Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

  Blevins reached for the letter he’d tossed aside. “Read this.”

  It was a statement from the cart maker. One Matthew Walsh had contracted with him for a new cart on 31 August, 1919, and had paid on account until the agreed-upon sum had been reached. The last payment, four days after Father James’s death, was in small notes and coins. The problem was, the other three payments had been as well.

  “It’s a conspiracy, that’s what it is,” Blevins went on sourly. “Standing by each other—the cart maker, the scissors sharpener, Walsh . . . I don’t know what to believe.”

  “It’s odd, isn’t it, for a scissors sharpener to be friendly with a Strong Man who frequents bazaars and small fairs? They aren’t of the same class. One is an itinerant peddler, the other a showman of sorts.”

  “Yes, I’d thought about that. But there’s a connection, in fact. The two men were in the same unit in the War. War changes things.”

  It did. You learned to trust a man not because of what he had been in civilian life but for what kind of soldier he made. Whether your life was safe in his hands when you went over the top or whether he was likely to get you killed . . .

  “Which could matter enough for this man Bolton to lie for him,” Hamish was saying.

  Or—Bolton might have been standing watch the night of the murder.

  “It might well have been Bolton’s shoe print out by the lilac bushes,” Rutledge said aloud.

  “I’d considered that. I don’t think I could prove it, not without the shoe he was wearing at the time. But there’s a possibility, all the same. Witnesses saw Bolton any number of times that day, but no one saw Walsh. Bolton claims he came in just after dusk. Could be the truth.”

  “What does Walsh say?”

  “What you’d expect. He was happy to claim it was true and he demanded to be released at once.” Inspector Blevins’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. “As for helping us with our inquiries, I’ve pried more information from a razor clam!”

  Rutledge asked, “If Walsh isn’t your man—for whatever reason—where will you look next?”

  Blevins said grimly, “I bloody well don’t know! I’d already looked at the good people of Osterley, before Walsh turned up as a likely suspect. And there was nothing I could find that made any sense, nothing that pointed to someone wanting to murder Father James. Theft was the most likely reason for what happened, and Walsh was the most likely thief. But it’s early days yet! I’ve yet to hear from the War Office, we’re still tracking Walsh’s movements, and I am going to crack Bolton’s alibi, if I can. Early days!” he said again, as if to convince himself.

  “Do you know a Priscilla Connaught?”

  “Yes. She lives alone out by the marshes and seldom mixes with anyone in Osterley, as far as I know.”

  “She’s a member of St. Anne’s.”

  “So are fifty other people. Sixty.” Blevins leaned forward, his elbows on the blotter. “My money is still on Walsh. Until I’m satisfied that there’s no earthly chance he’s guilty.”

  He looked at Rutledge, pain in his face. “I’ve told you before, I want the killer to be a stranger. I don’t want it to be anyone I know. I don’t want to think that any member of St. Anne’s parish, any friend of mine, any neighbor— any enemy for that matter—could murder a priest!”

  “And yet,” Hamish said, “he was killed!”

  Rutledge said, “It would be easier to watch a stranger hang.”

  Blevins shook his head. “I’ll watch the murderer hang. It won’t matter to me if I know his face or not. It isn’t the hanging that I can’t live with. It’s the thought that someone I have seen every day in Osterley is capable of such a crime.” He regarded Rutledge for a moment. “You’re not a Catholic. You may not see this the way I do.”

  “I don’t see that being a Catholic has anything to do with it.” He refused to be drawn beyond that.

  The Inspector looked away, his eyes moving on to the high, soot-streaked ceiling, as if searching for answers there. “Murder isn’t finished by killing, that’s what I’ve learned in this business. It’s just the beginning. A death opens doors that are better left shut. I’m a very good policeman. I do my duty and I mind my town like a bitch watching her pups. I see that people live in safety and in peace, if not in harmony. And the harmony is gone now.”

  Against his will, Rutledge said, “What do you know about Peter Henderson?”

