by Charles Todd
There were books on the shelves that were Father James’s, his name inscribed in a fine copperplate hand, mixed among others that belonged in the rectory. Rutledge turned the pages briefly, but found nothing of interest tucked between the leaves.
“Hardly secret vices and dark crimes,” Hamish mocked.
When Rutledge turned to the stairs, the housekeeper said, as she had before, “Go on then. I’ll have a cup of tea ready, when you’ve done your work.” She had returned to the kitchen before he had reached the top step.
He went first to the small room where the ledgers of church and rectory business transactions were kept, and where the heavy, bound books with Church Records on their spines stood on a separate pair of shelves.
Looking through the ledgers first, Rutledge found, in various hands, the long list of repairs and improvements, wages and offerings that represented decades of activity. The roof of the rectory had been repaired after a storm in 1903, and there was a faded receipt in the rough, untutored hand of the man who had done the work. You could, Rutledge thought, identify with certainty every expenditure: when it was made, to whom, and for what purpose. And the name of the priest incumbent at the time. Every penny of income was noted, every payment of wages due. He found the entry, scrupulously made in Father James’s hand, of the sum earned at the bazaar: eleven pounds, three shillings, six pence. The last entry was wages paid to Mrs. Wainer, two days before the priest had died.
The great volumes of church records listed the names of priests and sextons, altar boys and gravediggers over the years; a compendium of who had served God and in what capacity. Later pages recorded baptisms by date, with the name given the child, the sponsoring godparents, and the parents. By accident Rutledge came across the name “Blevins,” and found the Inspector’s own baptism: pages later, that of his first child. Among the marriages were Blevins’s, Mrs. Wainer’s, and others whose names Rutledge recognized.
The deaths were more somber: George Peters, Aged Forty-seven Years, Three Months, and Four Days, died this Day of Grace, Sunday, Twenty-four August, in the year of Our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Forty-Eight, of a fall down a well shaft in Hunstanton on Saturday the twenty-third. And later on: Infant son of Mary and Henry Cuthbert, stillborn, this Fourteenth Day of March, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Two, laid to rest beside seven brothers and sisters. May God have Mercy on His Soul.
It was the chronicle of life and death in a small village, perhaps the only mark many of these people had made in their short span on earth. He found it sad to read. Jocelyn Mercer, Aged Three Days short of Her Fourteenth Year, of Diphtheria… Roger Benning, Aged Five Years, Two Months, and Seven Days, of Cholera… The last volume ended with Seven July, Nineteen Twelve. The latest must, he thought, be kept in the church vestry.
The room yielded nothing more of interest-it was, as he’d thought, a public room, where the church officers had as much right of access as the priest.
Rutledge moved on to the study. From what Blevins had told him, Rutledge knew that Mrs. Wainer had restored the scattered papers and books and other belongings to their proper places. She wouldn’t allow the police to touch them.
Rutledge thumbed through the books, studied the photographs on the table by the hearth and on the mantel. They were a record of friends and family over the years, of journeys to Wales, of the great Fells in the Lake District. He even lifted the cushions of the settle.
This room was in some respects another public place, where Father James counseled his parish or talked to young couples on the brink of marriage or heard the grieving words of widows and parents and children. Where the deacons came and discussed church affairs. Where any person might wait, and with natural curiosity, look around him. Hence even the flimsy lock on the desk, perhaps…
Hamish said, “But the Titanic cuttings were here, on the desk, when the doctor saw them.”
“Yes, that’s true. He walked in while Father James was examining them, most likely.” Rutledge searched through the desk with care. Nothing of interest. And no photographs, framed or otherwise. Just as the solicitor had said.
Moving on to the bedroom, Rutledge felt his usual sense of distaste. He disliked what he was about to do, hating the need to violate the privacy of the dead. But murder victims lost not only their lives and their dignity but their innermost thoughts and secrets, secrets they would have preferred to deal with, if they’d been warned they were about to die.
