Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge suppressed a smile. The French were not always the most comfortable of allies. And interrogating prisoners never went smoothly.

  “Edwin keeps a boat in Osterley,” Sedgwick went on. “He and that fool dog of his go hunting in the marshes. Shooting isn’t allowed, but the dog’s nose stays sharp. Edwin takes him to Scotland for the Season.”

  Hamish reminded Rutledge of the man rowing into the quay with a dog in the thwarts. The woman who had offered him a lift had called him Edwin. . . . Edwin Sedgwick? Rutledge rather thought it was. The same man had been in the lounge bar in the hotel outside Norwich.

  They had reached the outskirts of East Sherham and turned onto a road where tall old trees marched on either side. Overhead, branches arched high to form a cool and shaded canopy, and the undergrowth along the verges was still thick and full here at the end of summer. Ahead Rutledge could see the walled grounds of an estate, with ornate gates marking the entrance to the drive. The crest on the heavy, gilded wrought iron bore the motto “I Will Persevere.” Two handsome pillars on either side were surmounted by a griffin. These apparently had belonged to the original owners: Time had etched them, wind and rain had worn them, but they had been carved to last.

  A man came out of the lodge to let the car pass through, touching his cap to Sedgwick, who responded with a nod. They wound their way through a finely wooded park, nearly as handsome as that at Hatfield, and turned to the left before sweeping up in front of a lovely old brick manor house. The wings were set back from the main block, and Elizabethan chimney pots soared into the blue of the sky. The lawn, wide and still reasonably green, ran down to a low brick wall, and beyond that the park continued to a line of trees. In the distance, a small Greek temple sat on the rising ground beyond what appeared to be a landscaped stream at the southern edge of the park. There was a feeling of old money here, and a long lineage. Nothing ostentatious, nothing new. An ideal setting, perhaps, for a newcomer to the aristocracy eager to present an appearance of having deep roots in the land.

  Evans pulled up and came around to open the door for Lord Sedgwick and Rutledge. Sedgwick thanked him and led the way across the short walk to the house. A housekeeper stood ready to greet them, alerted perhaps by a bell from the gatehouse. She was a trim woman in her late fifties, with a serene face and an air of competence. She nodded calmly when Sedgwick told her there was an unexpected guest, and said, “Luncheon will be ready in ten minutes, my lord. Shall I serve it on the terrace?”

  “Yes. That would be fine.”

  They entered a wide, flagstoned hall. A narrow stair of age-blackened oak on the left led up to the first floor. A massive hearth, which must have been a great comfort in the damp of a Norfolk winter, covered the wall to the right. Above Rutledge’s head, the high plastered ceiling was delicately carved with Tudor roses and garlands of fruit.

  At the foot of the stairs a Turkey carpet covered the floor, and there were rare Elizabethan chairs on either side of a small Jacobean table. It was quite an attractive room, little changed, Rutledge thought, from the day it was built. They preceded the housekeeper down a passage and through a doorway that led into a drawing room where long French windows looked out onto a sunlit terrace. An ornate stone balustrade reached like arms to embrace the broad, shallow stone steps that gave access to the gardens. Urns shaped like Roman amphora stood at the bottom, and in the center of the garden beyond, an aged mossy fountain spilled water into a bowl shaped like a Tudor rose. The effect was very pretty.

  Rutledge found himself thinking of his godfather, David Trevor, in Scotland—and banished the image before it had formed. Trevor was an architect by profession, with a love of buildings that he’d conveyed to his godson through the years. It was hard to see a place such as this without recalling all that had passed between the two men—or, now, remembering what had happened in Scotland just over a month ago.

  Rutledge followed Sedgwick out onto the terrace, where comfortable chairs had been set up to take advantage of the garden views. The housekeeper returned with a tray of glasses and decanters while Rutledge was admiring the flower beds. They were showing signs of autumn wear, but they had been designed with an eye for every season. The rare Japanese chrysanthemums were glorious.

  “What will you have?” Sedgwick asked, and when told, held out a very good whiskey. As Rutledge turned to accept it, he noticed a remarkable stone rectangle set at an angle in the garden. Larger-than-life apes, four squatting in a row, stared at the house, their eyes unblinking and focused, as if sharing some knowledge that was theirs alone.

