THE PELICAN WAS BUSY WITH THE dinner hour, noisy with voices and laughter and the rattle of dishes, and crowded with local people. The bar had a line of patrons leaning on their elbows and talking to or over each other. One seated on a wooden stool held a little gray-and-white dog in his lap. The tables near the windows were occupied by small groups of diners already served or waiting their turn.
Among them was the woman he had seen at the church two days ago-was it only two?-sitting with several men and another woman, just finishing their soup.
They were deeply immersed in their conversation and no one looked up as Rutledge walked past. He took a small table nearer the bar, where he would feel less confined by the press of people. The tiny island of space around him was a welcomed relief. Hamish, sensing his unease, argued warily for a return to the hotel.
“For it willna’ do to make a scene here!”
“I won’t,” Rutledge answered shortly. But he could feel himself tensing as more customers came in, one group searching for a table, a smaller one heading for the bar, hailed warmly by friends. As he watched them pass, he noticed in the back corner, occupied with a newspaper, the man he’d seen at the quay feeding the ducks and, another time, here alone in the same seat. Crowded as the room was, no one asked to sit with him.
The man had the air of a fixture at The Pelican, as permanent as the bench on which he sat and the table braced and nailed to the wall.
The strained face was bent over the opened paper, and neither Betsy nor the older couple helping her serve took any heed of him. He’d ordered tea, for there was a pot and a cup by his elbow. As if sensing Rutledge’s glance, his knuckles seemed to tighten on the page, crimping it.
Hamish said derisively, “He’s no’ a verra’ popular man. No doubt you’ll find you have much in common.”
“God save him, then!” Rutledge answered silently.
Betsy finally stopped at Rutledge’s little table, her manner more formal than it had been the first day he had arrived in the village. “Good evening, Inspector. Are you wishing to dine or could I bring you something from the bar?”
No longer “What would you like, love?” Rutledge smiled. “What would you recommend for dinner?” he asked her.
“You’re fortunate tonight,” she said. “There’s a roast of chicken with dumplings and potatoes, and I can tell you, there’s nothing like it this side of London!”
Rutledge felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for the woman in a book he’d once read, who had been branded with an A for Adulteress. Everyone in Osterley knew more of his business than he knew of theirs. He’d been branded with an O for Outsider-no longer the visitor who was benign, no longer the anonymous traveler who could ask questions and expect an honest answer. There was neither coldness nor rudeness in their manner, only a formality that precluded any expectation of breaking through it.
How long, he wondered, did it take a man to reach the status of “one of ours” in this village? For a policeman who hadn’t been born here, perhaps never. For a passing stranger there was welcome and courtesy. For an intruder, only suspicion. And yet Father James had come to be one of theirs…
He chose the chicken with dumplings and ordered a pint to go with it.
Although he tried to keep his eyes away from the table by the window and to stop himself from speculating about the relationships of the four people sitting there, Rutledge caught himself glancing that way from time to time. The woman had a quiet vivacity, and seemed to be comfortable with both men. It emphasized the formality she had displayed toward him on the few occasions when they’d spoken.
A stranger even among strangers…
He turned slightly to change his line of sight. Indirectly now, he could see the lonely man sitting in the corner. He served only to reflect Rutledge’s own isolation. Hamish had struck a chord with his words.
As Rutledge watched, the man’s hands began to tremble, and he hastily shoved them out of sight under the table, dropping the newspaper as if it had burned him. Shell shock?
Rutledge shuddered, Hamish suddenly aware and challenging in his mind. He himself had so narrowly escaped from that horror. And the fierce agony of it still haunted him. To be shell-shocked was to be publicly branded a coward-a man unfit to be mentioned in the same breath as the soldier with a missing limb or shot-away jaw. A shame-a disgrace. Not an honorable wound but the mark of failure as a man. He himself had been caged with the screaming, shaking, pathetic remnants of humanity in a clinic that kept them shut firmly away from the public eye. Until Dr. Fleming had rescued him.
He made a point not to look back again. After examining the oddities that decorated the pub, and counting the number of diners, Rutledge set himself the task of cataloging from memory the framed photographs in the priest’s house. But none of those he could call to mind seemed important enough to require a codicil to a Will. Certainly most of them would go, along with the rest of his possessions, to Father James’s surviving sister, who would cherish those of the family and perhaps pass on a few to Father James’s friends. As was right.
Gifford had already indicated that Mrs. Wainer knew nothing about any bequest. But if the photograph wasn’t in the desk, it must surely be somewhere. There was no reason why Walsh or anyone else should wish to steal it. However, there might be, perhaps, some way to jog a memory the housekeeper wasn’t aware she had.
That would have to wait until tomorrow.
Unwillingly aware of the occasional quiet laughter coming from the table by the window where the dark-haired woman sat, Rutledge felt a sense of depression settle around him and he fought against it, without any help from Hamish.
