Watchers of Time

The sun was in his face, the cold gray eyes warmed by concern.

“Was there anyone else there that day who might have had words with the priest? Or showed any signs of unusual interest in the rectory?”

“On the contrary, as far as I could tell it was an orderly crowd, and the amusements seemed to keep them entertained. The afternoon appeared to be very busy, and I think Father James was pleased.” He frowned as he tried to remember. “There was one skinned knee, as I recall, when some boys ran out to play among the graves. My father quickly put a stop to that, and Mrs. Wainer bound up the wound. My brother was in some pain because of his back, and shortly after that, he asked my father to drive him home. I left with them.” He turned to May Trent. “The famous bidding war began just after that.”

She laughed. “Oh, yes, Mrs. Gardiner and Mrs. Cullen saw a pitcher at the White Elephant Booth at exactly the same time. Father James finally had to ask them to draw lots. I thought it was clever of him.”

Sedgwick looked at his watch. “I must be going. Evans is waiting for me at the hotel. Inspector.” He smiled at Miss Trent. “I’ll speak to you another time.”

“Yes, indeed.” She watched him stride briskly down the walk and turn toward Osterley as he went through the gates. Then she quietly apologized to Rutledge. “I’m so sorry! I was nearly desperate, and you came along just when I needed rescue!”

“What happened?”

“He came looking for me in the church and asked me to have dinner with him in King’s Lynn. I told him I had other plans for this evening, and he was just about to ask me about tomorrow night, when I saw you out here. He’s an attractive man, and probably not used to rejection, but I’m—I’d rather not establish a precedent by accepting his invitations. It was such a relief to see you! Do you mind very much?”

“Not at all. But surely you could have managed, if I hadn’t come along.”

With a lift of her chin, she said, “Yes, of course. But you see, Peter Henderson wasn’t feeling well, and he was resting in one of the pews down by the altar screen, where it was cool. Wrapped in a blanket that the Vicar keeps there for him. I didn’t want Edwin Sedgwick to jump to conclusions—” Her face turned a becoming shade of pink.

Rutledge smiled, and it lighted his eyes. “I understand. Is there anything I can do for Henderson?”

“If you could drop me at Dr. Stephenson’s surgery, I’d be grateful. A headache powder would probably help him. He doesn’t eat regularly, I’m afraid, in spite of our efforts to see that he does, and I suspect that’s the root of the problem.”

“I’ll take you and then bring you back.”

“No, please. Peter sometimes uses the church as sanctuary, when it’s cold or wet. He knows I go there often; it doesn’t seem to bother him. But if you came in—”

“Whatever seems best,” he told her.

They walked together toward the motorcar, and she said, apropos of nothing, “You don’t believe Matthew Walsh killed Father James, do you? I wonder why.”

He studied her face. “Why should you think that?”

“A woman’s intuition, I suppose. And the way you go on asking questions. As if you seem to be waiting for something. A mistake. A false step. I don’t know. I have this rather uncomfortable feeling that one day quite soon, you’ll pounce!”

It was a very different attitude from Hamish’s.

And it made Rutledge feel ashamed.

How did one touch the spirit to test its scars? The reasons a man did things, the unconscious pressures behind ordinary decisions . . .

As he opened the door for her and went to crank the engine, Rutledge realized that he’d missed his chance to ask her about the photograph.

Outside Dr. Stephenson’s surgery, Rutledge stopped long enough for Miss Trent to thank him again and then disappear through the waiting room door.

He pulled out again in the wake of a milk wagon, and was halfway down Water Street when he saw Blevins walking in the same direction.

Blevins turned at the sound of a motor and recognized Rutledge at the wheel. He called out curtly, “You’re a hard man to find when wanted!”

“I’ve been to speak to Mrs. Wainer again.”

A greengrocer’s cart came up behind the motorcar, the horse snorting uneasily at the smell and noise of the vehicle. Blevins said, “Don’t clog traffic. I’ll meet you on the quay.”

Rutledge nodded. He left the motorcar in the hotel yard and walked out to the quay. Inspector Blevins was already standing there, staring down at the water. Sun streaked it as the tide trickled in. It was moving the narrow stream sluggishly now, but would do so with more method later.

Blevins’s shoulders were stiff, angry.

Rutledge said, coming up to the other man, “What’s happened?”

The Inspector turned, looking around to see if they could be overheard.

“I hear you’ve been hobnobbing with the gentry.” There was cold fury behind the words.

“Lord Sedgwick? He invited me to lunch. I was interested in knowing why.”

“Did you find out?”

“No. At least—I’m not sure,” Rutledge answered truthfully.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rutledge held on to his temper. “Look, I don’t know these people the way you do. I couldn’t. I haven’t lived here all my life. I have to depend on instinct to hear what lies behind their words. You never warned me off Sedgwick. Or anyone else.”

“Sedgwick put up the reward for Father James’s killer. Did he tell you?”

“Yes. He did. What difference does that make? Does it remove him from suspicion?”

Blevins turned back to look at the marshes. His profile was set, hard. “I had asked the Chief Constable to speak to the Yard about keeping you on here, and a Chief Superintendent by the name of Bowles agreed to it. Now I’m not sure I did the right thing.”

Suddenly Rutledge could see through Blevins’s fury. He resented the fact that the man from London, with his polished airs, had been treated with noticeable favoritism by the local gentry when he himself never had. . . .

“Sedgwick won’t make any friends for you. I can tell you that,” Blevins went on. “And if you have ambitions in London, he won’t do you any good. He’s not old money.”

“I never believed he was,” Rutledge answered coldly. “And as for any favors he might do me, I choose my own friends and pick my own enemies.” He let the words lie there, a challenge.

Blevins looked at him again. “There was a rumor. The Chief Constable had heard that you came back from the War a broken man. Half the policeman you were. If that.”

Unspoken was the rest of what Blevins wanted to say. “You might be in need of patronage . . .” But the words hung in the very air between the two men, accusatory and damning.

Hamish was saying something, but Rutledge was intent on fighting his own battle.

“I came back from the War broken by the waste of it,” he told Blevins, his voice harsh. “It was a bloody waste of lives and we brought home nothing—nothing!—to show for four years of dying in trenches not fit for swine. I asked no favors from anyone, and I received none. I did my job as well as I knew how, just as every other man back from the Front tried to do his. No one gave me back my past, and no one will hand me my future. Whatever your grievance is with me now, it has nothing to do with the War, and nothing to do with my skills as a policeman!”

Blevins stared at him, and then looked away, surprise in his eyes. Behind the thin face and the polite manner was a will stronger than he’d believed. “All right. I apologize.” He took a deep breath. “I’m at my wits’ end, that’s what it is. Look, I have to put together—and damned soon!—a sound enough case against Walsh that I can take to trial. Otherwise I have to let him go. We can’t hold him forever on suspicion. And right now, that’s all I’ve got!” Blevins took two quick steps away, and then turned back to Rutledge. “It’s like chasing wraiths, nothing can be nailed down!”

“Have you told him about Iris Kenneth’s death?”

“No. I find I can’t stand the sight of the man. He’s taken to sitting there smirking, like a damned gargoyle. One of my constables swears he’ll choke Walsh into confessing.” A twisted smile crossed his face. “Damned fool is half Walsh’s weight!”

“Let me be the one to break the news.”

Blevins considered the offer. “All right. Come and talk to him, then. Nothing else is working. This is worth trying.”

They walked in silence back to the police station. There, Blevins gave the key to Rutledge and gestured in the direction of the small cell.

When Rutledge unlocked the door, Walsh was sitting on the bed, a smile pinned to his face. That changed when he saw that it was not Blevins or one of his constables. A shadow of concern took its place.

“What are you doing, standing there in the doorway, like the Trumpet of God?” Bravado in a deep voice.

Hamish said, “He thinks you’ve come to take him to Norwich. Or London.”

It was a sharp observation.

Rutledge said, “There’s been an interesting development in your case.”

Walsh shoved himself to his feet, a big man with hands twice the size of Rutledge’s. “And what might that be?”

“Iris Kenneth.”

Surprise swept over Walsh’s face. “What’s she got to do with anything?”

“We thought she might have been the person you left on watch under the lilacs. That clump of bushes is out of sight of the neighbors’ windows. A clever place to stand and watch, in my opinion.”

“She never stood there! Because I wasn’t there. And if she told you she was, it’s out of malice. She’s a bitch! She’s got it in for me because I didn’t keep her on, that’s what it is! I could wring her neck!”

Rutledge waited to a count of ten, watching the man’s face. It was a thinking face, but not a cunning one. The Strong Man wasn’t just muscle and brawn; he was capable of working out the ramifications of his position and dealing with the reality it represented. But he didn’t appear to have that extra measure of slyness that sometimes cropped up in people of his ilk.

As if in agreement, Hamish observed, “He’s no’ one to lurk about in the shadows. He’s been larger than most men, all his life.” And it was true. Walsh had probably never feared anyone or anything. Unlike a small man, whose wits were all that stood between him and a bullying, Walsh had never needed to bluster or bargain. His arrogance grew out of his certainty about himself in the scheme of things.

Rutledge let his silence draw attention to itself. When something changed in Walsh’s manner, less belligerent and more wary, he finally said, “Iris Kenneth is dead. Did you kill her, too?”

The shock was real. Walsh sucked in his breath, and there was a sudden tightness around his mouth, an incredulity that left him shaken with a realization that he might have fallen into a trap.

“You’re lying to me!” he said, the deep bass voice rolling around the walls of the small cell like thunder overhead.

“Why should I lie? I can take you to London tonight and show you her corpse. If it hasn’t already been turned into a pauper’s grave.”

“She’s not dead! Iris had a way about her, a lively way. But she kept her wits about her, and she never—I don’t believe you!”

With a shrug, Rutledge turned to leave. “I don’t really care whether you believe me or not. I’m not lying to you. She’s dead.”

“How? By what means!” Walsh asked quickly, taking a step forward as if to stop Rutledge from leaving.

“Drowning,” Rutledge said coldly. “Not a pleasant way to go, surely?”

And he walked out of the cell, shutting the door behind him.

Walsh was there as he turned the key in the lock. His fists pounded furiously against the door. “Damn you! Come back here—!”

But Rutledge walked away down the passage to Blevins’s office, to the drumbeat of Walsh’s fists battering on the door.

As Rutledge walked into the office and dropped the key on the desk, Blevins said, “What’s that in aid of?” He inclined his head toward the savage pounding. “I don’t see you’ve gained much of anything!”

Rutledge sat down in the chair across the cluttered desk from Blevins. “I don’t know who killed Iris Kenneth,” he said. “But I’d give you heavy odds that it wasn’t Walsh.” He could feel the weariness building up in him, the strain across his shoulders that came from depression and stress. “Not that it matters. We’re far from proving she was on the scene, the night of the priest’s murder.”

“He had the opportunity, surely? We didn’t pick him up until after the woman went into the river, from what you’ve told me of the timing. He had a reason to want her silenced. He could have taken a train to London, finished her off, and taken the next one back to Norfolk!”

“And left his cart and his equipment with the scissors sharpener?”

“That’s possible! We should look into the trains. A man the size of Walsh would stand out. Other passengers might remember seeing him.”

“It’s best to be thorough,” Rutledge agreed. Then he added, choosing his words, “Something was said earlier about having to release Walsh, if you didn’t have incontrovertible proof. Perhaps—as a precaution—we might be well advised to look at other suspects.”

Warily, Blevins asked, “Starting where?”

“I was about to ask you that.”

“I’ve told you, no one in Osterley had a reason to murder Father James!”

“We won’t know that with any certainty until Walsh is found guilty.”

Disconcerted, Blevins studied the Londoner. “Do you really believe I’m wrong about Walsh?”

Rutledge answered indirectly. “If you’re forced to let Walsh walk out of here, will you still be convinced he was guilty?”

Blevins looked away, a long sigh expressing his frustration and uncertainty. His fingers toyed with the edge of the blotter, worrying a small tear in the corner. He was reluctant to give up any part of his authority—and equally reluctant to exercise it. This was his village, his people. To be seen rigorously investigating the private lives of those he lived with on a daily basis would bring their wrath down on his head. To let Rutledge usurp his position was an admission that he was not prepared to do it himself. For whatever reasons.

Finally he told Rutledge, “I don’t want to know what you’re doing. Not at first. But when you think you’ve got something I should hear, then I want to hear it. However unpleasant it might be. Do you understand me?”

Rutledge agreed with grace, knowing that Blevins had crossed a line that would come back to haunt him. Hamish, in the back of Rutledge’s mind, added silently, “If the killer is no’ the Strong Man, you’ve made an enemy.”

And that was equally true.

Down the passage the pounding had stopped, and Rutledge found the silence disturbed him.

Blevins waited until Rutledge had reached the door to the street before asking, “Where will you begin?”

After a moment, Rutledge answered, “Where death begins. With the doctor who examined the body.”

As Rutledge stepped out into the hazy sunshine of the October morning, he heard Hamish clearly, as if the voice had just walked out of the police station at his heels, no more than two steps behind his left shoulder.

“There’s no turning back,” Hamish warned. “If you’re wrong, he willna’ let you live it down!”

But Rutledge answered, unaware that he’d spoken aloud, “So be it.”

CHAPTER 15

RUTLEDGE WAITED NEARLY TWENTY MINUTES IN Dr. Stephenson’s surgery before the nurse, Connie, summoned him and led the way to the small private office in the rear.

Stephenson, looking at Rutledge over the tops of his glasses, said, “I’d heard you went back to London.” He collected the sheets of paper he’d been reading and set them in a folder. “Blevins is a capable man. I can’t quite see the need of someone from London looking over his shoulder. Most of the town feels satisfied that Walsh killed Father James, and if there’s been any evidence to the contrary, I haven’t heard about it.”

“When a man travels the country as frequently as Matthew Walsh did, his movements aren’t always easy to follow. And the timing on a given date can be critical,” Rutledge answered without rancor, waiting to be offered the chair on his side of the desk.

Stephenson nodded toward it, and Rutledge sat down. “Then what brings you here today?”

“Walk lightly!” Hamish warned.

“I wasn’t present when the body was found. I’d like to hear what you saw and noted at the scene.”

“I wrote everything down for Blevins. The next morning, in fact.”

“That’s the official report. Well-considered medical opinions designed to stand up in court. What I’d like is your personal opinion—whatever you felt and saw and thought, whether you could support it with fact or not.”

Stephenson leaned back in his chair. “I can’t think why! It was a clear-cut case of violent death. No question about that.”

Rutledge rejoined mildly, “Still, you might provide a small piece of the puzzle that’s been overlooked.”

Stephenson, a man used to judging people and tracking down the site of illness from small signs, considered Rutledge more sharply, his mind working swiftly behind the shield of his glasses. “You aren’t suggesting that someone in Osterley—”

Rutledge cut across what he was about to say. “For instance, Monsignor Holston tells me he was disturbed by the presence of something malignant and evil in that room. Mrs. Wainer on the other hand believes that the murder was motivated by revenge. But neither of them would write such impressions in an official report. Nor would you.”

Hamish was saying something, but Rutledge listened to the silence instead.

Stephenson scratched his jaw, a rasping sound in the quiet of the room. “I can’t say that I had an initial reaction. Unless it was disbelief. The constable who came to fetch me told me that Father James was dead. I was short with him, saying that it was my business, not his, to make that determination. After we got to the rectory, I remember thinking that this vigorous, intelligent man seemed smaller in death than he was in life. But we were standing over Father James rather than looking him in the eye as we usually did, which probably explained why he seemed— diminished. There were half a dozen people in the room and I could hear a woman sobbing somewhere down the passage. Mrs. Wainer, that was. After that I was too busy to do more than note the circumstances.” He stopped, looking back at the scene imprinted on his memory.

Rutledge said, “Go on.”

“He was lying by the window, facing it and partly on his left side, his left hand outflung and open, and I remember thinking that he couldn’t have seen the attack coming. But Blevins was pointing out the destruction in the study— chairs overturned, papers and books scattered about—and suggesting that Father James had walked in on this confusion and then gone to the window to call for help. That’s an old house, but the sashes work smoothly; I tested them myself. Still, even if Father James had been successful in attracting attention, it would have been too late. The bastard had found the opportunity he was looking for and struck hard. Nevertheless, the victim was facing the windows, and Blevins knows his business better than I do. Mine was to examine the body.”

Hamish said, “It wasna’ proper, surely, to influence the doctor’s view!”

“It’s done often enough. Setting the scene, as it were,” Rutledge silently responded. “Human nature to pay heed to it.”

Stephenson took a deep breath and studied the ceiling. “There had been an emergency on one of the farms around five that same morning—I was tired. And Blevins was taking it hard—he was one of Father James’s flock, as you probably know. I saw no reason to doubt what he was telling me.”

“How did Blevins look to you?”

“He was extremely angry, but his face was pale, his hands shaking. I thought it likely that he’d just vomited from the shock. He said two or three times, ‘I can’t understand killing a priest for a few pounds—I didn’t think we held life as cheaply here as in London.’ Or words to that effect.”

“Tell me about the room.”

“It’d been ransacked. You must know that. I could hardly set a foot down without tramping on papers or books and the like. I looked for evidence of a struggle, but didn’t find any. I said something to Blevins about that, as I remember. I’d always had the feeling that Father James could look after himself. I’d see him on the road on that bicycle of his at any hour of the day or night, and in any weather. I was surprised that he hadn’t made any effort to defend himself. Of course, that was before Blevins brought in Walsh.”

“Aye,” Hamish reminded Rutledge, “it’s a question you raised, yoursel’.”

Stephenson looked at the pen on his blotter. “I couldn’t find any scratches on the hands, nothing under the nails. No marks on the face. Rigor was present, and I was fairly sure he’d been dead for more than twelve hours.”

His eyes came back to Rutledge’s face, as if the medical details were more comfortable than speculation. “The back of his skull was crushed and that large crucifix lay on the floor near the body. I could see hair and blood on it quite clearly. I knelt on my handkerchief and someone held a lamp for me, so that I might examine the wound better. There had been at least three blows—I could identify the shape of the square base at three different points. I would say that the first blow stunned him, the second one killed him, and the third would most certainly have made it impossible to survive. Each blow was delivered with considerable force, judging from the compression of the skull.”

“Which confirms,” Rutledge said, “that the priest was standing, his back to the killer?”

“That’s true. I was told later that there were no fingerprints on the crucifix where it must have been gripped for leverage—either it was wiped clean or the killer wore gloves.”

“Women wear gloves,” Rutledge said thoughtfully, thinking of Priscilla Connaught, who was tall for a woman.

“I won’t tell you that it couldn’t have been a woman,” Stephenson answered, “but I find it hard to believe a woman would have struck more than twice.” He shrugged. “Still, it would depend on her state of mind. This was a bloody wound, and in my experience, few women are willing to splatter themselves with bone and blood and brain tissue, no matter how angry or brave they are. It’s not medical opinion, of course, but as a rule, women avoid that sort of unpleasantness. I pronounced him dead, and called it what it was: murder.”

Rutledge mused, “I come back to the question, what would I do if I walked in on a thief?”

“I’ve never faced an intruder in my house, Inspector. I’d feel violated, walking in on such wanton destruction—I know that—and damned angry as well. If I recognized the person, I’d tell him to stop making an ass of himself and get the hell out of my house, if he wanted to escape charges. I’d be in no mood to be charitable. And probably get myself killed for it. I’d be more wary of a stranger, not knowing what he was capable of, but I’d still go after him. But then I’m not trained as a priest. It would make a difference.”

