Watchers of Time

Hamish said, “The priest’s killer wore old and worn shoes.”

“Yes. I hadn’t forgotten. The Strong Man, Walsh, was wearing boots. With hobnails. And his feet are large.”

“Aye. It’s a thought to bear in mind. . . .”

CHAPTER 8

INSTEAD OF FETCHING HIS LUGGAGE FROM the boot as he’d planned, Rutledge drove to St. Anne’s rectory. The mixture of watery sun, clouds, and drizzle that had pursued him all morning had given way to fairer skies. If the sun stayed out, he thought as he pulled into the short drive, the day would soon be pleasantly warm. A light wind riffled his hair as he went up the walk to the door and lifted the coffin knocker. After a time Mrs. Wainer came to answer the clamor, and recognizing the Inspector on the doorstep, greeted him with noticeable relief.

“I thought it might be someone wanting Monsignor Holston!”

“I hope I haven’t taken you from your dinner,” he said.

“No, I’ve finished. Do come in!” she said, and was on the point of leading him back to the Victorian parlor when he stopped her.

“I’d like to see Father James’s study,” Rutledge said gently, “if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you.”

She turned her head toward the stairs. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go up there just now. I still find it hard.” She looked at Rutledge again. “It’s Sunday, and he was always on time for his dinner, and hungry, having fasted. There’s no one to cook for now, though I’d bought a nice bit of ham, hoping Monsignor Holston would stay. . . . I feel at sixes and sevens!” There was a sadness in the words that touched Rutledge. “Well. The Bishop will send a new priest when he’s ready.”

“It should be reassuring to know that Inspector Blevins has found the man responsible.”

The housekeeper answered, “Oh, yes.” But her response was polite, with no sense of relief. Only acceptance. “Of course I told the constables the Strong Man had been in the house. But I never dreamed— He seemed—I don’t know, apologetic about his size, afraid of bumping into anything. Go on, if you like. There’s no harm can be done. And maybe some good. Up the stairs then, and the second door on your right.”

“Toward the house next door,” Hamish observed.

Rutledge thanked her and started up, becoming aware of how little noise he made on the solid treads—a muffled step, a sound you’d miss if you weren’t listening for it.

When he’d reached the landing, he turned. Mrs. Wainer was still standing by the parlor doorway, unwilling to remember what lay at the top of the stairs. There was an expression of deep grief on her face. Then she walked away down the passage, as if turning her back on what he was about to do.

The second door to the right led into a large study, with a bank of long windows covered with heavy velvet draperies that shut out the light. Rutledge was reminded suddenly of what Monsignor Holston had said, that the room had spoken to him of evil. Whether what he sensed now was evil or not, he couldn’t say, but the dimly lit room seemed—not empty. Waiting.

Hamish said, “It isna’ the corpse, it’s been taken away. But the spirit . . .”

“Perhaps.” Rutledge hesitated, and then, shutting the study door behind him, crossed the carpet to pull the draperies open, watching the wooden rings move smoothly down the mahogany rod with the familiar click-clicks. Brightness poured into the room, and that odd sense of something present there was banished with the light.

He found that his feet were set in a scrubbed and faded portion of the carpet, where someone must have tried to remove the blood that had puddled from Father James’s head wound. An onerous duty for the grieving woman downstairs. Rutledge stepped away from it, then looked at it in relation to the windows.

If the victim had been struck down just there and from behind, he must have been facing the window. His back to his attacker. Rutledge went to test the latch, and then look out—almost directly into the windows opposite, where he could see an old woman in a chair, knitting.

Everyone described Father James as middle-aged but fit. But Walsh was a very large man. Even if help had come, what could even one of the strapping sons next door have done? It had taken four men at the police station to subdue Walsh. And by the time anyone had reached the study, the priest would have been dead. Yet if he was as capable as all the people who knew him had claimed he was, he would have abandoned any hope of aid, and tried to deal with the intruder in some fashion.

“If he wasna’ afraid of the man,” Hamish said, “he wouldna’ have called for help. If he was afraid, he’d ha’ kept an eye on him!”

“Yes, that’s what I’d have done,” Rutledge answered him. “Even if he knew the intruder, he’d have been wary . . .” Or—too certain of his powers of persuasion?

“Here, if you need the money that badly, take it, and go with my blessing. . . .”

“It’s easier to smash the back of a head—when there’s no face staring into yours,” Hamish pointed out. “With the bayonet, we didna’ look into the face.” And that was also true. Dead center, twist, withdraw. A belt buckle above the blade, not a pair of human eyes . . .

So why had the priest turned away? Toward the windows, rather than toward the intruder?

Only an exceptionally trusting man would have done that.

“Look, I’ll turn my back, and let you walk out of here. Return the money if and when you can; there are others who need it as much as you do. . . .”

Still, to say that, Father James must have had a very good idea who was threatening him. Yet how far could a frightened man trust in return? Had it been a calculated risk, then? To calm whoever stood there, rather than agitate him?

Or had his assailant said, “Turn your back, and let me go”—then lost his nerve?

Rutledge listened to his intuition, and heard no reply.

The room, then. He slowly turned to study it. Not only had the drawer been broken open, the room had been ransacked.

If the priest had caught the intruder with the tin box pried open and the money in his hand, and offered him safe passage out the door, when had the room been torn apart? It must have happened before Father James came up the stairs. But why, when the locked desk drawer was the most logical place to begin a search and would have yielded the small tin box straightaway?

If the room had been turned upside down after the priest was dead, why not take a few minutes more to search through the rest of the house? The small clock in the parlor—the gold medal around the priest’s neck— whatever other easily pocketed windfalls came to hand— these had been left behind.

Why had ten or fifteen pounds satisfied a killer? If Walsh needed that much to finish paying for his cart and would take nothing else—why kill the priest?

Hamish said, “When you came in, your first act was to open yon draperies.”

Rutledge looked again at the windows. “Yes. And if Father James had done the same, the killer would then have been presented with his back, before they had even spoken to each other.”

He examined the rest of the room. One closed doorway led to the priest’s bedroom, as he found by opening it. Simple furnishings—a hard single bed, a wooden crucifix above the headboard, and a much-used prie-dieu against the wall of the study. An armoire between the windows and a low, matching chest at the foot of the bed. A chair stood beside a small bookshelf, and Rutledge crossed to read the titles. Religious texts, for the most part, and a collection of biographies: Pitt the Younger. Disraeli. William Cecil—the great secretary to Elizabeth the First. And a selection of poetry. Tennyson. Browning. Matthew Arnold. O. A. Manning . . .

He turned away and opened the only other door. It led to a bath. Rutledge closed that and went back to the study. Here were the broken desk and a chair, to one side of the passage doorway. A horsehair settee with two straight-backed chairs at angles beside it faced the hearth. In the corner beside the bedroom door stood the private altar. The candlesticks were there, polished to shine like molten sunlight, but the police had taken away the crucifix used as a weapon. A darker spot on the wood marked its dimensions. It would have been heavy. And one blow would have sufficed. Two at most . . .

Hamish said, “A man could stand unseen between that altar and the wall. If the room wasna’ lit.”

Rutledge was already looking at the space. He wedged himself in it. A broad man could just fit himself in there. And a thin one . . . But could Walsh?

“Yon priest in Norwich?” Hamish had not liked Monsignor Holston. “Perhap he canna’ return to the scene of his crime.”

“If he’d stood in the bedroom, whoever he was,” Rutledge speculated, “until the priest had turned his back to attend to the drapes, it would have taken the murderer a half dozen steps to close the distance between them. Even accounting for Walsh’s longer strides. And wary, alert, Father James would have sensed he was coming. The first blow wouldn’t have hit the back of his head—it would have struck him in the temple.”

“Why was Monsignor Holston afraid in the church, as well?” Hamish persisted, but Rutledge was looking again at the shadows between the drapes and the altar’s tall back.

“I don’t know. That someone would hide in a confessional after the service—enter through the vestry door, and wait for the service to end.” He tried to concentrate again. Even if the draperies had been drawn and the lamps were not lit, Father James couldn’t have missed the signs of a search. Paper on the floor would have gleamed whitely, even in low light. And what householder would have crossed that scatter of papers and books and furnishings to go to the window? His first act would probably have been to call out, Who’s there? And to stand on the threshold, waiting.

In that case, the intruder had been in the bedroom and would have had to call to the priest to lure him nearer. Beside the altar, the slightest movement would have drawn the priest’s wary eyes immediately. And yet, the crucifix— the weapon—had come from the altar, not the bedroom. Unless the intruder had already armed himself . . .

It was a puzzle. And more than a few of the pieces failed to fit.

Rutledge went to the desk and examined the broken drawer. It was savagely butchered. A shard of wood still hung at an angle, though someone had tried to make it appear tidy by pushing it nearly back into place. He looked at the small lock. Mrs. Wainer was right. Hardly worthy of the effort put in to breaking it so severely.

“Unless,” Hamish told him, “it was done in haste, for fear of being caught.”

“He shouldn’t have been caught. Mrs. Wainer had gone and the priest was usually at the church at that hour. Whoever it was should have had a clear run. . . .”

Twist the evidence another way: the force of the blows that killed Father James.

A man of more than average strength, driven by fear, would have struck with what appeared to be savagery in an ordinary person. And that pointed a finger directly at Walsh. The Strong Man . . .

The thing was, only two people knew exactly what had happened here. One of them was the victim, unable to tell his side of the story. The truth, if it was to be found, had to be dug out of the silence of the killer. And the traces of his presence that could be read in his motive.

It was easy to understand why Blevins was so pleased to have such a likely suspect under lock and key. Walsh had been in the rectory before. Walsh had extraordinary strength. And Walsh was in need of money to pay for his cart.

But how many Inspectors had seen their early proofs slip through their fingers like sand, leaving them with nothing to take before a magistrate?

Rutledge looked around the room one last time, thinking about Monsignor Holston rather than Father James.

Why had Holston wanted the Yard to take over the investigation, or at the very least, to supervise its progress? To find out something he himself couldn’t tell the police? Or to protect something he was afraid the local people might discover? A policeman from London had no insight into the residents of Osterley, and could easily miss a small and seemingly insignificant bit of evidence that Inspector Blevins would recognize instantly.

But if Monsignor Holston died next, because he had known—or guessed—too much, how quickly the investigating officers would jump to the conclusion that the connection between the two victims must be their calling— and not shared knowledge. A priest killer—mad, beyond the pale. Kill a third priest, and there would be no shadow of a doubt. Even if the third had been selected at random. Misdirection—the sign of a clever mind.

Hamish said, “But I canna’ think that’s verra’ likely, if there’s already someone about to be charged.”

“I agree. But it might explain why Monsignor Holston is so afraid.”

Surveying the windows again, Rutledge went on. “If it was nearly dark, with no lamps burning, Father James might have drawn the drapes before lighting one. And if the damage was done after the murder, there would have been nothing to alarm the priest as he walked in here. The desk drawer would have been out of his line of sight. Which would mean that the killer was surprised . . . not the priest.”

“There’s another way it could ha’ happened. If the killer was waiting for the priest.”

“Which puts an entirely different complexion on it, doesn’t it?” Rutledge replied thoughtfully.

Monsignor Holston was right about one thing. There was something odd about this murder scene. It told conflicting stories about the sequence of events. Were the drapes open—or closed? Was the lamp on the desk burning? Where had the killer been standing? And when had the room been torn apart? Had the priest seen his killer? Or had he been struck down before he was aware that he was in danger? Had the murderer come here for the money in the desk—or for something else altogether?

A sieve through which a defense lawyer could walk at will . . .

Rutledge found Mrs. Wainer in the kitchen, staring out the window that looked out onto a stand of lilacs, the back garden, and beyond that, to the churchyard.

She turned as he came in.

He asked her to show him where the footprint had been found, and she pointed to the largest lilac bush on one side of the lawn. Its branches arched and then dipped nearly to a grown man’s waist. And there was a bare spot where the grass didn’t grow, just by it. The shadows of the bush would have made an excellent place to watch the house. . . .

Rutledge asked the housekeeper if she left the lamp in the study lit when she went home each evening.

“No, not that night, if that’s what you’re asking me. And I think about it time and again. I wasn’t sure, you see, when he might be coming back, and I didn’t want to leave it burning untended if he was going to be very late.” She hesitated and then said anxiously, “Do you suppose it made any difference?”

“No, I’m sure it didn’t. A policeman makes an effort to be thorough, when picturing the scene in his mind. And the draperies. Were they left open or were they shut?”

“They were shut,” she replied firmly. “That’s what I do when I leave of an evening, except in the summer when there’s light well past nine.”

“What did Father James generally do when he came in? Did he walk in this way or through the door at the front of the house?”

Rutledge took a moment to look around him. It was a friendly room, painted a very pale green, like early spring leaves, and the curtains at the windows were a rose pink. Feminine, in a way, but not exclusively so. Had Mrs. Wainer had a voice in choosing the colors? Most certainly she had a hand in its care. The great iron stove was polished like rare furniture, the table well scrubbed beneath the hanging lamp, the stone sink empty of unwashed dishes. A small rag rug lay by the door, for wiping feet. It, too, was spotless.

She was saying to him, “Father always came in by the back. He left his bicycle in the shed, then stood his boots there by the door, on the little rug, and hung his coat on a peg if it was wet. I’ve known him to walk through the house in his stockinged feet, rather than dirty my floors. He was that thoughtful! And then he’d go up to his room, to wash up if he needed to or to leave his coat if it was dry. If the meal wasn’t ready, he’d work at his desk, or if there were visitors, he’d come back down to the parlor to speak with them.”

