Watchers of Time ir-5

by Charles Todd

  Blevins stopped fiddling with the thermos and set it aside. “Interesting conversation. Hurst told me that one of Judith’s favorite stories as a child was Jack the Giant-Slayer, Father James undoubtedly filling the role of Jack in his sister’s eyes. Sarah claims he must have read it to her dozens of times. But that’s neither here nor there.”

  He seemed to be avoiding coming to the point, as if he found it distasteful. Rutledge waited.

  “When he was in France, Father James wrote often to both sisters, and Sarah remembers one letter in particular, where he told Judith that he’d finally met the ‘Giant.’ There was even a line drawing in the margin with Father James dwarfed by this stick figure. And there was some other nonsense about the story, and that was it.”

  “You’re telling me that Walsh is this ‘Giant’?”

  “God, no! Father James was joking, reminding his sister of their childhood. This Giant could have been anyone he’d seen-a Punjabi for all we know! A good many of the Highlanders were damned tall, for that matter. But now I’ve got to find someone in the War Office to look up records to see if Walsh could have met Father James in France. They won’t like that, but if it’s true, I need to know about it before I’m made a fool of in the courtroom. It doesn’t change anything, even if he did!”

  “You’ll have to question everyone at the bazaar again. To see if the two men recognized each other that day.”

  “I don’t see how it was possible for Walsh to recognize Father James-he was dressed as a clown to entertain the children, and his face was painted. But of course Father James could well have remembered him.”

  Hamish reminded Rutledge, “Mrs. Wainer spoke of clown’s paint. He was still wearing it when he handed her the bills and coins they’d taken in.”

  So she had. Rutledge regarded Blevins, trying to read his face. “Asking Walsh is the simplest way to find out,” he observed.

  “You can’t ask him anything without being cursed and abused. Better to find out from the War Office than give that clever bastard some way of crawling out of this charge!”

  “Does Sarah Hurst still have the letter?”

  “It was written to Judith, who showed it to her, and there’s no way of knowing if Judith kept it. Much less what’s become of it since she died. But Hurst thought we ought to know, and rightly so.”

  “Could Walsh have been searching for it? Either time he was at the rectory?” It was not uncommon to keep letters after a loved one died.

  “Lord, no, how would he have known such a letter even existed? No, it’s a false scent, and I’m not going to be sidetracked by it. Besides, if Father James had learned something incriminating about Walsh, he wouldn’t have told his sister, would he? Let’s leave it! I told you only because I thought you’d agree with me that it’s not important.”

  Hamish reminded Rutledge of an exchange during last night’s dinner at the Norwich hotel on the subject of the murder having to do with the War:

  And how to find such a needle in a haystack of returned veterans?

  Yet that same needle might have found Father James, nearly a year after the War had ended…

  Because he’d come to a bazaar?

  “I see your point.” It was enough to satisfy Blevins. Changing the subject, Rutledge told him, “I’ve been to the rectory to look at the study.”

  “Doesn’t tell you much, does it? Mrs. Wainer scrubbed that carpet nearly through to the nap, trying to get out the blood. Wouldn’t hear of having a constable do it for her. It was her place, she insisted, not his.” He wolfed down the last sandwich, then began to fold the serviettes in which they had been wrapped. A B in Gothic script had been embroidered into one corner, entwined with a sprig of lilac.

  “A great deal of force was used to open the desk.”

  “More than needful. Yes, that’s true. But I doubt our blossom of fragility back there in the cells knows his own strength. The same force was used to kill Father James.”

  “The theory is that he came looking for money to pay for his new cart. But this was some weeks after the bazaar. By that time, the money collected at the fair might well have been already dispersed-to the needy, to pay for a new altar cloth, whatever use it was intended to serve. Why did Walsh believe that the money was still in Father James’s hands?”

