Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

  “Did Walsh use his own name for his act?”

  “Lord, no, he called himself ‘Samson the Great.’ ”

  Which suited the man under lock and key—defiant and arrogant.

  Changing the direction of the conversation, Rutledge asked, “Was Father James a good priest? As you would judge any man of the Cloth.”

  Sims turned, studying the amount of paint on his brush. Ruefully he replied, “Probably a better priest than I am. My father was a clergyman—I more or less followed him into the family trade, so to speak. It was expected of me. ‘Sims and Son, Clergy.’ Like the greengrocer or the ironmonger.” He began to paint again, concentrating on the strokes. “My father was terribly proud of me when I was ordained. But I learned soon enough that I never had the deep calling that made him a sincerely committed man. I’ll marry one day and raise a family, and serve my congregation faithfully. Holy Trinity is beautiful, and I’ll be proud of what I accomplish here.” He bent to dip the brush again. “But Father James’s church was his family, and a more dedicated man you’ll never find. And when my sons come to me to ask if they should follow in the footsteps of their grandfather and father, I’ll encourage them to ask themselves why they want to be clergymen. If I’m not satisfied with the answer, I’ll dissuade them, if I can.”

  He stopped, appalled, and turned to Rutledge, heedless of the brush in his hand dripping onto his shoes, exclaiming, “I’m sorry! I don’t know where that came from! You’re not here to listen to me, you’re here about Father James.”

  “You’ve answered me,” Rutledge said, “in your own way.”

  But Sims shook his head. And with a lightness that was assumed to hide much deeper feelings, he said, “If I had your skill at listening, I’d be a very grateful man!”

  “It has haunted you, that skill,” Hamish said. For Rutledge remembered clearly every word Hamish had spoken in the trenches, as if each was carved into the depths of the soul, out of reach and never worn away.

  After a moment, Sims went on. “Father James had no ambition to rise in the church, even though his Bishop liked him immensely. He was content where he was. He gave himself unstintingly to anyone who needed him, and he was—as far as I could see—a happy man.”

  “Aye,” Hamish agreed, “with promotion a man is thrust into the glare of public notice. Was that what kept him content, anonymity?”

  “I’ve been told,” Rutledge said slowly, “that his advice— well meant as it may have been—has sometimes caused great hardship for people.”

  Sims knelt to work under the sill. “We talked a good deal, he and I. Well, we were both bachelors, and on occasion I’d dine at the rectory or he’d dine here, and we’d spend hours on whatever topic was uppermost in our minds. Sometimes we both feared we hadn’t given the best advice. That’s an occupational hazard. Are you infallible as a policeman? Do you know one who is?” The Vicar glanced up with a wry smile.

  “That’s a tidy answer for the seminary,” Rutledge answered. “Perhaps in the scheme of a man’s life—or a woman’s—well-meant advice leaves abiding scars and misery.”

  “We try,” Sims said, sadness in his voice. “We pray for solutions, for guidance. For understanding. It isn’t always forthcoming. And so we do great harm sometimes.” He moved on to the next windowsill.

  “Enough harm that a man might turn on a priest and kill him?”

  Startled, Sims swung around to face Rutledge. “God— I wouldn’t want to think about that!”

  “But it isn’t impossible.”

  He put the paintbrush down. “I—no. By the same token, you must understand that when a human being commits a sin, he’s well aware of it. He doesn’t come to us to be told that; he comes for a solution. A clergyman must address the fact that the cost of paying in full may be heavier or more difficult than the sinner expects. Seeing him through becomes our duty. We can’t self-righteously wash our hands of him and leave him to it!”

  “But what if the payment for a sin is out of all proportion to what the sinner has done?” Rutledge asked, thinking of Priscilla Connaught’s face.

  Sims said, “That’s where forgiveness comes into the picture. When restitution as such is not possible.”

  Hamish growled a comment.

  Rutledge, who understood better than most what restitution and forgiveness meant, didn’t answer. Instead he changed the subject. “Tell me about Herbert Baker.”

