Watchers of Time

Or hear Walsh, blundering through the dark?

Hamish reminded him, “Ye wondered, once, where he slept at night. . . .”

So he had. Rutledge thanked her and went out into the brisk wind that had arisen, thinking he ought to have brought his coat. But he didn’t have the energy to go back for it. Hamish warned him that he was in no shape to drive, either, and Rutledge said curtly, “I don’t have much choice!”

“You willna’ die. I’ll no’ let you die. Still—what if you kill someone else?”

It was not a pleasant thought.

He carried with him the directions that Mrs. Barnett had taken down from the man telephoning the hotel on behalf of Priscilla Connaught. The most direct route would have sent him back through Hurley, where Walsh had been found, but he chose instead to turn left out of Water Street and head east, then south and west again. He found himself wondering if this had—roughly—been the path Walsh had followed, too. It would explain to some degree why the man hadn’t got as far as Rutledge had expected. And on such an erratic course, it would have taken luck, a phenomenal amount of luck, for Priscilla Connaught to have caught up with him. . . .

Hamish said, “It wouldna’ do any harm to stop and see if the mare’s at the barn.”

Rutledge thought, “Let Blevins attend to it,” but as he neared the cottage he slowed and turned into the drive, bumping down the ruts to the barn.

The instinct that had served him so well in the past had been erratic since the War, as if deserting him and then finding him again. He tried not to turn his back on it when it stirred and woke.

A dog barked furiously at him, the yellow dog he’d seen the night before. It ran out of the barn, stiff-legged, its upper lip curled back from teeth that seemed to gleam in the pale light.

Rutledge stopped the motorcar some twenty feet from the barn, set the brake, and opened his door.

Hamish said something, but he ignored it.

Speaking to the animal quietly, his voice firm and ordinary, Rutledge said, “Good dog—good dog. There’s a good dog. Come here. That’s it, easy, my friend, no one means you any harm.” Matching his movements to the cadence of his speech, he got out to stand beside the car, slowly sinking to his haunches.

“Here, now, there’s a good dog. I won’t harm your master. Is he at home?”

Fierce and staccato at first, the barking changed to a loud and lengthy statement of duty, the black nose rising into the air, and the tail no longer rigid but dipping in the middle. In another thirty seconds, the dog came forward, nose outstretched, eyes wary, the bark more for show than for attack. Soon Rutledge was rubbing the rough head and tweaking the ears as he dug his fingers into the thick fur behind them. Tongue lolling, the dog would have licked Rutledge’s face if he hadn’t moved in the nick of time. Laughing, he stood and said, “All right, then, show me the barn. Will you do that?”

Hamish said, “You ken, if you tamed him, someone else could have. Walsh.”

“Yes. That’s what I wanted to find out.” He moved casually toward the barn, the yellow dog prancing at his heels, licking his hand in an invitation to play. But Rutledge was intent on his own business.

He paused as he reached the barn door, and then stepped inside. The dog followed happily, and Rutledge turned toward the stalls.

In the dim light of the barn, there was only one head raised to stare back at him with ear-twitching interest. The doors of the empty stalls stood wide.

Randal had not come home. And neither had the mare that he’d gone to find.

Satisfied, Rutledge prepared to leave, and the dog, sensing a lessening of tension, brought an old rag to him, offering it with a sloppy grin. Rutledge took it from the wet mouth and tossed it toward a bale of hay that stood beside a harrow.

The rag hit the back of the harrow, and something fell with a clatter, dislodged by the pull of the cloth. The dog went after his new toy, but looked back at Rutledge with an air that all but said, “It’s out of reach—not fair.”

Rutledge crossed to the harrow and leaned forward to retrieve the rag. It was entangled with something, and he brought both objects up together, tossing the balled rag toward the barn door before setting a hammer on the hay.

The dog raced off.

And a memory suddenly clicked. Rutledge stood still.

He was a young policeman again, walking into a house where a shirtless middle-aged man was in tears, begging him over and over to believe that he’d meant no harm—no harm. But in the kitchen at the back of the house lay the much younger wife, a bowl of eggs shattered on the floor around her, the shells broken and the whites as slippery as glass. From the muddy earth on her boots, she’d just collected the eggs from the hens in the back garden.

Her temple had been crushed by a carpenter’s hammer, a single blow with the weight of the husband’s heavy shoulders behind it. The weapon lay on the floor where he had dropped it, bright blood on its head. He had, he said, been using it to mend the cellar stairs.

Rutledge couldn’t recall now what the pair had quarreled about. Only that he’d felt like picking up the hammer and using it himself on the man. He’d been young, idealistic still, unused to murder. The man was on his knees by the quiet body of his wife, begging her to get up, to clean up the mess on the floor. To pull down her skirts before the policeman, and Rutledge had felt the upsurge of a fearsome anger.

And the wound—the wound was a bloody gouge on the temple. Not like—and yet somehow very like—the bloody hole in Walsh’s temple.

Why had he associated the two cases?

Because he was tired enough for his mind to play tricks. . . .

The dog came back with the rag, tail waggling, asking for another toss. But Rutledge was lost in the past, his eyes turned inward, his fingers moving involuntarily over the head of the hammer as he tried to bring back the images in his mind, to observe them more clearly. What was it that had stirred his memory? Not the shape of the wound— Not the kitchen floor, where the broken egg yolks ran into the thicker stickiness of the blood . . . Nor the man whimpering at his side.

He took the wet rag and threw it once more, and realized that it had left a smear of saliva across his fingers. He looked down at them as Hamish said something, and was on the point of wiping them on the loose hay when he stopped.

Rutledge stared at the tool in his hand, another thought rising among the confused images that exhaustion was fusing, like drug-induced dreams in hospital, into a semblance of reality.

The mare hadn’t been at the scene when the doctor arrived—he wouldn’t have been able to examine her shoe for signs of blood and hair. And by the time she was found, any useful traces on the shoe would have been worn away. A pity. It would have been clearer evidence in the chain of events Blevins had to sort out. Indeed, someone ought to wait here until the mare was brought in.

He himself should be on his way to Priscilla Connaught. . . .

His mind fragmented by multiple lines of thought, Rutledge tried to find coherence. And the fatigue riding him refused to let him.

How many hammers were there in Osterley—in a twenty-mile radius of Osterley?

It didn’t matter. The bodies of the dead often told their own stories of how they died. But not always why. It was the why that mattered now.

He realized what Hamish had just said to him. “. . . a needle in a haystack . . .”

Rutledge turned and walked toward the stalls that had held three Norfolk Grays only last night, thinking that the hammer had been in the barrow with its brothers only last night. He’d seen them there when he’d gone through the barn with the farmer Hadley and Tom Randal.

But he hadn’t been searching for hammers, only for Walsh—

The luminous brown eyes of the remaining horse met his and as Rutledge neared the stall, the animal blew softly, interested in the mixed smell of dog and motorcar that he carried with him. The yellow dog walked patiently at his heels, panting and grinning, a willing conspirator if Rutledge took it into his head to steal this last mount.

Rutledge approached the horse with care, concentrating on speaking quietly, reassuringly, before reaching out to the nose stretched toward him. “Where are your stable-mates? Hmmm? And what’s keeping your master—”

Hamish said something, fast and unintelligible.

There was heaving movement in the shadows at his shoulder, hardly visible, more a sudden blend of sounds and shapes so startlingly close that there was no defense against it. Rutledge ducked, prepared for a wild attack.

A second gray horse, awakened by a voice next to where she’d been dozing head down in her stall, swung it high and stretched forward to nuzzle him.

The mare.

She was home.

Once his breathing had settled back into the range of speech, Rutledge stepped into the stall, calling her name softly as he ran his hand down her neck and then along her flank, before moving toward her hindquarters. The mare quivered, her coat rippling with the movement of the nerves under it, but she stood still. He kept one hand on her back and bent to lift the heavy hoof on the near side. In the poor light of the barn, he couldn’t see well enough to examine it.

Turning her head to stare at him, she let him work with her without protest. He put down that hoof, and then moved to lift the other.

For an instant he thought she was going to kick out, and he could see himself caught in the head just as Walsh had been, his back too near the stall’s high side wall to let him escape the blow. But she simply moved a step forward, as if to give him more room.

The shoe was missing.

He put down the heavy hoof, keeping his hand gently on the mare’s rump. Her coat was rough with the lather of sweat, briars and leaves tangled in the thick hair. She had been ridden very hard, and she was tired. . . .