Hamish said, “He was in the War, Father James. Would he turn the other cheek?”

As if he had heard Hamish’s comment as clearly as Rutledge did, Stephenson straightened the folder on his desk to march with the right margin of the blotter and added with an odd tension in his face, “If there was no thief—if it wasn’t Walsh—then Father James was confronted by an enemy.”

Rutledge said nothing.

Stephenson moved uneasily in his chair. “No, disregard that, if you will. Blevins is a good policeman—he wouldn’t have got it wrong!”

Again Rutledge let the comment stand. Instead he asked, “Did you know much about Father James’s past?”

“That’s the trouble with you people from London! You don’t live here, you don’t understand the people here. You look for complexity, and these are not complex people.” Rutledge started to speak, but Stephenson said, “No, let me finish! Some twenty years ago, we had discussions to see if anything could be done to bring back the port. Experts from London preferred to keep the marshes as a sanctuary for birds. We said, What about the needs of the families who had to scratch a living here? But nobody listened. This was a good place for marshes, and marshes we would keep,” he said with growing heat. “Well, I’m the man who sees the cost of the struggle to make a living out here. I knew that Romney Marsh had been drained to make it fit for sheep grazing, and we could do the same here, along with dredging the port, making it safe for small boats and a holiday place for people who haven’t the resources to travel to the southern beaches. The experts would have none of it. You’re the expert here; you want to find something to blame Father James for, something to excuse the time and money the Yard has spent in sending you here. Well, it won’t wash. I knew the man. You didn’t.”

“He’s avoiding the question, ye ken,” Hamish pointed out.

Rutledge said without rancor, “I’m not suggesting that Blevins is wrong. Or that Father James was guilty of some unspeakable crime. But none of us is perfect—and people will kill for reasons that you and I couldn’t comprehend. One of the worst murders I’ve ever seen had to do with a simple boundary dispute, where a hedge ran over the line. Hardly a case for violence, but it ended in one man taking the shears to the other.”

Dr. Stephenson looked at him for a long moment. Then, as if against his will, growing out of some inner need he couldn’t silence, he said, “In all my personal and professional encounters with Father James, I never felt any doubt about his integrity or his honor.”

A but hung in the air between them, like a shout that couldn’t be ignored. Rutledge waited, silent.

And as if goaded by that, the doctor said, “Damn you! I don’t know why I’m telling you this. But there was something years ago that puzzled me, and I suppose that’s why I couldn’t put it out of my mind. It had to do with the sinking of Titanic. Once when I walked in on him—this was several months afterward—there was a great pile of articles spread out across Father James’s desk. A hundred or more cuttings, with notes in ink in the margins, and even photographs of passengers and recovered bodies. He saw me looking down at them, and before I could say a word, he’d gathered up the lot and swept it out of sight into a drawer, as if it were somehow . . . obscene material. I made some remark about the disaster, and his interest, and he said, ‘No, that’s nothing to do with me.’ It was odd, to hear a priest lie, and about something so—ordinary.” Dr. Stephenson frowned. “He never spoke of it again, and nor did I. But the lie never set well with me. I— In some fashion it altered my view of the man.”

He studied Rutledge’s face.

Rutledge said. “Perhaps he knew someone who had sailed on her.”

“I wondered about that, but people in Osterley seldom travel beyond Norwich or King’s Lynn. They most certainly don’t have the money for passage on a ship like that. I myself know of only one person who sailed on Titanic, and she didn’t live here at all. I can’t believe that Father James had more than a passing acquaintance with her.”

“Who was she?”

Stephenson answered testily, “Lord Sedgwick’s daughter-in-law. His son Arthur’s wife. An American. It was hushed up at the time—she’d left her husband and sailed for New York without a by-your-leave. Sedgwick and young Arthur had searched everywhere, they’d no idea where she went or why. She simply vanished. Until the ship went down, and someone found her maiden name in the passenger list. Terrible shock to the family.”

“Was her body retrieved?”

“I believe it was. The family held a private service on the estate. Look, I should never have spoken of this. For all I know, Fa her James had dreamed of running away to sea as a boy! Titanic was a marvel; she caught the fancy of the entire country. He was probably embarrassed to admit to sharing that excitement.” Stephenson took out his watch. “I’ve three more patients to see before I can go home for my dinner. Is there anything else you want to know?”

He made it sound as if Rutledge had been prying, vulgar curiosity driving him.

Rutledge rose and thanked him for his time.

He reached the door and was just putting his hand on the knob when the doctor said swiftly, for a second time, “Look, forget what I just told you.” There was a harsh expression on Stephenson’s face, a fierce desire to recall his words, and a strong dislike of the man who’d heard them.

As Rutledge walked down Water Street, he found himself wondering if indeed Father James had lied to the doctor. It was a small lie, of no great importance. Unless it was nested in a pattern of lies? This was perhaps what lay at the center of the doctor’s unease.

In the hotel lobby, Monsignor Holston rose from one of the chairs there and said, “I’ve come for lunch. Will you join me?”

It was an unexpected invitation. Rutledge said, “Yes. Let me wash up first, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”

Rutledge took the stairs two at a time, wondering what had brought the priest here from Norwich.

“He canna’ stay away, for a man who doesna’ wish to stay here,” Hamish commented dryly.

Busy with that question, Rutledge reached the head of the stairs, turned toward his room, and in the narrow passage nearly collided with his fellow guest coming the other way.

“I beg your pardon!” he said, catching her arm to steady her. “I was in too much of a hurry.”

Startled by his sudden appearance, May Trent said hesitantly, “It was my fault as well. I had just knocked at your door. Today in the churchyard I should have apologized for last evening. You were trying to help, and I turned on you like a termagant. It was rude and ungrateful of me!” There was a rueful smile in her eyes.

“Not at all,” he said lightly. “You had no reason to believe my methods would work.”

“I had no cause not to believe in them. But I have a way of collecting lost sheep, and then defending them from imaginary wolves. When I returned to my table, my friends had a few pithy comments to make. You may consider me chastised and properly chastened.”

Rutledge laughed, and received a deeper smile in return. He noticed a flicker of a dimple in one cheek, and on the spur of the moment said, “I have a friend who has come to take lunch with me. He’s a priest, and should know more than most about the old churches in this part of Norfolk. If Mrs. Barnett can accommodate us, would you care to join us?”

Hamish grumbled that it was unwise.

For an instant Rutledge could see that she was tempted, but she shook her head. “That’s kind of you. My friends are leaving for London tonight, and asked me to come with them as far as King’s Lynn. I’ve promised.”

She started past him, to the top of the stairs, but he put out a hand to stop her. “Miss Trent, I need to ask—it’s a matter of police business. Are you aware that Father James has left a bequest to you in his Will?”

“Bequest? There must be some mistake.”

“His solicitor has had some difficulty carrying out Father James’s wishes, because neither he nor the housekeeper has been able to find the item—”

Miss Trent shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve heard nothing of this—and I know of nothing that Father James might wish me to have.” She was clearly mystified, and a little apprehensive.

“It was a photograph. It was kept in the drawer of his desk, but apparently it isn’t there any longer. Did he by any chance give it to you himself?” And perhaps hadn’t got around to rescinding the codicil. . . .

She said, “No. He gave me nothing, and he said nothing about a bequest. Are you quite certain—why should he leave me a photograph?”

“Perhaps you should speak to the solicitor about it. The name in the Will is Marianna Trent, of London.”

“But I haven’t used Marianna since I was a child. Everyone calls me May. Marianna was also my aunt’s name, you see, and perhaps he meant her? Although he never said anything to me about knowing her—” The confusion in her face seemed genuine.

“Did he ever show you a particular photograph? Of himself, of his family, possibly of someone who was in some fashion dear to him? Someone he discovered you had known as well?”

The confusion cleared, but a frown took its place, as if the reminder was not welcome. “I think—it’s possible I know what you mean. But I haven’t the time to discuss it now. I’m already late; my friends will be waiting. When I come back to Osterley tomorrow? Will that do?”

He wanted to tell her that it wouldn’t. But she was eager to be gone, and he had no choice but to step aside and let her pass. She went quickly down the stairs, her heels clicking softly in the carpeting, and he heard the door to the street open and close behind her.

Hamish said, “It doesna’ seem to be of importance to her, this photograph.”

“On the contrary,” Rutledge answered thoughtfully. “I believe she would much prefer not to talk about it at all.”

Mrs. Barnett had already seated Monsignor Holston, and was chatting with him at the table. She looked up as Rutledge came striding through the French doors, and smiled. “Here he is now,” she said. “I’ll just go and fetch the soup.”

Except for the two men the dining room was empty, no other tables set, no other guests expected.

The scent of warm bread rose from a basket on the table as Rutledge took his chair next to the window.

“I have it on the best authority,” Monsignor Holston was saying. “This is one of the tallest loaves ever to come out of her ovens.”

“I’ve had no complaint about the food here,” Rutledge agreed. “I don’t see how she manages the hotel without more help. I’ve seen a maid upstairs a time or two, and there’s someone in the kitchens to do the scullery work. But Mrs. Barnett appears to do most everything else. She’s a widow, I think?”

“Her husband was quite a gifted man. He could turn his hand to anything—and it would flourish. But Barnett died just before the War, of a gangrenous wound. A horse stepped on his foot, and infection set in. They amputated the foot, then the leg, and in the end couldn’t do anything to save him. She watched him die by inches, and nursed him herself.”

“Did you know him?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. He’d been hired by Father James for work on the rectory, and I’d approved the cost at the Bishop’s request. Barnett was working there when he was injured.”

“You seem to know the parish here rather well. Are you equally knowledgeable about all of them?”

“No more than most. Old churches and rectories require an enormous level of upkeep, and while the local priest does as much as he can, the diocese has to fund many of the major repairs. Which means that I inspect and report, approve agreements, and pay the workmen.” He grimaced. “A far cry from the office of priesthood I prefer. That’s why I’m under consideration for St. Anne’s, because I’ve asked to serve a church again.”

Dishes of hot soup arrived on the tray Mrs. Barnett held aloft, and she set them before the two men with an unobtrusive grace. Vegetable, Rutledge decided, in a rich beef broth. He realized he was ravenous.

Cutting through the crisp crust of the loaf of bread, Rutledge said, “Did Father James find his parish troublesome? That’s to say, the kinds of problems he had to deal with here? I should think it would vary from church to church.”

“Human nature is human nature, everywhere. Still, this was once a rich parish, and now it’s not. The kinds of problems shift with the economic balance.”

“Give me an example.”

Monsignor Holston was suddenly uneasy. After some seconds, he began slowly, “A priest counsels broken marriages and intercedes in disputes. Sometimes he has to take sides, and that’s never simple. He tries to set the moral character of his parish; he keeps an eye on wayward children. God knows there are enough of those, thanks to the War.”

“Which tells me he knows the secrets of dozens of people.”

Monsignor Holston shook his head. “We’re not speaking of the confessional.”

“Neither am I. Only of secrets that might be more important to someone than we realized.”

“The Vicar at Holy Trinity can tell you much the same story, if you ask. Hardly the stuff of revenge, if that’s what you’re getting at. For instance, there was a youngster here in Osterley. Wild and heading for trouble. We discussed what to do about him. How best to redirect his energies. Father James discovered that the boy was interested in motorcars and aeroplanes, and was all for becoming a mechanic. His father was set on making him a farmer, like his forebears. It took some persuasion, but the father finally relented and let the lad learn a trade.” He smiled wryly. “It isn’t always quite that easy. But that’s more or less typical, all the same.”

“Not as typical as telling a straying husband that he has to confess to his wife that there’s a child out of wedlock. Or telling a man angry with his neighbor that he has to apologize and make restitution for whatever he’s done. That’s more the stuff of revenge.” Leaving the thought lying there, Rutledge changed the subject. “Tell me about Father James’s interest in Titanic.”

Surprised, Monsignor Holston stopped with his spoon in midair, staring at Rutledge. Then he said slowly, “I suppose he was overwhelmed by it, like the rest of us. And of course Lusitania as well. There’s great loss of life when a ship goes down. It’s almost incomprehensible.”

Hamish said, “He willna’ gie ye a straight answer!”

“There was a particular photograph Father James wished to bequeath to someone. The solicitor can’t find it. It wasn’t in his desk, where he’d indicated it would be found.” Rutledge broke off a piece of bread.

Monsignor Holston put down his spoon. “Let me see. There were the usual photographs from seminary, quite a few of his family, that sort of thing. He liked Wales, he’d walked there a number of times on holiday. As I remember, he’d had a number of those framed, and of course a few from the Lake District, too. Speak to Ruth Wainer. She will know.”

“I have. She doesn’t,” Rutledge said baldly, and paused, to let Monsignor Holston finish his soup. When the plates had been removed, he went on. “What did you know about Father James that frightens you so much? Did he have another side that we haven’t stumbled across? A secret life, perhaps.”

An angry flush rose under the priest’s fair skin. “That’s ridiculous! You know it is!” He considered Rutledge for a moment and added more calmly, “I thought the matter was settled. That it was Walsh who’d done the murder!”

“I have a feeling you aren’t satisfied with Walsh as the killer either. You wouldn’t still be afraid of that rectory, if you were. And it’s true—there are holes in the evidence against him. Even Inspector Blevins is aware of that. The question is where to look if Walsh is shown to be innocent. I have no allegiances here in Osterley, you see. Or to the church that Father James served. I’m not afraid to turn over stones and see what’s there. . . . I think the time has come for you to tell me what’s behind your fear.”

Monsignor Holston said earnestly, “Look. I’m in no position to tell you whether Walsh is guilty or not. What I can tell you is that Father James had no secret life—”

“He was—apparently—fascinated by the Titanic disaster—”

“So you say!” Monsignor Holston interrupted. “But he never told me the disaster fascinated him. For God’s sake, even priests have a life of their own. I know one who has written quite knowledgeably about butterflies. Another who collects front-edge paintings, and one who prides himself on having grown the finest marrows in Suffolk. I have an interest in grafting fruit trees. I can’t say that I talk about it very often. But it’s a way of relaxing, when I have the time.”

Hamish said, “He’s a bloody master at shifting your questions. . . .”

“Mrs. Wainer believes Father James was killed for revenge. Why would she tell me that, if he had no enemies?”

“You’ll have to ask her!”

“And there’s a Priscilla Connaught, who said that Father James ruined her life, and she hated him. It must have been true. I watched her eyes as she said the words. There’s a man called Peter Henderson, whose father disowned him, and Father James did his best to heal the breach, to the anger, apparently, of both parties. Failures, both of them! Potential murderers? Who knows?”

Mrs. Barnett came with another tray laden with dishes. She took one look at Monsignor Holston’s stormy face, and at the coldness in Rutledge’s, and made no effort to talk to them as she deftly arranged the dishes of vegetables and roasted potatoes, then set in front of them the heavy platters of baked fish.

When she had gone, Monsignor Holston tried to recover his equilibrium. Struggling with something he himself found it difficult to express, he made an effort to explain. “The boy who wanted to be a mechanic had secret dreams he couldn’t tell his own father. But he told Father James. People do confide in priests: their dearest hopes, darkest fears. But we aren’t perfect, and we aren’t always going to get it right. Failure means the person wasn’t ready to come to terms with a problem.”

“Perhaps a comfortable conclusion to draw as an excuse to walk away.”

“We can’t work miracles where none is wanted. And sometimes we can’t stand up in a court of law and tell the secrets of others—” The words had slipped out, and the priest’s eyes told Rutledge that he was instantly regretting them.

“Are you trying to say that one of the secrets Father James kept had to do with breaking the law?”

Monsignor Holston lifted his serviette to his mouth, giving him time to find the words he wanted. “I’m telling you that Father James never led a double life. I would swear to that. In your courtroom. As for what his parishioners confided in him, Father James took his knowledge of that to the grave. I was never a party to it, unless there was some way in which I could help. Which is as it should be. What I don’t understand, if we’re getting down to bitter truth, is why you’re still asking me questions when there is already a man in a cell. If as you say, I have a feeling of dissatisfaction, how do you define your own persistence?” Monsignor Holston let that lie between them for a moment, then added, “You haven’t been exactly open with me, either, have you?”

Hamish, who had been listening carefully, said to Rutledge, “He doesna’ want you to stop searching!”

Rutledge didn’t answer, his eyes on Monsignor Holston’s face.

“Did Father James ever speak of Matthew Walsh to you? During the War or after it?”

“That’s the name of the man Blevins brought in, isn’t it? No. Should he have?”

“Just closing a circle.” And then Rutledge changed the subject entirely to something more pleasant. But he’d learned what he wanted to know. Not even for the deep friendship that had existed between the two priests was Monsignor Holston willing to break whatever rules bound him. Or it could be that he suspected that something had disturbed Father James over the same period during which Mrs. Wainer had noticed a similar uneasiness, and was afraid to speculate aloud on the reason for it, because if he was wrong, he might reveal matters best left hidden.

“Aye, he canna’ tell you the lot, and let you sort through them!” Hamish agreed.

If the murderer was afraid that what one priest knew, he might pass on to another, surely that pointed away from a parishioner at St. Anne’s? And toward someone who wasn’t clear on how the priesthood worked.

It was an interesting avenue to explore. Rutledge had a sudden feeling that Blevins was right about one thing— that it wasn’t the collar that had made Father James a victim.

For the remainder of the meal, Monsignor Holston appeared to be distracted, as if behind the now ordinary conversation he was conducting with Rutledge, he was weighing what he had said earlier—and what conclusions the man from London would have drawn from his words.

As they rose to leave the dining room, the Monsignor paused on the threshold to the lobby, his eyes heavy with a personal guilt. “I’m a clever man when it comes to the faith I uphold. I understand the nuances of Church Law, and the responsibilities I’ve undertaken. Father James was a man who carried that a step further. He was deeply involved with the needs of people. That’s why he was still a parish priest, while I had moved higher in the Church hierarchy. If he hadn’t been a priest, I think he would have been a teacher. Please keep that in mind as you go digging through his life. You could do a great deal of harm, without ever intending to do it.”

Rutledge understood what he was trying to say—that it was important to exercise discretion in what was brought out into the open.

Monsignor Holston went on wearily, “I’m not sure what I believe anymore. Whether there was a sense of evil in that study or not. I could have imagined it, just as you suggested the first day we talked. I could have been searching for a way to explain the death of a friend. I don’t even know how I feel about Walsh, whether I have compassion for him or not. In the days just after the murder, I was haunted by the need for action, for answers, for proof that this death mattered to the authorities, that out of the shame of it would come some meaning, a memorial to a good man.”

Rutledge said, “I don’t believe you were necessarily wrong about the sense of evil there in the study. My only question from the beginning has been, why should evil reach out to touch a parish priest in a small town, hardly more than a village, on a bleak and marshy stretch of coast? That’s the answer I have to find.”

Monsignor Holston started to say something, then bit back the words. Instead he reached out and clapped a hand on Rutledge’s shoulder. “I’ll make a bargain with you—with the devil, as it were. If you come to me with the truth, and I recognize it, I’ll tell you so.”

And with that he was gone, leaving behind an air of contradiction that was the closest this Norwich priest could come to openness.

CHAPTER 16

NEEDING AIR TO CLEAR HIS MIND, Rutledge walked as far as the quay. He was trying to pin down what it was that disturbed him about Monsignor Holston’s vehement defense of his dead colleague and friend.

It was the subtle way in which the investigation was being manipulated.

Don’t look here—don’t look there. He didn’t do anything wrong, you needn’t explore that. Like a puppet master trying to untangle the strings of an obstreperous character who wouldn’t play his role properly.

