouldn’t have broken that vow.”

  “And if a man or a woman tells the priest something, and later regrets that confidence?”

  “He or she may regret having spoken. But God knew long before he or she stepped into the confessional. And the priest is sworn to silence.”

  “That’s not always the practical answer,” Rutledge told him.

  Monsignor Holston removed his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “No, it isn’t. The practical answer is, that man or that woman may simply move to another parish, leaving behind the priest who knows the truth and finding another one who will accept this newest member of his flock at face value. One doesn’t murder the priest for the secrets of the confessional. It would have changed the face of the Church hundreds of years ago if that had become the common practice.” He restored his glasses to their proper place, settling them into the deep indentations on either side of his nose, then tried to smile. And failed. “Were you told that Father James was a chaplain in the first two years of the War, until he was sent home with severe dysentery in 1917? Who can be sure that the truth doesn’t lie there? In the War?” Monsignor Holston turned his head again to look out at the garden, as if he half expected to find the answer he wanted in the grassy paths and the shrubbery. Or half expected to find someone standing there.

  Hamish said, “He fidgets like a man with an uneasy conscience!”

  Rutledge answered silently, “Uneasy? Or uncertain?” Aloud he said, “In that event, I see no reason why you should feel that you’re in any particular danger.”

  Monsignor Holston turned from the window to Rutledge. “I have told you. It’s primitive-the hair rising on the back of my neck in a dark corner of my church, or coming down the passage here in the house when it’s late and I’m alone. Sitting in a lighted room when the windows are dark and the drapes haven’t been drawn, and looking up suddenly to see if someone is out there,
staring in at me. It isn’t real, it’s all imagination. And I’m not by nature easily frightened. Now I am.”

  “Did you serve with the same units that Father James did?”

  “I never went to France. I worked among the wounded here in England as they were being sorted out when the ships came in. Most of them were in too much pain to do more than accept a cigarette and a little compassion, some reassurance that God was still watching over them.” Monsignor Holston shook his head. “You’re probably right, I’m not thinking very logically about any of this. But somewhere in this muddle there must be an explanation for Father James’s murder and my own strange sense that something’s wrong. ” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. You’re a very clever man, Inspector Rutledge. You’ll sort it out. I am reassured that Scotland Yard has sent us its best.”

  And that was all that Monsignor Holston was prepared to say.

  Leaving the rectory, Rutledge paused to speak to Bryony as she showed him to the door. Around them the house was silent, shutting out the sound of the rain and the echo of shovels scraping against stone out in the street. “I understand that Father James was well thought of.”

  “Now there was a black day, when Father was killed! I’ve not got over the shock of it. Well thought of? Of course he was, and well loved, well respected, too!” She took Rutledge’s hat and coat from the chair beside the door and held them to her as if they offered comfort. “You can ask anyone.”

  “People always speak well of the dead,” he told her gently. “Even a priest is human, and sometimes frail.”

  “As to that, I wouldn’t know! I’m not one to go around looking for failings. I can tell you Father James was a patient man, and generous. If someone had come to him with a tale of hard luck, he’d have given them the money, they needn’t have killed him for it! It’ll turn out to be a stranger, mark my words. A cruel and ungodly man with no regard for his own soul.” Her eyes remained on his, as if expecting him to make a pronouncement that would set her mind at rest.

  “A non-Catholic? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Neither Protestant nor Catholic, in my view-no churchgoing man would murder a clergyman, would he? I’m saying that whoever it was killed Father James wasn’t hungry or in debt. He was calculating and self-serving, with a devil in him. Or her. Women can be terrible cruel sometimes. Are there so many of those walking about that it takes all this time for the police to track down the right one? It’s been days now since Father’s death, and what have the police got to show for it? I call it a crying shame!”

  “Surely they’ve tried.”

  “Oh, as to trying, now, I’d agree with you there. They’ve tried. But they’re not what I’d call clever men.” She moved to open the door for him, letting in the damp and the reek of the filthy mud being piled high at the roadside. “Housebreaking and petty theft, fire-setting or assault-they’ll find the culprit, because chances are he’s done it before. But that’s not clever, is it? It’s only a matter of knowing where to look!”

  “And in this case, perhaps only a matter of finding out who has extra money jangling in his pocket, the money he stole from Father James,” Rutledge responded reasonably. “Six of one-”

  “Is it, now?” She tilted her head to look up at him. “Father James was a family man, did they tell you? This past August his sister presented her husband with three little ones, and Father James was always helping out with the babes. What’s she to do now, with winter coming on and no one to come and stay a few days, when one’s sick of the croup and she’s up all the night? You might speak to Mrs. Wainer. She was Father James’s housekeeper, and a more decent woman you’ll never meet. Ask her about walking into the study and finding him there stiff and cold, blood all over the place. And for all she knew, the killer lurking in the bedroom, ready to strike her down as well! If you’ve set Monsignor’s mind at rest just now, it would be a kindness to reassure her, too. And only a few hours out of your way, mind!”

  “Where will I find her?” He stepped through the doorway as she handed him his coat and hat. He could feel the blowing mist on his face, fine as silk against his skin.