He himself was careful not to preserve any record of the voice in his head. There was no diary entry, no letter, not even a conversation with a friend that would distress his sister, Frances, after he was gone. Only the private files in Dr. Fleming’s office, and Fleming could be depended upon to leave them sealed.
“Was that what fashed Baker?” Hamish asked. “He couldna’ rise from his bed, and he couldna’ ask the Vicar to look into a drawer or burn a letter.”
It was something to consider. It would, indeed, explain why Father James had wanted to be so certain of Baker’s state of mind before he carried out whatever instructions he may have been given. For instance, burning an old love letter…
Rutledge searched through the priest’s meager belongings, the clothing in the wardrobe and the church robes folded in the chest at the foot of the bed. Relieved to find nothing of consequence there, he stood in the middle of the room, thinking.
Hamish said, “It was no’ a verra’ guid idea after all-”
Rutledge replied absently, “The frustrating part of the search is not knowing what I’m after. Or if it exists in any recognizable fashion.”
Monsignor Holston’s words came back to him: If you come to me with the truth, and I recognize it, I’ll tell you so.
There were other rooms on the first floor. But opening the doors confirmed what Rutledge expected: bedchambers made up for guests, with nothing in them of a personal nature and all of them scrupulously clean.
“You couldna’ hide a wee mouse in here,” Hamish commented as Rutledge closed the last of the doors.
He climbed the narrow, uncarpeted flight of stairs to the top floor. Rooms here had been designed for servants- small and without character, unfurnished for the most part, or cluttered with the collected debris of several generations. Lamps, iron bedsteads, rusted coal scuttles, a wardrobe with one door warped on its hinges, chairs with caned seats that had never been mended, chipped mirrors, and the like. Even a broken window sash leaned against an inside wall next to two rakes whose bamboo handles had splintered.
A few of the odds and ends appeared to have been used year after year for bazaars, including a small cart, half a dozen umbrellas and long wooden tables, boxes of signs and ribbons, and the kit of clown’s makeup that Father James must have favored for entertaining the children.
There was also, near the top of the steps, where Rutledge would have expected to find such things, a small traveling trunk and a valise that bore the priest’s name on the labels. Cheap, conservative, and well worn.
Running probing fingers through the jumble of belongings stored in the trunk, he came across the corners of an envelope, fairly large and rather thick, but unevenly so, as if there were several things stuffed inside. Lifting out the assortment of hats and gloves and hiking boots that lay on top, he picked up the packet, testing its weight in his hands. It had been neither hidden away nor in plain sight.
Letters from Father James’s dead sister Judith? Or the ones he had written to her, with that enigmatic reference to the Giant?
Inspector Blevins would be pleased if they were!
Rutledge sat down on the dusty floorboards, his elbows resting on his bent knees, and held the envelope upright between his spread feet.
There were no identifying marks-it hadn’t been mailed and there was no name on the outside.
As he opened the flap and looked in, Rutledge said “Ah!” in almost a sigh. A fat collection of cuttings met his eye. Drawing them out, careful not to lose one, he could already see that they were newspaper and magazine accounts
of the sinking of a ship that was unsinkable.
Sorting through them at random, he noted that certain developments had been clipped together-the publicity over departure, the tragedy, the search for bodies, reports from Ireland, editorial reflections on the tragic loss of life, lists of the dead and missing, accounts of the ensuing inquiry-as if Father James had carefully cataloged each new addition to his accumulating data. In the margins were handwritten notes, referring the reader from one article to another.
Dr. Stephenson was right-this had all the hallmarks of an obsession, not a passing fancy. Too much work had been done to coordinate all the information. Photographs from news accounts ranged from smiling Society figures boarding the great liner to pitiable corpses lying in plain wooden coffins in Ireland, eyes half shut and faces flaccid.
It was, in all conscience, Rutledge thought, a gruesome collection.