  They had been carved in bas-relief, with a vividness that was both unusual and riveting. Exotic as the land they’d come from, they rested on their haunches, unperturbed by this English garden, or by the Englishmen who had stepped into view.

  Catching the direction of Rutledge’s glance, Sedgwick said, “I don’t know why my father kept the damned thing. Or, for that matter, why I leave it there. Except that the previous owners of the house felt it brought good luck, and he was superstitious about that. I can’t think why it should—it’s as ugly as anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s Egyptian, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Eighteenth Dynasty, I’m told. It once stood in the hall, just by the stairs. Where the Jacobean table is now. God knows how the Chastains came by it! They were magpies, collecting whatever caught their fancy. I couldn’t abide looking into those faces every night before I went up to bed. And Arthur swore it gave him nightmares as a child. When my father died, I banished it to the gardens.”

  Rutledge walked down the steps and went to examine the thick slab of stone. It had been cut from a building’s wall, he thought. Longer than it was tall, it was well polished, not rough. The figures of the baboons, it seemed, were meant to catch the morning and afternoon sun in a climate where the light was intense. Slanting rays would give them an almost three-dimensional quality. Here in the much paler light of the English Broads they possessed an almost preternatural air.

  Following him, Sedgwick went on, “They’re called—so I’m told—‘The Watchers of Time.’ ‘Set the task of witnessing what man and the gods may do. Through all eternity.’ That’s what the catalog says, at least. We bought the house furnished. Lock, stock, and phantoms.” He was smiling, but when Rutledge looked up from the stone, he could see that the smile had not reached Sedgwick’s eyes.

  Hamish, who had been silent since they entered the house, was saying, “But they canna’ speak. The apes. What use are they as witnesses?”

  Rutledge answered silently, “They don’t judge. They merely observe.”

  “Aye,” Hamish said. “But a man with a guilty conscience wouldna’ find it verra’ comfortable, that stare. I wouldna’ care for it mysel’!”

  CHAPTER 12

  LORD SEDGWICK SHOWED HIMSELF TO BE a genial host. He possessed a wry sense of humor, which Rutledge enjoyed, and seldom put his views ahead of those of his guest even when he must have had far more insight into political matters, moving as he did in such vastly different circles.

  Rutledge, under no illusions (policemen were not invited to dine with the gentry—indeed, they were seldom welcomed at the front door), took care not to overstep his role. All the same, the hour passed very pleasantly. The luncheon itself was excellent, finishing with a plate of cheeses.

  The loneliness of the man under the polish of a titled and privileged life was apparent. Sedgwick’s wife had been dead some years, for he spoke of her with an old regret rather than a recent bereavement. Her portrait as a young American bride now hung in the library, he said at one juncture, replacing “a remarkably hideous work of dead rabbits and quail hanging from a nail” that Ralph, the first Lord Sedgwick, had fancied. Ralph had gone shooting

  with the Prince of Wales in his day, and “bagged enough to show his aim was excellent, but was careful never to exceed his host’s count. Quickest way to see yourself off the royal invitation list!”

  Arthur, Sedgwick’s elder
son, had had a taste for racing cars before the War, and had even won a motorcycle race of some note, early on in his career. Sedgwick had traveled to France to watch him compete, and he spoke with wistful enthusiasm for the excitement. “It rained, often as not. I lived in terror that he’d spin out on a curve. Arthur had nerves of steel when he got behind the wheel, and a feeling for the road—and that made him one of the finest drivers I’d ever seen. His wife begged him to give it up, but of course he couldn’t. She didn’t understand that it was his life, speed and risk.”

  “Racing is a dangerous sport,” Rutledge responded. “And few women are attracted to the prospect of being widowed young.”

  Sedgwick grunted. “She was the one who died young, before they’d been married five years. Arthur took it hard, of course, but I must admit I was not particularly fond of her. A pretty simpleton.”