  Blevins’s eyes came back to him. “Peter? I don’t think he’s capable of killing anyone ever again.” There was a pause. “But his shoes are old and worn. And Father James did his best to heal the breach with Peter’s father. When he couldn’t, he tried to make Peter swallow his pride and go to the old man and beg forgiveness, if only to be accepted back into the family at the end. They—Father James and Peter—quarreled about that. Publicly. Down on the quay. You could probably make a good case for Peter Henderson. But I don’t want to. The poor devil’s suffered enough.”

  Rutledge retrieved his motorcar from the hotel and drove to Old Point Road, his destination the rectory.

  Mrs. Wainer, surprised to see him, opened the door wide and said, “Come in, sir. Has there been any news?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. I wanted to ask you—”

  From the kitchen came an old voice, saying, “ ’Oo is it, Ruth? Is it Tommy?”

  “It’s the policeman from London, dear.” She turned back to Rutledge, apologetic. “It’s Mrs. Beeling. She’s come for a cup of tea and a gossip. In the kitchen . . .”

  “I won’t keep you—” Rutledge began, but the housekeeper shook her head.

  “No. Come along back, if you don’t mind—she’s not well, and I don’t like leaving her alone too long!”

  He followed Mrs. Wainer down the passage to the kitchen. The woman at the table was swathed in shawls, as if she felt cold, her gnarled fingers closed around a cup of tea, and her clouded eyes turned toward the door. “That’s not Tommy,” she stated, regarding Rutledge with obvious suspicion.

  “Tommy Beeling is her grandson,” Mrs Wainer said in explanation to Rutledge. “No, Martha, it’s the policeman from London. Inspector Rutledge.”

  The old eyes sharpened. “Oh, aye.” Mrs. Beeling nodded her head almost regally, as if welcoming Rutledge to her own house. “The one come to find out who killed our priest.”

  Feeling as if he weren’t there, Rutledge bade her a good morning and then turned back to Mrs. Wainer.

  She was saying, “Tommy—that’s her grandson—drops her off here for a little visit, on his way to market. Martha used to speak to Father James for ten minutes or so, and then we’d have our tea here in the kitchen.” She gestured toward the kettle on the stove. “The water’s still hot, sir, if you’d care to have a cup. I could bring it to you in the parlor.”

  “Thank you, no. I do need to ask you a question, and then I’ll be on my way. If Mrs. Beeling doesn’t mind?”

  Martha Beeling didn’t. In point of fact, she was delighted to be a witness.

  Rutledge asked, “The photographs that Father James kept about the house. Do you recognize the people in all of them?”

  “As to recognizing,” Mrs. Wainer said doubtfully, “no, I can’t say that. But I knew who most of them were. His parents, of course—his sister and her husband—the brother and sister that died—Monsignor Holston—friends from seminary. He’d point them out sometimes when I was dusting and say to me, ‘Ruth, I’ve just had a letter from John, there, and he’s taking up a church in Gloucestershire.’ Or he’d heard that one or another had gone to Rome or to Ireland. It was like family, you know, the way they kept up with each other.”

  “Was there a photograph of anyone whose name he never gave you? Someone he never identified for you?”

  “I wasn’t one to pry, sir! He told me what he wished to tell me, I never asked.” She bristled a little, as if he had questioned her integrity. “If you’re meaning that photograph that Mr. Gifford was looking for, I don’t know which it could be.”

>   Hamish said, “You must tread wi’ care, yon lawyer willna’ wish for you to make too much of the bequest.”

  And not in front of the inquisitive Mrs. Beeling!

  Rutledge patiently explained, “I’m looking for information, you see. About Father James, about the people he knew—and trusted—and cared about. Not only the seminary and his family, but individuals as well. A soldier he’d befriended at the Front. A woman he’d known long before he became a priest. Nothing suspicious or doubtful, only a personal memory that he’d kept to himself.”

  “You’re welcome to see for yourself. The truth is, after Mr. Gifford left, I’ve thought about it a good bit, and there’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

  He tried another possibility.

  “Do you know a Miss Trent?”