“Other people would know this was his habit? To come in through the kitchen door?”

She smiled. “I shouldn’t wonder if half the village did the same. Tradesmen come to the kitchen door, and a neighbor bringing over an extra loaf from her baking or a jar of pickles or jam she’d just put up. A man would never think of walking into the front hall with muck on his shoes, or children running in from the rain. I daresay there’s not a kitchen door in Osterley that’s ever locked, though there’s the key on the nail just beside it. There was no need—”

Without warning her face crumpled, the smile dissolving into a grimace of pain. “He was like my own son. I’ve such grief I don’t know how to cope with it.” Turning away, she fought to keep her voice steady. “If that’s everything, I’ll go home now. I shouldn’t have stayed this long. . . .”

Rutledge thanked her gently and walked back through the house to let himself out the front door. Halfway down the passage he heard a sob and hesitated. But her grief was private. There was nothing he could do or say to assuage it.

And his place in Osterley was clearly marked out—he came and went a stranger by the door at the front of the house.

CHAPTER 9

WHEN RUTLEDGE ARRIVED AT THE POLICE station twenty minutes later, after leaving his motorcar at the hotel, he found Inspector Blevins sitting in his cramped office finishing a stack of sandwiches and a steaming thermos of tea. “Missed my lunch,” he said, gesturing to the sandwich wrappings. “Someone was reported shooting out in the marshes, and that’s not allowed. I spent well over an hour tramping through the bloody reeds looking for the fool. My wife took pity on me and brought me these. Care for one?”

“Thanks, no. I ate at the hotel. Is it safe to walk out to the sea?”

“If you’re local, I suppose it’s safe enough. I wouldn’t recommend it. Too easy to lose yourself, and then I’d be out searching for you.” It was a friendly warning.

Putting the cap back on the thermos of tea, Blevins looked up at Rutledge and away again. “There’s been a complication,” he said. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Father James had two sisters—Sarah and Judith. Judith died in the influenza epidemic. Sarah is married and has young children. There was a telephone message here at the station this morning from Sarah’s husband, man by the name of Hurst, Philip Hurst. I’ve met him a time or two. Steady and reliable. The message was, he’d call back after Mass. And he did, just before the damned shooting started in the marshes.”

Blevins stopped fiddling with the thermos and set it aside. “Interesting conversation. Hurst told me that one of Judith’s favorite stories as a child was Jack the Giant-Slayer, Father James undoubtedly filling the role of Jack in his sister’s eyes. Sarah claims he must have read it to her dozens of times. But that’s neither here nor there.”

He seemed to be avoiding coming to the point, as if he found it distasteful. Rutledge waited.

“When he was in France, Father James wrote often to both sisters, and Sarah remembers one letter in particular, where he told Judith that he’d finally met the ‘Giant.’ There was even a line drawing in the margin with Father James dwarfed by this stick figure. And there was some other nonsense about the story, and that was it.”

“You’re telling me that Walsh is this ‘Giant’?”

“God, no! Father James was joking, reminding his sister of their childhood. This Giant could have been anyone he’d seen—a Punjabi for all we know! A good many of the Highlanders were damned tall, for that matter. But now I’ve got to find someone in the War Office to look up records to see if Walsh could have met Father James in France. They won’t like that, but if it’s true, I need to know about it before I’m made a fool of in the courtroom. It doesn’t change anything, even if he did!”

“You’ll have to question everyone at the bazaar again. To see if the two men recognized each other that day.”

“I don’t see how it was possible for Walsh to recognize Father James—he was dressed as a clown to entertain the children, and his face was painted. But of course Father James could well have remembered him.”

Hamish reminded Rutledge, “Mrs. Wainer spoke of clown’s paint. He was still wearing it when he handed her the bills and coins they’d taken in.”

So she had. Rutledge regarded Blevins, trying to read his face. “Asking Walsh is the simplest way to find out,” he observed.

“You can’t ask him anything without being cursed and abused. Better to find out from the War Office than give that clever bastard some way of crawling out of this charge!”

“Does Sarah Hurst still have the letter?”

“It was written to Judith, who showed it to her, and there’s no way of knowing if Judith kept it. Much less what’s become of it since she died. But Hurst thought we ought to know, and rightly so.”

“Could Walsh have been searching for it? Either time he was at the rectory?” It was not uncommon to keep letters after a loved one died.

“Lord, no, how would he have known such a letter even existed? No, it’s a false scent, and I’m not going to be sidetracked by it. Besides, if Father James had learned something incriminating about Walsh, he wouldn’t have told his sister, would he? Let’s leave it! I told you only because I thought you’d agree with me that it’s not important.”

Hamish reminded Rutledge of an exchange during last night’s dinner at the Norwich hotel on the subject of the murder having to do with the War:

And how to find such a needle in a haystack of returned veterans?

Yet that same needle might have found Father James, nearly a year after the War had ended . . .

Because he’d come to a bazaar?

“I see your point.” It was enough to satisfy Blevins. Changing the subject, Rutledge told him, “I’ve been to the rectory to look at the study.”

“Doesn’t tell you much, does it? Mrs. Wainer scrubbed that carpet nearly through to the nap, trying to get out the blood. Wouldn’t hear of having a constable do it for her. It was her place, she insisted, not his.” He wolfed down the last sandwich, then began to fold the serviettes in which they had been wrapped. A B in Gothic script had been embroidered into one corner, entwined with a sprig of lilac.

“A great deal of force was used to open the desk.”

“More than needful. Yes, that’s true. But I doubt our blossom of fragility back there in the cells knows his own strength. The same force was used to kill Father James.”

“The theory is that he came looking for money to pay for his new cart. But this was some weeks after the bazaar. By that time, the money collected at the fair might well have been already dispersed—to the needy, to pay for a new altar cloth, whatever use it was intended to serve. Why did Walsh believe that the money was still in Father James’s hands?”

“I’ve looked into that myself. More often than not those funds are used as a priest sees fit. The accounts that must be paid by the parish come from another sum that’s on deposit in the bank. The Autumn Fete never brings in a large amount. Although this year, the first since the War ended, we had a better turnout. The men had come home, and the young women who had gone away to do war work were back as well.” He paused. “That’s been the hardest part for me, you know, accepting that a good many men from Osterley won’t be coming home. Whilst you’re fighting, you don’t think about it all that much. But the butcher’s son and Mrs. Barnett’s nephew, and so many other faces you’d expect to see about the town didn’t make it. Or they’re crippled and off somewhere learning how to make baskets or some such that they can sell. The best man we ever had in the marshes is blind. Two of the choirboys are orphans, their mother dead of the influenza and their father killed off Jutland. There’s talk of making a small war memorial here to honor the dead of Osterley. I don’t see it myself. But those who lost loved ones might find it comforting after a fashion.”

Rutledge was reminded of the monument that London was building to the nation’s war dead. An enduring memorial to The Great War, the newspapers called it; a place where wreaths could be laid each November and prayers said for the dead who hadn’t come home.

He shivered. Many of them had never been found. They still lay in Flanders’s Fields, buried so deep in the wrecked earth that not even a farmer’s plow would turn them up. Leather boots might last longer than flesh or bone, and helmets as well, but in time, even leather crumbled and metal rusted. After a few years, peas and corn and vineyards would cover their resting place, not a wooden cross or a plinth of marble. Would they even hear the prayers of a grateful nation? And how long would gratitude last?

Blevins was saying to him, “—Father James survived the War, survived the influenza epidemic. A brave man, but never a foolhardy one. Anybody will tell you that. He’d have dealt with the man in his study, given half a chance. But if it was Matthew Walsh, he had no chance at all. I don’t know what your experience has been, but in mine a good many men the size of Walsh are of a milder nature. This monster’s got a temper. Father James may have made a fatal mistake in judging his adversary.”

“There’s some truth to that,” Rutledge agreed. “But speaking of Walsh’s size—I’ve been thinking about the print of the shoe you found at the rectory near the lilacs.”

Brushing aside Rutledge’s words, Blevins said impatiently, “Yes, I’ve already come to the same conclusion. Walsh’s foot dwarfs that print. I had a drawing made of it, to match with the shoes of any suspects. You know what this means, don’t you?”

This time Rutledge let him have the pleasure of answering his own question.

“It tells me friend Walsh must have had an accomplice.”

Hamish, breaking a long silence, warned, “You ken, the sum stolen wouldna’ be enough for two. . . .”

“Did Walsh have an assistant at the bazaar?” There had been no mention of anyone else in the Strong Man’s act, to Rutledge’s knowledge, but that would make sense, if Walsh needed someone he could trust.

“No, no, he worked alone as far as we can discover,” Blevins answered. “I doubt he ever made enough to hire an assistant. Some months ago he had a woman with him, but I’m told she wasn’t good for business. The young ladies seemed to find her intimidating. Well, that’s not surprising! But breaking and entering is a different proposition. There’s often another man along to act as lookout. That’s why he was standing near the lilac bush. He was out of sight from the churchyard and the neighboring house.”

Blevins seemed convinced. For the time being, Rutledge left the subject and moved on.

“What about other towns where Walsh has made an appearance? Were there any crimes that could be traced to him? Is this a pattern?”

“I’d thought of that, too. We’re looking into it.” After a moment of silence, Blevins said, “We haven’t got more than curses out of Walsh so far. Would you like to try your hand at questioning him?”

“It wouldn’t do any harm.”

“We’ve put him in irons, to keep him manageable.” Blevins reached for a ring of keys and took Rutledge down the passage to the makeshift cells set in behind the offices. “He won’t be tried here,” the Inspector went on as he unlocked the door. “We’re moving him to Norwich by the middle of next week. We’re used to drunk and disorderly, petty theft, and the occasional wife-beater who won’t learn his lesson. And any murderers we’ve had to deal with over the years are generally more terrified of what they’ve done than they are a threat to the peace. But this man is dangerous.”

When Blevins unlocked the door of the cell, Walsh was sitting on the iron cot, his face bruised, his eyes defiant. Ankles and wrists were fettered, a heavy chain hanging between them.

Blevins said briskly, “You’ve met Inspector Rutledge before. Nearly knocked him down. I wouldn’t think about trying it again. He’s here from London.”

Walsh, surprise in his face, said, “Are they taking me to London, then?”

“That could depend on how cooperative you are. The Inspector wants to question you. About the priest’s death.”

Taking advantage of the man’s uncertainty, Rutledge asked almost conversationally, “Ever use an assistant in your act, Walsh?”

Eyebrows raised, Walsh answered, “I used a woman for some weeks. Thought it would make the ladies more willing to let themselves be lifted on the bench, if Iris went first. But she didn’t work out. Why do you want to know?”

“I should have thought a man would have been more useful, considering the bench and the weights you must haul about regularly in your cart.”

Walsh grinned. “I can lift them and you, too, and I’ll show you if you unlock these!” He raised his hands. The chain clanked unmusically, but its weight seemed not to cause him any distress.

Rutledge returned the smile. “Then why did you take someone with you when you killed the priest? Was that more dangerous than pulling a carriage against a team of horses? I’m surprised that you’d choose a woman to stand outside and watch. She couldn’t stop the priest from coming home, could she? Or warn you. But what you’ve done is pitched her into this with you. Accomplice to murder. I should have thought there was barely enough money for one.”

The grin had faded. Walsh said angrily, “I didn’t kill any man, with or without help! Except in the War, when I was paid to do it. Are all policemen deaf, or is it that you can’t do your work properly?”

Rutledge responded quietly. “You bought yourself a new cart.” Behind him he could hear Blevins fuming. But the trick with a man like Walsh was to encourage braggadocio. To let him tweak the noses of the police.

“Aye, with the savings from letting Iris go. The old one had got worm in it, sitting in a shed all the time I was away fighting. It had to be replaced. I didn’t have any choice!”

“If you didn’t kill Father James, who did? You were at the bazaar. Did you see anyone looking for a chance to pick up money?”

“Pickpockets, you mean?” Walsh asked. “There were two, but a constable run them off soon enough. Men in the line of housebreaking don’t come to church bazaars. The bloody things are advertised everywhere you look! In shop windows, on pasteboards or lampposts. Invitation to robbery, right out in the streets! All they have to do is watch for a family to leave for the day.”

“We’ll make a note of that,” Rutledge assured him. “Will you tell us where to find Iris now? We’d like to hear what she has to say about killing a priest.”

Walsh shrugged. “London, probably. How do I know? She didn’t work out, and I let her go. She wasn’t what you’d call happy about it, either. But business is business.”

“What’s her full name?”

“Iris Kenneth is what I knew her by. I’m not saying it was her true name. She’s a shill by trade—you know, standing in front of a show like mine and talking it up. Used to work for a Gypsy fortune-teller from Slough, name of Buonotti—Barnaby, he called himself. Italian he was, went home to fight in the War and never come back. So she was at loose ends, and suited me just fine.”

Blevins said, “What did you promise her, Walsh? That you’d take her on again if she helped you? Or was there someone else who owed you a favor?”

Walsh’s laughter was a deep rumble in his chest that welled up and spilled over into a bass chuckle. “I’d have had to promise to marry her to get her to come in with me again. And I’m not the marrying kind! Not yet, anyway!”

After they’d finished with Walsh, Blevins turned to Rutledge and said, “I don’t know. He’s hard to read. But I’m ready to put good money down that says he’s guilty! Too damned cocky by half!”

