Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

“I’ll wait,” Rutledge told her, and she left them.

  Sedgwick ate with gusto. “I’m famished,” he said between spoonsful. “It has been a long morning and I breakfasted shortly after six. Is that your motorcar I saw in the hotel yard? The four-seater?”

  “Yes, it must be.”

  “My younger son bought one like it a year before the War. Found it an admirable motor. Made the run from London in excellent time and never gave him any trouble.” He smiled wryly. “I’m at the mercy of gout, myself. Don’t fancy driving when my foot is aching like a fiend in hell.”

  The conversation moved on from motors to unemployment and then to some discussion of the peace treaty that had been signed. “Is it worth the paper it was written on? I ask you! The French were vindictive as hell, and the Hun is too proud to live long under their heel!” Sedgwick shook his head, answering his own question. “Politicians are the very devil. Foolish idealists, like Wilson in America, or short-sighted and closed-minded, like that lot in Paris.”

  Mrs. Barnett served them roasted ham and a side dish of carrots and potatoes, seasoned with onions, still steaming from the ovens. As she rearranged the salt and pepper to accommodate the various dishes, she asked Sedgwick if he cared for hot mustard sauce. He smiled and helped himself from the silver bowl she held for him, then sighed. “I don’t think anyone can match Mrs. Barnett’s mustard sauce. She won’t tell me how she makes it. And so I try to remember which days she’s likely to serve it. You’ll find it excellent!”

  As she moved away after serving the sauce to Rutledge, Sedgwick added, “Know the Broads well, do you?”

  “I’ve come here a time or two. A friend kept a boat west of here, but that was before the War. He’s not up to sailing these days.” Ronald had been gassed at Ypres; the damp ravaged his lungs now.

  “Never been much for the sea myself. But one of my sons was fond of boats and took us out a time or two.” He smiled sheepishly. “Not the stomach for it, if you want the truth.”

  Sedgwick was an engaging man, the sort of Englishman who could spend half an hour with a stranger without fear of encroachment on either side. Which told Rutledge, watching the sharp eyes beneath the gray, shaggy brows, that he was not what he seemed.

  By the end of the meal, Rutledge had his man pegged. His accent was Oxonian, his voice well modulated, his conversation that of a gentleman, but he still had occasional trouble with his aitches. London roots, and not the West End, in spite of the heavy gold watch fob, the elegant signet ring on the left hand, and apparel that had been made by the best tailors in Oxford Street.

  As they finished their flan and Susan Barnett brought the teapot for a second cup, the woman who had been sitting behind Rutledge some tables away rose and walked out of the dining room.

  Sedgwick bowed politely, turning his head so that his eyes followed her through the doorway.

  “An interesting young woman,” he said to Rutledge. “Religious sort, I’m told. She was at a dinner party given by the doctor here, and spoke very well on the subject of medieval brasses.”

  It was almost condescending.

  As if to underline Rutledge’s thoughts, Sedgwick added, “Spinster, of course,” settling the question of where she stood in his scheme of the world.

  “Indeed,” Rutledge said, watching her walk across the lobby. The brief flash of a shapely ankle and the glossy dark hair above the straight back seemed at odds with Sedgwick’s opinion of her.

  Sedgwick excused himself after his second cup of tea and spoke to Mrs. Barnett in the kitchen before leaving the hotel.

  Rutledge himself rose from the table, dropping his serviette by his empty cup, and went into the lobby. There was a small sitting room beyond the stairs, the door standing wide. Inside he could just see his fellow guest reading her book. While the room was for any guest’s use, the occupant seemed to make it clear that she did not wish for company, her chair set at an angle that discouraged any greeting.

  He turned and left the hotel to walk down the street toward the water. A chill wind blew off the North Sea and whipped the saw grass he could just see far out on the dunes. The single boat he’d watched coming in was now beached on the damp strand below the seawall, with wet boot prints coming up the stone steps and leading up into the town. He could follow them, as cakes of gray mud flecked off at each step.

