by Charles Todd
For the first time, he caught a glimpse of fear in her eyes. It was unexpected, as if she had locked it away and didn’t want to bring it into the light.
Mrs. Wainer was silent for a moment, then answered, “I’d find his bed not slept in, some mornings. And he’d often be standing at the kitchen window by the back garden, looking out, the tea already made, as if he hadn’t been able to rest. That last morning, he turned a surprised face to me when I came in at my usual hour. As if he’d lost track of the time.”
“Was there a problem in the parish that kept him awake?”
“If there was, it never reached my ears! But he’d been to the doctor’s, several times to my certain knowledge, and I was beginning to wonder if he was ill—a cancer or some such. And it was on his mind.”
“A local man?”
“Dr. Stephenson, yes. It’s all I could think of, that Father must have been given bad news. I waited for him to confide in me, but he never did. And then he was killed, God rest his soul, and I couldn’t help but think as they put him into the ground, he’ll not have to worry any more about the cancer.”
“Did he show signs of being ill? Coughing—complaining of pain—taking medications you hadn’t seen before?”
“No, I’d have come right out and asked him then! It was just—I don’t know—just a feeling that he was sorely troubled. I asked him the first time I found him standing in the kitchen if there was anything on his mind, and he said, ‘No, Ruth, I’m well.’ But there was something wrong. He wasn’t himself!”
“Something on his conscience, then?”
She gave him a stern and heavy look. “Priests like Father James don’t have evil on their conscience! I’d as soon believe that my own son was wicked, and him a respectable bank clerk in London!”
CHAPTER 6
JUST PAST THE FIRST TURNING FOR Water Street, Rutledge saw the small board indicating Dr. Stephenson’s surgery. On impulse he pulled over and stopped, left the car out in front, and rang the bell. It would do no harm to confirm or deny Ruth Wainer’s fears.
A woman admitted him, her apron crisp and her hair tightly pulled back into a small knot. It gave her face a severity that was belied by the kind eyes. Rutledge gave his name and asked to speak to the doctor.
“His surgery is closed for the afternoon.”
“It isn’t a medical matter. It concerns a police investigation.” He showed her his identification.
She considered him, uncertain what to do. Finally, as Rutledge smiled at her, she said, doubt heavy in her voice, “He’s in his office, writing up a patient’s record to send to London. If I let you go in, you won’t keep him long, will you? The post won’t wait!”
He was taken to Dr. Stephenson’s private door down the passage and admitted into the small office, where the doctor sat at his desk, papers spread around him. He looked up, saw Rutledge behind his nurse, and said, “I don’t have hours today. Have you told him that, Connie?”
“It isn’t a medical matter,” Rutledge said. “It’s police business. I’ve been sent down by Scotland Yard.”
“The Yard, is it?” Stephenson said, giving his visitor his full attention. “Oh, very well, I can spare you five minutes! No more.” He put the cap on his pen and sat back in his chair, locking his fingers together and stretching his arms in front of him.
He was a brisk man, Rutledge thought, but not cold. And he appeared to be competent, for his eyes examined his visitor openly, and behind the short, neat beard, his mouth twitched with interest.
The nurse withdrew, closing the door, and Stephenson said, “You don’t look well, you know.” He gestured toward a wing chair.
“It isn’t surprising. I was shot some weeks ago.”
“In the line of duty?” Rutledge nodded. “That explains it, then. You still carry that shoulder a little higher, as if it’s stiff. What brings you to Osterley? This business about Father James?”
“I’ve been asked to reassure Father James’s Bishop that everything that can be done has been done in the matter of the priest’s death—”
“Then you should be speaking to Inspector Blevins, not to me.”
“On the contrary. The questions I have to ask are medical.” Rutledge’s glance moved from the prints hanging on the blue walls to the bookcase stuffed with medical treatises and texts.