“Do you think this Iris Kenneth was his accomplice?”

“No. I’d say the shoe’s too large for a woman’s foot.”

“That’s probably true. But stuffed with rags, it would be the perfect blind, wouldn’t it? A man’s shoe. A woman’s foot.” He let the thought lie there.

Blevins said in resignation, watching his simple case grow to monstrous proportions, “I’ll see what London can find out about Iris Kenneth.”

The sky was clear now, the deeper blue of a storm passed and finer weather to come, and even the wind had dropped. The sun’s warmth was not August’s warmth, but it felt good on his face as Rutledge left the police station and walked down toward the hotel. On impulse he continued as far as the quay and stood there looking out across the marshes. He felt tired, deeply tired, and thought about a drink to ease his chest muscles and his arm. But he knew it was better to fight through the pain, if he could.

“You didna’ sleep verra’ well last night,” Hamish pointed out. “Guilty conscience, was it?”

“No.” Rutledge was too weary to enter into an argument with his tormentor.

Hamish said, “There’s more on your mind than Scotland. This murder—this marshy country—I canna’ see what it is that has made you a hollow man.”

It wasn’t a hollowness, Rutledge thought, that left him empty. It was too much, not too little—conflicting emotions, divided passions, an uncertainty he hadn’t felt since June, when he had walked into Warwickshire an exhausted, haunted man with no hope and no expectations, and a great fear of going mad.

It wasn’t madness now that he feared—though he knew that his mind teetered on the brink of self-destruction more often than he cared to admit.

But he was damned if he’d let Hamish pry and tear at him like a bird of prey, pulling out his soul to examine it like some rare specimen from the dark corners of the Congo. The question was, how to shut him out. Rutledge had never found a way.

Hamish had the last word—as he so often did. “It isna’ a matter of a night’s sleep, ye ken that. You willna’ sleep until you allow yoursel’ to live again!”

Trying to ignore him, Rutledge moved along the quay, to stand so that he could see the little stream where the boats came in to tie up. Wildfowl took off from the reeds and grasses, looking for their night’s roost. He watched them for a time, and the long shadows of the late afternoon falling across the marshes. They were golden in this light, or a deep rufous, or pale yellow, and when he stood very still, he thought he could hear breakers coming into the strand out beyond them.

“Tomorrow will be fair,” Hamish said, his countryman’s instincts strong.

“Yes.”

Rutledge turned back, walked to his car in the hotel’s walled courtyard next to a stand of late autumn flowers, and retrieved his luggage from the boot.

It was early in the dinner hour when Rutledge came down for the evening meal. Mrs. Barnett greeted him and led him to a table in the middle of the room under the softly lit chandeliers. With a smile she asked if he’d enjoyed his day, and with equal courtesy he agreed that he had.

Where he had eaten his luncheon, a man was dining alone, a heavy cane hooked over the back of the second chair.

Mrs. Barnett turned to hover over him solicitously as he finished his cheese, and Rutledge caught part of the conversation.

The man was saying, “. . . in Osterley. We’re a benighted lot here on the north coast.”

Mrs. Barnett smiled. “I saw Nurse Davies a time or two in the shops. It was always the rain she . . .”

The glass doors between the dining room and the reception hall had been left open. Sunday night, it appeared, was a popular time for local people to come in for their dinner, and there were already six or eight couples by the windows and two families at the larger tables along the wall beneath the sconces. Their quiet laughter and low-voiced conversation filled the spacious room with warmth and life. A far cry from that noon when it had seemed much too large for its only occupants: Rutledge and the woman guest.

But it appeared that she wasn’t dining in this evening.

Waiting for his soup, Rutledge unobtrusively studied the man by the window, the one Mrs. Barnett had spoken with.

There was something in the shape of his head that had caught Rutledge’s attention, the way his hair grew thickly from its part, and the line of his chin. He was young— perhaps thirty or thirty-two—but his face was lined with pain, aging it prematurely. A member of Lord Sedgwick’s family? The resemblance was there, but softer drawn, as if the bone structure was less formidable.

“I canna’ see it mysel’,” Hamish said. “He’s no’ as large framed.”

It was true. Unless illness had whittled away the muscle and brawn. And certainly this man appeared to be taller, longer limbed.

Later, as Rutledge finished his soup, he saw the man by the window fold his serviette and set it by his plate, his expression relaxed, as if he’d enjoyed his meal. But he lingered, as if reluctant to push back his chair and retire to the lounge for his tea.

And then Mrs. Barnett came in from the kitchen, as if alert to his needs, and handed the man his cane. He grasped the ivory handle and rose with visible effort, his weight heavy on the thick shaft. He straightened, pausing to catch his breath. Rutledge looked away, but not before he saw the sharp sadness in Mrs. Barnett’s face.

After a friendly exchange with Mrs. Barnett, the man walked on toward the lobby with only a slight limp, as if sitting had left him quite stiff and motion improved the ability of his muscles to function. He went on into the lounge to take his tea.

Mrs. Barnett came to remove Rutledge’s soup plate and set the roast veal in front of him, and he said quietly, “The man with the cane. Is he related to Lord Sedgwick?”

She nodded. “Arthur. His elder son. His back was so severely injured in the War that they didn’t expect him to live. And now he’s walking again. It’s quite a miracle. But it’s hard to keep help. His last nurse was a London girl, not used to the country.”

“I should think,” Rutledge said lightly, “that the Sedgwick family paid well enough to overcome even that reservation.”

Mrs. Barnett smiled but shook her head. “Ordinarily they probably would. But Arthur Sedgwick doesn’t live in East Sherham with his father, although when he requires more surgery or physical rehabilitation, he often comes to stay. His home is in Yorkshire, and I’m told that compared to the Dales, Osterley is second only to Paris!”

Rutledge had nearly finished his meal when a woman came striding through the outer doors and walked up to Reception, where Mrs. Barnett was adding up figures. By this time most of the diners had retired to the lounge, and it appeared at first that the newcomer was going to ask if the dining room was still open. Instead she leaned over rather imperiously to touch Mrs. Barnett’s arm, interrupting her to ask a question.

Mrs. Barnett’s eyebrows went up, and she turned to look at Rutledge through the open doors.

Hamish said, “It appears the news has got around that ye’re a policeman.”

The woman, turning her head, followed Mrs. Barnett’s glance, thanked her, and came through to the dining room.

She stopped in front of Rutledge’s table and said, keeping her voice low, “Are you the man from London? Scotland Yard?”

Rutledge, standing now, his serviette in his hand, replied, “Yes. Inspector Rutledge. And you are—?”

“My name is Priscilla Connaught. Please—sit down and finish your meal! But if I may ask you to meet me in the lounge—it’s down the passage, beyond the stairs— afterward? I won’t keep you long, I promise!” Her voice was almost pleading, as if she feared he’d refuse her.

Hamish said, “She’s verra’ agitated!”

Rutledge was already answering, “Yes, I shan’t be more than a few minutes. Would you prefer to join me—?”

“No! Thank you, no, this is a very—private matter.” Glancing around the room at the remaining diners, she shook her head, as if to reinforce her refusal.

“Then I’ll join you shortly.”

“Thank you!” she said again, and turning, walked swiftly out to the lobby, in the direction of the lounge.

Rutledge resumed his seat as Hamish said, “It’s no’ a name you ken?”

“No. But if she’s already learned that I’m from the Yard, she must live here in Osterley.”

Finishing his trifle quickly, Rutledge left the dining room and went down the passage to the lounge.

But it was empty, except for one of the families who had dined at the hotel.

“She hasna’ waited,” Hamish pointed out. “A woman will change her mind, if she canna’ be sure she’s doing what’s best.”

Rutledge turned back to the dining room and met Mrs. Barnett coming through the glass doors. “Oh—there you are! I put Miss Connaught in the small parlor, just there—” She pointed to a closed door beyond the lounge. “There will be other guests having their tea in the lounge. I thought you might prefer a little privacy.”

“Yes, thank you,” he said. “Could you bring us tea in about five minutes?”

“I’ll be happy to, Inspector.” Her voice held a cooler note.

Hamish said, “Aye, they know now who you are.”

His anonymity—his role as a man with no ties to the problems of Osterley—had been stripped from him. There had been a new reserve in Mrs. Barnett’s manner. And it would soon be reflected in that of other people. His questions would be met with reticence.

Rutledge walked on to open the door Mrs. Barnett had indicated.

Priscilla Connaught was sitting by the small hearth, staring at the empty grate. She rose as Rutledge entered the room, facing him as if uncertain whether or not she really wanted to speak to him. Frowning, she gnawed her lip.

She was tall, rather slim, with dark hair showing only the first hints of graying, but her face was that of someone who suffers constant pain. Not lined so much as the planes worn down to bone, giving them a severity that was not unattractive.

Over the dark gray dress she was wearing was a matching coat with a lovely little gold pin at her lapel, stylish but somehow conveying a sense of mourning in the austerity of the cut. Her hat was a softer shade of gray with a small bunch of white feathers where the brim lifted on the left side.

A woman who would stand out wherever she was.

Hamish murmured something, but Rutledge didn’t quite catch it, only the words “. . . a fierce pride . . .”

Miss Connaught was saying, “I hope you didn’t rush your meal on my account—” Her voice was strained.

“Not at all,” he replied with a smile. “I did take the liberty of asking Mrs. Barnett to bring us tea.” In an effort to put her more at ease, he asked, “Do you live here in Osterley, Miss Connaught?” He indicated her chair, and after she sat down stiffly, her back ramrod-straight, he took the one on the other side of the hearth.

“Yes—yes, I do. I’m—not a native of Norfolk. My family is from Hampshire.”

“I was surprised to find the harbor has all but vanished.”

“I—it has been silting up for well over a century, I believe—”

A silence fell. The room, small but comfortably furnished, seemed to stifle her. She looked at the chairs and tables, the magazines on a low stand, the several pieces of Staffordshire porcelain on the mantel—anywhere but at Rutledge’s face.

The door opened and Mrs. Barnett came in with their tea. Miss Connaught seemed almost relieved at the interruption, her eyes following the settling of the heavy tray on a table at her elbow.

Rutledge thanked Mrs. Barnett, and when she had gone, he said, “Would you rather I poured?”

Priscilla Connaught looked up at him, startled. “Yes. Would you? I—” She smiled for the first time, giving her face a little color. “I really think I’d drop the pot!”

He filled their cups, asked her her taste in sugar and cream, and handed her one of them.

She sat back, seeming to draw comfort from the warmth between her two hands. After a silence, she said, “I’ve come to ask you something that matters very much to me. I went to see Inspector Blevins, but the constable on duty tells me he’s gone home and I didn’t want to disturb him there. I’m not on the best of terms with his wife.”

“I don’t know that I can help you—” Rutledge began.

“It isn’t a state secret!” she said abruptly. “Surely not. I need to know, you see—I need to know if the man they have at the police station is the person who killed Father James. The constable suggested that I speak to you.”

Ah! Rutledge thought. Aloud he said, “Inspector Blevins believes that the man is the murderer. Yes.”

“And what do you think?”

Parrying the question, he asked, “Do you know Matthew Walsh?”

Surprised, she said, “Is that his name? No, I have no idea who he is.”

“He came to the bazaar. He was the Strong Man.”

“Oh. I do remember seeing him. He was quite a spectacle, actually. Why do they think he killed Father James?” She sipped her tea, and he thought for an instant that she was going to spill it—the contents seemed to move in tiny waves, in concert with her nervousness.

“Why are you so concerned for him?” Rutledge asked.

“Concerned?” she repeated, as if bewildered. “For him? No—I have no interest in him at all. I want to know who killed Father James. It’s very important to me to know! That’s why I’ve asked about this man.”

“Are you a parishioner at St. Anne’s?”

“I attend Mass there. But you’re not answering my question directly. Have the police found Father James’s murderer or haven’t they?”

“We aren’t sure,” he said. Something in her face shifted. Disappointment? Was that what she felt? He couldn’t be certain. “There appear to be very good reasons to believe that this man could have committed the crime. But there are also some unexplained problems. The courts may have to sort it out.”

“I need to know!” she said again, her voice harsh with that need. “I can’t wait until the courts do their work.”

“Why?” he asked bluntly. “Did you care so much for the priest?”

“I hated him!” Priscilla Connaught said roughly.

For an instant Rutledge was reminded of what Mrs. Wainer had told him. That Father James had been killed for revenge.

“That’s a very strong word, hate,” he told her. “And if you did hate him, why should you care whether his killer is found or not?”

“Because whoever killed Father James has cheated me!” she cried, her voice trembling. “And I want to see him hang for that!”

Looking back on the encounter, Rutledge realized that his face must have reflected his shock. Priscilla Connaught set her cup on the tray with a clatter that sent tea over the lip of the saucer and onto the shining silver surface.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she said, rising to her feet. “I didn’t mean a word of what I’ve just said. I’m upset, that’s all. Everyone in Osterley is upset by this murder. Frightened by it. It’s late, I must go—!”

Rutledge stood also. “No, I think you’ve told me the truth. And in my opinion, you owe me some explanation—”

“I just want the killer found, that’s all! That part is true enough. And I wanted to know if that man—what did you say his name was?”

“Walsh. Matthew Walsh.”

“Yes. If that man Walsh was likely to be the murderer. And you won’t tell me straight out whether you believe he is or not!”

She was flushed, and Rutledge thought she was close to tears. Suddenly he felt a wave of pity.