  “The lady at the hotel. Oh, yes, sir, she’s called on Father James a time or two. The man she was to marry, he was killed in the War, and she’s finishing the book he’d begun. As a memorial, so to speak. It’s all about what’s to be found in old churches—misericords, brasses, pew ends, baptismal panels, that sort of thing. Before he went off to France, her young man had written all the book except the chapter on Norfolk. As you’d expect, Father James knew the history of any number of the churches up here in the north, and was helping her.”

  Suddenly enlightened, Rutledge remembered that Lord Sedgwick had referred to May Trent as having a religious bent. He could understand why such a mistake had been made, if she spent so much of her time visiting churches.

  Mrs. Beeling spoke up. “You’re speaking of that pretty lady who was here to tea once when I came? Very kind she was, asking after my Tommy.” To Rutledge she said, “Tommy nearly lost a leg in the War. He still limps something fierce. The bones not knitting right.” And that carried her to a new train of thought. “You was the policeman in the motorcar t’other day, with Lord Sedgwick. Tommy was taking me to the doctor, and he said he saw the Inspector with His Lordship, but I took it to mean Inspector Blevins. And that made no sense at all!”

  “Why not?” Rutledge asked.

  “His Lordship’s far above taking up Inspector Blevins. Proud man, like his father. And he was as mean as they come! My grandmother was parlor maid to the Chastains, that lived in the hall before the first Lord Sedgwick took it over. When she married the coachman, they was given a grace-and-favor cottage in the village, for life. No such thing when I married my Ted. Head gardener, Ted was, and the old lord—Ralph, this ’un’s father—he knew the gatehouse cottage was coming open, and he never said a word. But this ’un’s wife, she tried to make up for it, and was kind enough to give me a brooch to wear on my wedding day.” The old woman fumbled in her shawls, and held out a lovely little enameled brooch, a hunting scene of hounds and horsemen over a fence after the fox. “That’s an American hunt, that is. Not one of ours. See the fence? Wood railings! You can tell by the fence!” She had remembered exactly what she’d been told about the little brooch, and it was a prized possession, one she wore when calling on friends.

  Rutledge admired it, and she beamed with pleasure. Then, as class-conscious in her own way as any member of the aristocracy, she added spitefully, “They both married Americans, you know. The present lord and his son Arthur. Couldn’t find no titled English lady that would have them, smelling as they did of London trade. It wasn’t old money, you see.” She glanced at Mrs. Wainer’s pursed lips. “Well, I should say the present lord found himself a well-born bride over there, and she was very kind. Died of her appendix, she did. Mr. Arthur’s was a love match, they tell me. He went one summer to visit his cousins on his mother’s side and fell in love with one of them.” She ended triumphantly, “And I met that one, too. A pretty little thing, shy as a violet. But Ralph’s wife—Charlotte, I think her name was—was long dead when he was given the title. Just as well; they say she was no better than she ought to be. A Londoner, she was.”

  Mrs. Wainer threw an apologetic glance at Rutledge, and said, “Now, then, Martha, let me warm up your tea!” She rinsed the pot and turned to lift the kettle, pouring the steaming water over fresh leaves.

  But Mrs. Beeling was delighted with a new audience. “Arthur’s wife is the one that drowned. On that ship that went down. She ran off from Arthur, they say, though no one knows quite why, except that he was away in France racing whenever he could and she must have been lonely, out in the middle of nowhere like she was!”

  “Here, in East Sherham?” Rutledge asked, encouraging her.

  “Lord love you, not here. They lived over to Yorkshire, where Arthur had bought a house after the marriage. He never got along with his brother, Edwin. I wondered if Edwin didn’t care for his sister-in-law more than he should. The story was, he’d head to Yorkshire on that motorcycle of his, as soon as Arthur set out for France. Both were motorcycle mad one time or another. Noisy, smelly machines, to my mind. Edwin still has one; I’ve seen it.”

  Mrs. Wainer brought the fresh pot of tea and added more small cakes to a plate. “Now, you help yourself, Martha, and I’ll just see the Inspector out.”

  Mrs. Beeling was still enjoying herself. “I don’t quite know why he took you up in his car,” she added, returning to more recent events, perplexed. “Unless it was to hand over the reward money he put up for Father James’s murderer.”

