Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

  “You’d have done it for Father James.”

  “What has this drive to Norwich to do with Father James?” she demanded.

  “I think he began by trying to solve a problem, and found himself pitched headlong into something far more horrifying than he was trained to deal with. He did what he could. The man who may have killed him is dead now—there won’t be a trial, no clear judgment of his guilt, or for that matter, his innocence. Blevins is satisfied that the case is closed. But I’m left with an uneasy feeling that it isn’t. It’s convenient to blame Matthew Walsh. And shut our eyes. But I should think someone owes it to Father James to get to the bottom of what troubled him. I’m willing to try, but I can’t do it alone.”

  Both Sims and May Trent were silent, absorbing what he’d said. She was the first to recover. “Then let that someone drive to Norwich with you.”

  But something made her look away from him.

  “Walsh is dead,” Sims put in. “I can’t believe that Walsh would have tried to escape, if he was innocent! If the facts, once they’re collected, would exonerate him, why not wait to be cleared?”

  “Because he was a poor man and terrified that justice wouldn’t care if he went to the hangman. Which reminds me—if you’re convinced of his guilt, tell me why the two of you spent the night in this empty barn of a house, and wouldn’t leave it or go for help?”

  May Trent stared down at her cup. “I’m a silly woman. The Vicar asked me again and again if I’d walk with him as far as the hotel. But I couldn’t go back outside and feel safe. You said yourself—a murderer was on the loose.”

  “I think he was,” Rutledge replied slowly. “But perhaps it wasn’t Walsh.”

  She spilled tea into the saucer and clicked her tongue in annoyance. “I wish you would tell us what’s wrong! What it is you want from us.”

  Sims took the saucer from her, poured out the spilled tea, and wiped it with a serviette. He said, “I have work to do here. I can’t abandon my parish on a whim. Miss Trent is justified in asking what it is you want.”

  Rutledge said quietly, “I’m a policeman. Have you forgotten? I don’t have to ask. I can require you to accompany me. Now, if you’ve finished your tea, we’ll be on our way.”

  Listening to Hamish battering at the back of his mind, Rutledge made one detour on his way to the road south.

  He pulled once more into the rutted drive by Randal’s farm.

  But the gelding and the farmer had not come home.

  Rutledge was beginning to feel uneasy.

  The motorcar was silent as they drove south. Rutledge, uncomfortable because the Vicar was sitting in Hamish’s usual place, was not the best of companions, and May Trent kept her face turned away from him, looking out the window.

  Hamish, on the other hand, was conducting a long and skeptical conversation with Rutledge.

  “It isna’ the best way! Go to London, and speak to yon Chief Superintendent, tell him what it is you suspect! Let him reopen the inquiry.”

  “Bowles won’t be any more receptive than Blevins was. And the case will be closed. I have at best twenty-four hours to solve he mystery that surrounded Father James’s last days. But it was there.” Rutledge paused. “And there’s a secret binding these people together. Each seems to know only a part of it. What I don’t understand—yet—is whether the mystery and the secret are one and the same. I’m willing to bet my career that they are!”

  “Aye, it could be so. But the days of the rack are over— you canna’ force them to tell you. Or be certain in the end you’ve got the truth.”

  Rutledge concentrated on the road for a time and then picked up the thread of his silent conversation with Hamish. If nothing else, it kept him awake. But it failed to satisfy either one of the participants.

  Hamish’s last salvo was telling.

  “They willna’ like it in London.”

  “No. But we’re a long way from London.” Rutledge shut out the voice in his aching head and tried to concentrate on the busy road south.

  It was close to teatime when Rutledge pulled the motorcar into a small space between a cart full of cabbages and the deep hole that still reeked like a cesspool.

  He got out, stretched aching shoulders, and went around the boot to open the door for May Trent. But the Vicar was already there before him, saying, “Why didn’t you tell us that it was Monsignor Holston you were coming to see!” His voice was cross. “There was no need to be so damned mysterious!”