Stephenson pointedly shuffled his papers. “If you are asking me in some roundabout fashion to tell you which of my patients was likely to have committed murder, I can’t help you. I’d have gone straight to Blevins if I’d had even the faintest suspicion that one of them could have been responsible.”
Rutledge smiled. “The patient I’m inquiring about is Father James himself. You were his physician. And I’ve been told that he had something on his mind shortly before his death. His housekeeper believes that he might have been seriously ill, and was keeping it from her. If it wasn’t his health that troubled him, then we have another avenue to explore. If it was, we can close that door.”
“I don’t see how his state of mind will help you find the thief who killed him. But I can assure you that Father James was as healthy as a horse, save for a few bouts of sore throat now and again. Bad tonsils, but never serious enough to require more than a box of lozenges for the soreness. They worked well enough, most of the time.”
“And yet he came here to see you several times in the weeks before he died.”
“There’s nothing surprising about that! Religion and medicine walk hand in hand, as often as not. I confer with the priest or the Vicar as frequently as I summon the undertaker. People grieving or in pain or frightened need comforting, and that’s the role of the church when medicine has done all it can.”
Rutledge let a silence fall. It expressed nothing, but Stevenson seemed to read into it a refusal to accept his offhand remarks. After a moment, the doctor added, “But you’re right. The last time or two it wasn’t an illness that brought him here—his or a parishioner’s. He wanted to ask me about a patient of mine. Man named Baker. Father James had been to see him just before he died. Afterward he began to wonder about Baker’s state of mind at the end. Far as I know, it was clear and coherent. I saw no reason to believe otherwise, and I was in attendance.”
“One of Father James’s flock?”
“Actually, no. I suppose that’s what lay behind his questions, although Father James didn’t go into the matter. Baker was staunch Church of England, but he wanted to be shriven by a Catholic priest as well as his own Vicar, and his family humored him. Father James, to his credit, attended even though it was one of the nastiest nights I’d seen in a year or more. A few hours later Herbert Baker died of natural causes—I can vouch for that—and his Will was quite straightforward. As a matter of fact, I’d been asked to witness it some years back. None of Baker’s children has complained about it, as far as I know. There was no reason to feel any concern, and I told Father James that.”
“And yet you tell me he spoke to you again about Baker.”
The doctor picked up his pen, indicating that he wanted to get back to his own work. “I just explained what happened. There was some confusion the night this patient was dying. Baker insisted he wanted a priest. The one from St. Anne’s. But it was the Vicar who sat beside the old man when he breathed his last, close on to three in the morning. Father James had already gone back to the rectory, having spent no more than half an hour with the patient. I grant you that it wasn’t the usual sort of thing, but then I’ve sat by enough deathbeds myself to know that there’s no accounting sometimes. Martin Baker sent for a priest to give his father ease. Rightly so!”
“What do you think was resting so heavily on Herbert Baker’s conscience?” Rutledge asked the question conversationally, as if out of simple curiosity.
“I expect it was no more than some youthful indiscretion. Baker had been sexton at Holy Trinity for many years, and he may not have relished spoiling the Vicar’s good opinion of him, just at the end. I’ve known more than one case where a m
an’s wild oats came back to haunt him on his deathbed.”
“I shouldn’t think that Father James—an experienced priest from all I’ve heard—would be overly concerned about a young man’s wild oats.”
“Father James often surprised me with the breadth of his concern for people. There was compassion to spare for any lost sheep. I found it admirable in him.” The doctor uncapped his pen. “I’ve given you far more than your five minutes. This is pressing, the report I’m writing. I have a patient in hospital in London, facing surgery. It can’t wait.”
“Just two other questions, if you will. Did anyone to your knowledge hold a grudge against Father James?”
“He wasn’t that kind of man. His predecessor was autocratic, and while everyone respected him, there was little love for him. Father James on the other hand was a reasonable, clear-thinking individual who took his duties to heart but was never oppressive about it. I wasn’t one of his parishioners, but I am told he preached a fine homily in a voice that made the rafters sing.”