  “Herbert Baker? Good heavens, what has Baker got to do with Father James?” Surprised, Sims stared at him. “Oh—you must be referring to the fact that he sent for a priest! I don’t know where you heard that story, but it isn’t so remarkable. A dying man is likely to worry about his soul in ways that we, with time to make amends still stretching out ahead of us, can’t imagine. What would be on your conscience that you’ve never told any other person?”

  The question was rhetorical. But Rutledge’s face answered him.

  “That’s what I mean,” Sims went on, “when I tell you that a dying man is not like other penitents. Baker asked for Father James, and he came as a kindness. I can’t tell you what passed between them. But Father James never gave me any cause to think he was worried about what was said to him that night.”

  Hamish, judgmental in his own fashion, said, “Aye, but would he? The Vicar is no’ a man long on wisdom.”

  “Did Herbert Baker confess to you?” Rutledge asked Sims.

  Sims said uneasily, “Yes. I’m not at liberty—”

  But Rutledge interjected, “I’m not asking you to tell me what he said—”

  Sims, in his turn, interrupted him. “If you’re asking me if there were shocking revelations, no. I will say he was mainly afraid that he had loved his wife too dearly, and God would hold that against him. She’s dead, has been for a number of years. Apparently they were quite close.”

  “And the dead man’s Will, what about that?”

  “I expect it was in order. There’s not a lot of money here in Osterley to squabble over. I daresay the house was left to the elder son, but Martin is a very conscientious man. He’ll see his sister and his younger brother right.”

  Leaving the vicarage, Rutledge crossed the road and walked up the hill to Holy Trinity. When he tried the north door, he found it was unlocked. Lifting the latch, he went inside, his eyes adjusting to the darkness.

  Over his head the king-post roof was dark and lovely, and the sun spilled through a great stained-glass window leaving puddles of color on the stone floor. Looking up he saw that it depicted orders of angels—he could recognize the archangels and angels, seraphim and cherubim in rich shades of yellow and blue and blood red. The orders were a very popular theme in East Anglia. In the center was the symbol of the Holy Trinity, and at the bottom were four figures he couldn’t identify, although one looked suspiciously like early portraits of Richard II and another was self-proclaimed by the scroll spilling across his lap as the Venerable Bede.

  Hamish, to whom stained glass was iconography close to idolatry, was more interested in the construction of the marvelously carved wooden roof. Rutledge walked down the nave past benches capped with ornate poppy-heads, like inhabited fleurs-de-lis, and armrests carved as small animals, from dogs to griffins to ponies.

  His intention was to take a closer look at the window above the high altar, but as he entered the small choir he nearly stumbled over a box of charcoal and a knee.

  The woman he’d spoken to so briefly the night before was sitting on a hassock making drawings of the odd figures on the misericords—those half-seats on which a monk might rest his posterior without actually sitting down in the choir chair assigned to him.

  She looked up, as startled as he was, and said, “Sorry!”

  Hamish, remembering Lord Sedgwick’s comment, said, “The religious woman.”

  “Did I hurt you?” Rutledge asked in concern.

  “Oh, no. And it’s my fault for sprawling across the floor with my kit.”

  He looked down at the drawing she was makin
g, of a nun with ragged teeth, dramatic and lifelike in bold strokes of charcoal. “That’s quite good.”

  Her expression became defensive. “It’s a hobby,” she said curtly.

  To shift the subject, he gestured around him. “This is a remarkably fine church.”

  “Yes, it is. I knew someone who was writing a book about old parish churches. He brought it to my attention.”

  “I shan’t distract you, I only intended to look at the glass here.” He walked on, examining the window with its fine colors and vividly detailed figures.

  To his surprise, she said to his back, “You’re the policeman from London, I think?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t turn.

  “Perhaps you could tell me—is it true they’ve caught the man who killed Father James?”

  Rutledge turned slowly. “You knew him? Father James?”

  “A little. He was interested in work I was doing, and I found him quite knowledgeable about East Anglian church architecture. He was generous with his time and I valued that.”