He lifted the hoof again. She turned her head, the great brown eyes watching him.

But she did not kick. She was safe in her own stall now, and not likely to object, in her present state. He let the hoof down, and moved around toward the big head.

“Clever girl, to find your own way home.” He slapped the neck just below the ears twitching with interest as if wondering what it was he wanted.

Hamish said, “Left to hersel’, it’s no’ a great surprise.”

Where was Randal?

Had he come back yet? There was no sign of the gelding. This time Rutledge moved on to the last stall to peer inside. It stood empty.

Randal was still searching for his lost mare.

Rutledge laid the hammer by the harrow, where he’d found it, and walked out of the barn. He could hear ravens calling in the woods, and somewhere the sharp whistle of a pheasant.

Priscilla Connaught was waiting. He had to go.

It was almost a surprise when he heard Hamish’s voice saying, “The woman willna’ go away. Stay until yon farmer comes back.”

Rutledge thought, “I’ll finish what I’ve begun.” But in Hurley, the doctor would be ready to examine Walsh’s body. Hamish was right. He ought to be there, too. No matter what he did, he was off track—last night, this morning—and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.

Besides, it was Blevins’s case. The Inspector would have to be present.

He absently fondled the dog’s ears. Walsh was dead. Whatever Hamish thought, one had always to remember the living.

CHAPTER 23

THE FARMHOUSE WHERE PRISCILLA CONNAUGHT HAD been taken after wrecking her motorcar was set, like so many others, back from the road down a winding lane that led up a slight rise and then into the farmyard. It was muddy, the warm smell of manure coming from a cart by the far wall where the milking shed had been cleaned. The cows themselves, some dozen of them, were already plodding steadily out to pasture, following a routine so well established in their lives that they needed no human direction.

A walk of paving stones led across to the house, and one branch of it disappeared through a hedge around to the front. Rutledge left his car by a stack of bricks covered with a tarpaulin and picked his way across the yard to the walk. There was a door at this end of it, what he assumed to be the kitchen door into the yard. It opened before he got there.

An anxious woman peered out at him. She wore her graying hair in a bun at the back of her neck, and a heavy sweater over her dark dress. “Inspector Rutledge?” she asked, her voice rising.

“Mrs. Danning? I met your husband along the main road. He’s brought the team down to pull Miss Connaught’s motorcar out of the ditch.”

She said, disapprovingly, “I shouldn’t wonder he’ll have his hands full. She shouldn’t have been driving so fast just there. It’s a miracle she didn’t do serious harm to herself!”

It was, he thought from her expression, more a condemnation of a woman at the wheel of a motorcar than it was of speed. Priscilla Connaught would have little in common with Mrs. Danning. They were brought up in very different worlds. The farmer’s wife had work-reddened hands and dressed much as her own mother must have done a generation ago. Youth had deserted her, her life given over to chores and cooking and raising children. To her, Priscilla Connaught was a city-bred peacock suddenly and inexplicably set down in a farmyard.

Holding the door for him, she walked ahead down a flagged passage, past the dairy room and a larder, then opened another door into the warm, lamplit kitchen. “She’s just in here,” Mrs. Danning added over her shoulder, and he stepped into the large room, his hat in his hand. Although sparsely furnished, there was a good round table, handsome chairs, the work sink, and two oak dressers. One of them held jugs and plates, cups and bowls, the glaze shining in the lamp’s glow.

Priscilla Connaught, her hair pinned up haphazardly, her coat dirty and torn, a long scrape across her cheek from her ear to her nose, was sitting hunched in a chair by the coal stove, though the room was warm. Someone had given her a shawl to wrap around her shoulders. It was handmade, thick, and appeared to have been knitted of whatever oddments of wool had been in the basket. There was almost a frivolous air about it, as if the juxtaposition of blues and grays and a very pretty rose had not been thought out as a pattern. A child’s first efforts, perhaps, for the stitches were sometimes too tight.

He said, “Miss Connaught?”

She looked up, her face streaked with tears and blood from the scrape. The misery in her eyes shocked him.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. “I didn’t know who else to ask. These people have been very kind—but I’d like very much to go home, now.”

He crossed the room to pull out a chair from the table, to set it next to hers. “Are you hurt?”

“Hurt?” She stared at him, as if the word was foreign to her. “I don’t think I am.”

He’d seen the car in the ditch. She’d have taken some punishment.

Rutledge reached out and gently lifted the hair from her face. His intent had been to make her more comfortable, but she flinched as he touched it, and he saw that there was a bloody cut at the very edge of her forehead.

Turning to Mrs. Danning, Rutledge said, “Could you bring me a wet cloth, please?”

She went to the sink and pumped up water into a small bowl. “It’ll be cold. Shall I set it on the stove for a spell?”

“No, that will do.” She brought him the bowl and a clean towel from a drawer. Rutledge got to his feet, dipped the towel into the bowl, and moving the hair aside, began to clean blood from the wound.

Priscilla Connaught’s breath caught at the coldness of the water, her eyes fluttering, but she held her head still like a good child, and let him work. Mrs. Danning, standing just behind him, was saying, “My dear lord, I never saw that! And she didn’t say anything—”

It was deep, and the blood welled up, in spite of his efforts to stem the flow. Rutledge said, “I don’t mean to hurt you—” And then he added, to distract her, “How did you come by this?”

“I don’t know,” she said faintly. “I don’t remember anything, except wanting to die . . . lying there in the ditch, wanting to die.”

She began to cry, silently at first, moving her face away from his fingers, and then the sobs shook her body, and she hunched away from his ministrations, into herself.

Mrs. Danning took the bowl from his hands. Her voice was troubled as she said, “She was this way when Michael brought her in. He’s the dairyman. He’d gone out with the milk cans, and the dogs found her first—dark as it still was, the motorcar was that hard to see in the ditch. He discovered she was alive, and ran back for my husband, to help get her out of the vehicle—her door was jammed, they said, and she couldn’t walk. They thought she’d broke her ankle or worse.”

Rutledge looked down. One ankle appeared to be swollen, the stocking sagging around it torn and filthy. A strap on the shoe was torn as well.

“Could you make us some tea?” Rutledge asked, to keep Mrs. Danning occupied. “I think it might help. I could use a cup myself.”

“It won’t take a minute. The kettle’s still hot.”

As she busied herself with the tea preparations, Rutledge sat down again and reached out to put his hand on Priscilla Connaught’s shoulder. “You’re safe,” he told her. “It’s all right now. Come, look at me.” He took out his handkerchief and pressed it into her hands, but she just clenched her fingers around it, like a lifeline, and couldn’t seem to stop the wrenching sobs that enveloped her.

If she’d been a man, if she hadn’t had the head wound, he would have slapped her lightly, to snap her out of the hysteria. Instead he said harshly, “That’s enough!”

She took two or three gulping breaths, startled into obeying, her eyes lifting in surprise to his face. Rutledge took the handkerchief from her fingers, and began to press it against her wet cheeks.

As if the words bottled inside had finally been unstopped, she said shakily, “I tried to kill him. I saw him there in the dark, bent over in his saddle, and I wanted to kill him. I drove into the hedge instead—because I couldn’t bear to hit the horse—”

He waited, letting her talk. “I shrieked at him, blowing the horn, screaming, heading straight at him, and the horse threw him then, and I drove directly over him. I wanted him dead, and then I wanted to kill myself. I tried to point the bonnet at a tree, but the wheels slipped in the grass, and I missed it and went into the ditch instead, and was terrified that I wouldn’t die—and it went black, and I—” She started to cry again. “I’m still alive!” Her eyes were on his, begging. “I wanted it to be swift, painless, over within an instant . . .”

Beyond the table, he saw Mrs. Danning standing with the teapot in one hand, the lid in another, staring at her unexpected guest, horror on her face.

She clearly hadn’t heard this part of the story, she knew only that there had been an accident. “Is there someone dead? Michael didn’t say anything about that!”

Rutledge, his mind working swiftly through what Priscilla Connaught had said, heard Hamish ask, “It couldna’ be Walsh she ran down—”

“How do you know he’s dead, Miss Connaught? Did you see him after you hit him?”

Hamish said, “There’ll have to be a search.”

Priscilla Connaught frowned. “I drove straight over him. He must be dead!” She brushed her hair back again, and looked at the blood on her fingers. “Is that his blood?” she asked, confused. She took the handkerchief from him and scrubbed the spot. “I don’t know. I can’t—I can’t remember any more. Except that it’s finished. That’s all. Finished.” She made a faint gesture and after a moment added, as if bewildered, “It’s easier said than done, trying to kill yourself—” She stared at him, as if this was a new discovery, something she hadn’t foreseen.

