Watchers of Time

by Charles Todd

  Lord Sedgwick was sitting there, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He rose and greeted his guests with warmth.

  “Do sit down! You’ve come about the reward, have you? Has Blevins made up his mind who should have it?”

  “I rather think he’s leaving the decision to you. But I haven’t come about Walsh. I’m here about your late coachman, Herbert Baker.”

  Surprised, Sedgwick said, “Baker? What does he have to do with Walsh?”

  “Can you tell me who in your family made it possible for his wife to have the medical attention she required?” His expression gave away nothing but polite interest. “It must have cost more than Baker could afford in a lifetime.”

  “Baker’s wife? Ah. I have a feeling that must have been Virginia. My daughter-in-law. She no doubt arranged for money to be sent anonymously. Very much the sort of thing she would do.” There was a blandness in his voice that Rutledge found irritating.

  Even if she’d had no idea what she was signing, Virginia’s name would surely be there, in the bank’s file of correspondence. Because that’s when the planning must have begun.

  Rutledge’s glance crossed May Trent’s. She smiled pleasantly, as if they were discussing a mutual acquaintance. But her gloved hands gripped each other.

  “That brings me to the next question. In regard to your daughter-in-law—”

  This time Sedgwick’s eyebrows rose. “Virginia? You seem to have a great deal on your mind this evening! Baker and now Arthur’s late wife. I don’t see how you could have known either one of them.”

  “As a tangent to Inspector Blevins’s efforts to investigate Walsh’s role in Father James’s death, I’ve been looking into the priest’s background and interests. He did know Virginia Sedgwick, I’m told.”

  “Can I offer you something to drink? Tea? A little sherry for you, Miss Trent?”

  They politely declined.

  “Virginia was sweet-natured, and she had half of Norfolk at her feet. Father James was no exception, as I remember.” Sedgwick smiled indulgently. “She seemed to feel comfortable with older men. Baker. Myself.”

  “The priest was quite anxious about her when she disappeared.”

  Sedgwick crossed his legs and flicked a small bit of mud off his shoe. “Yes, his support meant more than we can say. A great kindness, that was! As soon as we’d learned what happened to her, I sent him word.”

  “As I understand it, she sailed on Titanic,” Rutledge said.

  “It was some time before we realized that she was among the victims. It came as quite a shock.” His voice was heavy. “She’d had a quarrel with Arthur, you know— one of those things that happen in any marriage. Apparently she took it to heart. When she told him she wanted to go home, he told her not to be ridiculous, expecting it to blow over. Tragically, she left anyway.”

  “Her body was never recovered?”

  “Sadly, she wasn’t identified when the bodies were brought in. We didn’t know, you see, that she’d even sailed. Not until after the fact. Arthur was the one I worried about—he was frantic. When the police failed to find any trace, we worked through private sources. And in the end, Arthur went straight to Ireland. I’d have accompanied him if I’d realized he was going to be subjected to those pathetic photographs of the dead—imagine, if you will, trying to see a resemblance to someone you loved! But money has its uses. In the end, she came home to us. So many of the dead couldn’t be identified. It was—rather horrible to think about them.” He set down his drink, unfinished. “For a time, I was afraid I’d lose my son as well. I’ve tried for five years now to persuade him to put her death behind him and marry again. He won’t hear of it.”

  “There’s another school of thought,” Rutledge said quietly. “That she never sailed at all. That somewhere between her home in Yorkshire and King’s Lynn, where she intended to plan a party, she was murdered.”

  Sedgwick sat forward, his face a picture of dismay. “Good God, man, where did you hear that wild tale! She was recognized in King’s Lynn!”

  “No, she was seen. A woman in a veiled hat? It could have been anyone.” Remembering Iris Kenneth’s parting words, Rutledge improvised. “It could even have been a hired impostor. A shopkeeper might be pleased to say your family patronized his business, whether you did or not. But no one who knew her well ever came forward.”

  Sedgwick looked over Rutledge’s head. He said quietly, “You’d better fetch your brother, Edwin.”

  Rutledge turned to find Edwin Sedgwick just walking out of the room behind him. Hamish asked, “How much did he hear?”