Rutledge was more than halfway through his roast chicken when the woman sitting by the window got up from her table and walked toward him. He thought for an instant she was coming to speak to him and had nearly risen to his feet when he realized that her eyes were fixed on something behind him.
He turned. The man in the corner was shaking like a leaf in the wind, his shoulders jerking with it.
The woman crossed to him and sat on the bench opposite him. Reaching out, she caught his hands before he could hide them again, and began to speak to him. Rutledge, watching, had the feeling it was not the first time she’d done this. Something in her voice-whether the words or simply the sound-had a calming effect, and for a moment Rutledge thought she had actually stemmed the tide of whatever it was that drove the man into such a frenzy of trembling.
He was just turning away again when the man surged abruptly to his feet, with such force that he overturned the bench on which he sat. The unexpected clatter of the wood on the floor stopped conversation in its tracks: every head turned toward the man and the woman. And he stood there, like a hare caught in the headlamps, unable to move. His eyes were shocked, almost beyond seeing.
Rutledge rose and strode forward, reaching the man and taking his shoulder in a firm grip. The man flinched away, and the woman said sharply, but in a voice that didn’t carry beyond the three of them, “ Leave him alone! He’s done nothing to you!”
Rutledge ignored her. He said to the trembling man whose face had turned away, toward the wall, “All right, soldier. Let’s get some air.”
It was the timbre of his voice that got through. An officer’s voice. Steady and assured.
For a long moment the tableau was unbroken: the furious woman, the man in the throes of a breakdown, and the outsider who had interfered.
And then it altered, dissolving into movement, the woman stepping aside, lips tightly shut and eyes worried, and Rutledge seeming to walk away, without looking back, his shoulders as ramrod straight as if he still wore a uniform.
An officer expected a soldier to obey. Unquestioned loyalty to rank was the hallmark of training. Rutledge drew on that now.
Hamish said, “He won’t follow. He’s beyond heeding!”
Rutledge had taken no more than two strides when the man moved away from the fallen bench and, with Rutledge just ahead of him, almost a shield, walked through the gauntlet of staring eyes and through the door, out into the night.
The woman, her face pale with distress, followed.
Outside, Rutledge didn’t stop until he was well away from The Pelican’s door, nearly to the quay. In the darkness of the waterside, he stood staring out to sea, not looking at the man who had stopped some little distance from him. Then he said, as if addressing a comrade, “There’s a wind coming up. But it’s a beautiful night, still.”
The man just behind him cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said roughly, as if finding it hard to speak. He hesitated. “There were too many people in there-”
Claustrophobia. Rutledge knew it all too well…
“Yes.”
“Suddenly I couldn’t breathe-I thought I was dying. But I never do. Worst luck!”
There was almost a lightness in the words that belied their intensity. But Rutledge felt sure the man meant them. He had himself, on more than one occasion fraught with panic.
“In the War, were you?” It was a common enough question, but the man flinched.
“For a time,” he said. And then he walked away, unsteadily but strongly, as if wanting to be alone more than he needed human companionship.
The woman, watching the scene, said, “He was in the War. He was a sniper.”
She flung out the last word as if daring Rutledge to say anything. Daring him to condemn.
Rutledge said, “Snipers saved my life any number of times. And the lives of my men. Why should I find that so terrible?”
“Everyone else does.” Her voice was bitter. He tried to see her face, but it was hidden. The lights from The Pelican barely touched her hair, like a pale halo behind her head.
“Why?”
“He shot from ambush. It wasn’t very gallant. It was assassination, if you will. Not the thing, you know. ” Her voice altered, twisting the words, as if she was quoting someone. He heard an echo, he thought, of Lord Sedgwick in them, but couldn’t be sure.
“He killed from ambush, yes, it’s true,” Rutledge answered her tersely. “Such men took out the machine gunners when we couldn’t. They could move in the night as silently as a snake or fox, waiting for their chance, then making their shot. Some of the other men weren’t too pleased about what they did. I suppose it must have seemed unsportsmanlike. But I can tell you they were life, when we expected to die.”
She said, surprised, “You’re a policeman. I expected you to condemn what he’d done as tantamount to murder.”
“Was it murder?” He looked out across the dark, silent marshes, listening for the sea. “I suppose it was,” he said tiredly. “Those men were deadly; they seldom missed. The German gunners never had a chance. A good many of our snipers were Scots, with years of stalking behind them. Others had a-knack for silence. For stealth. They were brave, very brave, to do what they did. I never judged them.”
“His own father judged Peter Henderson. Alfie Henderson was one of Father James’s failures. He never forgave his son, not even on his deathbed, even though Father James begged him to heal the breach between them. I think Alfie would have been happier if Peter had never come home from France. He believed that being a sniper had brought dishonor to the family name.”