  “I’ve looked into that myself. More often than not those funds are used as a priest sees fit. The accounts that must be paid by the parish come from another sum that’s on deposit in the bank. The Autumn Fete never brings in a large amount. Although this year, the first since the War ended, we had a better turnout. The men had come home, and the young women who had gone away to do war work were back as well.” He paused. “That’s been the hardest part for me, you know, accepting that a good many men from Osterley won’t be coming home. Whilst you’re fighting, you don’t think about it all that much. But the butcher’s son and Mrs. Barnett’s nephew, and so many other faces you’d expect to see about the town didn’t make it. Or they’re crippled and off somewhere learning how to make baskets or some such that they can sell. The best man we ever had in the marshes is blind. Two of the choirboys are orphans, their mother dead of the influenza and their father killed off Jutland. There’s talk of making a small war memorial here to honor the dead of Osterley. I don’t see it myself. But those who lost loved ones might find it comforting after a fashion.”

  Rutledge was reminded of the monument that London was building to the nation’s war dead. An enduring memorial to The Great War, the newspapers called it; a place where wreaths could be laid each November and prayers said for the dead who hadn’t come home.

  He shivered. Many of them had never been found. They still lay in Flanders’s Fields, buried so deep in the wrecked earth that not even a farmer’s plow would turn them up. Leather boots might last longer than flesh or bone, and helmets as well, but in time, even leather crumbled and metal rusted. After a few years, peas and corn and vineyards would cover their resting place, not a wooden cross or a plinth of marble. Would they even hear the prayers of a grateful nation? And how long would gratitude last?

  Blevins was saying to him, “-Father James survived the War, survived the influenza epidemic. A brave man, but never a foolhardy one. Anybody will tell you that. He’d have dealt with the man in his study, given half a chance. But if it was Matthew Walsh, he had no chance at all. I don’t know what your experience has been, but in mine a good many men the size of Walsh are of a milder nature. This monster’s got a temper. Father James may have made a fatal mistake in judging his adversary.”

  “There’s some truth to that,” Rutledge agreed. “But speaking of Walsh’s size-I’ve been thinking about the print of the shoe you found at the rectory near the lilacs.”

  Brushing aside Rutledge’s words, Blevins said impatiently, “Yes, I’ve already come to the same conclusion. Walsh’s foot dwarfs that print. I had a drawing made of it, to match with the shoes of any suspects. You know what this means, don’t you?”

  This time Rutledge let him have the pleasure of answering his own question.

  “It tells me friend Walsh must have had an accomplice.”

  Hamish, breaking a long silence, warned, “You ken, the sum stolen wouldna’ be enough for two…”

  “Did Walsh have an assistant at the bazaar?” There had been no mention of anyone else in the Strong Man’s act, to Rutledge’s knowledge, but that would make sense, if Walsh needed someone he could trust.

  “No, no, he worked alone as far as we can discover,” Blevins answered. “I doubt he ever made enough to hire an assistant. Some months ago he had a woman with him, but I’m told she wasn’t good for business. The young ladies seemed to find her intimidating. Well, that’s not surprising! But breaking and entering is a different proposition. There’s often another man along to act as lookout. That’s why he was standing near the lilac bush. He was out of sight from the churchyard and the neighboring house.”

  Blevins seemed convinced. For the time being, Rutledge left the s
ubject and moved on.

  “What about other towns where Walsh has made an appearance? Were there any crimes that could be traced to him? Is this a pattern?”

  “I’d thought of that, too. We’re looking into it.” After a moment of silence, Blevins said, “We haven’t got more than curses out of Walsh so far. Would you like to try your hand at questioning him?”

  “It wouldn’t do any harm.”

  “We’ve put him in irons, to keep him manageable.” Blevins reached for a ring of keys and took Rutledge down the passage to the makeshift cells set in behind the offices. “He won’t be tried here,” the Inspector went on as he unlocked the door. “We’re moving him to Norwich by the middle of next week. We’re used to drunk and disorderly, petty theft, and the occasional wife-beater who won’t learn his lesson. And any murderers we’ve had to deal with over the years are generally more terrified of what they’ve done than they are a threat to the peace. But this man is dangerous.”

  When Blevins unlocked the door of the cell, Walsh was sitting on the iron cot, his face bruised, his eyes defiant. Ankles and wrists were fettered, a heavy chain hanging between them.