  Edwin, the younger son, appeared to worry Sedgwick. “I see much of my father in him. Strange, isn’t it, how a man’s nature can jump a generation?” It seemed not to be a compliment. But then the grandfather had made a fortune in the City, and was not, perhaps, a rough diamond in his own son’s eyes.

  Sedgwick dwelt on none of this, but a word here and there told Rutledge more than perhaps his host had meant to reveal. It was often a failing of lonely men.

  “It doesna’ signify,” Hamish pointed out, “if there’s naught to hide.”

  Certainly in Sedgwick’s case, that appeared to be true.

  As the table was cleared, Sedgwick looked out beyond the terrace at the expanse of formal beds and cropped lawns, and sighed. “I’ve a mind to marry again, myself. If only to fill this garden with young voices and bring a spark of life to the house. Damned silly thing to do, but I’m not by nature a man who prefers his own company. Have a wife, do you?”

  “No. The War altered any plans I might have made.”

  “Never too late to start over.” He regarded Rutledge for a moment. “It’s odd, you know, but you remind me of Arthur. I don’t know quite how to put my finger on it. It’s there in the way you carry yourself and something in your voice.”

  “A holdover from the Army,” Rutledge said.

  “I suppose it must be. You’d like him. A good man. And a deeper thinker than the rest of us—he got that from his mother, not my side. I see it more and more often these days.” There was a sudden flash of grief in Sedgwick’s face, as if Arthur wasn’t the man he’d been before the War, losing that edge that had made him a fast driver and a dashing figure to watch in a race. Wounds changed a man in more ways than the physically apparent damage. Nerve, for one thing, was easily worn down by constant pain.

  There had been a man named Seelingham on the boat to France at the start of the War, Rutledge remembered— he tried to dredge up an image of the man’s face, and finally brought back a tall, dark, broad-shouldered figure with a taste for books in German. “Never too late,” he’d said, “to learn about the enemy. Best way to outwit them, in my view. Otherwise you’re tilting in the dark . . .” He’d been a racer, too, but never spoke of his family. Fast boats were his preference. Later Rutledge had heard that Seelingham had lost both legs in a lorry accident near Paris, and was invalided home. He had shot himself a month later.

  Was Sedgwick afraid that Arthur’s wound would lead him to self-destruction because he, too, was shut off from what he loved doing?

  Rutledge changed the subject. They spoke only once more of Father James’s death, and that in a roundabout way.

  “We’ve had good weather for the most part, this autumn,” Sedgwick was saying as he pushed back his chair, favoring his gouty foot a little. “Edwin has been down a time or two, and one morning we went over to Osterley— it was the morning they found the priest’s body, actually, although we didn’t know it at the time. It had begun to clear, and we left the car up by Holy Trinity Church, then walked as far as Cley, where Evans met us again. We had a look at the dikes and the big windmill, ate our luncheon by the marshes, and came home ravenous. Couldn’t do that today. Bloody foot!”

  Passing through the drawing room later, Sedgwick paused to show Rutledge a watercolor of Osterley in its prime—“One of the Chastains had it painted. It’s said to be by Constable, but there’s no provenance.” Rutledge also noticed a photograph sitting on the windowsill to his right: A man standing by the marshes, shotgun in the crook of his arm, and a setter at his feet looking up adoringly as if eager to run. If Sedgwick saw his straying glance, he made no comment. He didn’t have to. Rutledge recognized the face and the dog. Edwin, the younger son, who kept a boat in Osterley’s harbor . . .

  A short time later he was on his way back to Osterley. The chauffeur had nothing to say, and Rutledge preferred his own thoughts.

  Hamish, still mulling over the luncheon conversation, was busy in the back of his mind. Coming around again to the subject of Lord Sedgwick himself, Hamish said, “He’s no’ a man I’m comfortable with. He’s verra’ like Sergeant Mullins.”

  It was an odd comparison. Mullins had replaced Sergeant McIver, shot in the hip and invalided home. Both Sergeants had come up through the ranks, where the heavy attrition of the Battle of the Somme had given men seniority overnight, prepared for it or not. Mullins was a seasoned soldier, careful, gruff, and humorless. He had been a butcher by trade, and could determine at a glance whether a wound was likely to see a man relieved or just patched up at the nearest aid station and returned to the lines. Sentiment seldom played a role.