If it wasn’t the church—if it wasn’t the man—if it wasn’t the parish—if it was not a fall from moral grace— then the only explanation left was a theft.

Or another crime that had been committed and that had never been exposed . . .

Hamish said, “Whatever it was that worried Father James, it couldna’ ha’ been a murder—there hasna’ been one!”

“Yes,” Rutledge said slowly. “All right, what if it’s true that the priest knew of a crime?” He remembered the Egyptian bas-relief at East Sherham Manor. The Watchers of Time. The baboons who saw all that men and the gods did, witnesses—but without the power to condemn or judge.

What if the priest had become just such a witness? What if he had heard something that, bit by bit, had led him to knowledge that was dangerous? Like a bobby who walked the London streets, a priest knew his parishioners by name and face and nature. He knew the good in each person; he knew the temptations they faced. The needs and passions and hungers, the envy that drove some and the greed that drove others. He knew what they confessed to him, and what by observation he had grown to understand about them.

It was an intriguing possibility—and for the first time, it brought together a good many of the seemingly disparate facts.

Father James’s noticeable uneasiness before the murder, the unexplained sequence of actions in the priest’s study, and the seeming difficulty in finding a connection with anyone who might have a personal reason for killing him.

“If he didna’ have any proof of what had been done, whatever the crime was, then he couldna’ go to the Inspector with suspicion. But someone might ha’ feared he would.”

“Yes. Especially since Blevins was a member of his church. Secrets have more than one kind of power . . .”

A very clever piecing together of a puzzle—that had destroyed Father James, in the end.

The only question was: What crime had Father James stumbled over, and if the evidence of it had died with him, then where were the small signs of his knowledge that must surely have existed somewhere?

Or had the killer found them when he overturned the study, and taken them away along with the bazaar funds that were kept in the desk?

A few pounds that provided an apparent motive—but were just an opportune shield for the real motive.

Hamish reminded him: The theft had sent Inspector Blevins off on a wild-goose chase that had yielded a suspect.

“And Walsh could still be the man we’re after . . .”

That would be irony, if he was.

But how long had it taken Father James to weave together the strands of truth that had turned into knowledge?

Begin with the bazaar, Hamish advised.

“No, I’m going back to the study,” Rutledge told him.

He set out for the police station to ask permission of Inspector Blevins.

As before, Mrs. Wainer had no wish to accompany Rutledge upstairs.

“I’ve come to believe that Inspector Blevins has found the man who did this terrible murder. He told me himself that the proof was clear, and I’ve had time now to think about it a little. I ought to admit that I was wrong about the revenge; it’s just prolonging the pain, and taking me nowhere. And so I’ve begun to box up Father James’s belongings, to send to his sister. If the Bishop names a new priest soon, the rectory should be ready for him. It’s my duty!”

Rutledge glanced around the parlor. It seemed unchanged from his last visit. “What have you removed?”

She looked down at her hands, her face torn. “I started with his old things in the garden shed, and then the kitchen entry. I find it hard to think about touching this parlor—or facing the upstairs—but I’ll manage. It’s the last task I’ll ever perform for him, you know. And I want to do it right.”

“I do understand, Mrs. Wainer. I shan’t keep you long. I’d like to have a look at the framed photographs if I may, and I need to ask you if Father James stored any of his private papers in some other room of the house.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” she answered doubtfully. “There’s the study and the bedroom, and a room just down the passage that’s always been used to hold parish books and the like. Accounts, for one thing, and the church records—baptisms, deaths, marriages. There’s a grand number of them now; the books fill two shelves.” It was said with pride.

But these would be passed on to the incoming man. The public duty, and not the private life. “I’m sure they do. Can we begin with the parlor, perhaps? Show me, if you will, what belonged to Father James personally.”

She began by the windows, picking up each photograph. “That’s the little house in Cumberland, over near Keswick, where he spent an entire week just before the War. It poured cats and ducks, and he couldn’t set foot out the door without a thorough drenching. He played backgammon until he was blind, he said. And here’s the young priest who was ordained with him. Father Austin. He died of the gassing in the War, poor soul . . .”

Each of the photographs had a story, but none of them appeared to have special significance. Mrs. Wainer moved on to the small treasures. “He liked pipes, although he never smoked, and he collected more than a dozen,” she reminisced as she touched each one. “And over there is the walking stick, in that Chinese umbrella stand, that he carried with him to Wales and the Lake District. Westmorland. The stand belonged to a great-aunt, it was a wedding gift to her, and I’ll be shipping that along to his sister. And the clock on the mantel there—”

There were books on the shelves that were Father James’s, his name inscribed in a fine copperplate hand, mixed among others that belonged in the rectory. Rutledge turned the pages briefly, but found nothing of interest tucked between the leaves.

“Hardly secret vices and dark crimes,” Hamish mocked.

When Rutledge turned to the stairs, the housekeeper said, as she had before, “Go on then. I’ll have a cup of tea ready, when you’ve done your work.” She had returned to the kitchen before he had reached the top step.

He went first to the small room where the ledgers of church and rectory business transactions were kept, and where the heavy, bound books with Church Records on their spines stood on a separate pair of shelves.

Looking through the ledgers first, Rutledge found, in various hands, the long list of repairs and improvements, wages and offerings that represented decades of activity. The roof of the rectory had been repaired after a storm in 1903, and there was a faded receipt in the rough, untutored hand of the man who had done the work. You could, Rutledge thought, identify with certainty every expenditure: when it was made, to whom, and for what purpose. And the name of the priest incumbent at the time. Every penny of income was noted, every payment of wages due. He found the entry, scrupulously made in Father James’s hand, of the sum earned at the bazaar: eleven pounds, three shillings, six pence. The last entry was wages paid to Mrs. Wainer, two days before the priest had died.

The great volumes of church records listed the names of priests and sextons, altar boys and gravediggers over the years; a compendium of who had served God and in what capacity. Later pages recorded baptisms by date, with the name given the child, the sponsoring godparents, and the parents. By accident Rutledge came across the name “Blevins,” and found the Inspector’s own baptism: pages later, that of his first child. Among the marriages were Blevins’s, Mrs. Wainer’s, and others whose names Rutledge recognized.

The deaths were more somber: George Peters, Aged Forty-seven Years, Three Months, and Four Days, died this Day of Grace, Sunday, Twenty-four August, in the year of Our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Forty-Eight, of a fall down a well shaft in Hunstanton on Saturday the twenty-third. And later on: Infant son of Mary and Henry Cuthbert, stillborn, this Fourteenth Day of March, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Two, laid to rest beside seven brothers and sisters. May God have Mercy on His Soul.

It was the chronicle of life and death in a small village, perhaps the only mark many of these people had made in their short span on earth. He found it sad to read. Jocelyn Mercer, Aged Three Days short of Her Fourteenth Year, of Diphtheria . . . Roger Benning, Aged Five Years, Two Months, and Seven Days, of Cholera . . . The last volume ended with Seven July, Nineteen Twelve. The latest must, he thought, be kept in the church vestry.

The room yielded nothing more of interest—it was, as he’d thought, a public room, where the church officers had as much right of access as the priest.

Rutledge moved on to the study. From what Blevins had told him, Rutledge knew that Mrs. Wainer had restored the scattered papers and books and other belongings to their proper places. She wouldn’t allow the police to touch them.

Rutledge thumbed through the books, studied the photographs on the table by the hearth and on the mantel. They were a record of friends and family over the years, of journeys to Wales, of the great Fells in the Lake District. He even lifted the cushions of the settle.

This room was in some respects another public place, where Father James counseled his parish or talked to young couples on the brink of marriage or heard the grieving words of widows and parents and children. Where the deacons came and discussed church affairs. Where any person might wait, and with natural curiosity, look around him. Hence even the flimsy lock on the desk, perhaps . . .

Hamish said, “But the Titanic cuttings were here, on the desk, when the doctor saw them.”

“Yes, that’s true. He walked in while Father James was examining them, most likely.” Rutledge searched through the desk with care. Nothing of interest. And no photographs, framed or otherwise. Just as the solicitor had said.

Moving on to the bedroom, Rutledge felt his usual sense of distaste. He disliked what he was about to do, hating the need to violate the privacy of the dead. But murder victims lost not only their lives and their dignity but their innermost thoughts and secrets, secrets they would have preferred to deal with, if they’d been warned they were about to die.

He himself was careful not to preserve any record of the voice in his head. There was no diary entry, no letter, not even a conversation with a friend that would distress his sister, Frances, after he was gone. Only the private files in Dr. Fleming’s office, and Fleming could be depended upon to leave them sealed.

“Was that what fashed Baker?” Hamish asked. “He couldna’ rise from his bed, and he couldna’ ask the Vicar to look into a drawer or burn a letter.”

It was something to consider. It would, indeed, explain why Father James had wanted to be so certain of Baker’s state of mind before he carried out whatever instructions he may have been given. For instance, burning an old love letter . . .

Rutledge searched through the priest’s meager belongings, the clothing in the wardrobe and the church robes folded in the chest at the foot of the bed. Relieved to find nothing of consequence there, he stood in the middle of the room, thinking.

Hamish said, “It was no’ a verra’ guid idea after all—”

Rutledge replied absently, “The frustrating part of the search is not knowing what I’m after. Or if it exists in any recognizable fashion.”

Monsignor Holston’s words came back to him: If you come to me with the truth, and I recognize it, I’ll tell you so.

There were other rooms on the first floor. But opening the doors confirmed what Rutledge expected: bedchambers made up for guests, with nothing in them of a personal nature and all of them scrupulously clean.

“You couldna’ hide a wee mouse in here,” Hamish commented as Rutledge closed the last of the doors.

He climbed the narrow, uncarpeted flight of stairs to the top floor. Rooms here had been designed for servants— small and without character, unfurnished for the most part, or cluttered with the collected debris of several generations. Lamps, iron bedsteads, rusted coal scuttles, a wardrobe with one door warped on its hinges, chairs with caned seats that had never been mended, chipped mirrors, and the like. Even a broken window sash leaned against an inside wall next to two rakes whose bamboo handles had splintered.

A few of the odds and ends appeared to have been used year after year for bazaars, including a small cart, half a dozen umbrellas and long wooden tables, boxes of signs and ribbons, and the kit of clown’s makeup that Father James must have favored for entertaining the children.

There was also, near the top of the steps, where Rutledge would have expected to find such things, a small traveling trunk and a valise that bore the priest’s name on the labels. Cheap, conservative, and well worn.

Running probing fingers through the jumble of belongings stored in the trunk, he came across the corners of an envelope, fairly large and rather thick, but unevenly so, as if there were several things stuffed inside. Lifting out the assortment of hats and gloves and hiking boots that lay on top, he picked up the packet, testing its weight in his hands. It had been neither hidden away nor in plain sight.

Letters from Father James’s dead sister Judith? Or the ones he had written to her, with that enigmatic reference to the Giant?

Inspector Blevins would be pleased if they were!

Rutledge sat down on the dusty floorboards, his elbows resting on his bent knees, and held the envelope upright between his spread feet.

There were no identifying marks—it hadn’t been mailed and there was no name on the outside.

As he opened the flap and looked in, Rutledge said “Ah!” in almost a sigh. A fat collection of cuttings met his eye. Drawing them out, careful not to lose one, he could already see that they were newspaper and magazine accounts of the sinking of a ship that was unsinkable.

Sorting through them at random, he noted that certain developments had been clipped together—the publicity over departure, the tragedy, the search for bodies, reports from Ireland, editorial reflections on the tragic loss of life, lists of the dead and missing, accounts of the ensuing inquiry—as if Father James had carefully cataloged each new addition to his accumulating data. In the margins were handwritten notes, referring the reader from one article to another.

Dr. Stephenson was right—this had all the hallmarks of an obsession, not a passing fancy. Too much work had been done to coordinate all the information. Photographs from news accounts ranged from smiling Society figures boarding the great liner to pitiable corpses lying in plain wooden coffins in Ireland, eyes half shut and faces flaccid.

It was, in all conscience, Rutledge thought, a gruesome collection.

He looked down into the trunk to see what else might have been stored there, then ran his fingers again through the oddments of belongings that had formed the bottom layer. A frame came to light, one edge caught in a knitted scarf. Rutledge retrieved it and turned it over.

A young woman standing beside a horse, her face bright in the sun, smiled up at him, her hair shiningly fair. Judging from the lovely hat in one hand and the stylishness of the dress she wore, she was well-to-do.

But who was she? Was this the photograph that Father James had left to May Trent? There was no resemblance between the two women. Nor was there any to Priscilla Connaught. Rutledge hadn’t met most of the other women in Osterley. Frederick Gifford’s dead wife? The doctor’s daughter? Someone from the priest’s youth?

“Look on the reverse,” Hamish suggested. And Rutledge took the back out of the frame to remove the photograph. There was a date: 10 July, 1911. And he words, lightly inscribed, so as not to mar the face. Gratefully, V.

V. Victoria sprang to mind. It had been a popular girls’ name throughout the late Queen’s reign. As Mary was now, in honor of the present Queen. Vera? Vivian. Veronica. Virginia. Verity. Violet?

He ran out of possibilities.

Still, Blevins could perhaps help him there. Or Mrs. Wainer.

On the other hand—

Hamish said it for him. “I wouldna’ be in haste to show it.”

Getting to his feet, Rutledge found a flat leather case lying in a corner of the room, a coating of dust covering it, and a cobweb linking it to the frame of the bottomless chair beside it. The grip was broken at one end, but it would do.

Rutledge looked around him a last time at the “waste not, want not” philosophy of householders who store in their upper floors and attics the ruined furnishings and venerable treasures they couldn’t quite bring themselves to throw away. In the event it’s ever needed. And most of it lay there still, forgotten and unwanted, from generation to generation. Judging by the dust and cobwebs, even Mrs. Wainer seldom ventured up here. . . .

He wondered if Father James had kept that in mind when he stored the clippings and the photograph in his trunk. Or if that was where they were generally kept.

Rutledge shook the dust from the leather case, sneezing heavily, and discovered that there was a mouse hole in one corner of the leather. Human flotsam and jetsam, Hamish pointed out, sometimes served other creatures well.

Smiling at that, Rutledge set the cuttings and the photograph inside, closed the flap, and looked into the small trunk a last time—even stretching his fingers inside the torn corner of the lining on the right side—before deciding that he had the lot. He carefully repacked the clothing before going down the attic stairs.

When Rutledge walked through to the kitchen, the housekeeper was standing at the back door, in the midst of a lively conversation with the coal man. His apron, black with coal dust, matched the color of his eyes, and the bulbous nose matched the heavy chest that spread out from wide, muscular shoulders.

Rutledge’s tea was ready on a tray, the kettle steaming gently on top of the stove. An ironed, white serviette over a plate kept sliced sandwiches moist.

Hamish said, “If you didna’ stay, chances are, he will—”

And in the same instant, the coal man looked up with disappointment on his face as Rutledge stepped into the kitchen.

Rutledge said, “Mrs. Wainer, I’ve finished for the moment. I have a few papers here that I shall need to look over and return to you—”

“Papers?” She turned with some alarm, her eyes flying to the case he was carrying.

“Old cuttings, for the most part. Dated well before the War. I’ll just look through them before you box them up with the rest of Father James’s possessions. But you never know, do you, where something useful might turn up?”

She hesitated, clearly uncertain where her responsibility lay. Rutledge added, “They’re to do with shipping, not church business. Perhaps you’ve seen them on his desk. A hobby of his, was it? To study maritime affairs?” It was as far as he was willing to go, with the coal man unashamedly listening to every word.

“There was nothing like that in his desk,” she protested, but before she could ask to have a look at them the coal man stepped forward.

“Begging pardon, sir. Shipping, you said? Not that ship that sank back in ’12, was it?” His heavy hands, with coal dust thick in the cracks and creases, worked at his apron, as if not accustomed to speaking to his betters before spoken to.

“As I remember there was a reference to Titanic,” Rutledge replied guardedly. “Yes.”

“Then if I might offer a word, sir?” There was a diffident smile on his face. “My daughter, she’s got herself a fine situation in London. Father James—God rest his soul!—asked if she might do him a small favor, and he sent her twenty pounds to buy up all the London papers and cut out whatever there was about the ship’s sinking and the inquiry. He wanted every word she could find. And she must have sent him dozens of cuttings, sir, by post every week.”

Rutledge opened the case and pulled out the cuttings, laying them on the table and spreading them with one finger. “Like these?”

The coal man came closer, peering down his nose as if shortsighted. “Aye, I shouldn’t be at all surprised, though I never saw ’em. Jessie sent them straight to the rectory.” He paused, and when Rutledge didn’t move the cuttings, he added, “When t’other ship was torpedoed, that Lusitania, my daughter wrote him to ask if he wanted her to do the same again. But he thanked her and said he’d seen enough of tragedy. His very words.”

“And so it would be your guess, would it, that this was a passing fancy?”

“He never spoke to me about that ship!” Mrs. Wainer seemed hurt that she’d been left out of his confidence. “It was the talk of England, and I don’t remember he ever said anything more than what a pity it was.”

“But do you recall seeing the letters coming from London?”

“As a rule, Father James collected the post,” she explained. “But you’d have thought, if they were that important, he might have asked me to be on the lookout for them.” She peered down at the cuttings again. “I’d have put them in a scrapbook for him if he’d wanted me to. It’s just not like him not to say a word!”

“And no’ like him to lie to the doctor,” Hamish added, an echo of Rutledge’s own thought.

Turning to the coal man, Rutledge asked, “Did you ever tell anyone about the favor your daughter was doing for the priest?”

The jowly face flushed. “No, sir!”

“It would be natural—a matter of pride!”

“My work takes me into any number of houses, sir,” the coal man said with a certain dignity, “and I never gossip about one to t’other. Ask Mrs. Wainer if she’s ever heard me gossip!”

Mrs. Wainer shook her head. “No, he never does.”

Rutledge collected the cuttings once more and put them back in the case. “Thank you, Mrs. Wainer. You’ll have these papers back within the week. I shan’t have time for tea after all. Do you mind?”

She was still more than a little concerned about the papers, but said doubtfully, “If they’ll help in any way, sir, then by all means . . .”

Rutledge spent the next hour in his room, going through the yellowing cuttings. They were dated in an untrained hand, with the name of the newspaper or magazine written underneath. The coal man’s daughter? Another—the priest’s?—had underlined names of passengers, marking each with an S noting survivors, an X noting the recovered and identified dead, and an M for known missing. This was a sad and depressing list, but those who had not been recovered were sometimes mentioned by name—the wealthy, the powerful, the famous. There were hundreds with no grave but the sea and no one to ask about them— or grieve for them. Whole families lost together.

Which was, in a sense, more haunting, but at the same time perhaps, kinder.

Rutledge put the cuttings aside for a moment and stood by his windows looking out at the marshes. He glimpsed Peter Henderson walking along the quay, head down, shoulders hunched, and wondered if the man had a home to go to. And then recalled that his family had cut him off. Where then did he live?

His mind on the clippings again, Rutledge felt a sadness that came from touching the tragedy of others. One could claim that it was fate, the invincible weight of the iceberg and the unsinkable ship colliding on a cold night in the North Atlantic, where there should have been no such danger at that time of the year. Who chose those who would live, and who would die? Was that what disturbed the priest? That so many could simply be left to freeze and drown in the sea by an omniscient and all-powerful God? There were 1,513 known to be dead. . . .

Or was it far more personal than an exercise in the definition of God?