“We don’t have enough proof to charge him yet. It’s circumstantial evidence at the moment. But Inspector Blevins is waiting for information that might give us the answer to your question. And as a precaution he’s holding Walsh until it arrives.”

“Oh, God.” Her face seemed to close in on itself, the features tightening as if the muscles were pinched together. “Well, at least that’s honest.” She glanced around, searching for her purse, found it on the floor by her chair, and stooped to pick it up. “I’m sorry I interrupted your meal, Inspector. But I live alone; there’s no one to talk to about this. I sometimes think I’ve lost my perspective.”

“I wish you would be as honest with me,” Rutledge answered. “Why did you hate Father James?”

She sighed in resignation, brushing the edge of her hand across her forehead. “It was a very long time ago. Well in the past, and nothing to do with the police. It was before he became a priest. I went to him for advice, and he gave it to me. I followed it because I trusted him. And it ruined my life. It destroyed everything I believed in and loved and cared about. And this man who was so wise and compassionate and understanding became a priest. I have often wondered just how many other lives he ruined in his righteous belief in his own infallibility. But as long as I could hate him, I had something to live for, you see! And now that’s been taken away from me. And I really have nothing left. When that man killed Father James, he might as well have killed me, too!”

She swept past him, and out the door. Rutledge, staring at her stiff and uncompromising back, let her go.

Rutledge was halfway up the stairs when he thought about Monsignor Holston. He went down again to the lobby, found the telephone in the little alcove behind the desk, and put in a call to Norwich.

Eventually the priest answered, sounding out of breath. Rutledge identified himself.

“Sorry, I had to make a dash to answer the phone. Is there more news?”

“No, I’m afraid not. But I do have a small mystery on my hands. Tell me, do you know anyone called Priscilla Connaught?”

Monsignor Holston considered the question. “Connaught? No, I can’t place her.”

“She’s a parishioner here at St. Anne’s.”

“Was she at Mass this morning?”

“I didn’t see her. Tall, slim, graying dark hair.”

“No. I can’t put a face to the name. Does it matter? You could speak to Mrs. Wainer. She’d be able to tell you, surely?”

“Probably not important,” Rutledge said lightly. “Apparently Miss Connaught knew Father James a good many years ago. His death seems to have upset her more than most.”

“Priests have friendships, like anyone else. That shouldn’t surprise you.” There was a smile in the voice at the other end of the line.

“No, as a matter of fact, it doesn’t,” Rutledge responded. And after thanking Monsignor Holston, he hung up the telephone receiver.

Hamish said, “She wasna’ the kind of friend yon priest in Norwich would be told about. If she believed that Father James had ruined her life.”

“Yes,” Rutledge said slowly. “It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? I wonder if she came to Confession every week to tell him how much she hated him. The skeleton at the feast, reminding the merrymakers of their fate. Or in this case, the priest of his failure.”

The dining room was closed, the French doors shut, and Mrs. Barnett was just coming out of the lounge with a tray laden with the cups and pots of tea that she had collected there.

The contrast with Priscilla Connaught was striking. Mrs. Barnett looked tired, her hands red from dishwater, and her black dress rumpled from the heat of the kitchen.

Rutledge offered to take the heavy tray, but she shook her head. “I’m used to it. But thank you.” She rested it on the polished wood of the reception desk, and said thoughtfully, “I didn’t know you were a policeman.”

“I wasn’t here in a strictly official capacity. Not at first,” he answered her. “But Inspector Blevins is understandably eager to complete this investigation. I’ve been asked to stay on until then.”

“Yes, I’d heard there was an arrest.” She looked around her at the lobby and the stairs to the rooms above. “I was glad it wasn’t someone who had stayed here, that week. That would have been shocking! We always have a few guests for such an event.”

Taking the opportunity presented, Rutledge asked, “Would you mind telling me what you know about Miss Connaught?”

Alarm filled Mrs. Barnett’s eyes. “I can’t believe she has anything to do with Father James’s death!”

“She offered some information, that’s all. I wondered if it was trustworthy.”

“Ah.” Mrs. Barnett turned the tray a little, thinking. “It probably is, because she has no particular reason to lie, as far as I know. She keeps to herself.” And then as if prompted by his attentive silence, Mrs. Barnett explained, “Which hasn’t endeared her to most of the women here in Osterley. Many of them have put her down as a snob. That reserve of hers shuts people out. My late husband always believed she’d been involved in some sort of scandal, and was banished from Society.” She tilted her head, in the way women did when amused about the antics of men. “Well, that’s the romantic view, anyway.”

“What’s the general impression?” Rutledge asked, as if merely curious.

“That the only reason she’d be content in Osterley for so many years is that she has nowhere else to go. Occasionally she’s invited to dinner, to make up the numbers, and if she accepts, she’s pleasant company. But not the sort of woman another woman would sit down and have a good gossip with. Men seem to find her rather attractive and well-informed. But she’s not a flirt. I’d always wondered if she was married to someone rather unpleasant and there was a nasty divorce. The woman who cleans for her helps out here at the hotel when we’re busy, and according to her, Miss Connaught has no photographs or other personal things in the house, as if there’s no past that she cares to remember.”

Hamish commented, “Or no future to fill . . .”

Realizing that she had said more than she intended, Mrs. Barnett reached for her tray. Glancing up at Rutledge, she added, “I shouldn’t have told you that! It’s no more than idle speculation and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t pass it on. As owner of the only hotel, my livelihood is dependent on my discretion.”

“I see no purpose in passing it on. You’ve helped me make a personal judgment, that’s all.”

Lifting the tray again, she smiled. “It must be the fact that you’re a policeman. You listen rather well, and before I knew it, I was rattling on. Or perhaps I’ve missed my dear friend Emily more than I’d realized, since she moved to Devon to be with her daughter!”

He opened the door to the kitchen for her, and said good night.

CHAPTER 10

STILL MULLING OVER HIS CONVERSATION WITH Priscilla Connaught, Rutledge went out the hotel door into the evening air. The wind had picked up off the sea, cold as night, and he shivered. Turning toward The Pelican Inn, he made his way up Water Street to the main road, stopping for a time to look up at Holy Trinity. The church had beautiful proportions in this light, standing stark against the sky and framed by trees that marched south of it. Whoever had built it had had an eye for setting as well as architecture. Castles usually went up on the highest point in a district, but here it was the church. It must have been built after the Black Plague and the worst of the Wars of the Roses, because there were no defensive aspects in the design. Gracefulness was its hallmark, and the long windows, the high clerestory, the rise of the roof gave the tall tower at the west front and the round beacon tower at the chancel an elegance of their own.

Among the trees in the churchyard, Rutledge’s night-accustomed eyes picked out a solitary figure, head bent, standing among the gravestones. Then the figure straightened to stare up at the night sky above the towers. A mourner? Or another lonely soul with no home he wanted to go to?

“Like you?” Hamish asked softly.

Turning, Rutledge walked along the main road, passing the darkened windows of Dr. Stephenson’s surgery, the brightly lit ones of the police station, and what appeared to be a small country solicitor’s office tucked—with a prosperous air—into the corner where Water Street and the Hunstanton Road met.

His mind kept returning to the different view of Father James that Priscilla Connaught had presented to him, and before he could sleep, he wanted to think it through. Right or wrong, she herself believed it implicitly. Until half an hour ago, he’d believed that everyone had mourned Father James, the man and the priest, in equal measure.

“Relegating the dead to sainthood,” Hamish pointed out, “is no’ uncommon. No one wants to speak ill of the recent dead.”

Unlike Mark Antony’s wily promise over Caesar’s bloody corpse, Miss Connaught had come to bury Father James in every sense of the word, not to praise him. Which gave the priest human dimensions rather than saintly ones.

“It might have made him a better priest, knowing he’d failed one person,” Rutledge argued.

“Aye, it’s true. Ye canna’ tell without knowing how he’d failed the woman.”

But that had been left unspoken. Had Father James failed Miss Connaught personally—choosing the priesthood over marriage—or had he given her advice that a young man devoting his life to the Church might have seen as the only answer, although not necessarily the most compassionate one?

And in spite of her agitation, Rutledge was prepared to believe Priscilla Connaught when she swore she hadn’t killed the priest. Haunting him had clearly given her far more personal satisfaction than murder ever could. The reserved woman that Mrs. Barnett had described had been completely distraught.

“Unless Father James had learned to come to grips with it,” Hamish pointed out. “It wouldna’ satisfy her, then.”

Still, this second face of the man was intriguing.

Turning down the other leg of Water Street, Rutledge could see the bowl of sky out beyond the water, dark now but filled with stars, their clarity almost breathtaking. As he reached the quay, he stopped and stood there feeling the distant whisper of the waves, although he wasn’t sure he actually heard them. There was a line of luminescence out there as well, as if far beyond his earthbound line of sight, the moon was already rising.

Something prickled along his spine, a warning, and he glanced to his right to discover that he wasn’t alone here on the quay. A woman had walked out of the hotel and was standing some twenty yards away. Lost in her own thoughts, she hadn’t seen him. Holding her coat about her more as comfort than as a wrap against the wind’s chill, she was staring down at the stream that flowed in from the sea.

He stood very still, unwilling to disturb her reverie. She said something, the words whipped away in the wind. Thinking that she must have been speaking to him, he answered, “It’s a beautiful night.”

But she looked apprehensively in his direction as if only just aware that someone was there.

“Sorry,” she said. “I have a most dreadful habit of talking to myself!”

He walked toward her, stopping some ten feet away. She was, he thought, the other guest at the hotel. And, he realized, possibly the woman he’d seen in the churchyard on his first day. It was the set of her shoulders, and the way her skirts moved in the breeze.

“I’m afraid I’m guilty of that as well,” he said, then added as one does with a chance-met stranger, “I haven’t visited East Anglia in a number of years, and I’ve never been to Osterley. It’s a different world from London.”

“Yes.”

He thought for a moment that she was not going to continue, that her brevity was a signal to him to walk on.

But then she added, “I’ve come here before. It was a very long time ago. This trip, I’d planned to continue up the coast toward Cley, but for some reason, I’ve lingered. I suppose it’s because of the marshes. They’re beautiful around Osterley.”

“. . . a very long time ago . . .” He had the feeling that she meant long ago in memory, not in actual years. That she was thinking of someone and unwilling to speak of him to a stranger. A war widow?

Hamish said, “You willna’ hear me speak of Fiona—”

“No!”

Fiona, who had loved Hamish before the war, and loved him still. . . . She was a part of Scotland, and Rutledge refused to remember her.

But Hamish did, and the name hung between them like a bad dream.

The black ribbon of the tidal stream below the quay quivered as a small fish came to the surface and then vanished again.

The woman was saying pensively, “I don’t know why, but the rivulet there reminds me of something I read once. ‘I know a brook / Where the willow dips long fingers into / Water made sweet with summer. / Where birds come to drink, / And a lone fox lies dozing / In dappled shade . . .’ ”

Rutledge finished the lines silently. “ ‘. . . I know secret places / Where toads rest, / And a child sits, / Mourning the passing / Of butterflies . . .’ ” O. A. Manning had written those in a poem called “My Brother.” He knew it well.

Oddly enough, he understood what this woman was trying to say. That this barren little stream here in the marshes, gone astray and all that was left of the once-broad harbor, was neither familiar nor safe. As she, too, had managed to wander from the comfort and safety of a life she had once lived. But with no offer of surety that either would find a way back again, the stream or her world.

There was no answer he could make to that. He had no sureties either. Only of Hamish being there, from waking to sleeping, and unwilling to let him go in peace.

She lifted her head to look up at him, and smiled. There was a wryness in her smile that he found attractive. “How terribly dreary that sounds! I suppose it’s because we’ve had nothing but rain until yesterday. A rusting of the spirit, perhaps?” As she turned away to walk back in the direction of the hotel, her profile was outlined by the sky, very patrician, pale as a cameo against the darkness of her hair and her coat. “Good night.”

The farewell was formal, indicating that the brief companionship here in the dark was happenstance and not at all an invitation to further acquaintance.

“Good night . . .”

The air seemed to grow colder, and he could hear the lonely rustlings of the marshes.

Hamish had fallen silent.

Rutledge let her continue to the hotel alone, and stood for a time by the quay, until she had gone up the stairs.

After breakfast the next morning, Rutledge made his way to the vicarage to speak to Mr. Sims. The sun was shining again, catching the sparkle of flint, the dark red of the brick window facings, and the almost Mediterranean warmth of the tile roofs of Osterley.

Water Street was busy, carts and drays maneuvering around each other to make early deliveries—cabbages and turnips for the greengrocer, a brace of ducks and a cage of live hens for the butcher, and lumber for the smith’s shop, where a new wagon was in progress. Behind the houses, Monday’s wash hung on the lines, blowing in the surprisingly soft breeze.

Climbing the hill toward the vicarage, he could feel the coolness of the copse beyond the church and smell damp wood and wet leaves rotting beside the path. He turned into the vicarage gates, startling a half dozen birds busy at a bush along the drive. They swirled away in a glitter of sound, bright as berries on the wing. Overhead the old trees that sheltered the house spread heavy boughs, reaching out for sunlight and casting an umbrella of shade and shadow across the roof. Thick roots had broken through the earth to form a tangle of enticing places for childhood games—transformed into fortresses for lead soldiers and houses for dolls and sometimes even strong arms in which to curl up and sleep in summer’s warmth.