“I understand Father James was a chaplain at the Front, and was sent home early. With severe dysentery.”
“Yes, it was chronic, and the army surgeon was of the opinion he would be dead in a month if he wasn’t sent home. Decent water, decent food, and bed rest saw him right enough. Father James wasn’t happy to be sent home. He wanted to serve. There was a Father Holston in Norwich who set him right again by telling him that God, not Father James, decided where he could serve best. Which oddly enough came true. In the influenza epidemic he was my right hand. I’d have lost twice the number of patients without his dedication. Seemed to have the constitution of an iron man, I can tell you!”
Rutledge thanked Stephenson and stood up to leave. As he walked to the door, he turned and asked, “When did Baker die? Before or after the Autumn Fete at St. Anne’s?”
“A day or two after the bazaar. As I recall, the Vicar said something about the timing of the storm—that it was a blessing it hadn’t struck earlier. Now that’s all I have to say to you. Good afternoon!”
Hamish grumbled as Rutledge walked out of the surgery, “If it wasna’ his health that worried yon priest before his death, and this man Baker didna’ weigh unduly on his mind, what kept him awake at night? Was it yon fair at the kirk?”
“Yes, I was wondering about that myself. Sometimes people come a long distance to attend these affairs, if they have any sort of reputation for good food and good entertainment.”
“People travel far to funerals as well.”
“I think the bazaar is a more likely choice. Father James didn’t officiate at Baker’s services—the Vicar would have done that.”
Looking around him at the town of Osterley, where a watery and inconsistent sunlight was reflected from the flint walls, Rutledge found himself thinking that he would be on his way back to London tomorrow. Back to the letters lying unopened in the desk drawer in his sitting room. Away from the smell of the marshes and the call of gulls overhead. He answered absently, “The local police will know more about such evidence than I do.”
But would they? Whatever lay at the core of this murder, whether it was theft or a killing with a purpose, someone appeared to have covered his tracks very well.
Was he clever—or merely lucky?
Hamish said, “For a man who willna’ be involved with this death, you ask a good many questions.” There was a taunt behind the simple words.
Rutledge said, “No. I’ve merely tried to be sure that the good Bishop’s fears are unfounded. . . .”
But was that really true? In Rutledge’s experience, investigations often floundered when the police failed to ask the right question. Or failed to look behind the most obvious evidence at what could have been overshadowed by it. Damning connections grew out of persistence, connections that at first glance were not even visible. Most mistakes were made by the human element—the refusal to be objective.
An old Sergeant at the Yard had told him once, at the start of his own career, “When the police look for guilt, there’s always enough to serve their purpose. Nobody is free of guilt. But if you search for the truth, now, that’s a different tale!”
What was intriguing about this case was the reaction of those who were close to Father James. They ignored the theft and believed that nothing short of a Greek tragedy could explain this murder: The assumption that the death of great men grew out of cataclysmic events. It was implicit in their denial of the facts: Even though a small sum was stolen, it had nothing to do with the actual crime.
But what if it had? A life was not always given its real value. . . .
Hamish said, “Aye, but what if this killer only hunts priests, and there’s another one in jeopardy now?”
Neither theft nor Greek tragedy but madness? Rutledge raised his eyes to look up at the church standing high above the road, and wondered how such a killer would choose his next victim. Or if he had already killed before . . .
Since the Osterley police station was no more than a few doors from the doctor’s surgery, Rutledge left his motorcar where it was and walked there.
The sign was still up, and he started to turn away, intent on the drive back to Norwich. But there was the sound of a voice somewhere inside, and he hesitated, then reached for the knob, thinking he might find someone with whom he could leave a courtesy message for Inspector Blevins.
He stepped into a scene of chaos.
A huge man had been pushed against his will into a chair that faced the Sergeant’s rough, wooden desk, and two constables were attempting to hold him down on the seat while he bellowed at an Inspector listening to his curses with an expression of distaste. A Sergeant stood at the Inspector’s shoulder.