He went back to work, rubbing his shoulders as he concentrated on the cuttings, looking for a clue.

And in the end, he found not what he was looking for, but what he had not expected to see in these articles.

The name of Marianna Trent . . .

She had been dragged into one of the lifeboats, unconscious from a blow to the head. A blessing perhaps, with fractured ribs and a broken leg. Speculation was that she’d been struck by another boat while floating in the water. A sensation at first, for she had no name, and later of no interest to journalists hungry for fresh news. She must have remained in hospital in Ireland for some time, because there was a small cutting dated three weeks after the disaster, relating that this woman had been released and was returning to England, her leg still in a cast but healed sufficiently to travel. The article also contained a small and telling final paragraph.

“Miss Trent, whom the doctors have pronounced fully recovered, has no memory of the tragedy, but says that she dreams at night about falling into black water. When interviewed by the shipping authorities, she could provide no new information about the collision or the subsequent actions of officers or passengers to save the doomed ship.”

How well, Hamish asked with interest, did Father James know this woman before she came to Osterley? Titanic went down in April 1912—

It was, Rutledge thought, a question to pursue.

In the end, Rutledge went not to Inspector Blevins but to the Vicar of Holy Trinity as the most likely person to give him the truth.

Mr. Sims had been sitting in his study, working on his sermon for the coming Sunday service, and he led Rutledge to the cluttered, book-filled room with the air of a man just released from prison.

“You’d think,” he said ruefully, “that for a man of the Cloth, divine inspiration would pour forth like water from a holy spring. I’ve agonized over this week’s message for hours and still have no idea what I’m trying to say.”

He looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept, shadows emphasizing the blueness of his eyes.

“How is the painting coming?” Rutledge asked, for the smell of wet paint was still pervasive.

“With greater speed than my persuasive powers. My sister is wary about changing schools this far into the year. Her children are sad to leave their friends. Her own friends are asking her if she’d be happy here in the Broads. I have run out of words for her, too.” The last was said on a sigh.

When they were seated in the study, with its dark paneling and almost grimly Victorian austerity, Hamish said, “This is no’ a place of inspiration!”

Rutledge had to agree. The gargoyles that surmounted the hearth, and the agony-stricken caryatids that supported it, two well-muscled monsters with their mouths twisted open with effort, were depressingly vivid.

Catching his expression as he glanced at them, Sims smiled. “I find this room most useful when I’m discussing appropriate behavior in church with small boys. They can’t take their eyes off the figures, and it drives home my message quite well.”

“I think I’d find it more comfortable writing with my back to them.” Rutledge’s voice was light. “Unless the subject was Judgment and Damnation.”

Sims laughed outright. “It never occurred to me. This was the study of the Vicar before me, and I’ve tried to follow his example.”

“Better, surely, to follow your own? There must be any number of rooms in this house that are more cheerful.”

Sims nodded. “Actually, there is a small office I’m fond of. Now, tell me how I can help you with your problems? Any news on the man Blevins is holding?”

“The police are still tracing his movements.” Rutledge gave the stock answer. He waited for a moment, and then asked, “You were there, when Father James left the bedside at Herbert Baker’s house?”

“Yes. He came into the parlor and the Bakers offered him a cup of tea. He was tired, but he sat down and—in my opinion—made the family feel a little more comfortable about what Baker had done, in sending for a priest.”

“Did he bring anything with him, that Baker might have given him? An envelope, a small package—” He left the sentence unfinished.

“No. He had his small case with him. With consecrated wafers and wine. If there was something Baker had wanted him to have, it was small enough to fit in there. Or his pocket. Why? Does the family think anything is missing? I can’t believe—”

“Nothing is missing,” Rutledge replied quickly. “I found myself wondering if perhaps Baker had given him a letter to post. It’s as likely an explanation as any for Baker’s whim.” He shrugged, as if it wasn’t important. “Put it down to curiosity—the besetting sin of a policeman’s mind. No, what actually brought me are these.”

He had folded a half dozen of the cuttings to fit into his breast pocket, and now he took them out to hand to the Vicar. “Tell me what you make of these.”

The Vicar unfolded them and began to sift through the cuttings. “They appear to be news articles of the ship that sank back in ’12.” He looked up, a question on his face, as if uncertain what Rutledge wanted from him. “Were they Baker’s?”

“I shouldn’t think they have anything to do with Baker. No, I found them among Father James’s papers. And this—” He took the photograph from his pocket and passed it across the desk.

Something changed in Sims’s expression. “How did you come by this?” His voice was carefully neutral.

“Do you recognize the woman?”

“No, I think you must tell me first how you came to have this!”

“It was also in Father James’s possession. From what I’ve learned, just before his death he chose to add a codicil to his Will, leaving what I believe to be this photograph to someone—”

The Vicar’s face had paled, as if the blood had rushed to his heart and left his skin without its natural ruddy color. “Not to me! He would never have bequeathed it to me!” His voice was constricted by a tight throat. But he couldn’t take his eyes from what he held in both hands, as if it were a treasure—or a dangerous thing.

Rutledge, watching him, said, “Why not? If you know the woman?”

“I know—knew—her.”

“Can you tell me her name?” He moved gently, carefully, keenly aware that he was trodding on very emotional ground.

“She’s dead! Let her rest in peace. She had nothing to do with Father James—”

“He never met her?” Rutledge deliberately took the words literally.

“Of course he’d met her—but she wasn’t a member of his parish, she didn’t live in Osterley—” His words were disjointed, as if he spoke without thinking, responding to the tone of voice and not the sense of Rutledge’s questions.

“Then she was a member of your parish.”

“No. Not at all.”

With an effort, the young Vicar handed the framed photograph back to Rutledge. It was an act of denial. As if by giving it back, he was absolved of any more questions about it.

“You haven’t given me her name,” Rutledge reminded him.

“Look,” Sims said, his eyes wretched with pain, “this is a personal matter. She had nothing to do with the priest or his church or his death. How could she have? She had nothing to do with me, not really. Not in the true sense. It’s been seven years—she’s been dead for seven years! Just—leave it, will you?”

“I can’t. Until I’m satisfied that something Father James kept seven years and then felt was important enough to bequeath to someone in his Will, shortly before his murder, is not a matter of grave concern.” He chose the word purposefully. Not death. Murder. Violent and intentional murder.

It brought Sims out of his shock. His face seemed to collapse, as if Rutledge had so completely broken down his defenses that he had nowhere left to turn. He had never been a forceful man, he had never had the strength of a Father James, and yet in his own fashion he did have the ability to face the truth.

“For God’s sake—” he asked, “— did he leave it to me?” When Rutledge said nothing, he went on, “All right. If I tell you what you want to know, will you leave us both in peace? Just—leave us in peace!” He stopped, as if afraid he might say too much.

“What was she to you, if you weren’t her priest?”

Sims’s eyes went to the caryatids, the anguished figures howling in pain as they supported the heavy weight of the mantel. Rutledge thought, He knows how they feel—his burden is as heavy.

Hamish said, “He was in love wi’ her. Let it be!”

But Rutledge waited, forcing Sims to say what he did not want to say.

“I—I cared about her, because she was in trouble. But there was nothing I could do to help. With all the might of the Church behind me, there was nothing I could do to help her!”

CHAPTER 17

IN THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWED, RUTLEDGE gave Sims a space in which to collect himself.

Then he asked, “What was her name? Victoria? Vera? Ver—”

“I won’t give you her name,” the Vicar broke in wearily. “For God’s sake, man, have a little sense! She’s long dead, and you’ll only stir up what’s best forgotten. I gave that photograph to Father James myself, for safe-keeping. It was—it was part of a promise. And I kept it, that promise. I did what was asked of me while she was alive, and I tried to close the door once she was dead. I don’t know why he wished me to have it again. I thought perhaps he’d burned it years ago. But I never quite had the courage to ask. Who knows about this? Gifford? I’ll have to speak to him—”

“Father James didn’t leave it to you,” Rutledge said finally. “But he did wish someone else to have it.”

The impact of the Londoner’s words left Sims stunned. “Not to me? Merciful God!” He tried to absorb that, and then asked, “If not to me—then to whom?” When Rutledge didn’t answer immediately, Sims continued. “Look, you’ve got to tell me! That photograph could do unimaginable harm.”

Rutledge said, “If that’s true—that a dead woman’s photograph could do such harm—I can’t imagine that Father James would have kept it, much less passed it on. He wasn’t, from all I’ve learned about him, either cruel or callous.”

“But don’t you see? It was given to me. Out of simple fondness—a gesture that was meant in all innocence. That’s the trouble, it could be misconstrued—interpreted in another light. It would sully her memory, to no purpose. If you won’t tell me, I’ll go to Gifford myself—”

Relenting, and at the same time testing the waters, Rutledge answered, “I can’t tell you. But if it matters, this was bequeathed to a woman, not a man.”

Sims leaned back in his chair, a man emptied of all feelings. “Yes, that makes a kind of sense. Thank God!” And then he repeated silently, Thank God!, his lips moving without his knowledge, as if they uttered a prayer.

Hamish’s first question came when the motorcar was turning through the vicarage gates into Trinity Lane. “He didna’ ask you who the woman was. He didna’ care.”

“I think he cared—but he felt it was right—just—that she should have it.”

“Which means he already kens the name of the woman.”

“Or—thinks he does. Interesting, isn’t it?”

Mrs. Barnett was crossing the lobby when Rutledge came into the hotel. He stopped her, and left a message for May Trent to give him a time and place where they could meet. He included the words Official Business.

She was still out, Mrs. Barnett informed him as she took the folded sheet of notepaper and put it safely in the drawer of the reception desk. And might be staying the night with her friends.

He didn’t think that was likely. May Trent was avoiding him.

Rutledge went over the cuttings again, looking for any connection between May Trent and any other passenger on the ship and for anyone with a name beginning with V.

But he found no guidance in the reports of the sinking, the survivors, the missing, or the dead. Nothing that leaped out at him as the answer he sought.

He was on his way down the stairs to put in a call to the Yard, to ask Sergeant Gibson—who had an absolute gift for ferreting out information—to look into the shipping files at Lloyds and the White Star Line for women passengers whose Christian name began with a V. The first words out of the crusty old Sergeant’s mouth were likely to be “And are there any other miracles, sir, that you might require of me?”

Instead he met Mrs. Barnett coming up to find him. “There’s a telephone call from the Yard, Inspector. It’s urgent.”

He thanked her and followed her back to the narrow little office. “Rutledge here,” he said into the phone.

Sergeant Wilkerson’s voice came down the line with the force of a foghorn. “That you, sir? I’ve got a bit of bad news. Or it might be good news, depending on one’s point of view!”

“What is it, Sergeant?”

“That Iris Kenneth we found dead in the river, sir. Well, it isn’t her after all. Iris Kenneth just walked in her landlady’s front door and like to’ve given the old biddy apoplexy on the spot. Thought she’d seen a ghost, she did. But it was a very angry ghost, who was soon threatening to have her up for theft for disposing of her personal property. Which the landlady, if you recall, sir, had already sold.”

“Are you quite sure,” Rutledge said, “that the woman is truly Iris Kenneth? This time?”

“Oh, yes, sir. There was quite a row, and the local station sent a pair of constables along to see what it was about. All the roomers living there swear that it’s Iris, but of course Mrs. Rollings is fit to be tied, claiming she never clapped eyes on this woman in her life! Well, stands to reason,” he added, suppressing a gleeful note in his voice. “She’s likely to be taken up on charges.”

Rutledge thought, It must have been quite an entertaining scene. “Where has Iris been, did she tell you?”

“By the time I arrived, there was some semblance of peace, and she confessed she’s been staying with friends in Cardiff, hoping for a part in some production there. In my opinion, she was short of money and ruralizing until something came up. At any rate, I took the liberty of contacting the Cardiff police, and they just sent word she’s telling the truth.”

If she was Iris Kenneth—who was the woman in the river? And what did the corpse have to do with Matthew Walsh?

Hamish answered him. “Nothing at all.”

Rutledge asked Wilkerson if he’d questioned Iris Kenneth about Walsh.

“That I did, sir! And she tells me he’s a devious bastard who would strangle his own mother.” Wilkerson’s laughter boomed down the line, nearly deafening Rutledge. “She hasn’t had any decent work since he let her go, and if she could point to him being Jack the Ripper, she’d be happy to do it. It’s anger talking, in my view. Revenge. She doesn’t sound afraid of him, only furious with him. I asked her if he’d threatened her or hurt her in any way— showing his violent nature, so to speak. She swore he never touched her—she’d had a little knife to use on him if he had—but he’s a brute and a niggardly bastard, and selfish to boot.”

A woman scorned.

“If you learn anything about the other woman, let me know.”

“She’s gone into a pauper’s grave,” Wilkerson replied. “There won’t be any more interest in that one. More’s the pity, but still, she won’t be the last. If something does come up, I’ll make sure you hear of it.”

Rutledge asked for Sergeant Gibson, but was told that he was giving evidence in court for the next two days.

Blevins took Rutledge’s news with a shrug. “We’re not making much headway, ourselves. An old Gypsy who scratches his living sharpening scissors and tinkering is not likely to hold the police in high regard. They’ve moved him along too many times, and treated him like a pariah. He won’t forgive that. And he’ll lie like a sailor to get his own back! It won’t matter to him whether Matthew Walsh killed a priest or not.”

“Has this scissor sharpener—Bolton—ever been charged by the police? Other than rousting him as a public nuisance?”

“Nothing that could be proved against him.” In frustration Blevins added, “They’re worthless, that lot.” Deserved or not, it was the general view of Gypsies: thieves and liars and heathen, filthy and secretive vagabonds. “Inspector Arnold, who first interviewed this man, is of the opinion that he’s probably up to his neck in this, which means he’ll stay with his story for his own sake, not Walsh’s.”

Rutledge said nothing.

Blevins smiled ruefully. “Well, I’m glad of course for Iris Kenneth’s sake that she’s alive and safe, but it would have helped our case against Walsh if we could have charged him with her murder as well. Your Sergeant Wilkerson is sure, is he?”

“The other roomers in that boardinghouse had no reason to lie.”

“No.” He moved papers around on his desk and then said, “It has to be Walsh! There’s no one else it could have been.” His eyes, looking up suddenly, dared Rutledge to refute it.

“He has the best motive for murder that we’ve found so far,” Rutledge answered neutrally. “That has to count for something. Will you tell Walsh, or shall I? That Iris Kenneth is alive?”

“I’ll tell him.” There was resignation in Blevins’s voice. “We can’t charge him for the real drowning victim’s death, can we?” It wasn’t meant to be answered; it was no more than a reflection of his mood.

“Ever hear Father James speak of an interest in ships?”

“Ships? He was interested in the small boats around here. Handled the oars like a man used to the water. We’ve been out fishing a time or two, but he never said anything to me about ships. Why?”

“I wondered, that’s all. I found some cuttings among his papers. They had to do with Titanic sinking.”

“I’m not surprised. Shocking, the loss of life. We all felt it.”

“Yes.” Rutledge let the silence lengthen before adding, “And Lusitania. Did he ever speak of her?”

“I’m sure he was horrified, everyone was. What’s this in aid of?”

“I don’t know,” Rutledge answered. “At the moment, very little.”

Blevins grinned without humor. “You’re reaching, man!”

At the dinner hour Rutledge found his place at the only table set. Mrs. Barnett said, “I’m afraid it’s rather lonely tonight. Thursdays often are.”

Later, as she brought his main course, she informed him, “I’ve had no word from Miss Trent. Were you expecting her to join you for dinner?”

“No. Yes. I’ve some questions to ask her.”

Her gaze sharpened. “Oh?”

Rutledge smiled. “I wanted to ask her about a photograph I found. I thought it might be of interest to her.”

“I can’t imagine how. She isn’t local. Perhaps I could help you?”

“It’s in my room. I’ll bring it down after dinner—” The front door opened, and someone came into the lobby. Both Rutledge and Mrs. Barnett looked up.

It was May Trent.

She found them staring at her, and it seemed to startle her, but she said nothing, going directly to the stairs and starting up them. Leaving his meal to follow her, Rutledge caught up with her on the landing.

“I need to speak to you,” he said.

“I’m tired—”

“No, I don’t want excuses. If you don’t mind coming to my room, it will take no more than five minutes.” When she seemed on the point of arguing, Rutledge said, “My food is getting cold. Will you come with me or not?”

She looked back down the stairs, as if hoping to see Mrs. Barnett staring up at them. But she found no help there. The innkeeper was in the kitchens.

“All right. Five minutes.”

She went ahead of him, and he opened the door of his room for her, leaving it standing wide. There was no one to overhear their conversation.

May Trent looked about her with interest, as if mentally comparing his accommodations with her own.

He went to the desk drawer, and on a sudden whim, took out the photograph first.

Handing it to her, Rutledge said, “Can you identify this woman?”

It was a natural question. He had no intention of upsetting her and was completely unprepared for her reaction. Her face crumpled, as if she was on the verge of tears. But none came. Her eyes were dry and furious.

Jerking the photograph from his hand, she turned it on its face and dropped it on the bed, as if it had burned her fingers. “No. I won’t talk to you! I won’t!” She moved to go, and he stopped her, his hand on her arm. “Let go of me!” she cried, color flaring in her face.

“You can talk to me here, or you can talk to me at the police station,” he said angrily. “Your choice!”

“I’m leaving Osterley. I’ve only come to pack my bags and go. My friends are waiting—”

“They’ve gone to London,” he told her, guessing. “And I can put you under arrest if I have to, to keep you here. There’s an empty cell next to Walsh.”

She rounded on him, anguish in her eyes. “I won’t talk about it, do you hear! I couldn’t tell you anything if I had to, don’t you understand? I don’t know anything! I can’t remember anything!”

Hamish cautioned, “Someone is coming.”

There was the sound of someone walking down the passage, a soft footfall. It was Mrs. Barnett. She stopped in the doorway, horrified by the sight of Rutledge clutching May Trent’s arm as she tried to fight free of his grip.

“Inspector Rutledge!” Mrs. Barnett exclaimed, moving toward them.

He looked up, speaking with the cold air of command that had served him on the battlefield when his mind had been too tired and too worn to think. “Mrs. Barnett. Sit down. Now.”

She opened her mouth, stared at them, and sat.

“There’s a photograph on the bed. The one I spoke of earlier.” He kept his grip on May Trent’s arm as he spoke. The skin was warm through the cloth of the sweater she was wearing over her long skirt. “Pick it up, and tell me if you will, whether you recognize the woman in it.”

She reached for it, turning it over, frowning at the face looking back at her. “I think—well, I know it’s a photograph of Virginia Sedgwick. Lord Sedgwick’s late daughter-in-law.”

May Trent had begun to cry, her face averted, half shielded by her shoulder.

“She was the wife of his elder son? Arthur?”

“Yes. That’s right. But why should you be harassing Miss Trent with it? She never even met this woman, as far as I know!”

“How did Virginia Sedgwick die?”

“She disappeared. No one knew where she had gone. It was whispered that she’d run away from her husband, but I know that couldn’t have been true! She just wasn’t the sort.”

Hamish said, “It’s been said of many a wife. That she wasna’ the sort. But who can be certain?”

“I don’t understand, what is this about?” Mrs. Barnett was still wearing her apron, and she wiped a smudge from the glass over the photograph. “Please, will you not let Miss Trent go?”

“Did her husband ever find Mrs. Sedgwick?”