They dredged up memories. Rutledge’s grandfather’s house had had such places. An ancient oak, which he had thought he would never grow tall enough to reach his arms around, had stood near a pond of garrulous frogs, and just beyond its shade was the swaybacked shed where bicycles and sleds and croquet sets lived. The last time he’d seen it, at the age of seventeen, the back garden had seemed small, like his aging grandfather, and the tree had been toppled in a storm, ripped from rotting roots to sprawl like a drunken giant across the iron fence.

“We worked hard for our bread in the Highlands,” Hamish answered his thought, “and didna’ play with fine toys on well-trimmed lawns. Instead we washed in the stream that ran through the glen, and watched the sun go down over the mountain, glad to call an end to the day.”

Rutledge answered, “It made you what you are, as my childhood made me what I am. I can’t say that one or the other is better.” But Hamish could.

The vicarage was rather plain, sprawling, built of flint, designed more for a large family than for beauty. But there was a small, graceful porch over the door, and a pot of late-blooming flowers had been set in a patch of sun by the step.

Rutledge lifted the knocker and let it fall.

A man came to answer the door, his shirtsleeves rolled above his elbows and a large paintbrush in one hand. Slim and fairly young, his blond hair awry, he looked more like someone’s younger brother than a Vicar.

Rutledge identified himself and Mr. Sims said with some relief, “I’m in the middle of painting. I thought you were someone coming to fetch me. Do you mind if I go on with my work? Before everything dries out? Paint is unforgiving!”

“Not at all.” He stepped into the open hall and followed the Vicar up a flight of stairs.

The house appeared to be equally plain inside, with the kind of furnishings found in most vicarages—the outgrown collections of generations of occupants, left to the next man to serve or to be rid of as he wished. The finest piece was on the landing, a small Queen Anne table that must have belonged to Sims. No one would have left that behind intentionally.

“My sister and her three children are coming to keep house for me,” Sims said over his shoulder. “She lost her husband in the last year of the War, and I’ve just persuaded her to move here. The house in Wembley holds too many memories, and there really isn’t enough space for a growing brood.”

He disappeared into a large room down the passage where new wallpaper had been hung, cabbage roses and forget-me-nots on a cream background. There was a piece of paint-splattered canvas the size of a carpet lying under the windows and along the baseboard. Rutledge, stepping across the threshold, thought how bright and airy it was. Sims said, “This will be Claire’s room. I can only hope she’ll like it!”

His forehead was furrowed with doubt as he scanned his handiwork.

Rutledge said, “I’m sure she will.”

“This is a barn of a place!” Sims added. “I rattle around in it like my own bones. Children’s voices and laughter will make a vast difference.” He rubbed one hand over his forehead, leaving a smear of paint, and said with some intensity, “They’ve got a dog. A big one.” He began to paint the sashes. “What can I do for you, Inspector? I take it you’re here in regard to Father James’s death.”

“Yes. I’m trying to cover the same ground Inspector Blevins explored before me. We still have more questions than we have answers.”

“I’d heard there was someone in custody. The Strong Man from the bazaar.”

“Yes. His name is Walsh. But it will be several days before we can be absolutely certain we have our man. Inspector Blevins knows Osterley, knows the people here. He was one of Father James’s congregation. But I’m at a disadvantage. I’d like to know more about the victim, for one thing.”

“I thought this was a case of housebreaking gone wrong—” Sims said uneasily, looking over his shoulder at Rutledge as he smoothed the bristles of the brush along the sill.

“We surmise it was. But in murder, I’ve learned that nothing is certain. For instance, did Walsh know the priest before this autumn? Or had they met for the first time at the bazaar?”

It was a roundabout process, and Rutledge was patient.

“I have no idea,” Sims answered. “There’s been a bazaar at St. Anne’s for as long as anyone can remember. Most of the town attends it, just as the Catholic parishioners come to our Spring Fete. There isn’t enough entertainment in Osterley to stand fast on religious lines.” He threw a smile at Rutledge as he dipped his brush into the paint can. “As far as I know, this was the first year the bazaar committee decided to allow outsiders to perform. St. John the Lesser had been quite successful with such a program and it was the talk of Norfolk. A number of churches followed suit, and found that this drew attendees from miles around. Many of the villages inland from Osterley aren’t large enough to have anything approaching a bazaar, and so this one was—not surprisingly—rather popular. The Strong Man was a last-minute replacement when the wire walkers couldn’t come and suggested him instead. At least that’s what I’d heard.”

“Did Walsh use his own name for his act?”

“Lord, no, he called himself ‘Samson the Great.’ ”

Which suited the man under lock and key—defiant and arrogant.

Changing the direction of the conversation, Rutledge asked, “Was Father James a good priest? As you would judge any man of the Cloth.”

Sims turned, studying the amount of paint on his brush. Ruefully he replied, “Probably a better priest than I am. My father was a clergyman—I more or less followed him into the family trade, so to speak. It was expected of me. ‘Sims and Son, Clergy.’ Like the greengrocer or the ironmonger.” He began to paint again, concentrating on the strokes. “My father was terribly proud of me when I was ordained. But I learned soon enough that I never had the deep calling that made him a sincerely committed man. I’ll marry one day and raise a family, and serve my congregation faithfully. Holy Trinity is beautiful, and I’ll be proud of what I accomplish here.” He bent to dip the brush again. “But Father James’s church was his family, and a more dedicated man you’ll never find. And when my sons come to me to ask if they should follow in the footsteps of their grandfather and father, I’ll encourage them to ask themselves why they want to be clergymen. If I’m not satisfied with the answer, I’ll dissuade them, if I can.”

He stopped, appalled, and turned to Rutledge, heedless of the brush in his hand dripping onto his shoes, exclaiming, “I’m sorry! I don’t know where that came from! You’re not here to listen to me, you’re here about Father James.”

“You’ve answered me,” Rutledge said, “in your own way.”

But Sims shook his head. And with a lightness that was assumed to hide much deeper feelings, he said, “If I had your skill at listening, I’d be a very grateful man!”

“It has haunted you, that skill,” Hamish said. For Rutledge remembered clearly every word Hamish had spoken in the trenches, as if each was carved into the depths of the soul, out of reach and never worn away.

After a moment, Sims went on. “Father James had no ambition to rise in the church, even though his Bishop liked him immensely. He was content where he was. He gave himself unstintingly to anyone who needed him, and he was—as far as I could see—a happy man.”

“Aye,” Hamish agreed, “with promotion a man is thrust into the glare of public notice. Was that what kept him content, anonymity?”

“I’ve been told,” Rutledge said slowly, “that his advice— well meant as it may have been—has sometimes caused great hardship for people.”

Sims knelt to work under the sill. “We talked a good deal, he and I. Well, we were both bachelors, and on occasion I’d dine at the rectory or he’d dine here, and we’d spend hours on whatever topic was uppermost in our minds. Sometimes we both feared we hadn’t given the best advice. That’s an occupational hazard. Are you infallible as a policeman? Do you know one who is?” The Vicar glanced up with a wry smile.

“That’s a tidy answer for the seminary,” Rutledge answered. “Perhaps in the scheme of a man’s life—or a woman’s—well-meant advice leaves abiding scars and misery.”

“We try,” Sims said, sadness in his voice. “We pray for solutions, for guidance. For understanding. It isn’t always forthcoming. And so we do great harm sometimes.” He moved on to the next windowsill.

“Enough harm that a man might turn on a priest and kill him?”

Startled, Sims swung around to face Rutledge. “God— I wouldn’t want to think about that!”

“But it isn’t impossible.”

He put the paintbrush down. “I—no. By the same token, you must understand that when a human being commits a sin, he’s well aware of it. He doesn’t come to us to be told that; he comes for a solution. A clergyman must address the fact that the cost of paying in full may be heavier or more difficult than the sinner expects. Seeing him through becomes our duty. We can’t self-righteously wash our hands of him and leave him to it!”

“But what if the payment for a sin is out of all proportion to what the sinner has done?” Rutledge asked, thinking of Priscilla Connaught’s face.

Sims said, “That’s where forgiveness comes into the picture. When restitution as such is not possible.”

Hamish growled a comment.

Rutledge, who understood better than most what restitution and forgiveness meant, didn’t answer. Instead he changed the subject. “Tell me about Herbert Baker.”

“Herbert Baker? Good heavens, what has Baker got to do with Father James?” Surprised, Sims stared at him. “Oh—you must be referring to the fact that he sent for a priest! I don’t know where you heard that story, but it isn’t so remarkable. A dying man is likely to worry about his soul in ways that we, with time to make amends still stretching out ahead of us, can’t imagine. What would be on your conscience that you’ve never told any other person?”

The question was rhetorical. But Rutledge’s face answered him.

“That’s what I mean,” Sims went on, “when I tell you that a dying man is not like other penitents. Baker asked for Father James, and he came as a kindness. I can’t tell you what passed between them. But Father James never gave me any cause to think he was worried about what was said to him that night.”

Hamish, judgmental in his own fashion, said, “Aye, but would he? The Vicar is no’ a man long on wisdom.”

“Did Herbert Baker confess to you?” Rutledge asked Sims.

Sims said uneasily, “Yes. I’m not at liberty—”

But Rutledge interjected, “I’m not asking you to tell me what he said—”

Sims, in his turn, interrupted him. “If you’re asking me if there were shocking revelations, no. I will say he was mainly afraid that he had loved his wife too dearly, and God would hold that against him. She’s dead, has been for a number of years. Apparently they were quite close.”

“And the dead man’s Will, what about that?”

“I expect it was in order. There’s not a lot of money here in Osterley to squabble over. I daresay the house was left to the elder son, but Martin is a very conscientious man. He’ll see his sister and his younger brother right.”

Leaving the vicarage, Rutledge crossed the road and walked up the hill to Holy Trinity. When he tried the north door, he found it was unlocked. Lifting the latch, he went inside, his eyes adjusting to the darkness.

Over his head the king-post roof was dark and lovely, and the sun spilled through a great stained-glass window leaving puddles of color on the stone floor. Looking up he saw that it depicted orders of angels—he could recognize the archangels and angels, seraphim and cherubim in rich shades of yellow and blue and blood red. The orders were a very popular theme in East Anglia. In the center was the symbol of the Holy Trinity, and at the bottom were four figures he couldn’t identify, although one looked suspiciously like early portraits of Richard II and another was self-proclaimed by the scroll spilling across his lap as the Venerable Bede.

Hamish, to whom stained glass was iconography close to idolatry, was more interested in the construction of the marvelously carved wooden roof. Rutledge walked down the nave past benches capped with ornate poppy-heads, like inhabited fleurs-de-lis, and armrests carved as small animals, from dogs to griffins to ponies.

His intention was to take a closer look at the window above the high altar, but as he entered the small choir he nearly stumbled over a box of charcoal and a knee.

The woman he’d spoken to so briefly the night before was sitting on a hassock making drawings of the odd figures on the misericords—those half-seats on which a monk might rest his posterior without actually sitting down in the choir chair assigned to him.

She looked up, as startled as he was, and said, “Sorry!”

Hamish, remembering Lord Sedgwick’s comment, said, “The religious woman.”

“Did I hurt you?” Rutledge asked in concern.

“Oh, no. And it’s my fault for sprawling across the floor with my kit.”

He looked down at the drawing she was making, of a nun with ragged teeth, dramatic and lifelike in bold strokes of charcoal. “That’s quite good.”

Her expression became defensive. “It’s a hobby,” she said curtly.

To shift the subject, he gestured around him. “This is a remarkably fine church.”

“Yes, it is. I knew someone who was writing a book about old parish churches. He brought it to my attention.”

“I shan’t distract you, I only intended to look at the glass here.” He walked on, examining the window with its fine colors and vividly detailed figures.

To his surprise, she said to his back, “You’re the policeman from London, I think?”

“Yes.” He didn’t turn.

“Perhaps you could tell me—is it true they’ve caught the man who killed Father James?”

Rutledge turned slowly. “You knew him? Father James?”

“A little. He was interested in work I was doing, and I found him quite knowledgeable about East Anglian church architecture. He was generous with his time and I valued that.”

Rutledge walked back to her. Her upturned face was attractive, with intelligent gray eyes and a determined mouth above a very pretty chin. The dress she was wearing, a mossy dark green, was very becoming, but without the drama that was part of Priscilla Connaught’s apparel. “We don’t know if we have the right man in custody. There’s a good deal of work to be done before we can be certain of his movements between the day of the bazaar and the murder. But Inspector Blevins expects to clear that up quickly.”

She nodded, as if satisfied.

Yet something in her voice—or the way in which she had waited until his back was to her—had touched that deep well of intuition that Rutledge had always relied on. There had been some deeper interest than mere curiosity in her question, he thought. Probing, his mind still on Priscilla Connaught, he asked, “Were you here in Osterley when the bazaar was held?”

“No, I was in Felbrigg, having dinner with friends.”

Rutledge shifted to another direction.

“Did you see Father James the day he was killed?”

“No—”

“Was there anything about his death that worried you?”

He waited, continuing to look down at her. It seemed to make her uneasy.

Reluctantly she tried to explain. “I haven’t had much experience with murder investigations. It was probably more my imagination than anything else. But Father James had asked me a question on the last evening I dined with him. It was on my mind for several days, and after he— died—I found myself wondering if it might be important. But if you’ve arrested your man, then of course I was wrong! It doesn’t signify now.”

Rutledge replied carefully, “Who can say? Perhaps it still has some bearing on the case. Have you spoken of this to Inspector Blevins?”

She frowned. “No. I thought it best not to say anything. Inspector Blevins seemed convinced that the motive for the murder was theft. Not ancient history.”