  Hamish said, “The priest’s killer wore old and worn shoes.”

  “Yes. I hadn’t forgotten. The Strong Man, Walsh, was wearing boots. With hobnails. And his feet are large.”

  “Aye. It’s a thought to bear in mind. . . .”

  CHAPTER 8

  INSTEAD OF FETCHING HIS LUGGAGE FROM the boot as he’d planned, Rutledge drove to St. Anne’s rectory. The mixture of watery sun, clouds, and drizzle that had pursued him all morning had given way to fairer skies. If the sun stayed out, he thought as he pulled into the short drive, the day would soon be pleasantly warm. A light wind riffled his hair as he went up the walk to the door and lifted the coffin knocker. After a time Mrs. Wainer came to answer the clamor, and recognizing the Inspector on the doorstep, greeted him with noticeable relief.

  “I thought it might be someone wanting Monsignor Holston!”

  “I hope I haven’t taken you from your dinner,” he said.

  “No, I’ve finished. Do come in!” she said, and was on the point of leading him back to the Victorian parlor when he stopped her.

  “I’d like to see Father James’s study,” Rutledge said gently, “if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you.”

  She turned her head toward the stairs. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go up there just now. I still find it hard.” She looked at Rutledge again. “It’s Sunday, and he was always on time for his dinner, and hungry, having fasted. There’s no one to cook for now, though I’d bought a nice bit of ham, hoping Monsignor Holston would stay. . . . I feel at sixes and sevens!” There was a sadness in the words that touched Rutledge. “Well. The Bishop will send a new priest when he’s ready.”

  “It should be reassuring to know that Inspector Blevins has found the man responsible.”

  The housekeeper answered, “Oh, yes.” But her response was polite, with no sense of relief. Only acceptance. “Of course I told the constables the Strong Man had been in the house. But I never dreamed— He seemed—I don’t know, apologetic about his size, afraid of bumping into anything. Go on, if you like. There’s no harm can be done. And maybe some good. Up the stairs then, and the second door on your right.”

  “Toward the house next door,” Hamish observed.

  Rutledge thanked her and started up, becoming aware of how little noise he made on the solid treads—a muffled step, a sound you’d miss if you weren’t listening for it.

  When he’d reached the landing, he turned. Mrs. Wainer was still standing by the parlor doorway, unwilling to remember what lay at the top of the stairs. There was an expression of deep grief on her face. Then she walked away down the passage, as if turning her back on what he was about to do.

  The second door to the right led into a large study, with a bank of long windows covered with heavy velvet draperies that shut out the light. Rutledge was reminded suddenly of what Monsignor Holston had said, that the room had spoken to him of evil. Whether what he sensed now was evil or not, he couldn’t say, but the dimly lit room seemed—not empty. Waiting.

  Hamish said, “It isna’ the corpse, it’s been taken away. But the spirit . . .”

  “Perhaps.” Rutledge hesitated, and then, shutting the study door behind him, crossed the carpet to pull the draperies open, watching the wooden rings move smoothly down the mahogany rod with the familiar click-clicks. Brightness poured into the room, and that odd sense of something present there was banished with the light.

  He found that his feet were set in a scrubbed and faded portion of the carpet, where someone must have tried to remove the blood that had puddled from Father James’s head wound. An onerous duty for the grieving woman downstairs. Rutledge stepped a
way from it, then looked at it in relation to the windows.

  If the victim had been struck down just there and from behind, he must have been facing the window. His back to his attacker. Rutledge went to test the latch, and then look out—almost directly into the windows opposite, where he could see an old woman in a chair, knitting.

  Everyone described Father James as middle-aged but fit. But Walsh was a very large man. Even if help had come, what could even one of the strapping sons next door have done? It had taken four men at the police station to subdue Walsh. And by the time anyone had reached the study, the priest would have been dead. Yet if he was as capable as all the people who knew him had claimed he was, he would have abandoned any hope of aid, and tried to deal with the intruder in some fashion.