“No. That is o say, not alive. She went down on that ship, you see. Titanic. She wasn’t using her married name, and no one thought to look under any other, until Lord Sedgwick hired someone to do what the police apparently couldn’t—” She stopped, biting her lip in embarrassment.

“How do you know all this?” he asked.

“My husband told me—he’d met Edwin on the train, coming back from London. Edwin was quite upset. He said his father and Arthur had gone to Ireland to bring back the body.”

“I’d read that most of the dead were buried in unmarked graves?”

“So they were. But Lord Sedgwick was convinced he could find her. For Arthur’s sake. And he must have been successful; I heard there was a service in the little church on the Sedgwick estate. The Queen sent flowers, I was told.”

Rutledge released May Trent.

Hamish rasped, “Ask her—!”

He said to her, “Does the Vicar know you were on Titanic ? That you may have met Virginia Sedgwick, and seen her drown? Or that Father James was trying to awaken your memories?”

“No! I have never told anyone here! Father James—he had clippings—he’d seen my name among the survivors, and he wanted—” She stopped, unable to go on.

“And you can’t remember what happened the night of the sinking.”

She shook her head, her dark hair spilling over her face, hiding it.

But Father James had bequeathed her the photograph. And asked that she do something about it—find the courage, as he’d put it.

The priest hadn’t believed that her memory of that night had never been regained. Or else he had hoped that given time—and over the years he thought he still had to live—she might yet remember. Still, it was a strange way to go about it—to leave a message in a Will. Once he was dead, what difference would it make?

The cuttings. The photograph. The bequest.

But why was it so important to Father James?

It went through Rutledge’s mind before he could stop himself from thinking the unthinkable. That perhaps May Trent had killed the priest, to prevent him from prying into memories that she could not face. And never wanted to face.

Some eight months ago, he himself had tried to kill the doctor who had forced the secret of his own ghosts out of the silence he had wrapped around himself like a dark and protective cloak.

May Trent had suddenly found herself in the running, with a better reason than Walsh for committing murder. . . .

Abruptly realizing that both May Trent and Mrs. Barnett were watching him, he made an effort to meet the younger woman’s eyes.

They flickered, as she read his thoughts.

“I didn’t kill him,” she said quietly, numbness washing all expression out of her face. “Truly . . .”

But what, Hamish was demanding, if the worried priest had backed away from confrontation, and written the codicil to his Will instead, hoping that in time May Trent might relent and do whatever it was that mattered so much to him? Only to learn that it was already too late; he’d set in motion a chain of events that couldn’t be reversed. . . .

Something that need never reach the light of day, if he lived to old age.

Rutledge said harshly, to the two women in his room and to the voice in his head, “I don’t know the answer. I wish to God I did!”

CHAPTER 18

THERE WAS ABSOLUTE SILENCE FOR A long, disturbing moment.

Mrs. Barnett’s eyes were wide with distress. The emotionally charged atmosphere had left her speechless, unprepared to take up either side.

May Trent, who had borne the brunt of Rutledge’s intensity, found the inner resources to stare back at him, a remarkable strength in her face. “You don’t mean that,” she told him. “You can’t.” But there were tears on her lashes.

The room seemed to shrink in on him, the walls squeezing out the air, the two women between him and the door a trap he couldn’t escape from. Taking a deep breath to shake off the sense of smothering, Rutledge fell back on the one thing that had always brought him through: His ability to command.

In a voice that sounded absolutely normal, despite the turmoil that racked him, Rutledge said, “Mrs. Barnett. Can you serve Miss Trent her dinner tonight? I think she needs food, and she’s not in any condition to go elsewhere.”

“In her room?” Mrs. Barnett asked doubtfully, rising.

“No. In the dining room. Miss Trent, go and wash your face, then come downstairs with me.” He added as she started to protest, “I promise you I won’t bring up Mrs. Sedgwick or—or your own experiences. But I need to hear about Father James’s interest in Titanic and her death. And if you will tell me that, I shall stay out of your way after tonight.”

A fierce pride touched her. “I don’t want your pity!”

“I’m not offering you pity. I’m searching for answers. If you can help me, I’ll take that help with gratitude.” Then he added with a surprising and unexpected gentleness, “Go on. It’s for the best.”

May Trent studied him. He could almost read what was going through her mind—that she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts—but neither was she up to enduring public scrutiny at The Pelican, if her emotional state showed as she must have felt it did. “Give me five minutes.”

She walked out of the room and toward her own. Mrs. Barnett, watching her go, said to Rutledge, “That was inexcusable.”

“No, murder is inexcusable,” he told her flatly. “I can probably understand her feelings better than most. But I won’t walk away from my investigation when there are answers to be had.”

“But she couldn’t have known Mrs. Sedgwick! Even if somehow they’d met on shipboard, it wouldn’t have anything to do with Father James, would it? As for accusing her of killing him—!”

“She accused herself,” Rutledge replied, weariness in his voice. “It got out of hand, Mrs. Barnett—it sometimes does, when people are being questioned. I’m not sure why you came up here, but once you were here, I had no choice except to ignore you.”

Still rattled, she said, “Inspector Blevins would never —”

“I’m not Inspector Blevins.” He turned to shove the photograph safely away again in the desk.

“No,” Hamish pointed out, “and more’s the pity!”

Rutledge ushered Mrs. Barnett out of the room. As he shut the door behind them, he said, “Forget what happened just now. You can’t change it, for one thing, and for another, you don’t really understand all the reasons behind it. Meanwhile, since you’ve heard everything that has been said, I’d like to ask you what sort of woman Mrs. Sedgwick was.”

Mrs. Barnett seemed to have trouble concentrating on his question. They had reached the stairs before she began tentatively, “I—I can’t really tell you. I hardly knew her. She was always with one or another of the family—I seldom had an opportunity to say more than half a dozen words to her alone—”

Then she faced him. “I don’t know why this matters—!”

“Because in one way or another, she mattered to Father James. And even though we have Walsh in custody, we aren’t absolved from considering all the other avenues the victim’s life opens to us.”

Doubtful still, she answered, “I didn’t know her! But she seemed nice enough. Well born. I’ve heard she came from a very fine American family, a niece or cousin to the present Lord Sedgwick’s American wife. Quite pretty, as you could see for yourself. Rather shy and quiet, with a lovely smile.”

“Did she attend church here in Osterley?”

“Here? No, not very often. There’s a charming little church on the estate in East Sherham. But the Sedgwicks would come to Osterley around once a month, and the Vicar tried to interest Mrs. Sedgwick in good works. She was too shy, and always sent excuses for not showing up.”

“Did she have many friends in Osterley?” Rutledge asked as he walked with Mrs. Barnett through the French doors into the dining room. He saw her glance quickly over her shoulder as if she would like nothing more than to escape from him to her kitchen.

“I don’t suppose there was anyone here quite suitable. People generally appeared to like her—I never heard anyone say anything unkind about her. Men found her quite attractive. That soft American accent for one thing, and she seemed—I don’t know—my husband said that she brought out a man’s protective instincts.”

Mrs. Barnett clucked her tongue at the congealed food on his plate, and added quickly, “I’ll just warm this up.”

“Did women like her?”

“I suppose they did. But women of her class are often— you either fit into their circle or you don’t.” She paused, pensive. “It’s odd, I’ve just remembered something. The Sedgwick family came here occasionally for luncheon on market day. My husband’s mother, who is gone now, always called Mrs. Sedgwick the ‘little rabbit.’ Almost as if she imagined her huddled in the midst of the dogs, trying to vanish.” She shook her head. “I never saw that, myself.”

She took up the plate and started for the kitchen. Then she turned and forced herself to ask, “You won’t upset Miss Trent again, will you? I should hate to lose her as a guest just because you’ve badgered her. There aren’t that many weekly guests this time of year. And it isn’t right that you should use your office to upset her!”

“She’ll be safe enough, I promise you,” he said, and she walked through the swinging doors to the kitchen without looking back.

Miss Trent came in reluctantly to join Rutledge. Her face was exceedingly pale, and she seemed uneasy when she realized that they had the vast room to themselves.

Rutledge said immediately, “I ought to apologize. But I have a job to do, and I try to do it well.”

It was a more effective apology than an abject capitulation, and she accepted it.

“I don’t particularly care to take a meal with you,” she said in return. “But it’s probably more comfortable here than at the police station, with everyone staring!” A quirk of sudden humor in her eyes told him she was giving him his own back.

He laughed. “Yes, I suppose it is. But I promise to talk about Father James, not you.”

“I didn’t know him well—”

“You told me once before that he’d wanted something from you that you couldn’t give him. Was it to do with Mrs. Sedgwick?”

“Yes.” Like a swimmer plunging into cold water, she shivered. “I don’t know how he discovered that I’d—that there was a connection with the ship. But one day as we were having tea, he asked me if I remembered meeting her. I told him I couldn’t even remember sailing. It’s all blacked out, like amnesia, only it was shock that did it.”

“Do the doctors feel you might eventually remember?”

“They persuaded me not to try,” she said uncomfortably. “They told me it was better if I didn’t. I’ve had dreams—but they were always terrifying, and I’d make certain not to think about them afterward.”

“Do you still have those dreams?” He stopped and said, “Sorry. I meant it from the point of view of understanding what you’ve suffered.”

“Sometimes. Usually. I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

“And Father James felt that perhaps you could recall some of the voyage. If you tried. Or—given time.”

“Yes. He was convinced it was important to try. To put it behind me instead of running from it. But I didn’t want to open that door. I thought he was wrong to suggest it. There were other survivors. But he was—wary—about approaching them without some authority.”

“What was his interest in the Sedgwick woman?”

May Trent frowned. “I’m not sure. When she disappeared, it was very trying for her family and everyone who knew her. Why this sudden whim, this need to run away? Apparently there wasn’t an answer. And I suppose if Father James found someone like me who might be able to define her state of mind when she took passage, he would have been comforted. No, that’s the wrong word! Satisfied?” Shaking her head, she went on. “I suppose what he really wanted to hear was that she was safe and happy. It was almost as if he needed to know that, to have any peace himself.”

“What if she hadn’t been on board—what if she’d bought her passage and then changed her mind?”

“Oh, I can’t believe that—Father James never once suggested that she hadn’t been on Titanic!”

“After all,” Hamish pointed out sensibly, “the remains were brought back to Norfolk. The proof of death was there.”

“A coffin was brought back to Norfolk,” Rutledge contradicted the voice in his head. “No one would have opened it to have a look at the contents.”

“Father James seemed to be uncertain whether this was a planned ‘escape’ or if she just took an opportunity that presented itself. She’d been on her way to East Sherham from Yorkshire, and she decided to spend an hour in the shops in King’s Lynn, because she was planning a party. When she failed to meet the chauffeur at the appointed time, he was patient, he didn’t raise an alarm for several more hours. And later someone remembered seeing her at the railway station. She was seen again in Colchester, on the train to London. She’d taken nothing with her, which I found odd, but of course she could have bought whatever she needed in London shops.”

“Did Father James tell you the chauffeur’s name?” Rutledge asked.

“If he did, I can’t recall it.”

“What I can’t fathom is the relationship between a priest and one of the Sedgwick family,” Rutledge said. “It doesn’t fit into any explanation I can think of.”

“Actually it was probably nothing more complicated than the fact that Virginia Sedgwick had a grandmother who was Catholic. Father James mentioned that in passing. Mrs. Dabney had been terribly fond of her. If Virginia was homesick, I expect she’d be drawn to something familiar. And Father James had a very practical faith. If she’d come to him, troubled or lonely or just needing comfort, he’d have tried to help her without proselytizing.”

“The Vicar would have been closer to her age,” Rutledge speculated.

But Miss Trent was saying, “I wasn’t very attentive, I’m afraid, although Father James did his best to bring her alive for me.” She had the grace to flush. “I didn’t want to be interested in her. I didn’t want to find myself thinking about her, and then starting to dig into the blackness—I couldn’t face it!”

Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding. “It sounds quite selfish and callous to say that. Especially now that he’s dead. But there was nothing I could do for Virginia Sedgwick, was there? And the thing was, I couldn’t bear to go back. And I couldn’t explain why I couldn’t go back. It’s such a simple question, isn’t it? ‘Do you remember?’ ”

“I think he must have believed that, given time, you would remember—otherwise he wouldn’t have chosen to leave you that photograph.”

May Trent said, “Knowing that—now that he’s dead— puts a tremendous burden on me. I don’t quite see how to cope with it. I wish he hadn’t—!”

“But then he hadn’t expected to die within a matter of days.”

The shock of that left her silent for a moment. “Yes. I see your way of putting all this together. If he harried me, I must have killed him, just for a little peace. But he didn’t. I know he was the sort of man who believed that good would triumph. That one morning I’d sit up in bed and suddenly remember meeting this woman on the deck or in the dining rooms, the card rooms. Somewhere. After all, women traveling alone tend to gravitate toward each other—it wouldn’t have been so amazing if our paths had crossed.”

Mrs. Barnett came in with a tray bearing hot platters and trailing an aroma of beef in a wine sauce. She set their plates down with care, studying the faces at the table. “I’m so sorry, Miss Trent, but there isn’t any more soup.”

“I’m not really hungry. But thank you.” When she had gone, May Trent said, “I don’t think I can swallow a mouthful—what am I going to do . . . !”

“At least make a show of trying,” Rutledge told her bracingly. “You’ll feel better having eaten.”

“You don’t understand,” she said irritably. “It’s not something I relish, this black hole in my life. It takes a revenge of its own!”

“I think I do,” he answered her.

Their eyes locked. Hers widened in surprise, as if reading the depths of his, and turning away from what she found there. He felt a spreading hurt.

Her voice trembling, she replied, “Yes. Well, is there anything else you want to know?”

“Tell me about yourself. What you do, where you’ve been. Why you have stayed so long in Osterley.”

She grimaced as she tried a forkful of beef, but she persevered. He gave her credit for courage.

“The last is easy to answer. I’ve been looking at old churches, and I found Osterley to my liking. I prefer to stay here rather than pack my bag every few days and move to another hotel. I like the marshes. They appeal to me. The desolation, perhaps. Or their strange beauty. I’ve never quite decided which it is.”

“Do you live in London?”

“Somerset. I grew up there, and I feel at home there.”

“What took you to America? Is that a safe question to ask?”

She turned away. “I had the care of an elderly lady who was the aunt of a friend. She was going to New York to visit her son, and I was asked if I’d like to make the journey with her. As a companion, actually. But she was perfectly capable of looking after herself—”

She broke off and fought to regain her composure, clearing her throat with the effort.

He knew then that her charge had not survived. Which must have added enormously to the ordeal May Trent herself had suffered. Rutledge said, “Then you’d have come back to England in a few months?”

“Yes, that was the plan. I’d never been abroad, except to France a time or two, and once to Germany. I saw it as an adventure—” The words caught in her throat. “Can we talk of something else?”

She soldiered on valiantly through the rest of the meal. He thought perhaps she’d stayed at the table to prove to him that she could. Or because she didn’t want to go upstairs alone.

Where the ghosts in the night lay waiting for her.

It was something that they shared, this fear of being alone. . . .

After a long silence, May Trent put down her fork and considered Rutledge. “How can you bear to question people the way you do? Prying and digging into lives as if none of us possessed a shred of privacy. I should think it would be very wearing, after a time. It’s worse than gossiping or—or eavesdropping.”

Hamish said, “It’s true, it’s no’ a gentleman’s way.”

Rutledge winced but said, “If people told the truth the first time they were questioned, we’d have less need to pry. But lying shrouds what people say in layers of darkness. These have to be peeled away, and sifted, and verified, and even set aside as intentional misdirection.”

Playing with the bread beside her plate, she said, “I can’t believe that! Most people are honest enough, aren’t they?” She had rolled two small marbles of the bread before she realized what she was doing.

“Were you honest with me, earlier this evening?”

She flushed and said, “I was protecting my own secrets, not those of Father James.”

He hesitated. “If I come to you tomorrow and ask you if you killed Father James, will you tell me the truth?”

“Of course! Why should I not? I’m innocent.”

“Would you tell me the truth if you had—for reasons I couldn’t fathom—struck him down and left him to die on the floor in his own blood?”

Something stirred at the back of her eyes. “I’m not mad. I know you’d hang me, if I told you that. But that isn’t the same as prying! It isn’t the same as demanding the name of the woman in that photograph, when—when speaking of that ship digs into my shadows, not hers.”

She held up a hand to stop him from answering her. “How would you respond if I asked you about the War? You were in the fighting, weren’t you? You did see bodies blown apart and bones protruding from flesh, your friends cut in half by machine-gun fire, and nothing but blood where their chests used to be? You did kill people, didn’t you? How does it feel to watch a man die as you shoot him—?”

With a sharp intake of breath, Rutledge got up from the table, and went to the window. The street was dark, the last of the light gone, and the quay empty, save for a small marmalade cat, trotting along sniffing the air.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” she began, startled by his reaction. And then she lifted her chin, a little trick she had when she was defiant. “No, that’s not true! I did mean to hurt. I wanted you to know how your wretched questions tormented me!”

“Touché,” Rutledge told her quietly.

May Trent did not take her tea in the parlor with Rutledge. She went up the stairs without looking back.

But something in the set of her shoulders suggested that she was crying.

Unable to sleep, Rutledge walked out to the quay, to look up at the stars. A whiff of pipe smoke made him turn in time to see Dr. Stephenson coming in his direction.

“Well met,” Stephenson said, but without sincerity. “I had an emergency delivery, and I’m still too excited to go to bed. Touch and go, but mother and son are going to be all right. What’s your excuse?”

Rutledge thought, I could tell you I’ve been tormenting two women—at least they feel I have. Instead he answered, “I have a liking for the marshes, I suppose.”

Stephenson grunted. “What’s the news about Walsh?”

“Among other issues, Inspector Blevins has been trying to find out if Walsh had encountered Father James in France.”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think that was likely. Besides, what difference would it make? The fact that they’d met wouldn’t change what happened in the rectory, or why.”

“Blevins has learned that Father James had written a letter from France to his sister Judith. He made some remark in passing about a story she’d liked as a child. About Jack and the Giant. But Judith is dead, and the letter hasn’t survived.”

Stephenson began to chuckle, deep in his throat. “Sometimes I don’t pretend to understand the policeman’s mind! Jack the Giant, you say?”

“We can’t leave anything to chance—”

But Stephenson cut him short. “You’re fools, the lot of you! It wasn’t Jack, it was Jacques. And he was tall and thin as a rail, looked like a beanpole—but he was hardly a giant! Father James told me about this man—felt that I’d be interested in the way he treated wounds. Jacques Lamieux was his name, and he was a French Canadian medical man. He came to France for firsthand experience, and he got his fill of it. We still correspond. He has a practice in Quebec, and a reputation for being the best there is at amputations—a very high percentage of his patients live.”

Still chuckling, Dr. Stephenson walked away. Then over his shoulder, he said, “You can tell Blevins for me that I can produce letters from Lamieux dated this month. Hard to bash a man’s brains in, from that distance!”

Rutledge lay awake for hours, staring at the ceiling, his eyes following the pale ripples of light that clouds threw across the beautifully plastered finish as they moved in front of the half-moon.

Hamish talked about the War, about the men they’d lived with for days at a time in the trenches and in the holding areas, waiting for their turn. Most read, talked, played cards, wrote letters home, anything to while away the hours of boredom before the wild wash of fear when they were ordered to fall in. No one spoke of the dead, then. It was not superstition as much as dread that this time their own names would be added to the long rolls of missing, wounded, and killed. This time, they wouldn’t come back. The chances were never good. Luck—sometimes skill—sometimes mere instinct—could change the odds in your favor. But there were so many dead, so many. As if the War were a monstrous beast, hungry for flesh and impatient for bodies.