“Will you tell me what it was? My name’s Rutledge. Scotland Yard sent me to Osterley because Father James’s Bishop expressed grave concern over the time it has taken to clear up this business. It isn’t idle curiosity behind my questions. And I won’t repeat what you tell me to anyone else—until or unless I see the need.”

The woman picked up her charcoal again and began to put wrinkles into the wimple of the nun, capturing them perfectly. “No, I just—Father James was so kind that I— sometimes one wants to help so badly that one starts to imagine that what one knows is important. I’ve already explained: The matter he was referring to had happened some time ago, years in fact, and really had nothing to do with Osterley or anyone who lives here. It was only the importance that Father James seemed to attach to it that made me remember it at all.”

“Was it a church matter? Or a personal one?”

“I rather thought it was personal. Most certainly the subject was a painful one for me, and he—Father James— was helpful in dealing with that. In return, I tried to answer his question, and failed. A disappointment to him, and a regret for me. But it had nothing to do with Osterley, I give you my word.”

She bent her head over the drawing, and Rutledge, looking down at the nape of her neck and the dark sheen of her hair, decided that this was not the time to press her.

“If you change your mind, Mrs. Barnett will see that any message reaches me.”

“Yes. Of course.” It was said with grave politeness, but he knew she had no intention of doing any such thing.

He waited for a count of ten, but she seemed to be absorbed in her work, as if unaware that he was still there.

Hamish scolded, “You canna’ leave it!”

But Rutledge was already walking through the nave, listening to the silences of the shadowy church around him. He was thinking that Mrs. Barnett would give him the name and the direction of this woman, and he could put Sergeant Gibson on to searching for her background, with emphasis on what connection she might have to Osterley or East Anglia. . . .

He had learned early on in his career at the Yard that people who did not want to talk to the police could not be made to do so. But he wanted very much to know what it was that Father James had asked of a comparative stranger that had left behind it such unease.

CHAPTER 11

THE FIRM OF GIFFORD AND SONS, Solicitors, was a small country practice that had been in business for some time, judging by the brass nameplate by the door. The letters on it were worn almost to smoothness from years of polishing away the sea damp that etched it like freckles.

Rutledge had noticed the location of the firm during his walk the night before. Now as he crossed from Trinity Lane along the Hunstanton Road, he decided to speak to whichever Gifford was available this morning.

The two unusual events in Father James’s life shortly before his death had been the bazaar, with its connection to Walsh, and the summons to the bedside of a dying man. Odd though the circumstances had been, there was no indication that out of that deathbed had come, like a phoenix rising, the shadow that had dogged Father James until it killed him.

All the same, it had to be considered. The policeman in Rutledge was too experienced to leave the matter. Nor could he ignore Priscilla Connaught or the woman he had quite literally stumbled over in the church. They, too, had some sort of personal link with the victim.

“You canna’ face London!” Hamish reminded him, with some force. “It’s no’ experience, it’s cowardice. You willna’ face your own life. Better to delve into another’s, and not think about yoursel’ and dying and Scotland.”

But Rutledge knew he was wrong, that Father James was slowly becoming a puzzle he could not walk away from. Not the priest, but the man . . .

As he came to the corner of the main road and Water Street, Rutledge paused and then opened the heavy door of Gifford and Sons. He stepped into Victorian elegance that had sufficed for two additional reigns and seemed to be in no haste to change. The elderly clerk at the desk might have served through all of them. He was tall and stooped, with the soft, very white hair seldom seen on any head younger than eighty. But the blue eyes that turned Rutledge’s way were bright as new paint.

“Good morning, sir,” the clerk greeted him. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Gifford?”

“No, regrettably,” Rutledge answered with equal formality, recognizing the game. “However, I hope that he’ll spare me a quarter of an hour. My name is Rutledge. Inspector Rutledge, from London.”

The observant eyes took him in from head to toe. “Ah. I shall inquire, sir.” Rutledge wondered how he had fared in the summing up.

The clerk disappeared through a door into the private sanctum.

Looking about him, Rutledge could see that little had changed here since the first Gifford had begun to practice. The three chairs set against the walls of the spacious room were covered in worn leather, and the velvet-shrouded table in one corner was smothered in photographs in gilt frames, mostly of a man growing older, his son following suit, and then two younger men standing firmly in front of the camera with a look of nervous self-importance. A photograph of one of those men, dressed in uniform, had heavy black ribbon threaded through the openwork of the ornate frame.

“Grandfather, father, and sons,” Hamish said. “And one didna’ come home fra’ the War.”

The clerk returned, standing on the threshold. “Mr. Gifford will see you, Inspector.”

He led the way down a narrow passage, where two doors on the left were firmly closed, as if with sad finality. All they lacked was the black crepe of mourning. The clerk paused before a third, opened it, and introduced Rutledge with a Victorian flourish.

Rutledge walked into a paneled room bright with racing prints and glass-fronted bookshelves, a fine mahogany desk that was far older than the man seated in the chair behind it, and on the broad windowsills, an array of antique European snuffboxes and Chinese snuff bottles, each a small, exquisite gem, from enameled gold to cinnabar, ivory to painted glass, porcelain to jade. In the indirect light of morning they were quite beautiful.

A miasma of cigar smoke hung in the air.

Gifford rose to greet Rutledge, and Hamish’s first comment was “He’s small enough to be a jockey!”

He was a foot shorter than Rutledge, with the small features that matched his frame, thin and wiry. His hair was a rich, thick brown, as was his beard.

“I’m Frederick Gifford,” he said, gesturing to a chair. “Do sit down and tell me what I can do for you. I assume you’ve come about the Will?”

Surprised, Rutledge said, “As a matter of fact—”

Gifford nodded. “It seemed unlikely that Inspector Blevins would be interested in its provisions, given the nature of my client’s death. I’m told that they’ve finally caught the killer. It’s chilling to think about: Still, I suppose if someone is poor enough, any sum is princely.” The words echoed those of Monsignor Holston. Moving the blotter to line up with the pen and inkstand in antique silver gilt, Gifford sighed. “But I must admit that I’m surprised Father James’s reputation had reached London. It’s a compliment to his memory that Scotland Yard should take an interest in the matter.”

“He’s fishing,” Hamish warned.

Rutledge, accustomed now to offering a placating sentence or two, answered, “Father James’s Bishop was concerned enough to speak to the Chief Constable about the case. The Yard, as a courtesy, sent me to reassure him that all that it is possible to do was being done.”

“It has most certainly borne fruit!” As if satisfied that Rutledge’s credentials were in order, Gifford went on. “Well, as to the Will. There was nothing extraordinary in it. Father James didn’t leave a large estate, and what there is goes to his only surviving relative, a sister with a very young family. There’s a suitable bequest to Mrs. Wainer, for her years of service as housekeeper, and a small sum for the church fund. Not, I’m sure, as generous as Father James had hoped it might be, in the fullness of time!” His eyes watched Rutledge behind the pedantic mask of solicitor.

“He couldn’t have foreseen an early death,” Rutledge agreed. He had chosen the words carefully, for there seemed to be something more and the solicitor was biding his time. Hamish, at the back of Rutledge’s mind, was also advocating caution. “Of course it’s too soon to be absolutely certain we have the right man. Inspector Blevins strikes me as thorough and experienced. He won’t be satisfied until he’s found the proof he needs. It does no harm to keep the broader picture in mind, meanwhile.”

There was a subtle change in Gifford’s manner, as though he had been waiting for a sign that Rutledge, the outsider, was not usurping the local man’s position. Villagers looked after their own. . . .

“Yes, well, we don’t have many murders in Osterley, thank God! But Blevins is a good man. We went to school together, the three of us—Blevins, my late brother, and I. He followed his father into the constabulary, and we went on to take up law. Two sides of the same coin, in many ways.”

Rutledge acknowledged the connection, saying lightly, “Unless you’re arguing for the defense.”

“True enough.” Gifford’s smile gave his face an unexpected strength. Reaching into a drawer of his desk, he extricated a sheaf of papers. He looked through them and selected one. “There was a codicil added to Father James’s Last Will and Testament some three or four days before he was killed. I haven’t been able to carry out his instructions, as the piece of property he’d specified has been mislaid.” He stared at the sheet before him, as if refreshing his memory, but Rutledge had the feeling he could have quoted the short paragraph from memory. “ ‘I leave the framed photograph in the bottom drawer of my desk to Marianna Elizabeth Trent, in the hope that one day she will have the courage to pursue the obligation that I must now entrust to her.’ ”

“A photograph,” Rutledge repeated, as Hamish echoed the words in his head.

“And an obligation. Yes. It was clearly of paramount importance to him, because he had written it out, to be certain I’d got it right.” Gifford frowned. “As a rule, a bequest is rather simple: a pair of garnet earrings to a favorite niece, or a collection of books to a cousin. That sort of thing. People generally want to ensure that a particular possession ends up in proper hands.”

“What did you make of this?”

“It isn’t my role to question, only to see that everything is regular as far as the law is concerned.”

“You’ve already contrasted Father James’s bequest with that of a pair of garnet earrings,” Rutledge pointed out quietly.

“True enough. When we’d finished, the codicil witnessed properly and so forth, he told me that it was a debt he owed, and wished to see paid. If I thought anything— and I’m not admitting that I did—it was that Father James wished to handle the matter discreetly, whatever it was. Rather than ask his sister to act for him. Or it may be that it was a kinder way of returning a photograph he valued, through a mutual friend.”

“Or—unfinished business of some sort,” Rutledge said, Priscilla Connaught coming to mind again. Was Marianna Elizabeth Trent another failure on the priest’s conscience? “A task he preferred not to ask you, as his solicitor, to perform for him. And using Miss Trent as the intermediary, the gift remains anonymous.”

Gifford stirred uneasily. “Perhaps Miss Trent knows this person. And could be depended on to break the news gently. Or in the right circumstances.”

“But this photograph has been mislaid, you said?”

“As Blevins must have told you, the desk was ransacked. Mrs. Wainer tried to put everything back, poor woman. As far as she remembers, there wasn’t a photograph among the contents, at least not a framed one. I myself looked, and there were no photographs at all in any of the drawers. It could very well be that Father James simply hadn’t gotten around to putting it in the desk. And Mrs. Wainer can’t be sure which of the photographs on display he had in mind, because apparently he never spoke to her about the bequest. Needless to say, I’ve been reluctant to make an issue of it. Nor have I contacted Miss Trent, since it’s rather awkward to admit we can’t put our hands on it.”

“She might know which it is.”

“I’d thought of that. But the Will is under probate, and there’s still time to find it. Early days!” Gifford restored the papers to his drawer. “A single photograph is not often the subject of a codicil, but there’s nothing wrong in it. And as long as the request is legal and reasonable, we are required to honor it.”

Hamish repeated something Rutledge had said earlier: “He couldna’ know he would be killed.”

Which was true. It might have been years before the priest’s Will was executed.

“Ye ken this photograph might be for a child?” Hamish demanded, following Rutledge’s thoughts. “And too young yet to be told who her mother is—or her father.”

Rutledge answered him silently, “And that will bear looking into.” Aloud he added to Gifford, “Will you leave a message for me at the Osterley Hotel, if you locate the photograph? I don’t suppose it will matter to Blevins’s investigation, but at this stage, who can say?”

“Yes, I’ll be happy to do that,” Gifford said, jotting down a few lines in a small leather-bound notebook.

“Did you know Father James well?”

“He was an ordinary man, in many respects. He never made anyone uncomfortably aware of his collar—there was never any fuss about it. I’ve seen him down on the floor reading a book with half a dozen children. But there was a dignity about him as well that I admired. Quite a good tennis player, and possessed of a wry sense of humor. He had the most persuasive voice.” Gifford grinned. “With that gift, I’d have been a barrister! Father James and the Vicar—Mr. Sims—and I sometimes dined together. Not out of deep friendship so much as for the company. I lost my wife in ’15. I’ve learned,” he said ruefully, “that a widower with a good law practice is fair game, to make up the numbers at a dinner party. Especially when a maiden sister or cousin has been invited.”

Rutledge laughed. He had been introduced to all the sisters of his friends and half their cousins—until he’d become engaged and thus considered off the market. A twinge of memory swept him. Jean had been the first to make it clear that he was not a good prospect now. Even for the most desperate spinster.

Gifford prepared to rise, bringing the interview to a close.

But Rutledge sat where he was. “There’s another matter. Did you also serve as solicitor to Herbert Baker and his family?”

It was Gifford’s turn to be surprised. “Herbert Baker? Good God, how did you come to know him?”

“I didn’t. But he died shortly before Father James’s death, and I’d like to know how his Will stood.”

Bewildered, Gifford said, “I don’t believe Father James witnessed it, if that’s your point.”

“No, but I understand from Dr. Stephenson that he was in attendance just before Mr. Baker’s death. What can you tell me regarding the Will’s provisions?”

Gifford steepled his fingers. “Very straightforward. There wasn’t much in the way of money, although Baker owned the house he lived in. It’d been his wife’s family home. Naturally he left that to the elder son, Martin, with the proviso that the other son, Dick, and the daughter, Ellen, live there until they married. Dick just came home from hospital, bad shoulder wound. And Ellen is the youngest. A late child.”

Rutledge considered how to put his next question, and decided to be blunt. “Were the three children Herbert Baker’s?”

“Good Lord, I should think they were! Ellen looks very much like her mother, and the brothers are the spitting image of Herbert. Same spare frame, and same high forehead, same left-handedness. Why on earth should you suppose they weren’t?”