  Blevins said briskly, “You’ve met Inspector Rutledge before. Nearly knocked him down. I wouldn’t think about trying it again. He’s here from London.”

  Walsh, surprise in his face, said, “Are they taking me to London, then?”

  “That could depend on how cooperative you are. The Inspector wants to question you. About the priest’s death.”

  Taking advantage of the man’s uncertainty, Rutledge asked almost conversationally, “Ever use an assistant in your act, Walsh?”

  Eyebrows raised, Walsh answered, “I used a woman for some weeks. Thought it would make the ladies more willing to let themselves be lifted on the bench, if Iris went first. But she didn’t work out. Why do you want to know?”

  “I should have thought a man would have been more useful, considering the bench and the weights you must haul about regularly in your cart.”

  Walsh grinned. “I can lift them and you, too, and I’ll show you if you unlock these!” He raised his hands. The chain clanked unmusically, but its weight seemed not to cause him any distress.

  Rutledge returned the smile. “Then why did you take someone with you when you killed the priest? Was that more dangerous than pulling a carriage against a team of horses? I’m surprised that you’d choose a woman to stand outside and watch. She couldn’t stop the priest from coming home, could she? Or warn you. But what you’ve done is pitched her into this with you. Accomplice to murder. I should have thought there was barely enough money for one.”

  The grin had faded. Walsh said angrily, “I didn’t kill any man, with or without help! Except in the War, when I was paid to do it. Are all policemen deaf, or is it that you can’t do your work properly?”

  Rutledge responded quietly. “You bought yourself a new cart.” Behind him he could hear Blevins fuming. But the trick with a man like Walsh was to encourage braggadocio. To let him tweak the noses of the police.

  “Aye, with the savings from letting Iris go. The old one had got worm in it, sitting in a shed all the time I was away fighting. It had to be replaced. I didn’t have any choice!”

  “If you didn’t kill Father James, who did? You were at the bazaar. Did you see anyone looking for a chance to pick up money?”

  “Pickpockets, you mean?” Walsh asked. “There were two, but a constable run them off soon enough. Men in the line of housebreaking don’t come to church bazaars. The bloody things are advertised everywhere you look! In shop windows, on pasteboards or lampposts. Invitation to robbery, right out in the streets! All they have to do is watch for a family to leave for the day.”

  “We’ll make a note of that,” Rutledge assured him. “Will you tell us where to find Iris now? We’d like to hear what she has to say about killing a priest.”

  Walsh shrugged. “London, probably. How do I know? She didn’t work out, and I let her go. She wasn’t what you’d call happy about it, either. But business is business.”

  “What’s her full name?”

  “Iris Kenneth is what I knew her by. I’m not saying it was her true name. She’s a shill by trade-you know, standing in front of a show like mine and talking it up. Used to work for a Gypsy fortune-teller from Slough, name of Buonotti-Barnaby, he called himself. Italian he was, went home to fight in the War and never come back. So she was at loose ends, and suited me just fine.”

  Blevins said, “What did you promise her, Walsh? That you’d take her on again if she helped you? Or was there someone else who owed you a favor?”

  Walsh’s laughter was a deep rumble in his chest that welled up and spilled over into a bass chuckle. “I’d have had to promise to marry her to get her to come in with me again. And I’m not the marrying kind! Not yet, anyway!”

  After they’d finished with Walsh, Blevins turned to Rutledge and said, “I don’t know. He’s hard to read. But I’m ready to put good money down that says he’s guilty! Too damned cocky by half!”

  “Do you think this Iris Kenneth was his accomplice?”

  “No. I’d say the shoe’s too large for a woman’s foot.”

  “That’s probably true. But stuffed with rags, it would be the perfect blind, wouldn’t it? A man’s shoe. A woman’s foot.” He let the thought lie there.

  Blevins said in resignation, watching his simple case grow to monstrous proportions, “I’ll see what London can find out about Iris Kenneth.”