No man who had fought in battle remembered it afterward without the rich coloring of his own fears. Scenes replayed themselves in slow motion, unwinding like a ribbon of terror, and a soldier’s greatest fear was that his own gut-wrenching cowardice would let his mates down. And so he was brave in spite of himself, but never brave enough, never able to save them all, and he dragged the unlucky ones back to the trenches while they screamed to him to leave them, it hurt too much, and he held them as they died, and all the while furtively thanked God that he himself was whole. Only to lie awake at night, drowning in guilt because he had lived somehow.

Was that the fear that May Trent carried with her? That she had let the elderly woman in her care die? That somehow in darkness and terror and confusion, she had let go of a hand, to save herself—hurried too fast, to save herself—been blind, when she should have seen—

Guilt was what scoured the soul after it was over. And she would protect the darkness because it was comforting. Or because she feared the truth about herself.

Was that enough to drive her to murder, when Father James pushed her to remember—? He’d have turned his back on her . . . unwitting. Perhaps walk to the window and look out at the night while she found her handkerchief and pretended to wipe away tears. And she would have found it easy to silence the voice that was, somehow, reaching into the depths of her mind and hurting.

What had Dr. Stephenson said? That Father James had had such a beautiful voice and knew how to use it as a tool of his work.

Hamish growled, “Yon Inspector wouldna’ care whether it was Walsh or this woman he hanged. Ye ken, it doesna’ matter as long as it isna’ someone from Osterley.”

Drifting into sleep, Rutledge heard himself answer. “Virginia Sedgwick wasn’t from Osterley, either. . . .”

CHAPTER 19

RUTLEDGE AWOKE FROM A DEEP SLEEP to the sound of thunder. The guns, he thought, as he tried to shake off the dullness that weighed so heavily on his body, like a mattress, muffling and distorting the noise. They’ve started firing again—

He could hear one of the Sergeants calling his name, and cleared his throat to answer, but couldn’t.

And then sleep fell away and he realized there was a pounding on his door, and the voice calling him wasn’t one he knew.

Rising swiftly, he went to open the door and found a young constable standing there, blood on his cheek and shoulder, his face white. Rutledge struggled to recall his name. Franklin—

“Inspector Blevins asks, sir, if you’ll come straightaway.”

Rutledge opened the door wider. “Yes, all right. Tell me what’s happened.” He crossed to the chair by the window and began to dress, adding a sweater under his coat.

The constable was saying, “All hell’s broke loose, sir!” His voice was still high-pitched from shock, but steady enough. “That man Walsh has escaped—he struck me over the head and was gone before I could do anything. When I got my senses back, I ran to wake up Inspector Blevins, and on the way back to the station, we saw Mr. Sims, coming from the vicarage. There was someone trying to break into the house. It had to be Walsh, sir!”

Rutledge found his shoes and stockings, pulling them on hastily, then ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “All right, let’s be on our way.”

Hamish was saying, “I canna’ believe he’d run. It’s sure proof against him!”

May Trent, in a dressing gown, her hair in a dark plait over one shoulder, was at her door as he strode into the passage. The words found their way into the jumble of thoughts in his mind: She’s damned attractive—

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is there something amiss?”

The constable started to answer her, but Rutledge said, “No, it’s a problem at the station. I’ve been sent for. Go back to sleep, there’s nothing to worry about.”

There was doubt in her face, but she nodded and went back into her room, shutting the door. As he turned toward the stairs, he heard the click! of the lock behind him. Just as well, he told himself. But Walsh had no reason to come here. . . .

They let themselves out quietly, and Mrs. Barnett, in dressing gown and slippers, shut and locked the door behind them.

As the two men walked fast up Water Street to the station, Rutledge said, “You were on duty, then?”

“Yes. Walsh was asleep when I checked at midnight, snoring like the wrath of God. He always does—you can hardly hear yourself think!”

“And?”

“Close on to two o’clock, I heard him making an odd sound. As if he was choking. I went back to the cell, wary because Inspector Blevins had warned me he might try something. But there he was, hanging from the top bars, choking his life out, kicking like a mad horse. I opened the door, to get him down from there, but he was tangled in a shirt, and I had to struggle to make any headway. Then his fist came down on my face as I managed to lower him, and I hit the back of my head on the door. That’s all I can tell you.”

“And he made a run for it. All right, what else?”

“For the life of me I don’t understand why he didn’t kill me! He could have done, easily enough, and there’d be nobody to raise the alarm. As it was, it took me all of a minute to shake off the blow, I was that dazed, and half sick. But I got to my feet and went after him, running out of the station and looking in both directions. I couldn’t think he would go to the quay; there’s nowhere to escape there. I went up Water Street and looked up and down the main road. I couldn’t see anything, or hear anything. I went on to Inspector Blevins’s house. It took him nearly five minutes to come down and open the door, and then he was accusing me of rousing the children with my clamor!”

Excitement had loosened the young constable’s tongue, and he was finding it hard to conceal his reaction to Blevins’s rebuke when he’d been trying to carry out his duty. Stumbling on the cobbles, he caught Rutledge’s arm to steady himself.

“You should see the doctor,” Rutledge told him as they walked through the open door of the station. All the lights were lit, and another constable was waiting for the two men.

“You’re to stay here, Harry, and wait,” he said to Franklin. “If you’ll come with me, sir, I’m to take you to the vicarage.”

“Give me two minutes,” Rutledge said, and he walked back to the cell. Looking in, he could see that by standing on his toes, Walsh could have reached high above his own head to an exposed pipe coming out of one wall and crossing to the other side, wrapping his twisted shirt around it like a rope, and giving every appearance of a man hanging there.

After all, as Hamish was pointing out, the man was used to entertaining crowds. He would have put on a good show.

Long enough, at least, to lure the gullible young constable into the room.

Hamish said, “Blevins will have his hide!”

Rutledge silently agreed. He turned on his heel and followed the second constable—Taylor, was that his name?— out to the street.

By the time they had reached the vicarage, they could already see that all the lights had been turned on, giving it a strangely festive air, as if Sims was about to hold a party there.

The front door stood wide, and Rutledge could hear the station Sergeant moving about in the bushes near it, his torch flicking first this way and that. They found Sims and Blevins sitting in the study, like two wary bulldogs distrustful of each other.

Blevins said, “What took you so long?” His voice was querulous, tired.

Sims seemed to be happier to see Rutledge. He nodded, and then looked over his shoulder out the black window, as if he could probe the darkness in the tree-shadowed garden.

“I stopped by the station. To see how Walsh had played his trick. Quite clever.”

“Clever, hell. A child of six could have seen through it!” Blevins swore. “No, that’s not fair to Franklin. What matters, when you come down to it, is that the man’s got away.”

“There was a prowler here?” Rutledge asked the Vicar.

“I thought there was,” Sims said uneasily. “I awoke with a start to hear something downstairs. A banging. I thought it was a summons to a deathbed. I found my slippers and came down as quickly as I could. But there was no one at the door. I called out, to see if whoever it was had given up and was walking away. And I could have sworn I heard laughter—distant laughter!” He shivered involuntarily. “I stepped into the sitting room and picked up a poker by the hearth there, and went out to see if rowdy youngsters were having fun at my expense. But there was nothing. No one.” His voice changed on the last words, as if still unsure that there had been no one on the grounds. “I decided to fetch Blevins, here, to see if there was anything amiss in the church. It’s too large and dark to search on my own.”

Hamish said, “It wasna’ youngsters he feared—”

Rutledge said, “Do you often have problems with vandalism?”

“We’re more likely to find boys scaring themselves to death in the churchyard, daring each other to raise spirits. But before I could reach Blevins’s house, I ran into him on the road.”

Rutledge turned to the Inspector. “Do you think it was Walsh? Here at the vicarage?”

“I don’t know. He might have thought he could find something to sell, to get himself out of Norfolk as fast as possible. It appeared that one of the shed doors has been opened. He could have looked there for tools to strike off his chains.”

“That’s far more likely,” Rutledge agreed. “Did you search the church?”

“Not yet. Do you have another torch, Vicar?”

“Yes—there’s one in the kitchen.” He went to fetch it.

“Brave man,” Rutledge commented, “to tackle these grounds alone, and in the middle of the night!”

“He was terrified for his life, if you ask me,” Blevins said sourly. “I would have been, the surviving clergyman in the village.”

“Sims hadn’t been told about the escape. And Walsh would have no reason to kill Sims.”

“So you say. Who knows what he’s capable of?”

Sims returned with the torch, and Rutledge followed Blevins out of the vicarage, down the drive, and up the hill to the church. They walked in silence, their path just visible in the light of the half moon, but it was sinking fast.

The churchyard was empty, the white stones ghostly in the pale light, their shapes stark against the dark shadows of hummocky grass.

“If there was anyone here, he’s gone now,” Blevins said softly.

They walked on toward the north porch door. It screeched like the imps of hell as Blevins pushed it open, and he swore from the start it gave him.

Hamish said, “At least yon Strong Man canna’ slip away fra’ ye!”

“Walsh? Are you here?” the Inspector called. “The church is surrounded, man, you haven’t a chance of getting out of here! Might as well surrender now, and save yourself a rough time of it if you try to run!”

Blevins’s voice echoed in the stillness, bouncing from the rafters and around the stone walls, giving it a strangely unnatural sound.

There was no answer.

“Walsh? You didn’t hurt the constable. You can go back quietly to the station, and nothing will happen to you. Do you hear me? But if we have to winkle you out of this church, and you do any damage here, I’ll have your hide for garters. Big as you are, I’m not afraid of you!”

Nothing but his own words came back at him.

The moonlight seeping through the stained glass of the windows cast awkward patterns around the pews, gray here, black there, and the shape of a poppyhead outlined against a pane.

Rutledge thought, He’ll be impossible to find before daylight, if he’s here.

Blevins turned on the torch, blinding them and spoiling their night vision. Flashing it around the stone floor, across the backs of the pews, toward the choir screen in sweeps that raked the great nave with crossbars of light, he covered as much of the darkness as possible.

Rutledge said, “He has the advantage now. We’ll have to guard the doors until morning.”

“No, I intend to finish this now. You go toward the tower. I’ll move toward the choir.” He turned among the pews, his heels scraping on the stone flags. A man determined to get what he wanted.

Rutledge went on toward the tower, letting his eyes readjust to the darkness, using the great window there as his mark. Hamish, whose hearing had always been keen on night watches, said, “There isna’ anyone here—”

Blevins blundered into something. He grunted heavily and then called, “I’m all right.”

Rutledge made his way along one wall, reached the tower, and started into the opening.

His foot caught something on the floor, and the rattle of chain startled him. Leaping back out of reach, he knelt and began to sweep the floor with his hands. Nothing. Neither flesh nor cold iron. He moved six inches forward and repeated his sweep.

His fingers touched iron this time, and fumbled across thick links of chain.

“Blevins,” he called, not raising his voice. “I’ve found something. Bring your torch.”

Blevins turned and came toward Rutledge, the silvery light shining on his face.

“Down here, man!” Rutledge snarled. “Not into my eyes!”

The torch reached Rutledge’s knees and moved ahead.

On the stone floor lay a chisel, a great hammer, and the chains that had been around Walsh’s wrists and ankles.

But there was no sign of Blevins’s prisoner.

CHAPTER 20

RUTLEDGE DROVE EAST ON THE MAIN road out of Osterley, a ruddy-faced, yawning farmer beside him in the motorcar.

In the rear seat, Hamish stirred uneasily, and Rutledge felt every shift and movement as if it were real.

Blevins had acted swiftly, sending constables and any able-bodied man they could rouse to knock on doors, recruiting more men as the search for the Strong Man widened.

One party went out into the marshes to look for missing boats. The greengrocer and the barman at The Pelican accompanied Dr. Stephenson in his motorcar driving out on the western road toward Wells Next The Sea and Hunstanton.

Six men set out on the road toward East Sherham, while others fanned out through Osterley, looking behind fences, opening the doors of sheds, waking householders to ask if they’d heard anything, seen anyone. Bobbing lanterns marked their progress through the darkness like a great Chinese dragon, and wives watched from windows, shushing children who were unsettled by the night’s noises.

The road east toward Cley was the least likely direction to search, but it had to be covered. There was nothing here but the North Sea and a dead end—a man on the run would quickly find himself in a box, with nowhere to turn but south. Still, several roads that led down toward Norwich branched off from the Cley Road, and these were Rutledge’s goals.

The farmer, a man of few words, roused himself to remark, “ ’Course he might be clever enough to come this way, on purpose to throw the hunt off.”

Driving slowly, his headlamps scouring the road ahead while the farmer watched the verges, Rutledge could feel nothing—no sense of a fugitive hiding in the edges of the marsh or ducking behind trees and garden gates. He’d mastered that instinct during the War, where German snipers were skilled at picking off the unwary, and machine gunners hidden in cleverly disguised trenches and shell holes and uprooted trees waited for the onslaught of troops, holding fire until the unsuspecting were well within range. Hamish, behind him, seemed to keep watch as well, softly noting a high growth of shrub or a clump of wind-twisted trees that provided a likely covert for the human fox they were hunting.

The one factor on their side, Rutledge found himself thinking, was that Walsh was too big to hide himself in smaller and harder-to-see coverts. But in the dark, out in the marshes with their sluices and dikes, shadows could play deadly tricks. . . .

The farmer cleared his throat. “Ain’t likely, is it, that we’re going to find him in the dark? It’ud take an army searching in daylight—”

He broke off as a dog turned out of a field and trotted down the road, caught brilliantly in the headlamps. “That’s old Tom Randal’s dog—blessed beast got out again. I never saw such a one for wandering off every chance that comes. You’d think he’d be grateful for a good home!”

They were nearly past the dog when the farmer sat up and added, “On second thoughts, mayhap we should look in on Randal. Can you turn this thing around?”

Rutledge saw a drive ahead next to a high wall. He reversed into it and went back down the dark, empty road, the way he’d come. The dog had already disappeared into a patch of thick reeds and grasses.

“Just there!” the farmer finally said, pointing to a turning. A small cottage was set back from the road on the inland side, half lost among trees and a wild tangle of shrubbery. “Not much now, but once it was a pretty enough place. My wife treasured the plant cuttings Mrs. Randal offered her. She’s gone now, Mrs. Randal, some six or seven years back. Tom’s let her gardens run to seed.”

Rutledge drew up in the rutted, overgrown drive. The house was dark, hunching in on itself, vines running up the porch and struggling to hide the windows on the first floor.

Hamish said, “If ye believed in witches—”

Rutledge smothered a chuckle. The house needed only a cauldron smoking in the yard.

They walked to the door and with his fist the farmer pounded on the panels as hard as he could. “Deaf as a post,” he explained. “When he wants to be. My wife always claimed he’d rather be left alone.”

After a time, someone threw up the sash of the window just above the porch. It squealed with a shriek like a night bird’s. As Rutledge winced, a gray head appeared in the opening and called down, “Who’s there?”

“It’s Sam Hadley, Tom. We need to talk to you. Come down to the door.”

“It’s past midnight,” Randal growled. “Go home to bed!”

Rutledge called, “It’s a police matter, Mr. Randal. Please come down.”

“Police?” There was a pause and then mumbled curses. The window went down with a bang, and after a long wait, the door opened.

The tall, thin man in a heavy robe tied at the waist like a sack peered out at them. He turned to Hadley and said, “That’s not Blevins!” It was accusing, as if he’d been lied to. “Nor one of his constables!”

“Inspector Rutledge, from Scotland Yard in London, Mr. Randal. A man suspected of murder escaped from custody tonight in Osterley, a man named Walsh. We’re searching for him.”

Randal watched his lips closely as he spoke, then looked up at his eyes. “Walsh. That the one killed the priest?”

“He could be dangerous. He’s larger than most, with wide shoulders and noticeable strength.” He went on to describe the fugitive. This time, as Randal listened, he forgot to watch Rutledge’s lips.

“Nobody’s been here. I’d have known—”

“That yellow dog of yours is out in the fields,” Hadley said. “I saw him myself. We thought we ought to come and find out if you’re all right.” He had pitched his voice between a shout and a yell.

“Dog’s out, you say?” Randal frowned. “I penned him up before I went to bed! We’d better have a look at the outbuildings, then. Wait here.” He closed the door, and came back shortly with heavy shoes on his feet and a heavy staff in his hands, solid oak and thick enough to kill a man. “That a torch you have, Hadley?”

Hadley flicked it on and they made their way toward the back of the house, where a barn and several sheds showed signs of age, but were in better condition than the front garden. Randal, Rutledge thought, had his priorities right.

The sheds were empty. Hadley shone his light around each in turn, while Randal peered intently at the contents— farm tools, old gear and wheels, tubs and barrows, often rusted and broken. From time to time he poked the heavy staff viciously into the shadows behind them. “No. Nothing taken,” he said as they finished the outbuildings and turned toward the barn. “And not likely to be,” he muttered. “Damn fool waste of time.”

But it was a different story in the barn. The stalls where Randal’s horses were stabled lay on the far end, past the heavy wagon and the plows. There were four stalls, two of them occupied with great gray horses, staring back at the light with luminous eyes and pricked ears. The warmth of their bodies and their breath filled the night air, a homey scent of horse and straw and barn dust, and the heavier odor of manure and urine.

“God damn it to hell!” Randal swore. “Where’s Honey?”

He broke into a shambling run to throw open a stall door and lean to look inside. Hadley, right behind him, shone his light into the dark rectangle. But the horse that occupied the space was not there. Trampled straw reflected the yellow beam, and a clump of droppings.

Randal, beside himself, cried, “She’s my best mare—if he’s hurt her—”

Rutledge looked at the size of the other horses. Norfolk bred, they were very large, heavy-boned, and tall.

Hamish spoke, startling him. “One of those would bear Walsh’s weight.”

Randal was nearly dancing with anger now, clutching his staff in a white-knuckled grip, pounding it against the flagstone floor with every other word as he demanded to know what had become of his mare. A string of profanity indicated what he was prepared to do with the thief when he caught up with him.

Rutledge said, “Was—er—Honey the same size as these two?”

“Of course she is! That’s her son, the darker one. And t’other is her daughter.”

They hurried out of the barn, and searched the yard. But there was no sign of the horse, and it was too dark to be sure whether there were other footprints in the dust besides theirs.

“Where would she go, if she got loose?” Rutledge asked.

“She wouldn’t leave the barn.” Randal spoke with ill-concealed impatience, as if Rutledge were daft. “She’d never leave the barn, unless someone came in and took her.”

“The dog,” Rutledge said. “Do you think he could track her?”

“That old fool? He’s not worth a farthing! I keep him for his bark, not his common sense!”

Randal was staring around the yard, fuming, as if expecting Honey to come toward them, head down sheepishly, to snuffle his robe for apples.

But the mare was gone, and Rutledge thought the odds were very good that Walsh had taken her. The farm wasn’t, as the crow flew, all that far from Osterley and Holy Trinity.

He turned to Hadley. “Where would he go? If he’d taken the horse?”

Hadley shrugged heavy shoulders. “Through the meadow there, and the trees beyond. After that, who knows? He could travel some distance without being seen, if he kept his wits about him and didn’t stir up dogs.”

“We’ll have to come back in the morning. We can’t follow him now. Not across the fields on foot.”