She began to weep again. Mrs. Danning set down the pot, lifted the teakettle from the black stove, and poured in steaming water. “It’ll only take a bit to steep,” she said.

“How do you kill yourself?” Priscilla Connaught asked weakly through her tears. “I thought of slashing my wrists, but I didn’t have anything sharp—only the tools in the boot, and they wouldn’t do the job. I wish I was dead!”

Hamish said, “She needs a doctor’s care. She canna’ be trusted.”

It was true. Rutledge took a deep breath and said, “This isn’t the place to talk of dying. Or the time. You mustn’t upset Mrs. Danning!”

Priscilla Connaught looked up at the sturdy farmer’s wife. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then repeated it. But he thought the apology was more a response to his tone of voice than to his words.

Rutledge coaxed a cup of sugared tea into Priscilla Connaught, which warmed her, but failed to make any headway in bringing her out of her depression and exhaustion. Instead she lapsed into a silence that seemed almost a blankness. Setting aside his own tea, he said, “Let me drive you back to Osterley. My car’s just outside. We’ll fetch yours when you’ve rested. The Dannings will see to it, meanwhile. It will be safe enough here.”

With visible effort, Priscilla Connaught roused herself from her silent misery. “Yes. I can’t stay here. I’ve caused these kind people enough distress already. But I don’t know that I can walk. My foot still hurts.”

“I’ll help you, then—”

Her eyes were red-rimmed and dark with pain. “I just want to go home. Will you take me home? Please?”

“Yes. If that’s what you want.” It would probably be best to summon the doctor to her, rather than bring her into a reception room full of staring people.

With the help of Mrs. Danning at the doors, Rutledge managed to half-carry Miss Connaught out of the house and set her in his motorcar. Mrs. Danning provided a pillow for her injured foot, and stepped back, as if glad to wash her hands of her troublesome guest. He went back to the house with Mrs. Danning, promising to see that both the shawl and the pillow were returned and making arrangements for the car to be retrieved later.

The farmer’s wife began to collect the cups and spoons from her kitchen table, her face creased with worry. “Who is it that’s dead? I couldn’t make head nor tail of her story! Should we ought to summon the police? She wouldn’t hear of a doctor for herself, and we didn’t know about anyone else being in the car!”

Rutledge said, “I’m not certain exactly what happened. Dr. Stephenson will give her something to make her rest. Then we’ll be able to sort it out.”

He was on the point of saying more, but Mrs. Danning’s face cleared and she nodded. “I’ve heard he’s a good man. He’ll see her right.” Then she added, “When my husband pulled her out of that car, she begged him to look for a horse. She thought she’d struck it. But there was no horse. Nor any other injured party! He searched for near on to a quarter of an hour, to satisfy her, and never saw any sign of a horse!”

“A Norfolk Gray mare was stolen from a stable outside of Osterley last night. If you should find her, please send word to me as soon as possible.” But he’d already seen the mare. And she showed no sign of injury.

Rutledge turned the crank and climbed into his seat. Priscilla Connaught pulled the gaudy shawl closer as he circled the yard and began the long, rough descent down the drive to the main road. “I’m sorry,” he said, glancing at her. “I’ll make the journey as comfortable as I can.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she answered tonelessly, shrugging deeper into the folds of the shawl, her chin invisible. They rode in silence for a very long time. She hardly noticed when they passed her car and the farmer with his team, though Rutledge waved to him. And then she seemed to throw off some of the lethargy that wrapped her in bleak despair, as if the tea had finally helped.

He thought she might be recovering a little of her usual strength, and was encouraged. When she turned to stare at him, he offered her a brief smile.

She didn’t appear to see it.

“You were in the War!” she said fiercely. “Tell me how to die!”

He thought of all the men he’d watched die. And tried to shake off the dark cloud that settled over his spirits.

“There’s no easy way,” he said bitterly. “Trust me. I know.”

When they had reached the marshes, turning toward Osterley, Rutledge said in a neutral tone, as if discussing the weather, “What happened to the horse?”

She turned to look at him. “What horse?” she asked, frowning. “I don’t remember a horse. . . .”

Dr. Stephenson came at once in answer to Rutledge’s summons, and listened with concern as the Inspector explained what had happened to Priscilla Connaught. Then the doctor took the stairs up to her bedroom, where she lay with the shades down, her face turned to the wall.

When he came down half an hour later, drying his hands on a pale yellow towel embroidered with white violets, he walked into the sun-bright parlor and took the chair by the window. The room was pretty, with walls of a very soft cream, accented by the deep blues of the upholstery and carpets, and a pale climbing rose entwined in the matching drapes. A woman’s room, and yet empty of the small treasures that usually adorned such an ornate mantelpiece or filled the polished tabletops. In a way it seemed to reflect Priscilla Connaught’s empty life. She had, over the years, collected nothing but misery.

“That’s a nasty cut on her head. It could be serious—I’d not be surprised if there’s some concussion. Bruises,” Stephenson told Rutledge. “And a good many more will likely show up. She’s already sporting deep bruising on the shoulder and hip. But nothing appears to be broken. The ankle has been sprained, and I’ve taped that to reduce the swelling.”

“The head injury. Serious enough to confuse her memory?”

“I can’t say. The woman is suffering from more than the effects of the car running into the ditch—agitation and emotional collapse, to head the list. The sedative I’ve administered will keep her quiet for some hours, and we’ll see whether she’s calmer then.” He paused. “The right eye is turning black now. She won’t want to look into her mirror for awhile. And I took a stitch or two in another cut on her scalp. Bit of glass lifted a flap of skin and hair. I daresay she’ll have a headache for a day or so. I’ll find someone to sit with her. Ellen Baker should do, she’s gentle and has a way with her. High-strung women like Miss Connaught aren’t always the best of patients.”

Rutledge said, “You may want to make another choice. She was looking for ways to kill herself. She ran into that ditch on purpose, from what I could learn, and she believes she’s killed a man.”

Stephenson’s eyebrows rose. “Does she now! I could tell she’d been weeping. I didn’t know the rest of it, and she didn’t volunteer anything. Why does she want to kill herself? Because of this man Walsh? Doesn’t make any sense! Didn’t realize she even knew him!”

Rutledge felt the fatigue burrowing deep into his very bones. “It has nothing to do with Walsh. Not directly. But there’s a strong sense of guilt. Real or fancied, I don’t know. I think she ought to be—watched.”

“In that case, I’ll send for Mrs. Nutley. She’s had seven sons, all of whom have battled their way through life, and she’s nursed everything from broken bones to depression to drunken stupors. She’ll manage well enough.” He crossed the room to stand at the window, looking out at the marshes. “It’ll rain before dinner.” He turned back to Rutledge. “There’s a narrow line between love and hate sometimes, you know. And it can be crossed unwittingly.”

“I can’t tell you what’s behind it. She’s—a very private person.” And he wasn’t prepared to break her confidences. Not yet.

“That isn’t much help. I’d need to know what signs to look for!”

Rutledge rubbed his face with his hands. “All I can tell you is that she went out last night”—was it only last night?—“to look for Walsh. She was—one of Father James’s flock, and afraid the man would escape justice. And somewhere between that time and dawn this morning, she believes she killed someone and she tried to kill herself.”

“Went out on her own? I can’t see Blevins allowing that!”

Rutledge was too close to exhaustion to fight a battle of wits with this very sharp man. “He didn’t know. Ask him yourself, if you like.” Whatever secrets Priscilla Connaught possessed, if the good doctor hadn’t stumbled over them in ten or twelve years, it was a salute to her deep and abiding need for privacy.

But Dr. Stephenson’s curiosity was, quite frankly, aroused.

“Then what did she say when you walked into the farmhouse?”

“That someone was dead. And she’d tried to miss the horse. But later on she was confused about the horse, whether it was there at all.”

It was a bald account. Rutledge left it at that.

Dr. Stephenson grunted. “Well, the accident itself could have caused confusion between what she intended to do and what she did do.” He took out his watch and looked at it, sighing. “I’ve a long day ahead of me. I’ve had two men brought in with broken bones, and a woman hysterical enough to deliver prematurely. And that doesn’t count the scrapes and cuts and sprains from people wandering around in the dark most of the night! I’ll send my nurse to find Mrs. Nutley and see that Miss Connaught is cared for. If you’ll wait here for half an hour?”