  “As far as I know, there’s been no reward given to anyone,” Rutledge said.

  She nodded sagely. “I’m of two minds about yon Strong Man. I was at the bazaar, and he never exchanged more than a word with Father James, and him decorated like a clown—”

  “But he was in this house in the afternoon,” Mrs. Wainer said earnestly. “I found the Strong Man wandering about inside this house!” She cast a resigned glance in Rutledge’s direction. “That’s what alerted Inspector Blevins to look for him.”

  “Yes, and a dozen other people were in here as well. I saw Lord Sedgwick’s son come to have a lie-down, when his back was paining him. I asked him if I might bring him a glass of water, and he said thank you but no. There was also the doctor’s wife, to put a plaster on Mrs. Cullen’s cut finger, and—”

  “The Sedgwicks were at the bazaar?” Rutledge asked, although he knew they were. But Mrs. Beeling seemed to have perfect recall.

  “Osterley doesn’t have a lord, you see,” Mrs. Beeling explained graciously, “though there’s always been good blood here. The Cullens and the Giffords and so on. But there’s no title. Still, the family does try to make an appearance on special days, and that’s as it should be.” She nodded. The Sedgwicks were not old money, but they were still money. “As for Arthur, he’s in terrible pain, they say, but he can get about. He’d come down for the fete and stayed on for that Herbert Baker’s funeral.”

  “He was at Herbert Baker’s funeral?” The garrulous old woman had given Rutledge more information in a quarter of an hour than anyone else had done in several days of asking questions.

  “Of course he was. Herbert Baker had been his father’s coachman, and then driven Arthur’s wife about in the motorcar until her death.”

  Rutledge turned to Mrs. Wainer and said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll take you up on the offer of a cup of tea.”

  She wasn’t pleased to serve him in the kitchen. And as it turned out, he wasted the next quarter of an hour.

  Whatever her sources were for the gossip she had freely dispensed, Rutledge discovered that Mrs. Beeling had nothing more of interest to tell him, except that she most certainly had her own opinion on why Herbert Baker had seen two priests shortly before he died.

  “When you’re old, things begin to prey on your mind,” she told him affably, as if from personal knowledge. “You wake up in the night, dwelling on what was done or left undone. And it seems far worse in the darkness than it ever was in the light, until you take to brooding on it, more often than’s good for you. You take to worrying that it’s too late to make amends. I know myself, sometimes it weighs heavily on me, the things I’ve said and done. There’s nights when my bone
s are aching and I can’t sleep, and I’d even bow down to those heathen idols that His Lordship has in his garden, if I thought it might clear my mind!”

  The Watchers of Time.

  Rutledge said, “But what had Herbert Baker done, that made him send for the Vicar and the priest?”

  “Who’s to say? But I heard he’s the one who let Arthur’s wife step out of the motorcar in King’s Lynn, and then went off to get himself drunk while she was speaking with the shopkeepers about a birthday party. Only she never visited the shops. She went instead to the station and took the next train to London, and disappeared. Until the ship went down, and they discovered the poor lady had been aboard!”

  It made sense. Hamish, listening to the nuances behind the words, agreed. Guilt might have tormented Herbert Baker—who had the gift of loyalty. Not a sin of commission, but instead failure to do one’s duty for a single hour. His drinking couldn’t have set in motion any of the events that had followed. All the same, he might have bitterly blamed himself for them.

  If—if—if. If I had been there—if I hadn’t been drinking— if I had minded my duty . . .

  Was that what lay on a dying man’s conscience, driving him to try to buy himself absolution in two faiths?

  CHAPTER 14

  RUTLEDGE, DRIVING BACK TO THE HOTEL, told himself that Herbert Baker was proving to be a dead end. But the bequeathed photograph was still elusive . . .

  He braked to a slow pace behind a wain piled high with hay.

  Rutledge was beginning to wonder if the killer hadn’t taken it with him. Did that explain the ransacking of the desk? But what would Walsh—or his accomplice, for that matter—want with a photograph? How would they have known it even existed, and what earthly value did it have? And if it did have value, why had Father James made a sudden decision to leave it to May Trent?