  “If he wasna’ afraid of the man,” Hamish said, “he wouldna’ have called for help. If he was afraid, he’d ha’ kept an eye on him!”

  “Yes, that’s what I’d have done,” Rutledge answered him. “Even if he knew the intruder, he’d have been wary . . .” Or—too certain of his powers of persuasion?

  “Here, if you need the money that badly, take it, and go with my blessing. . . .”

  “It’s easier to smash the back of a head—when there’s no face staring into yours,” Hamish pointed out. “With the bayonet, we didna’ look into the face.” And that was also true. Dead center, twist, withdraw. A belt buckle above the blade, not a pair of human eyes . . .

  So why had the priest turned away? Toward the windows, rather than toward the intruder?

  Only an exceptionally trusting man would have done that.

  “Look, I’ll turn my back, and let you walk out of here. Return the money if and when you can; there are others who need it as much as you do. . . .”

  Still, to say that, Father James must have had a very good idea who was threatening him. Yet how far could a frightened man trust in return? Had it been a calculated risk, then? To calm whoever stood there, rather than agitate him?

  Or had his assailant said, “Turn your back, and let me go”—then lost his nerve?

  Rutledge listened to his intuition, and heard no reply.

  The room, then. He slowly turned to study it. Not only had the drawer been broken open, the room had been ransacked.

  If the priest had caught the intruder with the tin box pried open and the money in his hand, and offered him safe passage out the door, when had the room been torn apart? It must have happened before Father James came up the stairs. But why, when the locked desk drawer was the most logical place to begin a search and would have yielded the small tin box straightaway?

  If the room had been turned upside down after the priest was dead, why not take a few minutes more to search through the rest of the house? The small clock in the parlor—the gold medal around the priest’s neck— whatever other easily pocketed windfalls came to hand— these had been left behind.

  Why had ten or fifteen pounds satisfied a killer? If Walsh needed that much to finish paying for his cart and would take nothing else—why kill the priest?

  Hamish said, “When you came in, your first act was to open yon draperies.”

  Rutledge looked again at the windows. “Yes. And if Father James had done the same, the killer would then have been presented with his back, before they had even spoken to each other.”

  He examined the rest of the room. One closed doorway led to the priest’s bedroom, as he found by opening it. Simple furnishings—a hard single bed, a wooden crucifix above the headboard, and a much-used prie-dieu against the wall of the study. An armoire between the windows and a low, matching chest at the foot of the bed. A chair stood beside a small bookshelf, and Rutledge crossed to read the titles. Religious texts, for the most part, and a collection of biographies: Pitt the Younger. Disraeli. William Cecil—the great secretary to Elizabeth the First. And a selection of poetry. Tennyson. Browning. Matthew Arnold. O. A. Manning . . .

  He turned away and opened the only other door. It led to a bath. Rutledge closed that and went back to the study. Here were the broken desk and a chair, to one side of the passage doorway. A horsehair settee with two straight-backed chairs at angles beside it faced the hearth. In the corner beside the bedroom door stood the private altar. The candlesticks were there, polished to shine like molten sunlight, but the police had taken away the crucifix used as a weapon. A darker spot on the wood marked its dimensions. It would have been heavy. And one blow would have sufficed. Two at most . . .

  Hamish said, “A man could stand unseen between that altar and the wall. If the room wasna’ lit.”

  Rutledge was already looking at the space. He wedged himself in it. A broad man could just fit himself in there. And a thin one . . . But could Walsh?

  “Yon priest in Norwich?” Hamish had not liked Monsignor Holston. “Perhap he canna’ return to the scene of his crime.”

  “If he’d stood in the bedroom, whoever he was,” Rutledge speculated, “until the priest had turned his back to attend to the drapes, it would have taken the murderer a half dozen steps to close the distance between them. Even accounting for Walsh’s longer strides. And wary, alert, Father James would have sensed he was coming. The first blow wouldn’t have hit the back of his head—it would have struck him in the temple.”

  “Why was Monsignor Holston afraid in the church, as well?” Hamish persisted, but Rutledge was looking again at the shadows between the drapes and the altar’s tall back.