  Rutledge walked back to her. Her upturned face was attractive, with intelligent gray eyes and a determined mouth above a very pretty chin. The dress she was wearing, a mossy dark green, was very becoming, but without the drama that was part of Priscilla Connaught’s apparel. “We don’t know if we have the right man in custody. There’s a good deal of work to be done before we can be certain of his movements between the day of the bazaar and the murder. But Inspector Blevins expects to clear that up quickly.”

  She nodded, as if satisfied.

  Yet something in her voice—or the way in which she had waited until his back was to her—had touched that deep well of intuition that Rutledge had always relied on. There had been some deeper interest than mere curiosity in her question, he thought. Probing, his mind still on Priscilla Connaught, he asked, “Were you here in Osterley when the bazaar was held?”

  “No, I was in Felbrigg, having dinner with friends.”

  Rutledge shifted to another direction.

  “Did you see Father James the day he was killed?”

  “No—”

  “Was there anything about his death that worried you?”

  He waited, continuing to look down at her. It seemed to make her uneasy.

  Reluctantly she tried to explain. “I haven’t had much experience with murder investigations. It was probably more my imagination than anything else. But Father James had asked me a question on the last evening I dined with him. It was on my mind for several days, and after he— died—I found myself wondering if it might be important. But if you’ve arrested your man, then of course I was wrong! It doesn’t signify now.”

  Rutledge replied carefully, “Who can say? Perhaps it still has some bearing on the case. Have you spoken of this to Inspector Blevins?”

  She frowned. “No. I thought it best not to say anything. Inspector Blevins seemed convinced that the motive for the murder was theft. Not ancient history.”

  “Will you tell me what it was? My name’s Rutledge. Scotland Yard sent me to Osterley because Father James’s Bishop expressed grave concern over the time it has taken to clear up this business. It isn’t idle curiosity behind my questions. And I won’t repeat what you tell me to anyone else—until or unless I see the need.”

  The woman picked up her charcoal again and began to put wrinkles into the wimple of the nun, capturing them perfectly. “No, I just—Father James was so kind that I— sometimes one wants to help so badly that one starts to imagine that what one knows is important. I’ve already explained: The matter he was referring to had happened some time ago, years in fact, and really had nothing to do with Osterley or anyone who lives here. It was only the importance that Father James seemed to attach to it that made me remember it at all.”

  “Was it a church matter? Or a personal one?”

  “I rather thought it was personal. Most certainly the subject was a painful one for me, and he—Father James— was helpful in dealing with that. In return, I tried to answer his question, and failed. A disappointment to him, and a regret for me. But it had nothing to do with Osterley, I give you my word.”

  She bent her head over the drawing, and Rutledge, looking down at the nape of her neck and the dark sheen of her hair, decided that this was not the time to press her.

  “If you change your mind, Mrs. Barnett will see that any message reaches me.”

  “Yes. Of course.” It was said with grave politeness, but he knew she had no intention of doing any such thing.

  He waited for a count of ten, but she seemed to be absorbed in her work, as if unaware that he was still there.

  Hamish scolded, “You canna’ leave it!”

  But Rutledge was already walking through the nave, listening to the silences of the shadowy church around him. He was thinking that Mrs. Barnett would give him the name and the direction of this woman, and he could put Sergeant Gibson on to searching for her background, with emphasis on what connection she might have to Osterley or East Anglia. . . .

  He had learned early on in his career at the Yard that people who did not want to talk to the police could not be made to do so. But he wanted very much to know what it was that Father James had asked of a comparative stranger that had left behind it such unease.

  CHAPTER 11

  THE FIRM OF GIFFORD AND SONS, Solicitors, was a small country practice that had been in business for some time, judging by the brass nameplate by the door. The letters on it were worn almost to smoothness from years of polishing away the sea damp that etched it like freckles.

  Rutledge had noticed the location of the firm during his walk the night before. Now as he crossed from Trinity Lane along the Hunstanton Road, he decided to speak to whichever Gifford was available this morning.