  “Enough,” Rutledge answered. “I expected one of them to be listening.”

  In a moment or two, Edwin returned with his elder brother, the family resemblance between them strong, although Arthur was still quite thin and walked with a distinctly stiff back, as if he wore a brace tonight. He came in and sat down gingerly, as Sedgwick made the introductions.

  “You ought to hear this, Arthur,” he concluded.

  Rutledge said, “This isn’t my fancy, Lord Sedgwick.” And then to Arthur, he began mildly, “Someone in this family paid for the care of Herbert Baker’s ill wife, and he was deeply indebted to you. I can prove that. And you used him in return. After a fashion, I can prove that as well. In the early spring of 1912 you sent him to Yorkshire to fetch Mrs. Sedgwick for a journey to East Sherham. She enjoyed being driven by Baker, I think, with his old-fashioned manners. He didn’t know that he was going to be a witness to a staged event: her disappearance. Whatever it was that happened, he was led to believe it was what she wanted, and so he agreed. But he was rather a simple man, and it went against his conscience to wreck a marriage. He got drunk when he was supposed to be waiting for Mrs. Sedgwick to return from her marketing. He knew she wasn’t going to be meeting him. We can prove that as well.”

  Arthur Sedgwick nodded. “You’ve got your facts straight, actually. It’s the interpretation that’s wrong. Virginia did want to help Baker’s ill wife, and the bank can show you the letter she wrote asking for sums to be made available anonymously. And we’ve believed from the beginning that she cajoled Baker into turning his back while she made good her escape. We couldn’t blame him—he punished himself enough as it was.”

  Hamish said, “A jury would believe this man. . . .”

  It was true. But it wasn’t a jury that Rutledge wanted to reach just now.

  “The only wrong assumption that Baker made in this affair,” Rutledge told Arthur, “was believing that your wife was the instigator of these arrangements. You’d been planning her death since the November before, hadn’t you? And quite cleverly. When Virginia Sedgwick vanished, Baker was hamstrung. His own wife was still in the sanitarium, and he refused to put her at risk by asking questions. After that one bout of drunkenness, he lived an exemplary life until he died of natural causes.”

  “Yes, we went to the services,” Sedgwick put in. Noblesse oblige . . .

  “Which brings me to the services for Virginia, Mrs. Sedgwick. I can order the exhumation of her coffin, you see. To discover if there’s a corpse inside. But I rather think it’s empty. When Titanic went down, it provided the most unexpected windfall—a marvelous explanation for the disappearance of your wife. You’re right, money has its uses, including bribing London clerks and Irish gravediggers. No one would ask a grief-stricken family for proof! And if a coffin silenced Father James and Herbert Baker, who meant well but were persistent in asking for news, then it must have been worth every penny. The scandal of a possible runaway wife allowed you to use great discretion in suppressing the whole story.”

  Lord Sedgwick started to speak, but Arthur waved him to silence. He said in a strained voice, “It’s bad enough to lose my wife the way I did, Inspector. I don’t understand why you’re tormenting us!”

  Rutledge coldly replied, “My guess is that somewhere on that long drive, Baker simply walked away from the motorcar for half an hour. What did you promise Virginia to entice her to come with you? A su
rprise? A new pony? A trip on a boat you’d borrowed from your brother? If we search the marshes, will we find her rotted bones?”

  Edwin and his father had listened to the account with tight faces expressing anger and disbelief. But they’d support Arthur, whatever he’d done. Guilty or not, he was their flesh and blood. Surprisingly, they didn’t defend him—

  Hamish said, “If it was a lie, you’d ha’ been booted out ten minutes ago. But Arthur canna’ afford to have that coffin exhumed!”

  A flush had risen in Arthur’s face. “Perhaps if Baker had met her at the hotel at the hour he’d promised, she wouldn’t have taken it in her head to show she could fend for herself! And as for Titanic, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” He got up from his chair and moved about the room, rigidly at first, and then with more ease as the muscles in his back stretched. He was plausible, his voice and his manner carrying indignation and a sense of injustice nicely blended. But was it real? Rutledge couldn’t tell. Just as he refused to submit to the pain in his back, Arthur Sedgwick refused to be intimidated.