  “I don’t know. That someone would hide in a confessional after the service—enter through the vestry door, and wait for the service to end.” He tried to concentrate again. Even if the draperies had been drawn and the lamps were not lit, Father James couldn’t have missed the signs of a search. Paper on the floor would have gleamed whitely, even in low light. And what householder would have crossed that scatter of papers and books and furnishings to go to the window? His first act would probably have been to call out, Who’s there? And to stand on the threshold, waiting.

  In that case, the intruder had been in the bedroom and would have had to call to the priest to lure him nearer. Beside the altar, the slightest movement would have drawn the priest’s wary eyes immediately. And yet, the crucifix— the weapon—had come from the altar, not the bedroom. Unless the intruder had already armed himself . . .

  It was a puzzle. And more than a few of the pieces failed to fit.

  Rutledge went to the desk and examined the broken drawer. It was savagely butchered. A shard of wood still hung at an angle, though someone had tried to make it appear tidy by pushing it nearly back into place. He looked at the small lock. Mrs. Wainer was right. Hardly worthy of the effort put in to breaking it so severely.

  “Unless,” Hamish told him, “it was done in haste, for fear of being caught.”

  “He shouldn’t have been caught. Mrs. Wainer had gone and the priest was usually at the church at that hour. Whoever it was should have had a clear run. . . .”

  Twist the evidence another way: the force of the blows that killed Father James.

  A man of more than average strength, driven by fear, would have struck with what appeared to be savagery in an ordinary person. And that pointed a finger directly at Walsh. The Strong Man . . .

  The thing was, only two people knew exactly what had happened here. One of them was the victim, unable to tell his side of the story. The truth, if it was to be found, had to be dug out of the silence of the killer. And the traces of his presence that could be read in his motive.

  It was easy to understand why Blevins was so pleased to have such a likely suspect under lock and key. Walsh had been in the rectory before. Walsh had extraordinary strength. And Walsh was in need of money to pay for his cart.

  But how many Inspectors had seen their early proofs slip through their fingers like sand, leaving them with nothing to take before a magistrate?

  Rutledge looked around the room one last time, thinking about Monsignor Holston rather than Father James.

  Why had Holston wanted the Yard to t
ake over the investigation, or at the very least, to supervise its progress? To find out something he himself couldn’t tell the police? Or to protect something he was afraid the local people might discover? A policeman from London had no insight into the residents of Osterley, and could easily miss a small and seemingly insignificant bit of evidence that Inspector Blevins would recognize instantly.

  But if Monsignor Holston died next, because he had known—or guessed—too much, how quickly the investigating officers would jump to the conclusion that the connection between the two victims must be their calling— and not shared knowledge. A priest killer—mad, beyond the pale. Kill a third priest, and there would be no shadow of a doubt. Even if the third had been selected at random. Misdirection—the sign of a clever mind.

  Hamish said, “But I canna’ think that’s verra’ likely, if there’s already someone about to be charged.”

  “I agree. But it might explain why Monsignor Holston is so afraid.”

  Surveying the windows again, Rutledge went on. “If it was nearly dark, with no lamps burning, Father James might have drawn the drapes before lighting one. And if the damage was done after the murder, there would have been nothing to alarm the priest as he walked in here. The desk drawer would have been out of his line of sight. Which would mean that the killer was surprised . . . not the priest.”

  “There’s another way it could ha’ happened. If the killer was waiting for the priest.”

  “Which puts an entirely different complexion on it, doesn’t it?” Rutledge replied thoughtfully.

  Monsignor Holston was right about one thing. There was something odd about this murder scene. It told conflicting stories about the sequence of events. Were the drapes open—or closed? Was the lamp on the desk burning? Where had the killer been standing? And when had the room been torn apart? Had the priest seen his killer? Or had he been struck down before he was aware that he was in danger? Had the murderer come here for the money in the desk—or for something else altogether?

  A sieve through which a defense lawyer could walk at will . . .