  The two unusual events in Father James’s life shortly before his death had been the bazaar, with its connection to Walsh, and the summons to the bedside of a dying man. Odd though the circumstances had been, there was no indication that out of that deathbed had come, like a phoenix rising, the shadow that had dogged Father James until it killed him.

  All the same, it had to be considered. The policeman in Rutledge was too experienced to leave the matter. Nor could he ignore Priscilla Connaught or the woman he had quite literally stumbled over in the church. They, too, had some sort of personal link with the victim.

  “You canna’ face London!” Hamish reminded him, with some force. “It’s no’ experience, it’s cowardice. You willna’ face your own life. Better to delve into another’s, and not think about yoursel’ and dying and Scotland.”

  But Rutledge knew he was wrong, that Father James was slowly becoming a puzzle he could not walk away from. Not the priest, but the man . . .

  As he came to the corner of the main road and Water Street, Rutledge paused and then opened the heavy door of Gifford and Sons. He stepped into Victorian elegance that had sufficed for two additional reigns and seemed to be in no haste to change. The elderly clerk at the desk might have served through all of them. He was tall and stooped, with the soft, very white hair seldom seen on any head younger than eighty. But the blue eyes that turned Rutledge’s way were bright as new paint.

  “Good morning, sir,” the clerk greeted him. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Gifford?”

  “No, regrettably,” Rutledge answered with equal formality, recognizing the game. “However, I hope that he’ll spare me a quarter of an hour. My name is Rutledge. Inspector Rutledge, from London.”

  The observant eyes took him in from head to toe. “Ah. I shall inquire, sir.” Rutledge wondered how he had fared in the summing up.

  The clerk disappeared through a door into the private sanctum.

  Looking about him, Rutledge could see that little had changed here since the first Gifford had begun to practice. The three chairs set against the walls of the spacious room were covered in worn leather, and the velvet-shrouded table in one corner was smothered in photographs in gilt frames, mostly of a man growing older, his
son following suit, and then two younger men standing firmly in front of the camera with a look of nervous self-importance. A photograph of one of those men, dressed in uniform, had heavy black ribbon threaded through the openwork of the ornate frame.

  “Grandfather, father, and sons,” Hamish said. “And one didna’ come home fra’ the War.”

  The clerk returned, standing on the threshold. “Mr. Gifford will see you, Inspector.”

  He led the way down a narrow passage, where two doors on the left were firmly closed, as if with sad finality. All they lacked was the black crepe of mourning. The clerk paused before a third, opened it, and introduced Rutledge with a Victorian flourish.

  Rutledge walked into a paneled room bright with racing prints and glass-fronted bookshelves, a fine mahogany desk that was far older than the man seated in the chair behind it, and on the broad windowsills, an array of antique European snuffboxes and Chinese snuff bottles, each a small, exquisite gem, from enameled gold to cinnabar, ivory to painted glass, porcelain to jade. In the indirect light of morning they were quite beautiful.

  A miasma of cigar smoke hung in the air.

  Gifford rose to greet Rutledge, and Hamish’s first comment was “He’s small enough to be a jockey!”

  He was a foot shorter than Rutledge, with the small features that matched his frame, thin and wiry. His hair was a rich, thick brown, as was his beard.

  “I’m Frederick Gifford,” he said, gesturing to a chair. “Do sit down and tell me what I can do for you. I assume you’ve come about the Will?”

  Surprised, Rutledge said, “As a matter of fact—”

  Gifford nodded. “It seemed unlikely that Inspector Blevins would be interested in its provisions, given the nature of my client’s death. I’m told that they’ve finally caught the killer. It’s chilling to think about: Still, I suppose if someone is poor enough, any sum is princely.” The words echoed those of Monsignor Holston. Moving the blotter to line up with the pen and inkstand in antique silver gilt, Gifford sighed. “But I must admit that I’m surprised Father James’s reputation had reached London. It’s a compliment to his memory that Scotland Yard should take an interest in the matter.”