“I don’t. I merely wondered if there could be any skeletons in the Baker closet.”

The grin reappeared. “Herbert Baker, if you’d known him, was not the man for skeletons. He was sexton at Holy Trinity until his health broke, and while he’d worked hard all his life, he hadn’t the money or the time to squander on wine, women, and song. A devoted father, most certainly. And as far as I know, an honest man.” The grin broadened into a smile. “If you want the truth, he probably led as boring a life as anyone in Osterley.”

“Then there was nothing that might have rested heavily on his conscience at his death?”

“The only thing that ever worried Herbert Baker as far as I know was his wife’s illness. It was hopeless from the start, but he sent her to London to be treated. Tuberculosis, and too advanced when Dr. Stephenson caught it to expect a cure.” He shrugged. “She was the kind of woman who never complained, never sent for a doctor except in childbirth, used her own remedies for whatever ailed her, and generally died as she’d lived, as self-effacing as possible. But the sanitarium gave her two more years of life, and I don’t believe any of the family would have considered it money wasted!”

“Sanitariums are expensive. Where did a poor man find the money?”

“Charity, if you want my honest opinion. It’s happened before, actually. Not three years ago there was a woman who needed surgery for her goiter, and a generous contribution from her employer paid the better part of the cost. It was done with circumspection—I handled the paperwork myself, as the donor wished to remain anonymous—and this woman has never learned the truth. She believes she paid the entire fee.”

Rutledge said, “You’ve been very helpful. One final question: Were both of Baker’s sons in the Army?”

“Martin was sent home, compassionate leave when his father’s health began to fail, and Ellen wasn’t up to running the household on her own. Dick was wounded, as I think I mentioned. Both men from all reports did their duty.”

But as Rutledge had learned, having used that phrase more times than he cared to remember, the words were a catchall when an officer knew too little—or too much— about a soldier under his command.

“Did their duty” covered a multitude of sins. . . . Had Herbert Baker begged absolution for one of his sons, from Father James?

Rutledge had left the solicitor’s office and was walking back toward the Osterley Hotel when a large motorcar with a uniformed driver pulled up beside him. In the rear seat, Lord Sedgwick leaned forward.

“I say, have you had your luncheon yet?”

Rutledge turned. “Good morning. No, it’s still fairly early—”

It couldn’t have been more than eleven-thirty.

“Well, come and dine with me. And I’ll have Evans here bring you back afterward. My son’s returned to Yorkshire, and I’m damned if I can stand my own company for another meal. Mrs. Barnett at the hotel”—Sedgwick chuckled—“will turn me out if I appear unannounced a second time within the week. Or have you made a commitment to her?”

Rutledge had not.

“Then come along and bear me company, if you will. We can talk about something other than the price of sheep and what cabbages are currently fetching!”

Hamish warned, “It’s no’ a very good idea—!”

Rutledge hesitated. Then he opened the door, noting the crest on the panel, and climbed into the car. The interior was beautifully done with velvet cushions and quite fine, polished woodwork. Lord Sedgwick leaned back and spoke to Evans. The motorcar purred into motion, and moved off down Water Street between the carts and people as Evans handled his gears with smooth perfection.

Sedgwick said, “Any progress in your murder investigation?”

“Gossip hasna’ been slow in spreading,” Hamish told Rutledge. “You’ll soon be verra’ popular.” It was a sour comment.

“We think we may have found our man,” Rutledge said noncommittally. “But Inspector Blevins is making certain that he’s done his job thoroughly.”

“Yes, well, I’ve posted a sizable reward for information leading to an arrest. I hope I’ll have the opportunity to pay it out to someone.”

Rutledge recalled that Blevins had spoken of a reward. “Did you, indeed? Were you a parishioner of Father James’s? Did you know him well?”

“Good lord, no. Anglican. The East Sherham church is on our estate. Still, I keep a friendly eye on my neighbors. Right thing to do! I rather dislike people killing people, and I know that money can jog memories—or tongues. Father James was a conscientious man, from all reports. A considerable force for good. Over the years, I’ve applauded that. We can ill-afford to lose men of his caliber. Osterley’s best and brightest have already been sacrificed to that bloody War. I saw you coming out of the solicitor’s office. Frederick Gifford’s brother, Raymond, was one of the finest men I’ve ever met, and he went down in flames over the German lines. Gifford’s two clerks died at Ypres. Anderson at The Pelican lost his boy at Jutland, and Mrs. Barnett’s nephew was artillery, shells blew up in his face. Sadly, the list goes on.”

They were turning back out of Water Street onto the main road again. On the hill, the flint walls of Holy Trinity seemed to shine with an inner light. “But that’s a morbid line of thought. Tell me, what do you do in London, Rutledge?”

“Much the same sort of thing I do here. Ask questions. Collate information. Consider the evidence and try to draw conclusions from it. Search for motives.”

Hamish, who’d been silent since Rutledge had entered the motorcar, asked, “Hobnobbing wi’ the great willna’ give you the answers either.”

Sedgwick grunted. “What you do requires patience.” Evans had braked to allow a wagon laden with firewood to make the turn into Trinity Lane. Just a few yards beyond it, there was a woman walking along the verge, head down, face hidden by her hat. Rutledge recognized her and apparently so did Sedgwick. Priscilla Connaught, in Wellingtons and a long coat.

Sedgwick spoke to Evans and they slowed. He leaned forward to say, “Good morning, Miss Connaught! I see you are on foot. Anything the matter with your motorcar? I can have Evans take a look this afternoon!”

“Good morning, Lord Sedgwick. No, I’m walking for the exercise. But thank you for your concern.”

Something in her face gave Rutledge the impression she was walking off a dark mood. Her eyes flickered in his direction and then came back to Sedgwick.

Sedgwick touched the brim of his hat and Evans put the car into gear once more. “She’s had the very devil of a time with her brakes,” the former explained to Rutledge. “I told her she’d wind up in the marshes, if someone didn’t fix the problem. Evans believes it’s in the linkage.” Picking up the thread of what Rutledge had been saying earlier, he continued. “I’m not a patient man by nature. Never was. Can’t sit confined for long. But then I wasn’t trained to it!”

“Few of us are.”

They were passing the school now, on Gull Street where it became the Sherham Road. After a time Sedgwick nodded to rolling fields where sheep grazed in the late grass. “I wasn’t born to farming. Anyone will tell you, my father made his fortune in the City. He bought the house in East Sherham when the last of the Chastain family died. I spent my summers here. To keep me out of harm’s way, I was given into the care of an old sheepman who—God forgive him—thought I was entirely spoiled and woefully ignorant. On the other hand, I believed that anything that allowed me to escape from my tutor was daring and rebellious. Before I quite knew what was happening, I’d learned as much about sheep as old Ned could teach me.”

He lifted a hand, deprecatingly. “My father was shocked to discover that I was breeding sheep and had a natural eye for the best rams to improve the flocks. The Chastains hadn’t maintained the land or the pasturage, and I was soon badgering him to buy up acreage and extend our holding. He sent me off to Oxford to cure me of such low habits.” He chuckled. “That finally made a gentleman of me, but I’ve always kept my eye on the management of the estate. And it’s prospered. Our sheep produce some of the finest wool in the world. Or did, before the War turned everything on its head and all anyone wanted to manufacture was uniforms and blankets.”

He turned to Rutledge. “I needn’t tell a policeman that life goes on. But it does, somehow. It must. There’s never any turning back to what once was.” He fell silent, looking at the window.

Rutledge heard a hidden bitterness in the philosophy, although Sedgwick’s tone had been light. But money was not always a guarantee of perfect happiness. . . .

The detective in him intrigued, Rutledge cast about for another subject of interest to the man at his side. “You spoke of a son. I think he must have dined last night at the hotel.”

“Arthur? Yes, he’s the elder. He went to the Front and came home a broken man. He’s still in and out of hospital. Wound in his back. Edwin, the younger of the two, had a gift for languages and was given the task of dealing with prisoners. Or the French. Whoever was most troublesome!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes. That would be fine.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s Egyptian, isn’t it?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A holdover from the Army,” Rutledge said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The news would be all over Osterley in an hour.

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

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

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

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

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

Closer, Rutledge could see the strain on the haggard face, etched by the bright sunlight into deep and defensive lines. The dark hair was threaded with gray. It was an odd time of the afternoon to see a man sitting idle. . . .

Rutledge passed him by, turning toward the hotel.

As he entered the lobby, Mrs. Barnett stuck her head out of the tiny cubicle that served as her office. She smiled and said, “Inspector? There’s been a telephone message from London for you. Would you care to return it now?”

It was a message from Sergeant Wilkerson, and after nearly three quarters of an hour of searching for the man, Wilkerson was located and instructed to contact Rutledge again.

Wilkerson’s rough voice came down the line with such a roar that Rutledge had to hold the receiver away from his ear. The Sergeant was of the school that believed that shouting compensated for any small insufficiencies in the telephone system.

“Chief Superintendent Bowles asked me to find you, sir. He wants you back in London as soon as may be.”

“I’m involved with the investigation here—” Rutledge began defensively.

“Yes, sir, he knows that. But we’ve found a body. Whether she’s connected with your murder or not, we can’t say. But the Chief Superintendent wants you to have a look.”

Rutledge felt cold. There was no clear reasoning behind his reaction. But he was afraid to ask the name, afraid he might already know what it was. He’d only just heard it himself.

Marianna Elizabeth Trent.

Another dead end . . .

Driving hard and fast, Rutledge reached London in the middle of the next morning. Stopping briefly at his flat to shave and change his clothes, he went in search of Sergeant Wilkerson at the Yard.

They had not worked together very often. Wilkerson was Inspector Joyce’s man, and seldom free for other assignments. Joyce, in his mid-fifties, was a plodding but thorough policeman with no expectation of advancement and no desire for any. He had said, often enough, that policework and not paperwork was his pleasure, and the higher one goes, the deeper the tonnage of paper.

Wilkerson greeted Rutledge with some surprise. “You must have driven all the night, sir. Would you care for a spot of tea brought up to your office?”

“I did.” Hamish was all that had kept him awake on the road, after Colchester. And even Hamish had lost his edge on the outskirts of London. “Yes, send someone for tea, and then come upstairs.”

The tea provided by the Yard was black and strong enough to cope with any man’s drowsiness, coating the stomach with an unspeakable sludge that held the body upright for hours.

A few minutes later, Wilkerson stepped into Rutledge’s office and took the chair by the door. He waited until the constable on his heels had delivered Rutledge’s tea before beginning his report.

The Sergeant was as big as his voice, florid of face with thinning sandy hair and a double chin that overlapped the collar of his uniform, giving the impression he was on the brink of choking to death. A man who had come up through the ranks but bore no malice toward Rutledge, who had come from a very different background.

He began his report diffidently. “About this woman, sir. It was the usual thing. One of the boats on the river found her; can’t say whether she went in by accident or design. Bloated but hadn’t been there long enough for the fish to get at her. There were some bruises, but nothing to signify anything more than the tossing she’d taken in the water. The problem was identification.”

Rutledge, swallowing his tea with a grimace, nodded. Identification of the corpse was the first order of police work.

“She had none on her—no letters or papers or the like—and she didn’t match any of our missing persons records. We advertised more than a week for information. Then a woman who keeps a boardinghouse walked into a local station and reported that a lodger had skipped without paying her rent, and wanted her found. Right balmy old bitch, I’m told, arrogant and demanding. But the Sergeant on duty remembered the description of our lass, and soon enough they had the landlady down at the morgue. She couldn’t have identified the body—she only gave it a glance—but she did say the hair was right. We showed her the clothes the deceased was found in, but she wasn’t what you’d call certain what the lodger was wearing the last time she’d gone out. Or whether she could have been provided a new wardrobe by any gentleman she had taken up with. But the landlady did fling another fit about not getting her money, which made Inspector Joyce suspect she must be fairly sure it was the missing woman.”

Rutledge asked, before Wilkerson could put a name to the corpse, “Any trouble with her before? The landlady?”

“None, except for the occasional lodger who disappears with back rent owing. Then she’s demanding the police earn their keep. She gets a class of women who aren’t steadily employed, if you take my meaning.”

“Why did Chief Superintendent Bowles think the dead woman might be connected with the murder in Norfolk?”

“Stands to reason, doesn’t it? The lass worked as a shill for an Italian bloke who—the landlady claims—died in the War. Then she spent the better part of the summer with a Strong Man’s show, called himself Samson. Your man Walsh, it appears. Landlady remembers when he came to collect her, because of his size. They had a few words, did the landlady and this Iris Kenneth, on parting. But Mrs. Rollings took her back again when the Strong Man was tired of her!”

Iris Kenneth, then. With no connection to Father James . . .

After a visit to the morgue to look at the body and the woman’s clothing, Rutledge went with Sergeant Wilkerson to the small boardinghouse on a run-down street where Londoners with thin pockets often took rooms. It was just off Eustace Road, where industry had crowded out anyone who could afford to move on. Mrs. Rollings was plump, with tightly curled black hair, a pinched mouth, and an air of long-suffering. When Wilkerson introduced Rutledge to her, she looked him up and down, then said, bristling, “It doesn’t do my establishment any good to have a policeman at the door every other day! This is a respectable house.”

Rutledge smiled. “I’m sure it is.” She thawed visibly as the smile touched his eyes. “We’ve come to ask if you still have Iris Kenneth’s belongings.”