But Randal was adamant that they go after the fugitive immediately. “Honey’s got a soft mouth, but he won’t know that, will he? Bastard’ll ride her until she drops, most like. I want her back, and I won’t wait for morning!”

By Rutledge’s reckoning, Walsh had a head start of at least two hours. The first part of it on foot, as Hamish was pointing out, but with the horse under him now, he could have covered miles in any direction. South to Norwich?

It was possible. . . . But Rutledge had the feeling that Walsh wouldn’t box himself in for long—he’d leave East Anglia as swiftly as possible, and lose himself in the crowded Midlands or the outskirts of London, Liverpool, Manchester.

When Rutledge explained this to Randal, the farmer swore again, went stumping back into the barn, and began to saddle one of the remaining horses. Rutledge tried to persuade him to wait until dawn, but Tom Randal had made up his mind. He threw himself into the saddle with an agility that belied his years, and said with cold determination, “If I find him, I’ll get my horse back. If you wait until dawn, he’ll have ridden her into the ground, and she’d not be fit for anything but the knacker’s yard!”

He brandished his staff at them as he touched his heel to the flank of the big gelding, and clicked his tongue. The horse, snorting, went placidly out the barn doors and trotted off toward the meadow. For all its bulk, it moved quietly on the thick sod.

Hadley shook his head. “He’s always been an ornery old devil, Randal has. But he’s right. On horse he has a chance, and I can’t say I blame him.” Farmer understanding farmer. Ingrained for centuries, this caring for livestock was survival.

“Walsh won’t let Randal anywhere near him. He’ll be tired, frightened—and dangerous.” Rutledge looked around the barn at the scythes and rakes and pitchforks hanging from pegs along the walls, and a barrow with a tumble of trowels, hammers, short-handled mallets, and other implements. “God knows what he’s armed with now. There’re enough tools here to fit out a small army!”

“Randal’s no fool. He wants that mare back in the worst way, and he’ll be canny. And that staff of his is no mean advantage.” Hadley sighed. “We’d best tell Inspector Blevins what’s happened.”

Blevins was pacing the floor at the station, trying to coordinate all aspects of the search, but clearly wishing himself out in the field. He looked up as Rutledge walked through the door.

“You’re back soon enough. Anything?”

Rutledge made his report, with Hadley’s commentary to support it.

Blevins scowled. “The mare could be anywhere. And who’s to say that Walsh is on her? Still, precious little else has turned up.”

He had an old map spread out across his desk and he bent to run his finger down the road toward Cley, stopping at the square marking the Randal farm, with its pastures and fields fanning out to the south. It backed up to a much larger holding, an expanse of pasturage that slanted toward East and West Sherham. Toward the Norwich Road, there was an unbroken chain of farms and estates, miles of what appeared to be fairly uninhabited land.

A man on horseback could make good time, even in the dark, where only sheep would hear his passage.

Rutledge leaned over the desk with Blevins, eyes scanning beyond the now-still finger. There was a maze of lanes and footpaths that led in every direction. They were like small streams draining a basin, converging at one or another village. People in Norfolk looked inland from the sea to market towns, where goods and produce could be sold, a more trustworthy livelihood than the shifting coastline in the north.

Blevins was saying as his finger moved to draw a circle south of the farm, “I’ll get word to the villages in that district, tell them to be on the lookout for a Norfolk Gray carrying a large man. If the bastard’s ahead of us, better to let someone else cut him off. And we’ll get on with the search in the town.”

Pointing to land that marched behind the Randal farm, Rutledge asked, “Who owns that property?”

“It was the old Millingham estate. The present Lord Sedgwick’s father bought the lion’s share of it, and the Cullens and the Henleys own the rest. Good sheep country.”

He turned to issue an order to the harassed schoolmaster standing behind him, filling in for the constables, and then went on to Rutledge, “If you’ll have a word with the Vicar, that we think our man is well away from here, he’d appreciate it. Hadley, I want you to join the searchers down the lane past Holy Trinity. I’ve yet to hear a word from them—tell them to send a report! The Inspector here can drive you as far as the vicarage. And, Rutledge, after you’ve spoken with Sims, go directly to Miss Connaught’s house, if you will. Hadley can give you the direction. She has a motorcar—see if you can persuade her to let us borrow it for the next few hours.”

Rutledge said, “By stealing the mare, Walsh marked his direction. There’s still a possibility that he’ll double back, working his way west until he can find help.”

“If I were in his shoes, I’d keep going, counting on the head start to see me safe.” Blevins’s eyes met Rutledge’s across the desk. Without words—without the need for words—the message was clear: Walsh wouldn’t have run, if he wasn’t guilty as hell!

As far as Blevins was concerned, out of the night’s disaster had come one comforting certainty.

As Rutledge followed Hadley back into the street, he found himself thinking about what Blevins had said—that Walsh would be counting on the miles between himself and Osterley to see him safe.

Was that true? His mind reviewed the road system he’d scanned on the map. Walsh was no fool. He might well lay a false trail. He’d planned his escape, and while it was a matter of luck that he’d stumbled on Randal’s farm, where a horse could be taken without arousing the household or sending the dogs into frenzies of barking, there must be a dozen farms where the barn was far enough from the house to allow Walsh to break in.

And the yellow dog must have been an unwitting accomplice, delighted to be set free and not questioning the manner of it.

Sims was grateful for the news. He looked haggard. “I’m not afraid of Walsh,” he said, and oddly enough Rutledge believed him. “Although Blevins seems to think I was quaking in my shoes for fear I’d be the next victim! And I’m not convinced, somehow, that Walsh is guilty of murder.”

“Why do you say that? Have you seen him, met him?”

“No. Which is why I’ve kept my mouth shut. But I’ve had long nights to think about Father James and his death. It seems to me that Walsh took a chance coming back here weeks after the bazaar, expecting to find money at the rectory. Most churches live hand to mouth. It would have been easier to break into a house if he was desperate. Besides, if he was wandering about in the rectory the day of the fair, as Mrs. Wainer claims he was, he’d have seen for himself that there was very little to steal.”

“He must have assumed,” Rutledge said, echoing Hamish in his head, “that no one would connect his presence at the fair with a theft a good two weeks later.” That was Blevins’s opinion. “Someone at the fair could have calculated, roughly, how much money had been taken in. And there was a last payment to be made on the new cart, before it would be handed over to Walsh.” He was playing devil’s advocate, to give Sims an opportunity to get to the bottom of what he wanted to say.

Sims took a deep breath. “That’s a tidy assumption. On the other hand—was Walsh that clever? If so, you’ll play merry hell catching him now!”

“Then who killed the priest?”

There was a long silence. “I don’t know,” Sims finally answered. “But I have the oddest feeling sometimes. Of being watched. Our festival is in the spring. June. Why would anyone take an interest in the vicarage, if money was all they were after? Look around you—”

Monsignor Holston had also had the feeling that he was watched. . . .

Sims was saying, “You’re fairly certain, are you, that what I heard was Walsh chiseling off his shackles?”

“Certain enough. We found the chains in the church. You identified the tools as yours, and the latch on the shed door was broken,” Rutledge reminded him. “It seems clear that Walsh came looking for a shed or outbuilding he could break into. And the church was a perfect place to hammer off the chains. No one lives close enough to hear the racket. Except perhaps for you.”

“Yes, well, from what you say, he’s running now and not likely to hang about in Osterley.” He rubbed tired eyes. “All right, thanks. Tell Blevins if he needs me, I’m available. I won’t sleep anyway after all this excitement.”

“I must be going. I’m to make sure Miss Connaught is safe. Blevins has been trying to see that all the people living alone are warned.”

A wry smile crossed Sims’s face. “Yes, go by all means. I’ll be fine.”

But as Rutledge walked out the door to the car, he heard the bolt shot home behind him.

Hamish said, “Was the laughter real—or his imagination, yon Vicar?”

Rutledge answered silently. “I don’t know. Shock can play strange games with the mind. On the other hand, it’s easy to hear what you expect to hear.”

“Aye. Well. He heard something.”

Priscilla Connaught lived in the house at the edge of the marshes, lonely and isolated, where the wind bent the trees and shrubs into Gothic shapes and the grasses rustled like whispers. The walk to the front door was dark, flowers leaning dry seed heads and wilting blossoms over the path. Rutledge could hear the seeds crunching underfoot. Out on the marshes, a bird called, low and forlorn, like a desolate soul looking for solace.

Hamish said, “This is no’ a place for a woman alone!”

But Rutledge thought that it must have appealed to Priscilla Connaught, who carried secrets with her and preferred to use her life as a weapon against a man she hated.

He knocked loudly on the wooden panels, and then pitching his voice to carry, he called, “Miss Connaught? It’s Ian Rutledge. From Scotland Yard. Will you come down, please? I’d like to pass on a message.”

A light came on in a window on the first floor, and he stepped back so that it would fall on his upturned face. A curtain twitched, and he could feel her eyes. Hat in hand, he stood there and said again, “It’s Ian Rutledge.”

After a time another lamp was turned up, and another, tracing her progress through the house. The front door opened a crack. “What do you want?”

There was something in her voice that struck him. A resistance, as if she was prepared to turn him away. He thought for an instant that there was someone else in the house with her, and then realized all at once that she was braced against his next words.

He said, warily, “Inspector Blevins asked me to come and see that you were safe. Walsh has escaped, and we’re trying to make certain that he’s not still hiding in Osterley—”

“Escaped? How? When?” Her surprise seemed genuine.

“In the middle of the night. We’ve tracked him east of town, but it’s as well for you to be aware of the danger.”

“But you said he’d killed the priest!” she cried. “How could you let him go?”

“We didn’t offer him the key, Miss Connaught. He escaped.” Rutledge was tired, and in no mood to mince words. “Have you seen or heard anything—”

She cut across his words, saying quickly, “I can’t stand here in the night air—I must go—”

“Are you all right?” he asked again. “Would you like me to search the house, or the grounds, to be sure?”

“I don’t care what you choose to search. Where did you say he was last seen, this man Walsh?”

“We’ve found evidence that he was moving east of Osterley. Toward Cley, or possibly south in the direction of Norwich. There’s a horse missing from Tom Randal’s farm out on the east road. Inspector Blevins would be—”

“Where is this farm, for God’s sake?” she demanded impatiently.

He told her, adding, “Inspector Blevins has asked—”

But she was gone, the door slamming shut in his face. He could hear her behind the door, a scream of outrage, as if Walsh’s escape had been designed to torment her. And then silence.

He stood for a time on the walk in front of the house. He saw the lights turn off, and then the twitch of the curtain in what must be her bedroom. He turned, knowing that she must be watching, and walked back to the car. Winding the crank, he found himself debating with Hamish what to do.

In the end, he drove off, then left his car down the road, out of sight in a bank of thick shrubbery. On foot, now, he had barely reached her road when he heard the sound of a motorcar coming from the direction of the marshes. There were no lights.

Standing in deep shadow, he waited. The motorcar was small and there was only a driver to be seen, silhouetted against the clouds out to sea. A woman’s profile, stiff beneath a cloche hat. He watched as she came to the intersection with the main road. Without hesitation she turned out into it, gunning the motor with angry force. The tires screeched in the grit of the road, and then the car was gone, speeding east—toward Cley.

Rutledge thought, If she finds him before Blevins does, she’ll kill him if she can. For taking away her vengeance.

Hamish answered, “Aye, she drives yon motorcar like a spear!”

But there was little chance of her overtaking Walsh. She’d exhaust herself first, and go home. Still, it was his duty to stop her, bring her back to Osterley, and ask Mrs. Barnett to keep an eye on her.

Time was running out, and time just now was very precious.

“It’s a gamble, either way,” Hamish agreed. “If she runs afoul of Walsh, there’s trouble. For her and for you. If Blevins canna’ stop the Strong Man, and Walsh kills again while you’re distracted by this woman, it’s on your head.”

It was a gamble.

Rutledge made his choice. The most certain outcome of a night of turmoil was losing Walsh. Once the man was safely out of East Anglia, he had every prospect of staying free. He must have laid plans—

Striding through the darkness back to his own car, Rutledge’s mind outpaced his feet. What would he himself do, in the Strong Man’s shoes? How would he use this one carefully crafted opportunity?

Hamish answered, “Aye, it was well done, his escape. I canna’ believe he’d leave the rest to chance.”

“No.”

Walsh had apparently been a friendly and popular showman, whatever darker shades of his nature lurked beneath the smiling surface. The success of his act had depended on pleasing the public. “Step up, ladies, and test the Strong Man for yourselves. . . . See, here’s a bench, and all you have to do is seat yourselves at either end. . . . Don’t be afraid, you’re as safe as a babe in arms, I won’t drop you. . . . Who’ll wager a bob to see if the Strong Man can pull this carriage as well as any horse. . . . All right, lads, who among you wants to lift the Strong Man’s Iron Hammer. . . .”

There must be colleagues he could turn to, someone who would offer him temporary shelter, money to move on—and silence. It was, by necessity, a closed fraternity, this showman’s world. People who traveled from place to place to earn their living put down no roots, and counted on the goodwill of their own in place of family. Many of them had had scrapes with the law, and they’d believe Walsh when he claimed he was innocent. The police were a common enemy.

A closed fraternity also meant that not even the redoubtable Sergeant Gibson at the Yard had a ghost of a chance to trace him once Walsh disappeared into it. Big as he was, he could still vanish. The key was to stop him before he reached that safety.

Rutledge bent to turn the crank and then got behind the wheel of his motorcar. But if the object of this exercise was to block Walsh’s escape, the question became How? Cutting across country as he was, he could be anywhere.

Hamish said, “What precipitated his escape?”

“At a guess, he chose tonight because Franklin was on duty—young enough and naive enough to be gulled. Innocent or guilty, men of Walsh’s ilk don’t rely on justice to set them free. Blevins and his people made no secret of the fact that they were eager to see Walsh hang. Or— perhaps he wanted to find out for himself that Iris Kenneth was alive.”

“No man would choose to die by the rope,” Hamish reminded him.

Rutledge turned west. It was instinct and not reason that guided him now. Somewhere before Hunstanton on the north coast, Walsh must pick up the road to King’s Lynn. Key to the rest of England.

Inland from the coast road were a hundred hills and meadows that would provide better cover. But on the other side of the coin, estates like Lord Sedgwick’s and villages like East Sherham would block Walsh’s path, forcing him slightly north . . . toward the road.

Hamish was swift to remind Rutledge that he was counting on unadulterated luck.

Yet Rutledge had the strongest feeling that if he drove as far west as the turning for Burnham Market, and then began to follow the tangle of roads that led back to the east from there, he might just have that stroke of luck. . . .

The sky was lighter now; he could no longer see his face reflected in the dark windscreen. And—thank God—never Hamish’s.

He scanned the horizons, eyes only half on the road.

A horseman silhouetted against the horizon wouldn’t attract much attention. But Walsh would be no ordinary horseman. He was a huge man on a large, heavy mount, blundering through fields and across plowed land, depending on his sense of direction to keep him heading west. He risked stirring up sheep and their guardian dogs—and eventually someone was bound to see him.

The marshes on Rutledge’s right were dark expanses of grass and shadow now, caught for an instant in his headlamps and then gone. A badger ambled along the road, picked out by the light, and scuttled into the underbrush around a small clump of trees. A night bird swooped across his path, and eyes followed his passage, gleaming for the space of a heartbeat, and then vanishing in the grasses. This was no place for a man . . . and Walsh hadn’t been bred to the marshes. They would be a barrier.

He would avoid them.

Another seaside town ghosted into view, straggling along the main road, rising out of the marshes before turning toward the vanished sea.

A uniformed constable stood at the turning, watchful and alert. The message from Blevins, then, had traveled this far west. Rutledge raised a hand, slowing so that the man could see he had no one else in the vehicle. Except Hamish . . .

The constable saluted as Rutledge passed.

The early morning was cool, but he was grateful for the freshness of it, keeping him awake. The tires bumped on the uneven surface of the roadbed and clattered over a small bridge. Buildings loomed and then were gone, trees spread heavy branches over the road, casting deep shadow. From time to time he saw other constables walking the streets or, a straggle of men with them, cutting across country toward outlying farms, poking into hay bales, searching outbuildings, scanning the ground with torches for tracks.

Ahead was the turning Rutledge was watching for. A church marked it, stark against the sky, malevolent and dark and secretive, huddled beside the road.

Hamish said, “Yon church is no’ a comfort in this light. Small wonder that half the world is superstitious! The night changes shapes and conjures specters in the shadows.”

Rutledge thought, Better them than you . . . He could drive past the rest of them, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn’t follow—

He headed south now, then turned a little east, passing through village after village, his eyes scanning the fields and peering into the light mist that was rising in the shallow valleys.

A horseman could pass unseen in its folds. He stopped and scanned the white sea. Later, wishing for his field glasses, he studied one valley with care, but there was only a cluster of thornbushes along a stream, in the haze bent like the backs of hiding men. From time to time there were other constables stationed at crossroads, or climbing through the sheep toward an outbuilding on the side of a hill.

Wending his way from road to road, still following his instincts, Rutledge traveled in a zigzag back in the direction of Osterley. Down this road—turning here—only to turn back again—all the while searching, making the connection and deciding as he ran through sleeping villages where that war-honed intuition might carry him next.

It required patience, and a mind focused and determined. Tiring, he stopped once and rubbed his eyes with cold fingers, wishing for a pot of tea and twenty minutes of rest. His nerves, tautly stretched to their limit, kept him awake at the same time they drained his reserves of energy.

And all the while, Hamish doubted Rutledge’s intuition and his decisions.

If Rutledge was wrong—if Walsh had gone directly south—then Blevins’s counterparts would be in need of every man available to widen their own search. But were they having any better luck?

And when full daylight came, what were Walsh’s chances then? How close would he be to Norwich, if that was his goal?

Thinking of Norwich brought Monsignor Holston to Rutledge’s mind. A priest who searched for shadows outside his window as night drew on, and listened to the creaking of his house, afraid of something he couldn’t identify.

Like Sims . . .

What would Monsignor Holston feel if he knew that the man accused of killing Father James was on his way to Norwich? Fear? Or acceptance—

But there were no horsemen riding out in the dawn in this part of the county, save for a farm boy kicking the sides of a horse twice his size as he made his way across a stream.

By breakfast, Rutledge had circled back as far as the Sherhams—now all too aware that he’d wasted the hours, wasted his energy, and for what? Nothing.

Had Walsh passed him just over the crest of a hill or behind a screen of trees, or lost in the shadows that collected in the mists along small streams bisecting the land?

A bitter thought. And Hamish, as tired and grim as Rutledge was, seconded this honest indictment of his abilities.

“You arena’ the man you once were. You havena’ come to terms with yoursel’, nor wi’ Scotland—”

And yet Rutledge would have sworn, if asked, that he’d been right in his decision to work back from the west.

Another thought struck him—had Walsh already been captured?

No. Rutledge had seen constables still guarding the roads west, and at the junctions running through villages. He’d seen men searching—

And Walsh would have seen them, too. As the day brightened, he might even go to ground.

The intuition he prized so highly was failing him. Rutledge accepted the truth: One man alone in a motorcar bound by the roads had no chance to work a miracle when Walsh had the flexibility of so much space.

And today luck was favoring a fleeing man who must be as weary as his pursuers, and as determined, but with Fortune—or Fate—on his side.

CHAPTER 21

BETWEEN THE SHERHAMS AND OSTERLEY, RUTLEDGE’S fatigue swept over him like a heavy blanket.

It was Hamish who shouted the warning, barely in time to prevent the motorcar from heading straight off the road into a ditch that ran with black water.