He looked down into the trunk to see what else might have been stored there, then ran his fingers again through the oddments of belongings that had formed the bottom layer. A frame came to light, one edge caught in a knitted scarf. Rutledge retrieved it and turned it over.
A young woman standing beside a horse, her face bright in the sun, smiled up at him, her hair shiningly fair. Judging from the lovely hat in one hand and the stylishness of the dress she wore, she was well-to-do.
But who was she? Was this the photograph that Father James had left to May Trent? There was no resemblance between the two women. Nor was there any to Priscilla Connaught. Rutledge hadn’t met most of the other women in Osterley. Frederick Gifford’s dead wife? The doctor’s daughter? Someone from the priest’s youth?
“Look on the reverse,” Hamish suggested. And Rutledge took the back out of the frame to remove the photograph. There was a date: 10 July, 1911. And he words, lightly inscribed, so as not to mar the face. Gratefully, V.
V. Victoria sprang to mind. It had been a popular girls’ name throughout the late Queen’s reign. As Mary was now, in honor of the present Queen. Vera? Vivian. Veronica. Virginia. Verity. Violet?
He ran out of possibilities.
Still, Blevins could perhaps help him there. Or Mrs. Wainer.
On the other hand Hamish said it for him. “I wouldna’ be in haste to show it.”
Getting to his feet, Rutledge found a flat leather case lying in a corner of the room, a coating of dust covering it, and a cobweb linking it to the frame of the bottomless chair beside it. The grip was broken at one end, but it would do.
Rutledge looked around him a last time at the “waste not, want not” philosophy of householders who store in their upper floors and attics the ruined furnishings and venerable treasures they couldn’t quite bring themselves to throw away. In the event it’s ever needed. And most of it lay there still, forgotten and unwanted, from generation to generation. Judging by the dust and cobwebs, even Mrs. Wainer seldom ventured up here…
He wondered if Father James had kept that in mind when he stored the clippings and the photograph in his trunk. Or if that was where they were generally kept.
Rutledge shook the dust from the leather case, sneezing heavily, and discovered that there was a mouse hole in one corner of the leather. Human flotsam and jetsam, Hamish pointed out, sometimes served other creatures well.
Smiling at that, Rutledge set the cuttings and the photograph inside, closed the flap, and looked into the small trunk a last time-even stretching his fingers inside the torn corner of the lining on the right side-before deciding that he had the lot. He carefully repacked the clothing before going down the attic stairs.
When Rutledge walked through to the kitchen, the housekeeper was standing at the back door, in the midst of a lively conversation with the coal man. His apron, black with coal dust, matched the color of his eyes, and the bulbous nose matched the heavy chest that spread out from wide, muscular shoulders.
Rutledge’s tea was ready on a tray, the kettle steaming gently on top of the stove. An ironed, white serviette over a plate kept sliced sandwiches moist.
Hamish said, “If you didna’ stay, chances are, he will-”
And in the same instant, the coal man looked up with disappointment on his face as Rutledge stepped into the kitchen.
Rutledge said, “Mrs. Wainer, I’ve finished for the moment. I have a few papers here that I shall need to look over and return to you-”
“Papers?” She turned with some alarm, her eyes flying to the case he was carrying.
“Old cuttings, for the most part. Dated well before the War. I’ll just look through them before you box them up with the rest of Father James’s possessions. But you never know, do you, where something useful might turn up?”
She hesitated, clearly uncertain where her responsibility lay. Rutledge added, “They’re to do with shipping, not church business. Perhaps you’ve seen them on his desk. A hobby of his, was it? To study maritime affairs?” It was as far as he was willing to go, with the coal man unashamedly listening to every word.
“There was nothing like that in his desk,” she protested, but before she could ask to have a look at them the coal man stepped forward.
“Begging pardon, sir. Shipping, you said? Not that ship that sank back in ’12, was it?” His heavy hands, with coal dust thick in the cracks and creases, worked at his apron, as if not accustomed to speaking to his betters before spoken to.