  Lord Sedgwick had that same quality of practical reality that had carried Mullins through the War. He took his world in stride and dealt with it without sentiment.

  And yet Rutledge had sensed something else in this man, a wistful desire to be the local squire, as the Chastains had been before him. But he was tainted by his father’s roots, and villagers were often greater snobs than their betters. Money could buy some loyalties, but blue blood brought respect.

  “That explains,” Rutledge answered Hamish’s line of thought, “why Sedgwick was eager to put up a reward for Father James’s killer. The Chastains would probably have done the same.”

  Still, the Sedgwicks had, in two generations, gone from the streets of London to an inheritable title and weekends at Sandringham with the royal entourage. The first Lord Sedgwick, Ralph, whose antecedents had probably been of questionable bloodlines, had had to settle for an American bride for his only son. But his grandsons, with any luck, would find themselves wed to daughters of the old aristocracy, and their sons fully accepted as titled gentlemen with no lingering odor of trade about them.

  Three generations, that was what it took to bridge the social gap. . . .

  The future of the dynasty now rested on Arthur’s shoulders, and his brother’s.

  Unless Lord Sedgwick was indeed considering a second— and far more advantageously connected—bride, to better their chances through a stepmother’s connections.

  It never hurt, in present royal circles, to have a very presentable wife.

  Coming into Osterley again, Rutledge turned his thoughts to his own role here.

  He was expected not to tread on Blevins’s toes. The Inspector had already made that clear. But the more Rutledge learned about the people who lived in Osterley, the better he saw the dead priest—and was finding himself drawn into the theory that the man’s life had some bearing on his death.

  His fingers gently massaged the scar on his chest, stilling the dull ache.

  Still, Walsh was the ideal solution to the bloody crime on Blevins’s doorstep. He wasn’t a local man—and from the start the Inspector hadn’t wanted to discover that his killer was someone he knew. Walsh had a connection with the priest, one that didn’t in any way reflect on Father James’s memory: The bazaar was a public occasion. Finally, the motive appeared to be simple greed. No seduced wives in St. Anne’s congregation, no abused choirboys, no dark secrets that would destroy the man and the office simultaneously.

  A very convenient solution indeed. For everyone except Walsh
, of course.

  But Rutledge was learning that Blevins kneaded his evidence like a loaf of bread, forming it to his own satisfaction.

  Whereas his London counterpart was more likely to gather the scattered parts of the human puzzle and look closely at them for bits of knowledge he could string together.

  Hamish said, “You’d do better to go back to London, then! You willna’ convince yon Inspector that he’s made a mistake. And you’ll be branded along with him if it all goes wrong!”

  Rutledge answered, “Nothing less than a signed confession will serve.”

  He had meant it lightly, but realized all at once that he had unwittingly defined the course of his own inquiry.

  At the door of the hotel, Rutledge thanked the chauffeur— and turned to find three local people staring with interest at the sight of a policeman alighting from Lord Sedgwick’s motorcar.

  The news would be all over Osterley in an hour.

  Rutledge walked up Water Street to the police station. There was a constable on duty. He shook his head when asked for any news.

  “The new cart was ordered well before the bazaar, half down then and two payments to follow, the last one on delivery, which was after the murder. The Inspector is happy about that. But there’s a scissors sharpener who’s come to light. The man swears he was with Walsh the night the priest was killed.”

  “What’s the likelihood that he’s telling the truth?”

  “Inspector Blevins has gone to speak to the man himself. The Inspector’s not in the best of spirits, I can tell you!”

  There was a man sitting on the edge of the quay when Rutledge came back to the hotel. Under his dangling feet a dozen or so ducks padded about in the muddy trickle of water, catching the bits of stale bread that were being thrown down to them. The man’s concentration was intense as he fed them. The slump of his shoulders was familiar—Rutledge had seen him bent over a newspaper at a table in the back corner of The Pelican. A gray cat, curious about all the feathery activity, sat some ten feet away, watching the ducks. It seemed to ignore the man, as if he had no reality but was only a part of the quay.