  He and May Trent stood waiting by the road while Rutledge went to knock on the door of the rectory.

  Bryony opened it, beamed at Rutledge, and asked after greeting him, “Will you be staying for tea? I’ve got such a lovely bit of French cake for Himself, and—” She broke off as she saw the two people behind him, looking up at her from the street. “Ah, this’ll be business, then!”

  “I still wouldn’t say no to tea,” Rutledge assured her, smiling. On their way south, by mutual agreement, the three travelers had agreed not to stop for lunch.

  May Trent closed her eyes, as if shutting out the watery sun that had been threatening rain for two hours or more. Bryony saw it, and called to her, “Come inside, madam, and let me take you upstairs for a bit. You look like you could do with a rest.”

  She only smiled and shook her head. “No. But thank you!”

  They were ushered into the study, where Monsignor Holston looked up from his book in surprise.

  “I didn’t remember visitors were expected!” he said to Bryony, setting the cat, Bruce, on the floor.

  “The Inspector has come again, Monsignor, and brought guests with him.” She quietly closed the door as he greeted Rutledge warmly. Then he smiled at the Vicar and shook his hand, before the introduction to Miss Trent was made. Their host seated her with courtesy and said, “Father James spoke to me a number of times about the manuscript you’re completing. It’s quite an undertaking. If I may be of any assistance, you need only ask. Norfolk has a good deal of material to draw from.”

  “As I’ve discovered!” She thanked him, managing to smile. “Memorials, even so, are often an excuse to go on mourning. He tried to tell me that as well.”

  “I expect time will take care of that, too.”

  Rutledge said, “We’re here about Father James, as it happens. Walsh is dead. He—died—last night, trying to escape.”

  “Killed?” Holston asked. “By the police?”

  “He was kicked by a horse. At least that’s what the evidence suggests. There’ll be an official inquiry, as a matter of course.”

  “God rest his soul!”

  Sims said, “Altogether, it was a harrowing night for everyone.”

  “Walsh appeared to have the best motive,” Rutledge said. “There was a certain amount of evidence against him, but not all of it was conclusive—or satisfactory. On the other hand, I’ve been exploring Father James’s movements during the fortnight between the bazaar and his death.” His eyes turned toward Holston. “And I need to learn from you, Monsignor, what Father James told you about the Confession of Herbert Baker.”

  Completely unprepared for the question, Holston said, “I couldn’t, even if I—”

  “I’m not asking for a revelation of Herbert Baker’s last words. What I want to know is what Father James told you about this man.”

  “He never spoke to me about Baker or his family—”

  “I’m sure that’s true. But he came here one day shortly before he died and told you that he had just been given information that had upset him, and that the person who had passed on this information had had no idea of its importance to Father James personally.”

  It was an arrow shot into the air. But the sudden tightness of Monsignor Holston’s face told Rutledge that it had come very close to its mark. “No, it wasn’t that—”

  “Did he also tell you that he was helpless to do anything about it?” Rutledge kept his voice at a conversational level, as if he was continuing to confirm knowledge he already possessed.


  “There was nothing he could—” Monsignor Holston stopped. Then he said, “Look, he didn’t confide in me. Or confess to me. He didn’t tell me the circumstances. But I could see he’d come for comfort—from a friend, not a fellow priest.”

  “How could you see that?”

  “He walked in that door and paced the floor for over an hour. I didn’t ask him why—we’ve all been through that kind of personal despair. To tell you the truth, there was one family in particular that he was deeply concerned about. I thought his visit had to do with them. When he sat down in that chair, where you’re sitting now, I made some comment to that effect. He raised his head and looked at me. ‘No, they’re doing well enough just now.’ Then he added simply, ‘God works in mysterious ways. I’ve been given an answer to a question that has troubled me for years. But I can’t make use of it to set things right. It came unexpectedly, and in such a way that my choices are very limited.’ He put his face in his hands and I could see that he was under a great strain. I asked, ‘Would it help to speak to the Bishop?’ and he said, ‘That door is shut, but there may be another that will open.’ And so I went back to the report I was writing, to give him a little space. Half an hour later he was gone, and that was the end of it.”