“How long do you think it will be before her mind is clear?”

“Hard to say,” Stephenson replied, considering. “Wait until tomorrow before questioning her again. She may be making more sense by then.”

When he was gone, Rutledge looked in on Priscilla Connaught and then sat in a chair in the room across the passage from hers. He intended to watch; instead, he fell heavily asleep.

When Mrs. Nutley arrived, letting herself in quietly, he forced himself back to wakefulness. But it was hardly more than that. She clicked her tongue when she saw him. A motherly woman with a strong face and an awesome air of competence, she said, “If you know what’s best for you, you’ll get yourself in that spare bed over there and go back to sleep.”

But there was still too much to be done.

Blevins was working in his office when Rutledge walked through his door. He looked up with a sour expression and said, “I thought you’d be asleep by now. I wish to God I was.”

“If I look as weary as you do, we’re both a fine pair of sleepwalkers.”

“Matched set.” Blevins leaned back in his chair. “The doctor in Hurley tells me Walsh was probably kicked by the horse and died where he stood. The loose shoe fits rather roughly into the wound in his skull, even though it wasn’t the one that did the damage. The doctor’s not sure what the angle was, of course, when the kick was delivered. What matters was a luck of the strike. Delivered just exactly at the wrong place for any chance of survival. Death by misadventure.”

Rutledge said easily, “Any sign of other injuries? A fall—running into something in the dark?”

Blevins laughed. “You don’t give up, do you? London told me that, when I asked for you. All right, just for the hell of it, why should there be?”

“The searchers seemed to have had a rough night of it,” Rutledge answered, taking the other chair and sitting down. He hadn’t had breakfast, he remembered. Only the sandwiches that Mrs. Barnett had put up for him when he’d gone to find Priscilla Connaught. “Does Walsh have any family? Have you notified anyone that he’s dead?”

“There’s the scissor sharpener. I doubt he’d walk to the corner to help Walsh, now that he’s dead. What’s in it for him? With no real proof that he was the lookout while Walsh riffled the study, he’s home free.”

“There’s Iris Kenneth. She might know if Walsh had any family.”

“Yes. Well, do you want the task of going to London to fetch her? She’s not likely to come north on her own!”

“I suppose you’re right. Still—”

“If you’re on your way there,” Blevins said, watching Rutledge’s face, “you might do me the courtesy of calling on her yourself.”

After a moment, Rutledge made a last effort to break through the emotional barriers that Inspector Blevins had set up.

“Put aside your personal feelings about Walsh—and about the death of Father James. If you’d walked into the study of a stranger that morning, how would you have described the body lying by the window?”

“The same way. An intruder had struck hard and fast, out of fear of being recognized. Matthew Walsh won’t be giving us the answer to why he did it—but I don’t suppose, in the scheme of things, it makes much difference. He ran. That’s guilt.”

Rutledge said quietly, thinking it through, “The killer— Walsh, if you like—didn’t strike once, looking to buy time for an escape. He meant to kill.”

“Yes. It was deliberate. Makes me sick to think about it!”

“On the other hand, if there hadn’t been any money in the tin box in the desk—if it had been spent or given away by that time—how would you have decided on the motive for murder?”

Blevins said impatiently, “The same way.”

“No, you couldn’t have looked at it the same way! There was no money in the desk, nothing to draw a thief to the study. Nothing for Walsh or anyone like him to slip into the rectory to steal.”

“You’re setting up a scene that didn’t exist! Walsh couldn’t know that, could he? See it my way for once! Walsh was desperate—this was his last hope of finding the sum he needed to finish paying for that bloody cart. He may have killed in a fury when he discovered the box was empty!”

“If this had happened before the bazaar—” Rutledge began.

“All right! Let’s take your position and examine it. A dead man and no tin box would tell me there was another reason, a personal reason, to kill that priest. But I knew Father James too well—and in all your questioning, you still haven’t answered that one, either!”

Blevins, tired as he was, couldn’t make the leap of imagination. Hamish said, “You canna’ expect it from him. He was too close to the victim.”

Rutledge took a deep breath, thinking, Hamish is right.

“If Father James knew something that worried him— possibly involving a police matter—would he come to you with it?”

“Of course he would! I’d be the first person he’d turn to,” Blevins answered with a lift of pride.

But he hadn’t—and for the same reason: Father James, too, had known the Inspector’s limitations as a man and as a policeman.

Rutledge said, “I hear there’s a chance that Monsignor Holston will replace Father James until a suitable choice can be made. I’m driving to Norwich later. Shall I tell him that Walsh has died?”

“Suit yourself. I expect half the county has heard that by now. What’s taking you to Norwich?”

Rutledge smiled. “A personal matter. By the way— who’ll be given the reward that Lord Sedgwick put up?”

“Not the police,” Blevins said wryly. “And Lord Sedgwick ought to make that decision himself.”

“I expect he will.” Rutledge rose from his chair. “Have you by any chance seen Miss Trent? I’d like to speak to her before I leave for Norwich.”

“She went out last night, found herself badly frightened in the woods north of the church, and spent what was left of it at the vicarage. I stopped there to tell the Vicar that Walsh had been found. He thought she was still asleep.”

“What frightened her?”

“God knows. An owl probably, or a badger. Women have no business out in the middle of the night on their own.”

“You’ve heard, I’m sure, that Priscilla Connaught was out looking for Walsh? Ran her car into a ditch and was lucky to survive with only a concussion.”

“Yes, well, rather proves my point, doesn’t it?”

Rutledge reached across the desk to shake Blevins’s hand. “If you’d like a last piece of advice, I’d wire Iris Kenneth if I were you. Save the ratepayers from burying Walsh in a pauper’s grave!”

“I might, at that.” He thought about it. “Yes, I will!”

Rutledge left, glad to step out into the sunshine. It had a grayness to it now that forecast rain later, as the doctor had suggested. After the early morning, it had never been a clear day. But even in this light the marshes seemed rich with color, and the wind moved through the grasses like a wraith.

The walk from the police station to the vicarage seemed to stretch before Rutledge like the Great Wall of China, miles upon miles to travel on foot. His body rebelled at the thought. Hamish ridiculed him for his weakness.

Ignoring his tormentor, he went back to the hotel and started the car.

CHAPTER 24

MR. SIMS OPENED THE VICARAGE DOOR warily, peering out at Rutledge shrouded in the heavy shadows cast by the trees along the drive.

“What brings you here? Half the town is sound asleep after the long night. I understand Walsh has been found, and is dead.”

“Yes, that’s true. On both counts.” Rutledge said it pleasantly. “I came to ask if Miss Trent is awake.”

Sims said, “I expect she’s still asleep. But if you care to leave her a message?”

“Would you mind looking in on her? It’s rather urgent.” His voice was still quite pleasant, but the edge of command had crept into its timbre.

Sims was on the point of arguing when a door opened at the top of the stairs. May Trent stood there above them in a dressing gown far too large for her, her hair unbound and hanging in a dark stream down her back. She didn’t look as if she’d been asleep. The smudges under her eyes were as deep as Rutledge’s own.

“I’m awake, Vicar,” she said. And then to Rutledge, “But hardly dressed to receive callers.”

“A policeman isn’t ranked as a caller, Miss Trent. I understand you were frightened last night. What did you see or think you heard in the woods that brought you here in some haste? We’re trying to track Walsh’s movements.”

“How did you know—” she began, and then realized that he’d tricked her. “Yes, all right,” she said after a moment. “If you’ll give me a little time to dress?”

He agreed, and the Vicar led him into the kitchen at the back of the house. The curtains were still drawn. A dresser taller than he was stood against one wall. Dishes were piled in a pan of soapy water on a small table by the windows, and the remnants of breakfast were still on the stove—toast and sausages with fried eggs. A jar of marmalade and a dish of butter sat on the main table, next to three used teacups.

“I was making fresh tea,” Sims told Rutledge, nodding to the kettle on the stove. “My guess is that you could use a cup! I’ve drunk my share this night.”

Remembering what Hamish had said earlier that morning as he’d finished Mrs. Barnett’s provisions, Rutledge asked, “With a little whiskey, if you’ve got it.”

“Yes, indeed,” Sims answered, opening a cupboard and taking out a fresh cup. “I’ll just go and fetch it.”

“First, I’d like to hear how Miss Trent arrived last night.”