  The sky was clear now, the deeper blue of a storm passed and finer weather to come, and even the wind had dropped. The sun’s warmth was not August’s warmth, but it felt good on his face as Rutledge left the police station and walked down toward the hotel. On impulse he continued as far as the quay and stood there looking out across the marshes. He felt tired, deeply tired, and thought about a drink to ease his chest muscles and his arm. But he knew it was better to fight through the pain, if he could.

  “You didna’ sleep verra’ well last night,” Hamish pointed out. “Guilty conscience, was it?”

  “No.” Rutledge was too weary to enter into an argument with his tormentor.

  Hamish said, “There’s more on your mind than Scotland. This murder-this marshy country-I canna’ see what it is that has made you a hollow man.”

  It wasn’t a hollowness, Rutledge thought, that left him empty. It was too much, not too little-conflicting emotions, divided passions, an uncertainty he hadn’t felt since June, when he had walked into Warwickshire an exhausted, haunted man with no hope and no expectations, and a great fear of going mad.

  It wasn’t madness now that he feared-though he knew that his mind teetered on the brink of self-destruction more often than he cared to admit.

  But he was damned if he’d let Hamish pry and tear at him like a bird of prey, pulling out his soul to examine it like some rare specimen from the dark corners of the Congo. The question was, how to shut him out. Rutledge had never found a way.

  Hamish had the last word-as he so often did. “It isna’ a matter of a night’s sleep, ye ken that. You willna’ sleep until you allow yoursel’ to live again!”

  Trying to ignore him, Rutledge moved along the quay, to stand so that he could see the little stream where the boats came in to tie up. Wildfowl took off from the reeds and grasses, looking for their night’s roost. He watched them for a time, and the long shadows of the late afternoon falling across the marshes. They were golden in this light, or a deep rufous, or pale yellow, and when he stood very still, he thought he could hear breakers coming into the strand out beyond them.

  “Tomorrow will be fair,” Hamish said, his countryman’s instincts strong.

  “Yes.”

  Rutledge turned back, walked to his car in the hotel’s walled courtyard next to a stand of late autumn flowers, and retrieved his luggage from the boot.

  It was early in the dinner hour when Rutledge came down for the evening meal. Mrs. Barnett greeted him and led him to a table in t
he middle of the room under the softly lit chandeliers. With a smile she asked if he’d enjoyed his day, and with equal courtesy he agreed that he had.

  Where he had eaten his luncheon, a man was dining alone, a heavy cane hooked over the back of the second chair.

  Mrs. Barnett turned to hover over him solicitously as he finished his cheese, and Rutledge caught part of the conversation.

  The man was saying, “… in Osterley. We’re a benighted lot here on the north coast.”

  Mrs. Barnett smiled. “I saw Nurse Davies a time or two in the shops. It was always the rain she…”

  The glass doors between the dining room and the reception hall had been left open. Sunday night, it appeared, was a popular time for local people to come in for their dinner, and there were already six or eight couples by the windows and two families at the larger tables along the wall beneath the sconces. Their quiet laughter and low-voiced conversation filled the spacious room with warmth and life. A far cry from that noon when it had seemed much too large for its only occupants: Rutledge and the woman guest.

  But it appeared that she wasn’t dining in this evening.

  Waiting for his soup, Rutledge unobtrusively studied the man by the window, the one Mrs. Barnett had spoken with.

  There was something in the shape of his head that had caught Rutledge’s attention, the way his hair grew thickly from its part, and the line of his chin. He was young- perhaps thirty or thirty-two-but his face was lined with pain, aging it prematurely. A member of Lord Sedgwick’s family? The resemblance was there, but softer drawn, as if the bone structure was less formidable.

  “I canna’ see it mysel’,” Hamish said. “He’s no’ as large framed.”

  It was true. Unless illness had whittled away the muscle and brawn. And certainly this man appeared to be taller, longer limbed.

  Later, as Rutledge finished his soup, he saw the man by the window fold his serviette and set it by his plate, his expression relaxed, as if he’d enjoyed his meal. But he lingered, as if reluctant to push back his chair and retire to the lounge for his tea.