  “But you guessed—did you not—what he was referring to.”

  “Not then.”

  Rutledge waited.

  Monsignor Holston said, “It wasn’t until the funeral Mass for Father James that I first heard the name Baker.”

  “During the service?” Rutledge was surprised.

  “Actually, a young woman came up to me afterward to say that she didn’t know Father James well, but that she had attended the Mass from a sense of duty. He’d given her father comfort as he lay dying, even though Herbert Baker wasn’t a Catholic. She felt she was returning a kindness, in her own fashion. She was quite shy, stammering out the story, but I thanked her for coming and told her that Father James would have appreciated her thoughtfulness. And it was true. Later on I asked Sims, here, about her. Dr. Stephenson overheard and added that Father James had come in to the surgery to inquire about Baker— whether his mind was clear at the end. His point was that Father James had been a conscientious priest, but I read more into the conversation than Stephenson realized. Because I knew the one other bit of information that mattered.”

  “That Herbert Baker had been coachman—and sometimes chauffeur—to Lord Sedgwick’s family,” Rutledge said.

  “Everyone in Osterley could have told you that, if you’d asked. No, that it was Herbert Baker who drove Virginia Sedgwick to King’s Lynn, the day she disappeared. At her particular request.”

  The Vicar, listening apprehensively, sat back with a sigh. But Monsignor Holston had no more to say.

  Rutledge turned to May Trent. She had kept her composure, a woman with hidden strengths, learned from her personal suffering. He chose a different course with her.

  “The other door Father James mentioned—it was you. He wanted to know if Mrs. Sedgwick had been on board ship, if you’d actually seen her, spoken with her. If you had, then he no longer had to rely on Baker’s confession, whatever it was, to fill in the details of Mrs. Sedgwick’s disappearance.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that! He was trying to help me. To stop the nightmares. He said.” Her voice was odd, a tremor behind it. She seemed on the point of adding more, but stopped.

  “And when you refused to remember, the priest went to his solicitor and added a codicil to his Will. Father James left you a photograph of Virginia Sedgwick”—there was a sharp intake of breath from the listening Vicar—“but not the cuttings that he’d collected so painstakingly. He wanted only your own memories, and he wished you the courage to write down what had happened—to you and to her. Why would he have believed so strongly that you—of all the survivors—had met her on shipboard?”

  “I didn’t refuse to remember, as you put it. And he didn’t believe any such thing!” She was flushed, her chin high and her eyes bright. “I can’t understand why you keep harping on it. He just felt that the nightmares would stop if I could face them once and for all. And I couldn’t; I wasn’t ready. He never forced me to go back to that night—he was careful. We tried to discuss less frightening experiences, who had the cabins next to mine, the people I sat with at meals, what I wore the first evening out—and I couldn’t even remember that!”

  Hamish scolded, “The lass is tired. Let it go.”

  Rutledge heard him. He said to May Trent, trying to make amends, “I’m not hounding you—”

  “You are!” she said angrily. “You’re worse than Father James ever was. You don’t know what it is like to be haunted, you’ve never sat up screaming in bed in the middle of the night, hearing the dying cry out for help and knowing that you will live and they won’t—! ”

  Exhausted as he himself was, the strength of her emotions touched him on the raw. His own anger flared with unwitting heat.

  “Don’t I? I live it with every breath I take—”

  Hamish’s voice was sharp. “You mustna’ betray yoursel’!”

  Rutledge’s iron will shut off the flow of words even as he heard the warning. His face had grown so white and so strained that May Trent reached out a hand to him, as if to stop him, too. And then she dropped it.

  They stared at each other in horrified silence.

  Rutledge thought, I’ve never come so close—

  Hamish was still yelling at him, dinning in his head like the German guns, until he could barely function. “Ye’re vulnerable because she’s the first woman who’s been through the same horror—”

  But Rutledge didn’t care. How far had she seen inside his own grief? As far as he’d seen into the depths of hers? He didn’t know. It was not something he wanted to think about. It didn’t bear thinking about. . . .