The constables turned to see who had come through the door, glanced back at their Inspector, and in that instant of distraction loosened their grip on the massive shoulders.
The Inspector glared at Rutledge, demanding, “What do you want?” and then savagely ordered, “Franklin— watch what you’re doing, damn it!”
“Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard—”
The man in the chair surged to his feet like a whale breaching.
Hamish yelled a warning and Rutledge hastily leaped aside.
The enormous man broke away from the constables and lunged toward the door, one shoulder ramming into Rutledge and sending piercing swords of fire through his body. He gasped for breath, the pain nearly doubling him over, but thrust out a foot instinctively, managing to trip up the man and then to dodge his thundering fall.
Everyone was shouting at once: The clamor was deafening.
The constables were on the man like monkeys, and Blevins, breathing hard, swore again. “Don’t stand there, Sergeant, give them a hand!” As his Sergeant, an older man, jumped into the fray without much effect, Blevins added at the top of his lungs, “Hit him if you have to!”
The wildly struggling man went limp as something struck him on the head with a solid thud of flesh against flesh. A fist.
Rutledge, leaning back against the wall, was trying hard to breathe normally again, dizzy with the effort. The Sergeant, calling angrily to the constables to hold on, leaned over his desk to fumble for handcuffs.
Between them the four men managed to haul their dazed captive to his feet and out of the room, toward the rear of the station. As the prisoner regained his senses, Rutledge could hear his rising bellows and the thumps of his heavy boots as he kicked out at his captors or the walls, whatever was in reach.
Blevins walked back into the room rubbing his thigh with his fist. “Damned ox! Rutledge, did you say? From the Yard? What do they want? Is it about the priest’s murder?” As Rutledge nodded, Blevins bent to pick up papers that had fallen from the desk to the floor. He added, “Well, you’re just in time.” He jerked his head toward the rear of the station, where the protests and curses marked the location of a holding cell. “That’s our man. At least there’s every likelihood it is. He was the Strong Man at the bazaar. Quite an act, pullin
g a line of carriages against a team of horses, picking up a bench with two young ladies seated at either end, defying ordinary men to lift his iron weights. Very popular with the young people, engaging personality, they tell me. Name’s Walsh.”
It had been simple theft after all. “What connects him with the priest?” Rutledge felt like hell, his mind refusing to function, while his lungs burned.
“Circumstantial evidence so far. Mrs. Wainer was quite put out when she found Walsh wandering about in the rectory on the day of the bazaar looking—he said—for water to wash up. She sent him away with a flea in his ear. Fortunately, later on she remembered what had happened and told Sergeant Jennings. And when the police in Swaffham caught up with him at a fair there, he had a new cart for his gear. We’ve just brought him in, as a matter of fact.”
“Nothing suspicious in a new cart, surely?” The fire was subsiding.
“It was paid for two days after the priest was killed. With bits and pieces of bills and coin.” Blevins gestured to the chair vacated so abruptly by the Strong Man, then sat himself down behind the Sergeant’s desk. There was a cut on the heel of his hand, and he stared at it, then at the bloody stain spreading on his cuff. “Damn the bastard! Teeth like steel traps!”
Rutledge took the chair. His chest was settling into a dull ache now. Gingerly testing, he took a deep breath and felt nothing beyond the usual resistance. But the memory of the pain was still fierce. “The sort of money a bazaar takes in, yes. But surely the kind of thing his act brings in as well.”
Blevins glared at him. “Look, we’re just at the beginning of this business. I’ve got men asking questions at the smithy where the new cart was built to see when it was ordered. I’ve got men asking questions about Walsh’s movements the day of the festival here as well as the night Father James was killed. A man that size can’t slink around without being noticed. Half the county force has been given to me for the duration to track the killer down. A local lord has even put up a reward for information leading to an arrest. Father James was well liked. We’re doing the best we can!”