“Lord love you, why should I have kept them? Didn’t bring in much, I can tell you, not near enough to pay what I was owed. And I needed the room.”

She looked up and down the street with the same suspicious air with which she’d regarded Rutledge, and then stepped back from the door. “Do come inside, before I have to explain to half the neighborhood why I’m entertaining the police again!”

They followed her into a musty entry, where a flight of worn stairs ran up into darkness. The windowless entry itself was nearly as dark, for the glass panes in the door didn’t cast light beyond the first step, and the lamp was turned so low that it had long since given up trying to illuminate anything but the small circle of brightness on the gray ceiling and the first landing. Mrs. Rollings opened a door on her left, and led them into her sitting room.

It was surprisingly comfortable, if shabby. There were odds and ends of porcelain on the mantelpiece, including a demure shepherdess with a leering satyr at her shoulder. The juxtaposition of the pieces was nearly lewd. Rutledge wondered if it exemplified Mrs. Rollings’s sense of humor or the tastes of her guests. Prints on the other two walls were of theatrical productions, one Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet and the other a popular act in the music halls some twenty years ago. Mrs. Rollings herself wore rouge that stood out like two fever spots under the powder, and her hair was dyed. The jeweled rings on her plump fingers were cheap paste, one of them large enough to have poison secreted in it. Rutledge’s opinion was that it might have once been a prop in an Italian play.

She offered them the horsehair settle, and the two men sat gingerly side by side on the stiff upholstery. It smelled of dust and old dog. She herself took a very pretty wing chair covered with a faded but handsome brocade. On the table at her elbow was a collection of shells and a number of pottery jugs with the names of seaside towns painted on them. Where her guests had worked?

Hamish, his Covenanter soul offended by anything remotely smacking of the godless theatrical world Mrs. Rollings inhabited, declared, “She’s no’ going to give you an honest answer! It isna’ in her nature.”

“We’ll see,” Rutledge told him. Aloud he asked, “Did you like Miss Kenneth?”

“What has liking got to do with it?” She stared at him, genuinely surprised. “As long as my guests pay me on time and in full, I like them very well.”

“Was she a clever girl?”

“She was pretty. She thought that would take her far. But not far enough if she ended up in the river.” Mrs. Rollings leaned forward. “Now what was this about Iris’s belongings?” There was an avaricious glint in her eyes.

“Do you know if she might have owned a pair of old shoes, a man’s, with a worn heel and a tear in the sole?”

Mrs. Rollings’s eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. “Old shoes? Men’s shoes?”

“Yes. We’d like very much to know if she possessed such a pair.” Realizing that the concept was totally foreign to his hostess, Rutledge added, “Perhaps from some role or other.”

Wilkerson, stolid and silent, was looking around the room as if he expected to find something nasty hidden behind the wallpaper.

“Well, I should think not! She wasn’t the kind of girl who played in farce—she didn’t have the talent for it! It was more in her line to stand there looking respectable and drawing custom. She was quite lovely in green. You’d have thought her a lady, if she didn’t open her mouth.” Lovely was pronounced as luuvley.

Wilkerson said, “Then you are telling us that no such shoes were found in her belongings?”

“None that I know of! And I was fairly careful in searching through them.”

“Would another—er—guest have searched them before you did?” the Sergeant continued.

“Here! There’s no stealing in my house.”

“No, surely not,” Rutledge soothed. “But if you come across old shoes like those I’ve described—even in an unexpected place—will you send a message to Sergeant Wilkerson here?”

“Is there a reward for what you want to know?” she asked sharply.

“No. But it will be in the public interest.”

Her expression informed him what she thought of the public interest.

Hamish had been right. Rutledge stood up, and Wilkerson lumbered to his feet as well.

“You’ve been most helpful, Mrs. Rollings. Thank you for your time.”

She regarded them warily, uncertain if it was truly old shoes that had brought the police around. “There’s nothing else you wanted to know about her things?”

“Only if she’d pinched any of them,” Wilkerson answered.

That silenced Mrs. Rollings. Anything nice enough to have been stolen had already found its way to the next owner or a shop dealing in secondhand goods, no questions asked.

She saw them out with poor grace, and shut the door on their heels.

Sergeant Wilkerson laughed. “She’s a right old besom, but there are any number on the street like her.” He gestured in either direction at houses no better kept than hers, their paint peeling and roofs showing stains from years of damp. “But they serve a purpose. Many a pretty girl who went out to seek her fame and fortune would be lucky to wind up here, and not selling herself in the stews. There’s not been a lot of work for this lot, what with the War and all, but they’ve managed to survive. Somehow they always do. This Iris Kenneth would have had an eye for the main chance.”

“And yet she ended her life in the river.”

Rutledge compared the street here with Osterley, where prosperity had slipped away but dignity and resourcefulness had kept up appearances.

“Well,” Sergeant Wilkerson added as he turned to walk back to Rutledge’s motorcar, “it wasn’t much to go on, but you never know.”

The epitaph of police work, Rutledge thought.

“Yes,” he answered. “But I’d give much to know if Iris Kenneth was pushed, or was desperate enough to throw herself into the water.”

“You think that man Walsh might have wanted to be rid of her?”

“It’s possible. If she helped him rob the priest’s house. Or she may have been working for someone else with a better reason to kill her than Walsh had. The Iris Kenneths of this world seldom live to old age.” Although Mrs. Rollings had. It depended, he thought, whether the woman was clever or naive. Whether she could protect herself or was destined to be a victim.

He started the motorcar and stepped up behind the wheel. “I’ll be going back to Norfolk,” he told Wilkerson. “Will you pass that message to Chief Superintendent Bowles? And if there’s any more information about this Iris Kenneth or her death, I want to know about it.”

“Aye, I’ll see to that,” the Sergeant promised. He sighed. “I never fancied drowning, myself. I’d look to a quicker way of dying.”

“My first Inspector told me that women preferred drowning because it didn’t hurt and it didn’t mar the face. When I saw my first corpse from the river, I knew he was wrong. We never identified her. No one could have.”

Rutledge went to his flat and slept for two hours, then headed north again. But when he reached Colchester, he pulled into the dark yard of the Rose and Crown and slept until dawn. It was nearly dinnertime when he reached Osterley. The muscles in his chest ached, and his stomach rebelled at the thought of a formal meal at the hotel. After washing up, he walked down to The Pelican.

The cool night air, with its tang of the sea and the earthy scent of the marshes, welcomed him like an old friend.

CHAPTER 13

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?

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?

Why—when he could have given it to her on the same day he’d brought that carefully crafted paragraph into the solicitor’s office and asked to add a codicil to his Will?

The wain reached the turning for Gull Street and the Sherham Road and began to swing wide to plod around the sharp corner. Abruptly—without any warning— Rutledge found himself locked in an angry exchange with Hamish.

It had nothing to do with the discussion in the rectory kitchen. Not directly. It was instead an accusing and angry personal indictment.

“I canna’ ken why ye’re sae keen on proving yon Inspector wrong! Are you sae certain the Strong Man is innocent? When you walk away fra’ this town, you’ll leave behind raw wounds that willna’ heal as swiftly as yon hole in your chest! It’s a cruel thing, to stir up secrets to no purpose! Ye were sae set on Herbert Baker’s Confession as the key to this death, and now the auld woman has explained why it wasna’ any sich thing!”

“There are too many questions about Walsh. If he killed the priest, it had nothing to do with the bazaar money. I’d wager a month’s pay on that! And I can’t go over Blevins’s head and ask the War Office for information about where Walsh served. But that will have to be dealt with one way or another, before we can discuss guilt or innocence.”

“I canna’ see how a photograph is important.”

“It may not be. That’s a part of police work, too—to eliminate the variables.”

“And when the photograph also turns into a wild-goose chase, ye’ll go back to London?”

Rutledge said nothing. The wain lumbered into the turn, top-heavy and awkward. Two young boys along the road shouted at the driver, and began to run after him, as if trying to overtake the wain, their laughter spilling out like silver threads. The team of great Norfolk horses pulling the wain ignored the rowdy pair, heads down and shoulders into their harness. Rutledge watched them, concentrating on shutting out the voice in his head.

But Hamish was not to be put off.

“You willna’ see it, but ye’re running from yoursel’. You couldna’ find peace in your sister’s house, you couldna’ find peace in your flat, and then you couldna’ find peace at the Yard. And ye willna’ leave Norfolk, because there’s nowhere else to go. You’re afraid because in hospital you discovered a fierce will to live—”

Rutledge answered grimly, “I’ve been shot before—”

“Aye, that’s as may be! Piddling wounds that didna’ require more than bandaging at the aid station or a dram of whiskey! This was verra’ different. It left its mark. Why are ye sae afraid of living?”

Rutledge realized that the motorcar had not moved, and the wain was nearly out of sight down the Sherham Road. He drove on past the intersection and pulled into a tiny lane that ran between two houses. There he put the gears in neutral, set the brake, and leaned back to rub his hands over his face as if to erase the emotion there.

It was something he had tried to shut out from Hamish. But the Scot, used to burrowing deep into his secrets, had ferreted it out.

In truth, it had little to do with Scotland. . . .

On the night of his second surgery, he had heard the doctors telling Frances that the odds were against him; he might not survive going under the knife. “Too close to be sure,” one of them had said, and he had listened to Frances’s voice in his drugged state halfway between consciousness and sleep.

“He won’t leave me alone,” she said fiercely. “He won’t.”

And then someone had leaned over his bed, hovering in what appeared to be a mist but was only the anesthetic taking hold. At the time it had given the white hair and the kind face an insubstantial air, as if half dreamed.

“There’s nothing to fear, son. Whatever happens. But if you want to live—He’ll listen. Be sure of it.” The South Country voice speaking softly in Rutledge’s ear was confident, serene.

After that, the darkness had come down, and there had been no pain, only peace. It was not until many hours later that Rutledge had come back, in worse pain, to wakefulness.

It had startled him, to find himself alive. And he had been terrified that he’d begged to live, when he had no right . . . no right at all.

Much later, Frances had brought the corpulent little clergyman in to meet him. The doctors, Rutledge learned, had sent for the man to offer comfort to her if her brother died. In the light of day, Mr. Crosson was neither insubstantial nor half dreamed, but a practical and straightforward rector who regarded the patient with sharp blue eyes and said, “Well, then, Mr. Rutledge. I’m glad to see you know your own mind!”

It was far from the solace that Mr. Crosson had intended. Instead it had shaken Rutledge as deeply as the lines of sleeplessness on Frances’s face. And it confused him as well; all his energies for so very long had been concentrated on dying and to live was something he wasn’t— couldn’t be—prepared for.

“Oh, aye, was that it, then?” Hamish asked derisively. “Most men would ha’ been glad to live to see an end to the case. You went to hospital and buried your head in sand! You went back to work to bury your head in sand. And you stay here in Norfolk to bury it again.”

“What do you want from me?” Rutledge said tiredly. Listening to gulls call from the direction of the harbor, he tried to defend his answer. But their wild laughter distracted him. “You know that Blevins needs to sort out this murder.”

“Oh, aye, a training program for the local constabulary, is it?”

Rutledge nearly lost his temper, but Hamish got there before him.

“Ye’re the man with a fine understanding of people, they say. Can ye no’ understand yoursel’? D’ye think I wanted ye to die? No, like yon Connaught woman, I havena’ any wish for you to die. No’ until I’m ready! In France God wouldna’ have you, and He doesna’ want you now. But I do!”

Had he wanted to live? Rutledge asked himself, as he put the motorcar into gear once more and took off the brake.

There was no honest answer to that.

There hadn’t been for three weeks.

And Hamish fell ominously silent as they passed the turning for Water Street and slowed for Trinity Lane.

Rutledge made the turn into Trinity Lane, and pulled the motorcar into the web of shadows cast by a tree just by the churchyard wall. Switching off the motor, he sat back against his seat for a moment before stepping out into the light breeze that tempered the sun’s warmth.

From the churchyard where he walked, deep in thought, he could just catch the glimmer of the sea, struck by the sun and bright enough to hurt the eyes. Seagulls were wheeling above the tower, like white rooks, their hoarse cries almost human. He found he was listening to them instead, not wanting to think, not wanting to feel.

And then a woman called to him from the north porch of the church. “There you are, Inspector,” she said, as if she had waited there for half an hour or more for him to arrive. “I thought you’d forgotten!”

He turned toward the church, where May Trent was crossing the grassy churchyard toward him. “You had said something this morning about wanting to speak with me—”

Rutledge had said nothing of the sort. But as she moved away from the north porch, a man followed her out of the church. It was Edwin Sedgwick.

Her face was toward Rutledge, and there was a pleading smile on it. It made her look young and vulnerable.

“Yes, I have to apologize for being late,” Rutledge said immediately, removing his hat and standing there by the first row of gravestones, penitent.

Edwin Sedgwick moved gracefully in Miss Trent’s wake and she turned slightly to introduce the two men.

They shook hands. Sedgwick was saying, “I’d heard that you’re assisting Inspector Blevins. Any luck with the investigation into Walsh’s background? I had to drive my brother to London yesterday; I haven’t heard the latest news.”

“We’ve come up with a few pieces of information that seem to point in his direction,” Rutledge responded. “You knew Father James, I think?”

“We weren’t congregants at St. Anne’s, but of course everyone came to the bazaar. My father was offering a prize in the children’s games. Looking back on it, it seems to me that Walsh was affable enough, minding his own business and something of a success with the ladies. Hard to believe he was the sort to come back later and murder anyone, much less Father James.”