  Sims and Father Holston, watching the two of them, immobilized by the sudden silence after the fierce intensity of their exchange, were unwilling witnesses.

  And into the electrical atmosphere that no one knew quite how to cope with, the door opened and the housekeeper, Bryony, wheeled in the ornate walnut cart with the heavy Victorian tea service gleaming in the lamplight.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE VICAR GOT TO HIS FEET. “Monsignor Holston, if you’ll have your housekeeper summon a cab for us, I’ll see Miss Trent safely on the next train—”

  Monsignor Holston, rising as well, cut across his words. “I expect that Inspector Rutledge can explain—”

  But it was May Trent who collected herself with an effort and said, “No. We need to finish this.” She turned to Bryony and thanked her for the tea, adding, “I’ll pour.”

  As the housekeeper left, she busied herself with the cups, her head turned away from the men in the room. But her hands were shaking, and her eyes were haunted in her drawn face.

  Rutledge, his own face still as pale as his shirt, stood where he was, lost in the emotional storm that had swept him. Hamish, his voice harsh, was saying, “You canna’ be so foolish!”

  Miss Trent handed a cup to the Vicar, who awkwardly looked around for a table to set it on, his eyes avoiding Rutledge’s. Monsignor Holston took his and sat down again behind the desk, rearranging papers lying on the blotter as if giving everyone a little time to recover. She brought a cup to Rutledge and said, “Drink it. Now, while it’s hot and sweet.”

  He accepted the tea like a man sleepwalking, and seemed not to know what to do with it. After a moment, he drank it, hot as it was, and seemed to draw strength from it.

  May Trent set aside her own cup and silently passed the slices of cake and the thin sandwiches—egg and ham and cheese—each a small white triangle of bread that seemed likely to choke them all.

  It was ritual—and in ritual lay some normalcy. Each of the uncomfortable occupants in the quiet room accepted his role in this charade. And in the end, the tension in the air began to subside a little.

  Monsignor Holston bit into an egg sandwich and swa
llowed it in a gulp.

  Bruce the cat, who had slipped into the room with the housekeeper, came out from under the desk and stared impassively at the ham sandwich between Sims’s fingers, and the Vicar seemed to consider offering it to the animal. He couldn’t think why he’d accepted one in the first place, except out of politeness. His stomach was a twisted knot of despair. He didn’t want to hear any more; he’d had enough.

  Miss Trent drank her tea in silence, and then said, “I can’t tell you whether or not Virginia Sedgwick was on the ship. I remember sailing, I vaguely recall dressing for the evening, although I can’t tell you what I chose to wear. I remember going to dinner, and faces and people speaking to me. A hodgepodge of images, unconnected in any way with me personally. It’s as if I don’t want to remember who lived and—and who died. It is such a terrible thing, to drown. I nearly did—someone hauled me into a boat, like a bundle of wet rags, and I was coughing and sick and so frightened I couldn’t speak. There were others in the water—” She gulped for air, as if drowning again, and said quickly, “No, I won’t go back there!” She stopped and looked at the hearth, as if to find something new to pin her attention on. After a moment she continued, her voice uncertain. “Father James had worked with the wounded during the War. He told me that talking might help stop the pain and the dreams. But I’d buried it for so many long, difficult years. I’d reached a plateau of sorts, where I was someone else. People no longer remembered that I’d been on Titanic. When the War came, I was planning to be married and looking ahead to a future that would be happier than the past. But it was—I never told Roger about what had happened to me, I thought that if he didn’t know, I’d not see the reminder of my pain in his eyes, and be forced to look back. Someone else told him. A friend, who believed that Roger would want to know the truth and be better able to comfort me when the dreams were—worse than usual. That’s why I’m finishing his work. I had already decided to break the engagement, once he was safely home. But he never came home. And I carry that guilt, too.”