  “She’s at the rectory still, though I don’t know for the life of me how the poor woman can walk through the door. It’s her duty to be there, she says. Every day. Just as if Father James was still alive. Osterley is the name of the town. Surely they told you that in London? It’s closer to the sea in the north, and easy enough to get to from here.” Her eyes were shrewd. “Easier, of course, to go back to London satisfied you’ve done your duty by us. There’s many would do that. Somehow I don’t think you’re one of them!”

  And with that she bade him a good day and closed the door.

  Rutledge turned the crank and got into his motorcar, out of the rain. And then he surprised himself by sitting there, considering what Bryony had said, the motor idling under his gloved hands as they rested on the wheel.

  He hadn’t anticipated being drawn into the life or the death of this man. It wasn’t the task that had been set him…

  Go to Norfolk to reassure the Bishop that the police are doing their job properly.

  And instead he’d been expected, he thought wryly, to perform a small miracle or two. Find a true explanation for the murder of the priest-and then track down the killer.

  He didn’t envy the local man, Blevins, struggling to conduct an investigation in a climate of disbelief that refused to accept simple murder for what it really was, a commonplace calamity, not the stuff of legends.

  But even as he tried to make light of Bryony’s forceful plea and Monsignor Holston’s fears, Rutledge couldn’t escape the fact that their intensity had touched him.

  Hamish said, “Aye, but it will pass, with the mood.”

  Which was probably true. The thing was, Bryony had made it very hard for him to walk away.

  Instead, he put the motorcar in gear and turned the bonnet north instead of south toward London, driving on to Osterley.

  As a schoolboy, learning to draw the map of Great Britain, Rutledge had been taught that the island resembled a man in a top hat riding a running pig. The top hat was the northern part of Scotland-the Highlands. The man’s head and body were the Lowlands and the Midlands of England. The pig’s head was Wales, its front feet the Cornish peninsula, its hind feet the downs of Kent. And its rump was East Anglia, the great bulge of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk jutting out into the North Sea toward the Low Countries.

  It was a picture he and his schoolmates had found diverting, endlessly practicing their drawing of the pig and its rider, unaware that the effort sealed forever in their minds the geography of their country.

  Now, as he covered the miles between Norwich and Osterley, Rutledge watched the raindrops collect on his windscreen and resisted Hamish’s efforts to draw him into a debate over the interview with Monsignor Holston. He didn’t want to delve into the priest’s motivations or Bryony’s. The earlier mood (as Hamish had predicted) was wearing off, and in its place was a rising doubt about his own judgment. He hadn’t been cleared for a return to full duty-and his instructions had been to travel to Norwich. Nothing had been said about continuing north.

  Old Bowels would have his liver if he upset the local man on a whim and brought the wrath of the Chief Constable down on both their heads. On the other hand, Rutledge could say with some certainty that he had made precious little progress in “reassuring” the Bishop’s representative. The Monsignor wouldn’t have settled for less than a full-blown investigation by the Yard, given any choice in the matter. If a visit to Osterley was what it took to satisfy him of the Yard’s faith in Inspector Blevins, there would be no official objections to that.

  But Hamish wouldn’t be put off. “It’s no’ the body that’s standing in your way! Ye havena’ put Scotland out of your mind. Ye werena’ ready to return to work because you werena’ ready to face living!”

  “The bandages are off,” Rutledge answered flatly. “By the time I’m back in London, the police surg
eon will be satisfied that the medical leave can be rescinded.”

  “Aye, but watching yon fine doctor cut away bits of bandage is no’ the same as coming to grips with yoursel’.”

  “I’ll deal with Scotland. When I’m back in London.”

  “Oh, aye? Then tell me why we’re driving north again?”

  It was a pretty route, leaving Norwich to follow country lanes through gently rolling hills. Many of them hid small flint or brick villages in pocket-size valleys. And the still-green meadows on the rounded hillsides were sheltered by a line of trees, where fluffy clusters of Norfolk sheep dotted the landscape, their fleece thickening for the winter. So unlike France, with its broken walls and stark chimneys lining the roads from the Front. He could almost pretend that it was 1914, and nothing had changed. But of course it had. There was never any going back.

  To Hamish this was “soft country”-peaceful and prosperous, where a living came more easily than in the harsh, often barren landscapes of the Highlands. That very harshness, in Hamish’s opinion, had made the Scots formidable fighting men.

  Norfolk had produced fine soldiers, too, Rutledge reminded him. But as far as Hamish was concerned, training and blood were two very different factors in the making of an army. One could be taught-the other was in the very bone.

  Even in the trenches Hamish had been fond of citing examples-some of them ranging back to the twelfth century-of Scottish prowess in battle. It was, Rutledge thought, a way of life that had seldom brought prosperity or contentment to the Highlands, but in pride and fierce spirit, it had bred a full measure of courage.

  The miles rolled away behind them, and then the road Rutledge was driving wound through a cut in a hill and unexpectedly came to an end facing a broad expanse of marshes, as flat as they were striking and bronzed now with the coming winter’s palette of red-brown and yellow and old gold. He paused at the junction to stare out across them, thinking to himself that for such a small country, England had its share of beauty.