“Nothing much to tell.” Sims peered into the sugar bowl. “I heard a knocking at the door, and I called down from a window to see who it was. Miss Trent said she’d got separated from her search party, and was uncomfortable about walking back to the hotel on her own. I let her in, telling her I’d just dress and then see to it that she got back to the hotel. But she asked for tea to warm her, and by the time I’d made it, she was sound asleep in her chair. I left her there with a blanket over her, and sent her upstairs around six, when she woke up disoriented and still half asleep.”

It was told smoothly, with enough detail to give it the air of truth.

But even Hamish growled his disapproval.

“Yes, that’s a fine tale for the gossips of Osterley!” Rutledge replied, taking the cup that Sims poured him.

“It’s the truth—!” There was outrage in the Vicar’s voice.

“Yes, I’m sure it is. But May Trent doesn’t strike me as the sort of woman easily frightened by noises in the woods, if she was out with a search party, and she came down that dark drive of yours when it would have been far wiser to hurry down the hill to the comparative safety of Water Street.” He paused. “After all, Walsh had been here just hours before. As far as she knew, he might still be hidden in the grounds, waiting until the hue and cry faded. No one thought to search the church tower, did they? Or all the rooms of the vicarage?”

Hamish said, “It’s no’ an impossibility. . . .”

“You’d have got her out of here, fast as you could, if you’d had any sense,” Rutledge said. “But what she came to tell you made you both decide to stay here.”

Sims murmured, “I’ll just find the whiskey.”

But before he could move, the kitchen door opened and May Trent came in. “You said it was urgent?” She wore her clothes, wrinkled from sleeping in the chair, like a badge of honor. Her eyes strayed to the teapot. Sims was already searching for another clean cup.

She sat, accepted the tea he poured for her, added sugar, and sipped it as if it was warming her, her fingers around the bowl of the cup.

They were, Rutledge thought sourly, as companionable as a long-married pair, while he had only a matter of hours to finish what he’d set out to do.

“Get your coats, if you will. We’re driving to Norwich in five minutes.”

May Trent regarded him suspiciously. “I’m exhausted. I’m not going to Norwich or anywhere else—only to bed. And quite frankly, so should you, Inspector. You don’t look as if you’re rested enough to undertake—”

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

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

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

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

But something made her look away from him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the gelding and the farmer had not come home.

Rutledge was beginning to feel uneasy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamish’s last salvo was telling.

“They willna’ like it in London.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“God rest his soul!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How could you see that?”

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

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

“Not then.”

Rutledge waited.

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

“During the service?” Rutledge was surprised.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They stared at each other in horrified silence.

Rutledge thought, I’ve never come so close—

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 25

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She looked from one to the other of the three men. “I didn’t know Father James had his own nightmare. I wasn’t much help to him, I’m afraid.” There was a faint quality of the child in her voice, begging forgiveness. “I didn’t understand how great his need was!”

Rutledge sat down heavily, trying to bring himself back to the task at hand. He wished that the Vicar and May Trent had taken the train, and he could drive back to Osterley—or anywhere—all alone. Except for Hamish, who never left him alone.

The Vicar said, into the silence, picking his words, “Virginia Sedgwick was a woman hungry for affection. I watched her—I was invited to several of the parties at Sedgwick Hall after she married Arthur. She believed her husband loved her. She most certainly loved him. But he was mad for racing; he lived in a world of fast machines and dangerous sport. As far as I could tell, he was oblivious to her dislike of living alone out in the middle of Yorkshire, where she had few neighbors and fewer friends. He expected her to find pleasure in running the house, as his mother had done—she was a well-known hostess, and quite clever at smoothing over her husband’s connections with trade. It never worked, their marriage. When I heard Virginia had left him and gone back to America, I was— glad it was over. I couldn’t bear to watch her suffer.”

Rutledge, grateful for the change in subject, asked, “You spoke of friends. Were there any close friends she confided in?”

“No.” As if to soften the harsh negative, Sims added, “She found it hard to find common ground with women of her own class, and was too friendly with the servants. They took advantage of her. That’s why she came to the vicarage to talk with me, using whatever flimsy excuse she could think of. Father James and I were safe, you see. Clergymen, not likely to take advantage. In any sense.”

Intrigued, Rutledge asked, “What did she talk about?”

“The flowers. The music. She liked music. Services for the family were usually held at the church on the grounds of the estate. She preferred Holy Trinity because it was so beautiful. She’d spend hours sitting in the nave polishing the benches or mending the cushions. I found her one day on a ladder, cleaning out the cobwebs around the stained-glass windows. Impeccably dressed, her gloves filthy—” He stopped. “They closed the house in East Sherham when Sedgwick went to London, and she was sent back to Yorkshire, then.”

Monsignor Holston said, “Father James met her in London, just after she’d come to England. They served on some committee or other together. He said she was the happiest woman he’d ever seen. And he was the man she turned to when the marriage soured. She was a woman of strong faith, and he tried to bolster that. That’s one reason he wasn’t prepared to believe that she could turn her back on her husband and leave England. He always defended her, and it’s my feeling that he always hoped she might try to get in touch with him.”

The Vicar said unexpectedly, “I thought it was better for her just to go. Father James and I quarreled over that. He wanted to find her, and I told him I’d have no part in it.”

Hamish said, “Aye, it’s the difference in age between the two men. Both wanted to play knight, but no’ in the same fashion.”

Rutledge silently agreed. It was that male vulnerability to their own protective instincts. To save the damsel from the dragon—the dragon, in this case, Arthur Sedgwick’s seeming indifference to his beautiful young wife—and somehow make her life better. Priest or layman, it didn’t matter. Each man had responded to Virginia Sedgwick.

Monsignor Holston pushed his plate away. “There’s a more practical side, you know. It’s my understanding that she had a considerable inheritance, from a grandmother who had heavily invested in railroads among other things. What was the disposition of that, if she died? Or—if she just disappeared? And another question—why didn’t her family in America raise a hue and cry, when she went missing?”

“No one could foresee that her ship would sink!” the Vicar said.

“Father James told me in late 1912 that she wasn’t listed among the passengers,” Monsignor Holston replied. “That is, not until after the inquiry. Sedgwick hired someone to look into the matter for him, and he finally found her name. This would explain why Father James was so interested in what Miss Trent could tell him.”

Rutledge said, “Why was there a problem?”

“There was a record of her purchasing her fare, but none of her boarding the ship. Apparently there was some confusion over names.”

May Trent said unexpectedly, “If I had wanted to get away, and money wasn’t an issue, I’d have paid my fare, and then taken another ship. Or no ship at all. Virginia Sedgwick could very well be alive and still in England.”

Hamish said quietly, “Or dead, having never left England.”

Rutledge, pursuing that thought, asked, “In which case, if Herbert Baker changed his mind on his deathbed, and told Father James the truth about that journey from Yorkshire to King’s Lynn—or even what happened in King’s Lynn itself—it must have been very difficult for Father James to hold his tongue. And it’s quite possible, isn’t it, that someone doesn’t want the truth about Virginia Sedgwick to come out?”

Monsignor Holston replied slowly, “I hadn’t considered that. But it explains why I’ve been uneasy since I saw Father James dead. If you are not a Catholic—if you don’t understand the sanctity of Confession—it would be natural to believe that Father James told me or even the Vicar here whatever he’d learned from Baker . . .”

Sims spoke up suddenly, his face unhappy, eyes torn.

“There’s another part of the story.”

“Virginia Sedgwick was—a lovely child. I don’t think Arthur Sedgwick realized that when he met her in Richmond. She told me she was always surrounded by cousins, brothers, sisters—they seldom had the opportunity to be alone, she and Arthur. And in company, she was shy, she spoke softly, and she had the gift of listening. What’s more, her grandmother, worried about her future, had left her a fortune. Rich, beautiful—and not—not truly whole.”

They stared at him. In his mind, Rutledge heard Lord Sedgwick’s dismissive words: “Attractive simpleton, that’s what she was.” Rutledge had taken it as hyperbole—but it was the truth.

“They brought her to England for the wedding, you know,” Sims said wearily. “Her family. A very fashionable affair in London. I don’t think Arthur ever realized that she was—simple. Until they went away on their wedding journey. Her family had made certain they were never alone together.”

May Trent asked, “How do you mean? Simple?”

“Virginia—she’d had a fever as a small child. The family blamed it on that. They swore it wasn’t hereditary. But by that time Arthur was married to her, and he discovered that this very pretty, very sweet, very young bride was not simply modest and shy. Her mental development was retarded.”

Rutledge said, “And he didn’t like the feeling of being cheated.”