Rutledge swore under his breath. It was often that way-people at home, soldiers’ families in particular, seldom understood what war was all about. Their gallant men marched away in crisp uniforms, caps at a jaunty angle, flags flying, and went to France to kill the Hun- how that was done never seemed quite as clear. Young men in the filthy trenches were not likely to write to their mothers or their young wives and tell the truth: War was neither dashing nor colorful nor honorable. It was, simply, bloody and terrible. Even the government had entered into the conspiracy of silence for as long as it dared.
Wearily he tried to explain. “The Germans actually trained soldiers as snipers. Did you know that? They had schools to teach their best shots. We quite cleverly used whomever we could find.”
Hamish was saying something, but Rutledge didn’t hear it. The woman in front of him was also speaking. He caught the last of that.
“… wasn’t given his job back after the War. No one else in Osterley will hire him. He’s nearly destitute and won’t accept help. Father James believed-but now that he’s dead, Mrs. Barnett and the Vicar try to see that Peter is fed. But he doesn’t want pity -” Her voice cracked, and she added, “It’s never the evil people, is it, who suffer? It’s always the lonely ones who are already afraid!”
She turned on her heel, going back into The Pelican to rejoin her party.
Not hungry any more, Rutledge stood there for a time in the darkness of the October night, and then walked back to the hotel. He would settle his bill in the morning.
When he came into the lobby, Rutledge was greeted by Mrs. Barnett. She gestured toward the small parlor. “You have a visitor, Inspector.”
“A visitor?” he repeated, his mind still on the darkness he’d just left. On Peter Henderson and Father James.
“Miss Connaught.”
He brought his attention back to the present. “Ah. Thank you, Mrs. Barnett.”
With a nod he walked past the stairs and to the small parlor. As he opened the door, Priscilla Connaught got to her feet and faced him, as if facing the hangman.
“I saw you with Lord Sedgwick the other morning. And then I was told you had gone back to London. Is it finished then, the reward paid and the case of Father James’s death finally closed?”
She looked as if she hadn’t slept, dark rings under her eyes and a nervous tic at the corner of her mouth. The handsome dark blue suit she wore seemed nearly black, emphasizing her pallor.
Rutledge recalled what she had told him-that with Father James dead, she herself had no reason to live. He wondered what she did each day, when not absorbed in her anger. Did she read? Write letters to friends? Or sit and stare out at the marshes, waiting for something that would never come? Peace, perhaps.
He answered with some care, “I went to London on other business. As far as I know, the probe into Matthew Walsh’s movements hasn’t been completed. There has been no mention of passing out a reward. Not in my hearing.”
“Oh.” She seemed shaken. As if she had been so very certain that she hadn’t thought beyond the need to find out if she was right.
Rutledge, studying her face, hought, She’s in worse straits than Peter Henderson. Father James was an obsession she couldn’t live without. Like a drug, only far more deadly.
Hamish said, “Aye, but there’s naught to be done. You canna’ stop the investigation.”
Rutledge gestured to the chair she had risen from, but she shook her head. And then, as if her legs wouldn’t support her any longer, she sank back into the seat.
“Do you know Lord Sedgwick well, Miss Connaught?”
“Lord Sedgwick? Hardly at all. I have met his son Edwin-but that must be close to sixteen or seventeen years ago, now.” She sounded distracted, as if only half her mind was on what she was saying.
“Here in Osterley?” Rutledge persisted, keeping to a neutral topic.
“No, Edwin sometimes stayed with a family I knew in London. He was little more than a boy at the time, and I didn’t like him very much.”
“Why not?”
“He was very easily bored, and more than a little selfish. He’d lost his mother, and everyone rather spoiled him. But I’ve heard that he turned out rather well-he was on someone’s staff at the Peace Conference last spring.”
“And Arthur?”
“I know him by sight, of course, but we’ve never met. Like his father, he was married to an American woman-I did meet her once. At a vicarage tea I’d been persuaded to attend. One of those sweet girls with little to say for herself. And unbelievably pretty. They spent most of the year in Yorkshire and seldom came to Osterley. Later I heard that she’d died.”
She was beginning to breathe more regularly now, finding it easier to carry on a polite conversation. The intensity that had held her on the edge of breakdown was draining away, and in its place was a precarious control again.
“Lord Sedgwick was concerned about the brakes on your motorcar.”
“He rather enjoys playing lord of the manor. And I’ve good reason to thank him for that-his chauffeur rescued me once when I’d lost my way and run out of petrol.” As if realizing that she was steadier, she asked again, “Are you sure-have you told me the whole truth about Walsh?”
Her eyes begged him for an honest answer.
“Yes,” he said gently. “I have no reason to lie to you.”