  Hamish said, “He canna’ be shaken.”

  Arthur walked to the rain-wet window, peering out at the dark gardens, his back to the room. His father and brother waited for him to speak again. And Rutledge remembered something that Sedgwick had told him about his elder son—the Watchers of Time had given the boy nightmares. . . .

  When Arthur said nothing else, Sedgwick cleared his throat. “Inspector, I think you ought to leave. Miss Trent, we apologize for this distressful business, you shouldn’t have been subjected to it.”

  Hamish spoke swiftly, and Rutledge shifted in his chair to look at Edwin.

  Edwin’s eyes were still on his brother. As Rutledge had noted once before on the quay in Osterley, they were as cold as the winter sea. Edwin was the physically stronger now, and harder. He had made no effort to come to his brother’s defense, and it had become a telling silence.

  His intuition alive and working, Rutledge suddenly realized why. A jealousy lay like acid under the skin of the second son. It had nothing to do with Virginia Sedgwick’s death. The title would go to Arthur, not Edwin.

  Rutledge was on the point of continuing when May Trent spoke for the first time. “But it isn’t true,” she said with conviction to the room at large, “that the Inspector doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And it isn’t true that your wife was on board Titanic, Mr. Sedgwick. Because I was, you see, and I’d have met her. Father James made a study of the ship. That’s how he found me.”

  The logs on the hearth crackled and sent sparks flying, but no one noticed. A gust of rain rattled against the windows. May Trent waited.

  Rutledge forced himself not to look at her. But Lord Sedgwick and Edwin were staring at her with an almost malevolent expression, as if she had called them liars. And she had.

  “My dear lady,” Sedgwick said. “Virginia was a wretched sailor—it’s very doubtful that she ever left her stateroom!”

  May Trent answered, “But I’d have known that, too. Women gossip on shipboard, Lord Sedgwick, just as they do at a garden party. We knew who was assigned to our table, to our lifeboat stations. Who was available for bridge, who had been confined to bed. Her name wasn’t there.” She looked at Arthur and her face wisted with disgust. “How could you callously use that tragedy for your own ends? I find it appalling!”

  Arthur’s mouth tensed, but he said nothing. His reflection in the dark glass of the French doors was a study in control. Yet his hands, locked behind his back, clenched until the knuckles were white.

  Rutledge turned to Lord Sedgwick. “And as Herbert Baker lay dying, he couldn’t face the prospect that he was taking with him the one bit of knowledge that might clear up the mystery of what really happened to your daughter-in-law. Trying to set his soul in order, he sent for Father James, not because he was a priest, but because this man cared as much about Virginia Sedgwick’s fate as Baker had. The one man in Osterley who could be counted on to use the information wisely! And that’s why Father James had to die—there was no way of knowing whether what Baker confided to the priest was under the seal of Confession or had been told man to man, with a simple promise binding the priest.”

  There was the shock of truth in Lord Sedgwick’s face now. Arthur and Edwin swung around to look at their father. And he gave them no sign.

  Rutledge frowned at Arthur. “I was convinced you killed Father James. I was coming here to break the news to your father. Until today, when I discovered two witnesses who placed not you but your father at the rectory that night. And I realized then that he’d been the killer.” Facing Sedgwick, he said, intent on angering the man, “It was quite clever to empty the tin box, to leave a false trail. Certainly Inspector Blevins was convinced by it. You have a flair for planning murder.”

  Lord Sedgwick met Rutledge’s eyes with arrogance. “It doesn’t matter if you have a dozen witnesses. I think it’s time you left this house.”

  There was an uneasy moment in the room. Edwin, leaning over the back of a chair, his hands lightly gripping the wood frame, was watching the fire. Arthur started toward a chair and then changed his mind, toying with the photographs on the table.

  Hamish said, “Watch your back!”

  Indeed, there was an odd intensity in their postures. These three men had spent a lifetime with no leavening to counteract the ferocious ambition that had driven them since the day they were born. It was what their character was all about: the paramount importance of a goal set in the first generation.