Sims agreed. “It may explain why he spent so much time in France, racing with his friends. Why he left Virginia behind in Yorkshire, isolated from his friends and from London Society. Reading between the lines, I gathered that this was the reason behind his brother Edwin’s frequent visits when Arthur was away. He was making damned sure that the simpleton didn’t fornicate with the servants or the stableboys, and produce a half-wit bastard who would inherit the family title!”

Monsignor Holston, after much persuasion, agreed to return to Osterley with them and speak to Inspector Blevins.

It had been a heated argument “I can’t see that it will do much good. So much of it is speculation,” the priest protested. “Father James is dead, Baker is dead—for all we know, Mrs. Sedgwick is dead. All we may succeed in proving is that the chauffeur, Baker, was cajoled into letting his passenger flee her husband, there in King’s Lynn. And there’s no crime in that.”

Rutledge argued, “It isn’t a question of convincing Blevins. It’s a matter of strategy. If there is sufficient doubt, he must reopen his investigation.”

“How will you begin?” May Trent asked.

Turning to the Vicar, Rutledge asked him, “Think back. Herbert Baker was your sexton. Can you recall when Mrs. Baker was ill-enough to be placed in a sanitarium for her tuberculosis? You must have visited her then!”

Sims rubbed his eyes. “She was very ill in November 1911, I think, and they didn’t expect her to live through the winter. With sanitarium care, she did.”

“By the spring of 1912 then—when Mrs. Sedgwick went missing—Baker could see that continued care was essential to keeping his own wife alive?”

“He never expected miracles,” Sims corrected Rutledge. “She was dying.”

“Yes. She’d have been dead in November without that care. She survived two years with it. That mattered to a man who loved his wife very deeply.”

Sims responded, “Herbert Baker was a decent man— loyal.”

“How did he define loyalty?” Rutledge persisted. “If someone convinced him he was acting in Virginia Sedgwick’s best interests, would he shut his eyes?”

Sims said, “He’d never harm her!”

“But would Arthur Sedgwick feel the same way?”

The argument had ended there.

It was crowded in the car, and Hamish, in the rear seat with the two men, was restless and not in the best of moods.

Rutledge drove like an automaton, beyond exhaustion. May Trent sat in the seat beside him, head bowed, lost in her own thoughts. Once she turned to him and asked, “If Virginia Sedgwick was—simple—how did she manage to elude Baker, find her way to London, and arrange to sail on the next ship leaving for America?”

Sims answered, leaning forward with one hand on the back of her seat. “It’s what worried Father James. Why he feared she might be dead. God knows, Arthur received plenty of sympathy. He could have married again any time, an eligible young widower with more money than he knew what to do with, and no children to share in it? But he’d been burned once. He stayed clear of any entanglements.”

“And what did you think?” Rutledge asked him.

There was a long silence. “I thought perhaps Edwin Sedgwick had engineered her flight. I was jealous. I had wanted her to turn to me. I wanted to be the shining knight on the white horse who rescued her. I sat there alone in the vicarage and told myself that she’d been more clever than I knew. And I asked myself what she’d given Edwin in return. I’m not very proud of it. But it’s the truth.”

Monsignor Holston added unexpectedly, “She’s never been declared dead, you know. It was all kept very quiet. Father James wrote to her family in America. They swore Virginia hadn’t come home. They’d agreed with Lord Sedgwick’s decision to hire people to look for her and were satisfied that it was very possible she had been lost at sea. But Father James was convinced early on that if she had arrived safely, they would have sent her back.”

Hamish added, “It doesna’ seem that her ain family cares o’wer much what happened. They were eager enough to palm her off on an unsuspecting suitor.”

Sims swore. “To hurt her would be like hurting a child!”

May Trent said, “I shudder to think—it was so wild that night, when we went down. She’d have had no idea, what to do—” She stopped, waited until her voice was steady again, and went on. “But there had been a great deal of talk about the ship. She might have been attracted to the idea of sailing home on a famous ship. It would have made it easier for her to plan. . . .”

“Then what did Herbert Baker Confess?” Rutledge asked. “If he’d only helped her to find a train to London, he didn’t share in the guilt of her death.”

Hamish said morosely, “We’re back to who paid for the care of his ill wife?”

Baker had even asked the Vicar if it was possible to love someone too much—

The question was, if one of the Sedgwicks had plotted Virginia’s disappearance, which one had it been? Arthur? Edwin? Or Lord Sedgwick himself?

Rutledge could feel the weariness that dragged at him like an anchor.

When the story got out that Herbert Baker had sent for a priest as well as the Vicar, had someone been terrified that the past would come back to life if the priest delved too deeply in it?

It was a strong enough motive for murder. If you’d killed before.

When they neared Osterley, a low mist hung over the marshes and the dips and twists of the road, the verges vanishing and reappearing like links in a chain. The dampness in the air sometimes produced a passing squall.

Rutledge stopped again at the Randal farm, unwilling to leave that loose end unraveled. Over the protests of his weary passengers, he got out and went to hammer on the door.

A ragged and battered figure came stomping around the corner of the house, yelling obscenities.

Rutledge stared.

Randal was bloody from a dozen cuts and scratches on his face and hands. Bruises marked his jawline and his left arm was held close to his body.

“The mare’s run into the ground, damn you, and that bitch done her best to kill me! I’m flipping lucky to be able to walk!” The farmer’s anger was a live thing, too long pent up. He kicked out at the corner of the house, then kicked again. “I’ll be seeing that solicitor in the town. I’ll be wanting somebody to pay for last night’s piece of work!”

Rutledge said, “Walsh is dead. The mare killed him.”

“Good on her! So the constable told me when I rode home by way of West Sherham. It serves the bastard right, and I hope he rots in hell where he belongs, the son—”

He looked up and saw the woman in the car in the drive. “Is that the bitch—” He started forward.

Rutledge in three long strides caught Tom Randal’s arm and held him back. “No. It’s someone else. The Vicar is with her.”

Randal peered at the motorcar. “That ’ee, Vicar?” he called.

“Yes, hello, Tom. What’s happened to you, man!”

Randal shook his head. “I was run down by a crazed woman in a motorcar, that’s what happened! Damned near killed me, she did, and of a purpose, too! Drove straight over me, after frightening the gelding half to death! It took me a quarter of an hour to catch him!”

He turned back to Rutledge, still furious. “I’m in no fit state to ride into Osterley. I’d take it as a favor if you’d see that a constable pays me a call out here. You owe me that. I’ve a claim to lay against the police and against that bitch. And I’ll be calling on the solicitor in the morning!”

“You ought to see Dr. Stephenson—”

“I’ll live. And you can tell that damned fool Blevins if he’d been better at his job, I wouldn’t have two horses in my stable that aren’t fit for work and won’t be for another week! Who’s going to help me do mine, I ask you!”

He turned and kicked savagely at the house a third time before stalking around the corner, muttering imprecations under his breath.

It was hard to feel sorry for the old curmudgeon, but Rutledge could sympathize. Tom Randal had been caught up in something over which he had no control, and Priscilla Connaught had shown him no mercy.

He walked back to the car. It would be just as well to send Dr. Stephenson out to make a call, he thought. When the fury and the sense of being wronged faded, Randal would be hurting rather badly.

At least, he thought, bending to turn the crank, Priscilla Connaught hadn’t killed the man.

Rutledge left the Vicar at his front door. Sims looked up at the dark shadows of his house, and turned, as if half afraid to go in. Then, with resolution, he unlocked the door and closed it behind him.

Holston, on the other hand, refused to spend the night in St. Anne’s rectory. “It’s bad enough by daylight, but with the mists swirling about it and the churchyard, I’d just as soon be in a well-lighted hotel!” he said wryly.

And so Rutledge pulled into the hotel yard and delivered the remainder of his passengers into the care of Mrs. Barnett, who welcomed them with the news that dinner could be warmed if they cared to dine.

Rutledge, standing in the dark outside the door, could feel the fatigue moving through him like a sluggish stream. But he turned and went instead to The Pelican for his meal.

Betsy, the barmaid, who came to ask what he’d have as Rutledge took the last seat in the crowded common room, was buoyant. “We’re doing a fine business tonight,” she informed him. “Everyone slept away the day, and now they’re eager for company and gossip.” She looked around her, pleased, then remembered what the cause of her good fortune was. Her mood shifted. “They tell me, though, that the man is dead. Still, it’s a swifter way to go than a hanging, any day!”