And yet he thought he had. She’d been distraught enough to do something foolish, before she’d reasoned out the consequences.
“Aye,” Hamish said, “it wouldna’ do to have her blood on your hands!”
She stood up again. “I must be on my way-”
“Whatever rumors you hear,” Rutledge told her, “come to me and I’ll tell you the truth. I give you my word.”
Priscilla Connaught took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m not sure I can believe you. I don’t know, I can’t somehow think straight.”
“It might be a good idea to speak to Dr. Stephenson. Someone you trust.”
She laughed, a hollow and mirthless sound. “There’s not much a medical doctor can do for a shattered life.”
“I wish you would tell me what Father James-”
Priscilla Connaught shook her head with finality. “It had nothing to do with his death. Only with his life. And that’s finished. Over and done with.”
She looked around, saw her purse on the table, and as she picked it up, spoke again. “I’ve lain awake at night, wondering who could have murdered him. If there was someone else he’d treated as cruelly as he’d treated me. I think I’d be happier believing that than in the story of a thief.” Then she turned toward Rutledge again.
“Thank you for your concern, Inspector,” she said with great poise, as if they’d spent an evening in pleasant conversation and she was leaving the party. “You’ve been quite kind.”
And with that, she wished him a good night and walked past him out the door.
Another of Father James’s failures, he thought, watching the door close behind her. Like Peter Henderson’s father… How many were there?
Mrs. Barnett was still in the office when Rutledge came back to the lobby and paused by the desk.
“Yes, Inspector?” she said, looking up.
“I’m told that Mr. Sims, Frederick Gifford, and Father James dined together from time to time. Did they come here?”
“Yes, about twice a month, generally. Occasionally it would be just Father James and the Vicar. I’ve always looked forward to having them come. They were no trouble at all, and I’d enjoy chatting with them when I brought their tea to the lounge.” The memory of that caught her for a moment. “It’s not easy, running this hotel on my own. I have so little time for anything else. It was almost like having friends drop by, because they would tell me about a book I might enjoy reading or where someone they knew had been traveling or even a bit of news from London that I hadn’t heard. My husband knew all of them quite well, you see, and in a small way it brought him back to me for just a little while.”
Something to look forward to…
It was a gratification Rutledge did not have. And he had, after a fashion, come to terms with the fact that how he lived today, on the edge of breakdown and exhaustion, would be a pattern he could expect in his tomorrows. It was not self-pity, whatever Hamish drummed into his head, but acceptance. The price of living with himself.
Mrs. Barnett hesitated, on the point of wishing him a good night.
Instead he asked, “Would you give me the name of the young woman who is also staying here?”
Something altered in her face. “I’m sorry, Inspector. She’s a guest here, and you must ask her yourself.”
Hamish said, “It’s no’ unusual, for a hotel to guard the privacy of a woman traveling alone.”
Rutledge, inexplicably angry, as if accused of a breach of manners, said curtly, “It’s a matter of police business, Mrs. Barnett, not personal interest.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth before he regretted them. But it was too late to recall them.
Mrs. Barnett stared at him, as if she didn’t believe him. Then she replied stiffly, “Her name is Trent, Inspector.”
He didn’t hear what else she was saying, something about Somerset.
“Is her first name Marianna?”
“She’s registered as May Trent.”
But May was often a diminutive for Mary. The Queen, Mary, was called May by her family.
Had Gifford known Marianna Trent was staying in Osterley? He’d chosen not to tell Rutledge that.
Or was he trying to make sure that Rutledge didn’t go in search of the woman?
“You didna’ ask,” Hamish informed him.
The next morning, Rutledge found Inspector Blevins already in his office at the station. A letter lay open on the blotter in front of him.
He looked up as a constable ushered Rutledge into the room, and nodded.
“I hope your morning has been fairer than mine.”
Rutledge said, “The scissors sharpener?”
“Yes, a man named Bolton. He swears Walsh was with him the night the priest was murdered. It won’t be easy to pry the truth out of him. If there is any truth to be had.”
“I have another bit of bad news. The London police believe they’ve found the body of Iris Kenneth in the Thames. The woman who kept the lodgings where Iris Kenneth lived was satisfied enough to sell her belongings for whatever they might bring.”
Blevins was staring at him. “When was she found?”
“A week ago. Two days before you picked up Walsh.”
“Damn!” Blevins leaned back in his chair. “It’s like dealing with a will-o’-the-wisp-you no sooner think you have your hands on the truth when it evaporates like morning fog! Do you think Walsh might have killed her? To shut her up?”
“God knows. There’s no real evidence to support murder. She may have killed herself. Or someone else may have put her into the water. I did ask Mrs. Rollings about an old pair of men’s shoes. She couldn’t believe that Iris Kenneth had ever owned anything of the kind.”
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 bones 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?