  Rutledge rose, as if preparing to leave. He wasn’t comfortable sitting any longer. He said to Sedgwick, “When Walsh escaped, you sent your sons to search for him, and then borrowed old Tom Randal’s mare, and went after him yourself. You found him because you know the land around here better than anyone else—you’d grown up on it, with an old sheepman training your eye. And you killed Walsh—with a hammer—or the shoe Honey had cast. Using it with a polo swing and the full weight of the galloping horse behind your arm. And the Sedgwick luck held—you caught him just right. The police inquiry into the death of a priest was closed.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! How could I have got to this Randal’s farm, without my motorcar being seen as I drove through Osterley? Besides, Arthur was using it, in the search! And there’s my gout—” Sedgwick was on his feet. “If you won’t leave of your own accord, I’ll have my sons throw you out. I won’t stand for this in my own house.”

  “Yes, you’ve taken every opportunity to remind me of your gout. Your son Edwin rides Arthur’s motorcycle. I wouldn’t be surprised if you do as well.” He turned to the sons.

  “If you try to cover up what your father has done, if you refuse to help me, you’ll be tarred by the same brush. It will be the end of your family—”

  He read cold calculation in hard eyes, an uncompromising facade of unity. They were ranged between him and the door, a solid phalanx of enmity.

  Hamish warned, “It’s no’ what you think—”

  Rutledge felt shock. Like cold water thrown in his face.

  How could he have got it so wrong?

  He said, “May. Will you wait for me in the car, please? I’ll be out in five minutes.” His voice was pleasant, but there was command in it.

  She started to protest, then stood up. The atmosphere had changed subtly, and his order had frightened her.

  “If you don’t come, I’ll drive back to town, shall I?”

  “Yes. By all means.”

  She nodded and walked into the hall, drawing her coat back around her shoulders. They could hear the outer door open—and then shut behind her.

  Rutledge walked to the windows, and stood there with his back to them. He could feel the draft coming through the glass, cold and damp. It felt like hope.

  “I was wrong,” he said, into the waiting silence. “I realize my mistake now.”

  Sedgwick said, “You won’t be able to pursue this. And your career will be destroyed. I have that power.
You know I do. If you leave now, I’ll undertake to guarantee that your silence will protect that young woman who just left. You would be wise to heed me.”

  Rutledge said wearily, “Arthur killed his wife, didn’t he? And you, Lord Sedgwick, killed Father James. But it was Edwin who killed Walsh. Arthur’s back won’t allow him to ride that strenuously. And you were busy ordering your staff to search the house and grounds, the outbuildings and the sheepfolds.” He paused. He’d blended conjecture and experience and intuition in a unholy weave of truth. But he didn’t want to hear the answer to his last question. “In God’s name—why!”

  “She was a pretty ninny who charmed the men around her,” Lord Sedgwick replied, “but couldn’t hold a fiveminute conversation with anyone. Much less conduct a household properly. She had the attention span of a ten-year-old. She had no idea that she could conceive a child just as half-witted as she was.” He shook his head. “Her mother swore to Arthur after the wedding that she’d had a fever as a child. I discovered later that there had been a cousin and an aunt who were also mentally deficient. It was a trick from the start—and Arthur here thought he’d discovered Guinevere!” Sedgwick’s voice was sour with anger. “Do you have any idea what it’s like, living every day of every year with someone as stupid as she was? The endless repetitions. The tantrums. The constant refrain of ‘But why can’t I?’ as if God had given her the keys to the bloody universe! Edwin or I kept an eye on her when Arthur was abroad. But even that was getting to be difficult. Arthur drew the short straw, as it were. He’d married her, after all. We never asked how or where it happened.”

  “And,” said Edwin for the first time, “Baker didn’t know either. Only that she wouldn’t be going all the way. The day we buried that damned empty coffin, he promised my father he’d never speak of what happened. We expected him to carry whatever he thought he knew to his grave. Instead he made himself the laughingstock of Osterley when he died shriven by two clergymen! Too many people began to wonder why.”