“What are people saying about Walsh? Do they believe he killed Father James?” Rutledge asked, curious.

“Well, of course, he must have done! He escaped, didn’t he? Inspector Blevins was here no more than half an hour ago, and saying that he’d spoken to the Chief Constable in Norwich. Everyone’s relieved that the police have done their best. Even though there’s to be no trial.”

Looking around her once more, she waited expectantly for his order.

The death of Walsh, he thought, had been papered over. Justice had been served. Perhaps it was true. He was beyond caring. He ordered an ale and a serving of the stew, and Betsy brought him a covered dish of warmed bread from this morning’s baking and a slab of butter.

Hamish said, “Ye ken, you’ll no’ make any headway against what Blevins has been saying. And they’re eager to believe him. There’s the sticking point. It was no’ one of his friends or neighbors who killed the priest, and no’ one of theirs. That’s what matters. They can go to bed this night and no’ be worried about being murdered in their sleep.”

There was an outburst of laughter from a group by the window. Every head turned to look. Rutledge could see the general mood was relief, and it bordered on the hysterical.

Hamish was right. Order had been restored, their own sturdy faith that no one from Osterley could be guilty of such a heinous crime had been upheld. But a stubborn refusal to go against his own better judgment made Rutledge argue with his nemesis.

“The priest kept working toward a solution to Virginia Sedgwick’s disappearance. The story about two priests at one deathbed was bound to get out, and someone began to worry. I don’t think Father James expected to be attacked. Perhaps his visit to Norwich was the last straw. Even the appearance of having confided in his fellow clergymen would have aroused unwelcome suspicion.”

“Aye, that’s possible. But it doesna’ signify! Truth is no more than what people want to believe.”

Rutledge answered, “Or what they fear.”

“And ye’re as gullible as any man. You canna’ face the question about yon Englishwoman’s guilt!”

“I haven’t forgotten May Trent. But if she killed Father James, there won’t be another victim. If it was one of the Sedgwicks, what’s to stop the murderer from biding his time until it’s safe to kill again? He may already be suspicious of Sims—Holston—or even Miss Trent. Where is my duty toward them?”

“Aye, duty, that’s all verra’ fine. Ye did your duty in France, too. And I’m dead for it!”

CHAPTER 26

FINISHING HIS MEAL AS QUICKLY AS he could, Rutledge paid his bill and then walked toward the hotel.

His fatigue had passed the need for sleep. As he had so many times at the Front, he’d ignored it and pushed his body and his mind to their limits—and then pushed both beyond that.

Retrieving his motorcar, he drove to the police station. There, he asked the sleepy constable on duty how to find two people, and left word for Blevins requesting that someone be sent around to speak to the old farmer in the morning.

The constable grimaced. “A year or two back, a lorry hit one of his piglets, out on the road. Odd place for a piglet to be wandering, you’d think, and the Inspector was of the opinion the sow had rolled over on it. But Randal swore it was a lorry. It was three months before we could satisfy him!”

“He has a better claim this time,” Rutledge warned, and left.

Dr. Stephenson lived on the main road, toward Hunstanton, in a well-kept three-story house that backed up to the marshes. Rutledge turned into the yard, where a gate led into the flint-walled garden with its flagstone walk up to the door. A black spaniel, waiting on the step to be let in again, greeted him effusively, trying to lick his hand. When the housekeeper answered the knocker’s dull thunk, the little dog darted past her crisp skirts and disappeared into the hall beyond.

The middle-aged woman, regarding Rutledge with unconcealed interest, as if his reputation had preceded him, warned him that he had interrupted the doctor at his dinner. Stephenson himself, coming out to speak to Rutledge, told him to make his call brief.

“It’s brief enough. Tom Randal was bruised in a fall from his horse. It might be best to find out if he’s more seriously hurt. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’ll be more grateful than he’ll care to admit. By tomorrow morning, he’ll be stiff as a board.”

“I’ve been trying to persuade him to hire a couple to cook for him and help with the farm. He may listen now, but he’s as independent and stubborn as they come.” Stephenson, his serviette in his hand, sighed. “All right, yes, as soon as I’ve finished my dinner. And I’ll take someone along who can stay the night and see that he has a decent breakfast in the morning. Was it Randal that Priscilla Connaught thought she’d killed?”

“I have every reason to believe it is. Tom Randal is damned lucky to be alive. She was in no state to think clearly about what she was trying to do.”

“And whose fault is that?” Hamish asked in condemnation.

Rutledge ignored his voice. “How is she?”

“I’ve kept her sedated. Mrs. Nutley is staying the night with her.”

“I’ll look in there on my way.”

“Do you have any idea how tired you are? You’re slurring your words, man, you ought to be in your bed. Or I’ll have a new patient on my hands!”

“Good advice. I’ll take it shortly.”

Rutledge said good night and strode down the dark path to the road. As he cranked the engine, his chest protested in fiery wires spreading deep.

Ignoring that, too, Rutledge drove next to Priscilla Connaught’s house. He was surprised to find that she was awake, drinking a mutton broth that Mrs. Nutley had made.

The nurse had explained to Rutledge on their way up the stairs, “An empty stomach sees nothing good. I always feed my patients before the next dose of medicines.”

Priscilla, wearing a very fetching lavender dressing gown, smiled at him as he walked through the door, but obediently drank most of the broth before saying, “You’re here to arrest me.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her expression bleak behind the smile. “I’d warned Mrs. Nutley the police would come for me soon.”

“No.” He pulled a chair to the bed and sat down, wondering if he’d be able to get out of it again. “The man you thought you killed is alive, though bruised and bloody. And furious. He must have gone through a hedge headfirst. Still, I’d accept that as very good news if I were you. Nor was it Walsh. Again, good news from your perspective.”

“Dear God!” She set the bowl on her tray and stared at him. “Oh, gentle God!”

“There’s nothing you can do about Mr. Randal tonight. Except to sleep and regain your good sense.”

She said faintly, “You look like a dead man yourself.”

“Yes, I rather feel like one.” He smiled. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what lay between you and Father James?”

Biting her lip, she turned away. “I told you once before. It doesn’t have anything to do with his death. Only with mine.”

“What did he ask you to do? What ruined your life?” he pressed her.

It was unfair to force her in her present state—as Hamish was pointing out—but he was afraid that when she regained her strength, she would be more than a match for the police.

She glanced at Mrs. Nutley. “I’m half drunk with whatever it is she’s made me swallow. I can’t keep my mind clear!”

He could see it in the pupils of her eyes. Mrs. Nutley, her hands folded in her apron, was unruffled. “It’s only what the doctor instructed me to give her.”

“I understand.” To the patient he added, “Would you like Mrs. Nutley to leave the room? I’m sure she’ll be glad to give us a moment.”

“Yes. No.” Priscilla Connaught fell silent, closing her eyes against his inspection. And then unexpectedly she opened them and said in a despairing voice, “It was so long ago. Nobody cares, nobody remembers. Not anymore. But that doesn’t make the hurt go away!”

He could see the pain in her face, stripping away what was left of her youth, and turning her almost as he watched into a very different woman. “Do you know what loneliness is, Inspector?”

He answered quietly, “I’m afraid I do. It’s how I live.”

She embraced herself with her arms, drawing them across her chest as if they offered a measure of comfort, leaning into them as if desperate for human warmth. “I loved a very fine man. We were to be married. I was over the moon with joy.”

He knew what she meant. He’d watched the same joy wash over Jean when he’d asked her to marry him. On Saturday next she’d be married to someone else. He didn’t want to be in London then—

Priscilla Connaught’s voice startled him, stronger now and thick with grief. “And then one day Gerald came to me to say that he had had an—epiphany—of sorts. A revelation. I asked him what it was, and he said he had always been drawn to the Church, and now he knew that that was where he ought to be. It was what God wanted him to do. I told him if this was what he wanted, of course he should follow his vision. We could marry when he finished his studies. But he explained that he wanted to become a Catholic priest. There couldn’t be any marriage, now or later. He broke off our engagement.”

“And you blamed Father James for persuading him?”

She squeezed her eyes tightly to hold back the tears, as if on the back of the lids, the past was still vivid and clear. “He wasn’t a priest then. He was only John James. But he was Gerald’s best friend. I went to him and asked him to persuade Gerald not to do this. He told me the best thing I could do for Gerald if I loved him was to let him go. Let him enter the priesthood.”