“As I remember there was a reference to Titanic, ” Rutledge replied guardedly. “Yes.”
“Then if I might offer a word, sir?” There was a diffident smile on his face. “My daughter, she’s got herself a fine situation in London. Father James-God rest his soul!-asked if she might do him a small favor, and he sent her twenty pounds to buy up all the London papers and cut out whatever there was about the ship’s sinking and the inquiry. He wanted every word she could find. And she must have sent him dozens of cuttings, sir, by post every week.”
Rutledge opened the case and pulled out the cuttings, laying them on the table and spreading them with one finger. “Like these?”
The coal man came closer, peering down his nose as if shortsighted. “Aye, I shouldn’t be at all surprised, though I never saw ’em. Jessie sent them straight to the rectory.” He paused, and when Rutledge didn’t move the cuttings, he added, “When t’other ship was torpedoed, that Lusitania, my daughter wrote him to ask if he wanted her to do the same again. But he thanked her and said he’d seen enough of tragedy. His very words.”
“And so it would be your guess, would it, that this was a passing fancy?”
“He never spoke to me about that ship!” Mrs. Wainer seemed hurt that she’d been left out of his confidence. “It was the talk of England, and I don’t remember he ever said anything more than what a pity it was.”
“But do you recall seeing the letters coming from London?”
“As a rule, Father James collected the post,” she explained. “But you’d have thought, if they were that important, he might have asked me to be on the lookout for them.” She peered down at the cuttings again. “I’d have put them in a scrapbook for him if he’d wanted me to. It’s just not like him not to say a word!”
“And no’ like him to lie to the doctor,” Hamish added, an echo of Rutledge’s own thought.
Turning to the coal man, Rutledge asked, “Did you ever tell anyone about the favor your daughter was doing for the priest?”
The jowly face flushed. “No, sir!”
“It would be natural-a matter of pride!”
“My work takes me into any number of houses, sir,” the coal man said with a certain dignity, “and I never gossip about one to t’other. Ask Mrs. Wainer if she’s ever heard me gossip!”
Mrs. Wainer shook her head. “No, he never does.”
Rutledge collected the cuttings once more and put them back in the case. “Thank you, Mrs. Wainer. You’ll have these papers back within the week. I shan’t have time for tea after all. Do you mind?”
She was still more than a little concerned about the papers, but said
doubtfully, “If they’ll help in any way, sir, then by all means. ..”
Rutledge spent the next hour in his room, going through the yellowing cuttings. They were dated in an untrained hand, with the name of the newspaper or magazine written underneath. The coal man’s daughter? Another-the priest’s?-had underlined names of passengers, marking each with an S noting survivors, an X noting the recovered and identified dead, and an M for known missing. This was a sad and depressing list, but those who had not been recovered were sometimes mentioned by name-the wealthy, the powerful, the famous. There were hundreds with no grave but the sea and no one to ask about them- or grieve for them. Whole families lost together.
Which was, in a sense, more haunting, but at the same time perhaps, kinder.
Rutledge put the cuttings aside for a moment and stood by his windows looking out at the marshes. He glimpsed Peter Henderson walking along the quay, head down, shoulders hunched, and wondered if the man had a home to go to. And then recalled that his family had cut him off. Where then did he live?
His mind on the clippings again, Rutledge felt a sadness that came from touching the tragedy of others. One could claim that it was fate, the invincible weight of the iceberg and the unsinkable ship colliding on a cold night in the North Atlantic, where there should have been no such danger at that time of the year. Who chose those who would live, and who would die? Was that what disturbed the priest? That so many could simply be left to freeze and drown in the sea by an omniscient and all-powerful God? There were 1,513 known to be dead…
Or was it far more personal than an exercise in the definition of God?
He went back to work, rubbing his shoulders as he concentrated on the cuttings, looking for a clue.
And in the end, he found not what he was looking for, but what he had not expected to see in these articles.
The name of Marianna Trent…