Rutledge pulled carefully to the verge and rubbed his face. The autumn dawn had broken, drawing long golden shadows across the road and among the trees, and the flickering of light and dark had mesmerized him before he had even realized it.

He took out his watch and looked at it. Most of Osterley would be at breakfast now, and the searchers straggling in like lost sheep, ready to sleep before going out again.

But it would be useless. Blevins had been stubborn— and wrong.

Walsh wasn’t in Osterley. The man was well away, on the road to Norwich, watching his back and praying that the next dip in the land didn’t bring a police blockade into view, choosing their spot where the twisting road allowed no escape, even for a man on horseback. If he had ridden the mare hard, as her owner, Randal, had feared, he would have made good time. If he’d handled her with some care, she could take him a long way in the morning light. Hunched on the saddle, his head drooping in weariness, his profile would be different. . . .

Rutledge put the car into gear again and drove several yards farther, where he could stop safely and sleep for ten—twenty—minutes. He thought of trying for Osterley and his bed, but the exhaustion went too deep.

Hamish was saying something about duty, but Rutledge didn’t hear him, wasn’t paying any heed. He slumped between the door and the seat, where his head would be cradled, and was already falling heavily into merciful sleep.

A horn blew loudly—once—twice—a third time. Rutledge came up out of waves of blackness, confused and unable for an instant to remember where he was or why.

Another car was coming up behind him, slowing, voices shouting at him.

Fighting off the last dregs of sleep, he sat up and tried to focus on what they were saying.

It was Blevins, who pulled alongside. “For God’s sake, wake up, man! What are you doing out here? Where have you been? I’ve had half of Osterley searching for you!”

Rutledge cleared his throat. “I was driving back to Osterley when I nearly ran off the road. What’s happened? Have you found Walsh?”

“A report came in just half an hour ago, and I wasted fifteen minutes hunting for you. Get in, and I’ll tell you on the road. Constable, take the Inspector’s car, will you, and follow us.”

The constable got out and started toward Rutledge’s motorcar. In an instant of absolute panic, Rutledge found himself saying, “No! I’ll follow you—”

He couldn’t leave Hamish in the rear passenger seat, with a stranger driving the car—

“Don’t be bloody-minded! Constable, do as I say.”

But Rutledge was wide awake now, well aware that where he himself went, Hamish would follow. Yet in that wild half-world between waking and sleeping, he had responded out of habit—Hamish always occupied the rear seat. . . .

As Blevins took over the wheel, Rutledge turned his own motorcar over to the grinning constable. Coming around the boot, he noted the bicycle lashed to the back of the motorcar Blevins was driving. The Inspector snapped, “Hurry, man!” and barely waited for Rutledge to close his door before the car was off down the road at speed.

“That’s Jeffers, from Hurley. It’s a town southeast of the Sherhams. He was sent to bring me back to where they’ve found a body. Some fool thinks it could be Walsh, but I can’t for the life of me see how he came to be there.”

Rutledge felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “Body, you said?”

“That’s right. A body. Constable Jeffers doesn’t have any information. The other constable, Tanner, who was out on foot searching the area, stopped a woman on her way in to the Hurley shops, and asked her to send Jeffers on to Osterley. Jeffers couldn’t find a motorcar and had to bicycle in. Took the devil’s own time doing it, too!”

“And the horse?”

“They didn’t say anything about a horse. That’s why I’m willing to wager this is a wild-goose chase. If Walsh has already run the mare into the ground, he wouldn’t be shy about finding himself another mount. Why would he be on foot?”

Because he had started on foot—

Hamish’s voice rang through Rutledge’s head.

They were silent the rest of the way. Carts were on the road at this early hour, and people walking to their fields or leading out the cows. Small boys on their way to school were trotting behind a pair of squawking geese, laughing as the geese darted at first one boy and then another and they dodged the attack. Blevins shouted at them to mind what they were about, and they dropped back sullenly.

“You wouldn’t have seen that sort of behavior before the War,” he told Rutledge. “There’s a generation growing up wild. Mark my words.”

It was a frequent refrain in rural England these days.

When they reached the outskirts of Hurley, there was a farmer in boots and brown corduroy trousers standing by the road. An old hat was jammed on his head and he wore a heavy green sweater with a ragged hem straggling down one hip.

“Inspector Blevins?” he called as the motorcar slowed. “The doctor’s been and gone. Take the road just there, to your left, before you get into the village proper. Follow it near half a mile, and you’ll see the farm gate.”

Blevins found the road, and it soon dwindled into a lane, hardly worthy of the name. A farmhouse faced a sloping hill of pasturage, where the white backs of sheep caught the morning spears of light. The lane continued, little more than a wagon wide now, last summer’s wildflowers brushing dry heads against the coachwork on either side. Within a few minutes they came to an open gate, where a muddy and well-rutted farm track began. “Here, I should think,” Blevins said, turning in.

The track climbed a hill for some distance, angling toward the shoulder and a cluster of young trees. Blevins followed it for some fifty yards, and then pulled in where bruised grass indicated that the doctor had stopped as well. Beyond that, the track’s ruts offered a challenge. Blevins said shortly, “I’d not like to find myself bogged down up there.”

Rutledge got out and Hamish said, at his shoulder, “Walsh could ha’ made it this far.”

It was true. They trudged in silence toward the copse of trees, and a constable stepped out of it, standing there waiting. Blevins was finding it hard to get his breath, and Rutledge glanced at him.

The Inspector’s face was nearly gray with strain, his jaw set and his body tense. With each stride he began to swear softly, trying to contain the pressure that was building in his mind. Rutledge’s longer legs made easy work of the hill, but his chest burned from the night of driving.

The constable, hunched against the morning chill, touched his hat to Blevins, and nodded to Rutledge. “Constable Tanner, sir. I thought you’d want to see this. The doctor says he’s dead, and they’re sending up a cart from the farm, to bring him in.”

“Who the hell is it, man?” Blevins halted as if unable to walk another ten yards. But it was his fear of the answer that had stopped him.

“It’s Walsh, sir. Just beyond the trees.” Tanner turned to lead the way, and Rutledge followed. Blevins moved slowly in their wake, as if unwilling to confirm the truth.

Tanner continued his report to Rutledge. “I can’t say how long he’s been dead—just before dawn, I’d guess, or not long after. His clothes are damp.”

Just beyond the trees, the land sloped again, this time to the south. And about ten feet beyond the crest lay the sprawled body of a man. Rutledge could see at once that it was Walsh—the size of the shoulders, the length of the awkwardly bent legs defined him before they had reached the head.

Rutledge looked down at the bloody dent in the temple, and had no need to squat on his heels and feel the hand nearest him for warmth or touch the throat for a pulse. But he did it anyway to give Blevins time to recover.

The hand was cold, damp. There was no pulse in the equally cold bare flesh beneath Walsh’s collar. The giant-sized Matthew Walsh seemed shrunken, a bundle of discarded clothes, lying here on the wet grass, his trousers soggy with dew, and Rutledge found himself remembering what Dr. Stephenson had said about Father James. When the power of the personality had gone . . .

By that time Blevins had stopped just at Rutledge’s back, and Rutledge could feel his gaze running over the corpse of his prisoner.

He rose slowly to his feet, not turning. Hamish said, “He died quickly. How do you think it was?”

But Rutledge was silent. Tanner, watching Blevins’s face, shifted from one foot to the other, waiting for his superior to speak to him.

And then Blevins said harshly, anger and grief thickening his voice until it was unrecognizable, “I wanted to see him hang!”

No one spoke for what seemed minutes. Then Blevins said, “All right, Tanner, tell me what happened.”

Tanner flinched, as if he’d been accused of murdering the man himself. He was young and all elbows and knees, but he said with a confidence that belied his years, “If you’ll look just over here, sir—”

He led them some six feet from the body and pointed down at the iron half-circle lying in the grass. “See here, there’s a shoe. And I backtracked the horse some distance. He cast it perhaps a quarter of a mile back—I found a muddy patch where you could see clearly that the off hind hoof was bare.”

Blevins grunted, then squatted by the shoe. “All right. Go on.”

“It’s my thinking, sir, that the rider didn’t want to do anything about it, exposed as he was. It’s fairly open on the hill; with the farmers out early, he’d have been wary of being seen. But he brought it along with him, and here, with the trees to screen him from the farm, looked to see what the damage was, and if he could continue with this mount, or if he needed to find himself another.”

“It makes sense,” Blevins said, nodding.

“And when he lifted the off hind, the horse didn’t care for it, backed away, and when Walsh bent to try again, kicked him in the head with the shod hoof.”

“How do you read that?”

“The grass is trampled a bit, just below where he fell, sir. See, it’s bruised and the ground is torn in one place. As if he might have been trying to make the horse stand still for him. Everywhere else you look, there’s no sign of that.”

Blevins went over to look at the grass. “Are you certain the doctor didn’t do this? Or you, even.”

Tanner’s face was earnest. “No, sir, the doctor came in from the head. He said it was a heavy blow, caught Walsh just right, crushing the bone at the temple and killing him outright. An inch lower, and he’d have had a cracked jaw but lived to tell about it. An inch higher, and he’d have suffered a severe concussion.” He was clearly quoting the doctor. “The wound itself supports the possibility of it being the shoe.” He half turned, looking around them. “There’s really no other clear explanation.”

“Yes. I suppose that’s true.” Blevins’s voice was flat. He wasn’t interested in how Walsh had died. He felt cheated and was already trying to come to terms with that.

“The doctor says when he has the man in his surgery, he’ll be able to tell if there’re any grass bits in the wound, but he’d be surprised if his first opinion changes,” Tanner finished diffidently. He had grown used to the corpse, guarding it. But the Inspector from Osterley seemed to be dazed, like a grieving relative.

Blevins got heavily to his feet, as if he’d aged ten years in the last ten hours. Looking around him at the empty hillsides and the long twist of the lane below, smoke rising from the farmhouse where a man in boots was hitching two horses to a long cart, he was silent.

“I hadn’t counted on it ending like this,” he said.

“There’s no other way it could have happened,” Tanner answered, as if Blevins had challenged his account. “If the horse wasn’t his, it might have taken exception to Walsh’s handling. Especially if he was angry about the shoe, and rough.”

Rutledge walked back to the body.

It made sense. He sat on his heels and studied Walsh’s face. The expression was one of faint surprise, as if he had died even as he saw the blow coming. But was the shape of the wound right?

Hamish said, “It’s deep. The rim of the shoe must ha’ caught him. I canna’ think what else would have struck such a blow. But it’s tae bluidy to be sure.”

“She’d have lashed out blindly, and put some force behind it. Catching him before he could leap away.” Behind him, he could hear Tanner and Blevins talking quietly. “He isn’t the first or the last to die this way. And he was close to giving us the slip. Still—if he’d stayed on this route, with luck I’d have crossed his path somewhere near East Sherham.”

Hamish said, “Ye ken, horses pulled Walsh’s cart. He’d have known how to handle the mare. He saddled her and got her out of the barn without fuss.”

Below the hill, the farmer was bringing the cart through the gate, to fetch the body.

Rutledge put out his hand and roughly measured the wound without touching it. As the sun’s light began to brighten the clouds, he could see a blade of grass in the bloody edge. The doctor was here—what, a good half an hour earlier? While it was still dark enough to make such small details nearly invisible. . . .

He got to his feet as Blevins came to stand once more at Walsh’s head.

“I’ve let him down. Father James,” the Inspector said with a heavy sigh. “I swore I’d find out who killed him. And I did! This was an easy way for the bastard to die!”

Rutledge’s motorcar arrived, pulling up at the gate just as the farm cart reached the trees. Blevins went to meet the farmer, calling, “Leave the cart there. Better to carry him across to it than to muck up the ground.”

“I’ll just lower the tail, then.” The farmer, red-faced from years in the wind, took out a handkerchief and wiped his glasses. “Doctor says he was kicked by a horse. The dead man. Not one of mine. They never left their stalls last night.”

“No. Not yours.” Blevins answered curtly.

The other constable was climbing toward them now, the smooth movements of a countryman in his stride.

With the farmer holding the horses’ heads to steady the cart, the four men lifted Walsh, grunting under his weight. The body shifted awkwardly in their grip, mocking them in death as it had in life. They tried to move in step over the uneven ground, until one of the constables slipped, barely regaining his balance in time to prevent pulling the others down with him. It was as if Walsh were still struggling to stay free, fighting their efforts, and they were breathing hard by the time they got him to the wagon.

Heaving the corpse into its bed, they misjudged the weight again, and the head brushed along the wooden bottom, leaving a smear of drying blood.

Blevins swore. “You’ll do the doctor’s work for him, if you damage that wound!”

Then they stood back, as if by unspoken command, and stared mutely at Walsh. It was an unexpected ending to the night, the adrenaline that had energized them through the long hours of searching beginning to fade and leaving them with an odd sort of feeling—of having lost, not won. Keyed to action, there was nothing to do now but go home.

The dead man’s eyes seemed to gaze at the side of the cart as if distracted by the rough pattern. The horses stirred uneasily, troubled by the smell of blood and sweat and death. One stamped its hoof, and the harness jingled.

Rutledge thought of the corpses he had seen in France, loaded like cords of wood onto wagons, stiff in the cold air that did nothing to stop the heavy odor of maggot-infested wounds and rotting flesh from choking the men handling the dead. There was no honor in death, whatever the poets claimed.

O. A. Manning, the poet who had never seen the Western Front, had said it best: “The bodies lie like lumber, / Obscene, without grace, / Like a house uninhabited and not yet ready / For ghosts . . .”

As the sun reached over the hill behind them, Rutledge could see the wound more clearly now.

It reminded him of something, and he was too weary to bring it to the fore of his mind. Something he’d seen, as a young policeman—

Hamish said, “What? Think, man!”

But it had escaped him. . . . It didn’t matter. And he was too tired to care.

At his elbow, Blevins was saying to Rutledge as the farmer raised the tailgate and turned his horses, “You’ll be wanting to start back for London, I daresay.”

“What? Yes, I suppose so.” Rutledge looked back at the trees, as the cart began its rumbling descent down the hill, the farmer talking to his team as if they were old friends. There was no reason to stay. . . .

“Easy as you go, Nell. There’s no haste, lass—”

Rutledge turned to Blevins and said, “Where’s the mare?”

“The mare? What mare?”

“Honey. She isn’t here. There’s no sign of her.”

“At a guess she’s halfway home by now!”

They started down in the wake of the cart. Rutledge said, “I’m surprised Walsh hadn’t made better time than this. I’d have put him farther west by first light.” He rubbed his hand along his chin, feeling the roughness of his beard against the skin of his fingers.

In the quiet morning air, the clump of their boots on the muddy hillside and the harsh breathing of men and horses was a counterpoint to the creaking of the cart’s wheels echoing across the valley.

Blevins was still finding it hard to manage what he regarded as failure. “She cast her shoe, and it slowed him. What difference does it make?” he continued impatiently. “I’m not in the mood to speculate on the late Matthew Walsh’s last hours. I’m cold and tired, I’ve not had my breakfast, and he’s dead. It’s finished. I’ll write my report and officially close the case, and that’s the end of it.” He stared hard at Rutledge. “Unless you’ve got a more likely suspect to hand me, from all those questions you’ve been badgering people with. Oh, yes, it’s my town, I hear what’s been said! Right now, to tell you the truth, I feel like stringing up the bloody corpse! A live one would be a hell of a lot more to my liking!”

May Trent’s name came unbidden into Rutledge’s mind.

CHAPTER 22

THE LONG ORDEAL WASN’T OVER FOR Rutledge.

Someone had telephoned the Osterley Hotel and left a message for the man from London. A farmer’s dairyman had come across Priscilla Connaught in her wrecked car, weeping hysterically, on a road a little east from where Matthew Walsh had been found dead.

Rutledge had forgotten her—she had left her house in a rush, looking for Walsh, and he had forgotten her.

The sleepless night showed in the dark circles under Mrs. Barnett’s eyes, and in the faded color of her face. He couldn’t ask more of her. Instead he said, “Will you go up to Miss Trent’s room, and ask if she’d mind accompanying me when I fetch Miss Connaught and her car? I think it best to have a woman with me.”

Mrs. Barnett raised her eyebrows in surprise. “But she left last night shortly after you did. Miss Trent. I thought you knew!”

“She hasn’t come back?”

“No. I’d locked the outer door, you see. Until a quarter of an hour ago. Of course I’d have heard the bell, she’d have no other way of getting in. And I’ve been awake since the telephone rang.”

“Never mind, then. Er—do you think I could have a cup of tea before I leave?” He couldn’t worry about May Trent now. . . .

She looked at him, must have seen the weariness eating into the bones of his face. “Must you go out again? Surely Miss Connaught is better off where she is, while they’re still searching!”

“Blevins has called it off. The search. Walsh was found.”

“Well, that’s a great relief, isn’t it? It means we’re all safe. I’ve just put the kettle on. And I think there’s some cold bacon and a little cheese, if you want me to make up a sandwich.”

“Please!”

As Rutledge climbed the stairs, Hamish said, “The woman’s right. Sleep for an hour—there isna’ any need for haste.”

He answered, “She gave someone my name—the farmer or the dairyman—and sent him out to find a telephone. I should have stopped her rather than drive half the night on a fool’s quest. In a way, whatever has happened is my fault.”

When he opened the door of his room it seemed to open its arms to him, welcoming and silent and still dark, with the shades drawn. But he ignored the temptation of the waiting bed and walked across the carpet to run his fingers again over the bristles of his chin. He felt grimy, unkempt. Shaving and a clean shirt would help.

The face staring back at him from his mirror as he worked up a lather in his mug and applied the brush to his cheeks and throat was gaunt, with the dark growth of beard lending it a sinister look. Hamish reminded him that he could pass more easily as a murderer than the dead Walsh.

Rutledge could still see the big hands lying limp, without force, on the grass, and the flaccid muscles that had once given the impression of great power to the Strong Man’s shoulders. In his mind’s eye, as he shaved, he reexamined the wound. An irony—a horseshoe spelling the end of the road for an escaping murderer.

What were the lines he’d found so fascinating as a boy? Something about for want of a shoe, a horse was lost—for want of a horse, a rider was lost—and it went on in that vein until a battle was lost. . . .

Certainly for Blevins, the battle had been lost.

Ten minutes to shave, wash up, and change, and then Rutledge was calling to Mrs. Barnett as he crossed the lobby.

She was just coming through the kitchen doorway, carrying a thermos of tea, a basket of sandwiches, and two cups. She said, “Don’t break the cups, will you? I need them back.”

“I’ll be careful. Why did Miss Trent leave? Orders were for everyone to stay indoors until Walsh was caught.”

Suddenly anxious, Mrs. Barnett asked, “You did say you’d found him, didn’t you? I’m afraid I’m beyond thinking just now.”

“We found him. He’s dead.” It was terse, and he hadn’t meant for the words to sound that way.

“Dead—”

“Why did Miss Trent leave?” he repeated.

“She was rather worried about Peter Henderson—all that searching, people moving about—and if he didn’t know why, it’d be upsetting. I expect Peter could take care of himself; he’s quite at home in the night. I mean, from the War and all that. I’ve seen him wandering about at all hours, just—wandering. Sometimes he stands on the quay and stares up at the hotel. Not in a threatening way, you understand. I think the light comforts him somehow. I don’t know how many times I’ve asked him to come in out of the rain, but he always shook his head and thanked me and walked on. I leave him alone, now. I’m sure he’d hear the search parties long before they saw him!”