The tears began to fall, but her eyes were shut still, closing Rutledge out. “So I let him go. I—I truly believed that once he had his way, once he’d embarked on his studies, he’d quickly discover that it wasn’t what he wanted after all. I was convinced that he loved me too much for this— this fancy—to last. I gave him my blessing and let him go !”

Rutledge waited in the bitter silence that followed, uncertain whether or not she had finished. He could imagine how she must have felt, abandoned for what—to a woman—seemed an inexplicable rejection of her and her love.

Finally she opened her eyes and looked across at him.

Her voice was shaking so much he wasn’t sure he heard her clearly. “In his last year before being ordained, Gerald killed himself. And neither God nor I had him, in the end. I couldn’t torment God. I tormented Father James instead. Gerald’s death lay at his door, and every time he looked at my face in his congregation, he was unable to forget how wrong he’d been, how he’d failed Gerald, and me—what, in his sanctimonious faith in his own judgment, he’d done to us. Just as I could never forget Gerald. . . .”

Rutledge waited by the bedside until the sedative Mrs. Nutley had given her sent Priscilla Connaught into the comforting oblivion of sleep.

“Keep an eye on her, will you?” he asked as they left the room.

“You can depend on me, Inspector.”

As he walked on down the stairs to the door, the older woman, following, said quietly, “In my experience, it helps sometimes to unburden the heart.”

But he wasn’t convinced that confession would do much for the sleeping figure he’d left in the darkened bedroom.

The only certainty was that Priscilla Connaught’s secret had had nothing to do with the priest’s death.

Frederick Gifford’s house was set well back from the road, just past the school. It stood in a small park of old trees that reminded Rutledge of the vicarage at Holy Trinity. Driving through the gates and up to the door, he could see that the house was gabled and probably very old.

The maid who admitted Rutledge left him in the parlor. From another part of the house he could hear people talking, as if Gifford had guests.

Gifford came in with apologies. “A week ago, I’d invited friends to dine with me. We decided not to let the upheavals of last night affect our plans. Though to tell you the truth, no one is in a festive mood! What brings you here at this hour of the night? Shouldn’t you be in your bed? You look like death walking, man!”

Rutledge laughed. “I’ve heard that enough to believe it. I won’t keep you long. I need to learn who arranged for Mrs. Baker—Herbert Baker’s ill wife—to have the treatment she required for her consumption. It’s rather important.”

Surprised by the request, Gifford smoothed the line of his beard with the back of his fingers. “I don’t know. That is, I never knew. Nor did Dr. Stephenson. A bank in Norwich sent me a letter instructing me that an anonymous benefactor had requested a sum of money be set aside for the care of one Margaret Baker, wife of Herbert, of this town. I was to use it to pay any medical bills, as required by her doctors, associated with her illness.”

“Mrs. Baker wasn’t particularly well-known. Her illness wasn’t uncommon. Why should she be singled out by a Norwich bank for such a generous gesture?”

Gifford frowned. “I have no idea. I didn’t ask. I saw no reason to. The papers were in order—and Mrs. Baker was seriously ill. Stephenson told me later that better care extended her life by several years.”

“But surely you must have guessed who was behind this generosity. Baker’s employer, for one.”

“The thought crossed my mind. But I didn’t pursue it. Stephenson does what he can on his own, and there are other people in Norfolk who support a variety of charitable activities. The King has been known to act anonymously. And he knew the Sedgwick family.”

“I can’t imagine how the King discovered that an obscure coachman’s wife, living quietly in Osterley, was in need.”

“No, no, the King doesn’t handle such matters himself; you misunderstand,” Gifford answered. “But he has deep roots in Norfolk and apparently feels strongly about them. The staff at Sandringham raised a troop of their own, during the War. He and the Queen took a keen interest in the men. It’s not impossible that someone in the Household brought the Bakers to the attention of the staff.”

“Yes, I understand. But in my view, they’d be far more likely to have a word with Lord Sedgwick rather than go to the trouble of making arrangements with a bank in Norwich. Is there any way that this—kindness—could be traced through the paperwork?”

“I doubt it. Bankers are worse than stones when it comes to divulging information. Immovable.”

Rutledge thanked him and left. Stones could be moved. If Scotland Yard wanted the information badly enough . . .

Hamish said, “Even if his lairdship paid for the sanitarium, it willna’ prove much.”

“It proves that a debt existed between Herbert Baker and the Sedgwick family. The sort of debt that Baker would have gone to great lengths to repay. As he lay dying, he told the Vicar that he feared he’d loved his wife too much. He could easily have confessed to Father James how he’d demonstrated that love.”

“Aye. But yon Trent woman—she has depths you canna’ plumb. I wouldna’ count her out of the running. You canna’ know for certain if she abandoned an elderly woman when the ship was sinking, to save hersel’. She’d ha’ killed Father James if he came too close to her secret.”

Only a few days ago, when Rutledge had seen the connection between Father James and the Watchers of Time, Observers of Deeds, he had remarked that there were no bodies and therefore no murders that the priest could have uncovered.

Now there were two. The woman whom May Trent had accompanied as a companion. And Virginia Sedgwick, who was—possibly—also lost in the sea.

“Or,” Hamish interjected into Rutledge’s thoughts, “buried here in these marshes. I havena’ seen more likely ground for disposing of a corpse!”

On the way back to the hotel, Rutledge spotted a solitary figure walking among the trees just back from the road. As the headlamps of his motorcar flashed across the pale, expressionless face, he recognized Peter Henderson.

He was about to stop and offer the man a lift, and then Mrs. Barnett’s words made him drive on. “I leave him alone now.” Peter Henderson still had his pride.

Rutledge was so tired his eyes were playing tricks on him as the motorcar’s headlamps picked out the turning for Water Street, and he came close to swerving into the wall of a house.

He had done all he could this night, and he wanted his bed.

But as he neared the hotel, another thought struck him: May Trent and Monsignor Holston were staying there, too, and if they were waiting for him in the lounge, it would be at least another hour—or more—before he could walk away from them.

He passed the hotel, drove along the quay, and turned toward the main road, considering even a pew in the church as a better alternative. There was something that May Trent had said about a blanket kept there for Peter Henderson. It would do. Soldiers were used to sleeping rough.

But as he went up Trinity Lane, Hamish pointed out another choice, one where his presence might be gratefully accepted. Gratefully enough that no questions would be asked.

The vicarage.

Rutledge had to fight the wheel to turn in through the vicarage gates, like a drunk whose reflexes were starting to fail. He drew up in front of the house, his hands shaking as he switched off the motor.

It was a minute or two before he could make it to the front door and lift the knocker.

After a long wait, the window above his head opened. The Vicar said, “Who is it?” in a flat voice.

“Rutledge. I don’t want to go back to the hotel. But I need to sleep. If I keep you company tonight, will you trade me a bed and no conversation?”

There was laughter from over his head. Bitter and without humor.

“I haven’t slept myself. All right, I’ll let you in. Wait there.”

Sims was still fully clothed when he unlocked the door and opened it to Rutledge. He smelled of whiskey. “I’m beginning to think about posting a sign: Rooms For Let,” he said. “You look like hell.”

Rutledge took a deep breath, unsteady on his feet. “As do you.”

“Have you been drinking?” Sims asked suspiciously.

“No. I’m cold sober. Just—nearly at the end of my tether.”

Five minutes later Rutledge was deeply asleep in the bedroom that May Trent had occupied only twenty-four hours before.

Her scent still lingered in the room.

Rutledge awoke in the dark, startled by a figure walking close by the bed.

“Who is it?” he managed to ask coherently, after clearing his throat.

“Sims. It’s after nine. I brought hot water for shaving, a razor, and a clean shirt. Breakfast will be ready in fifteen minutes, if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks.” Rutledge lay there, an arm flung across his eyes, stunned by exhaustion, his mind working slowly. After several minutes he forced himself out of the bed and across the room to draw open the draperies.

It was pouring rain out of heavy black clouds, a sky that seemed to absorb all light. No wonder he’d thought it was still the middle of the night.

Hamish scolded, “There’s no’ any need for haste, if you’re no’ clear-headed.”

Rutledge went to the washstand and looked at his face in the mirror, shadowed by beard and the dreary light coming in the windows behind him. It was not a face he was particularly fond of. Lighting the lamp, he set about shaving and dressing.

A quarter of an hour later, he walked into the kitchen.

Sims said, “If anyone came to the door and looked at the two of us, they would be ready to believe we’d had an all-night carousal. My head feels like it.” In the lamplight he was haggard, lines bracketing his mouth and heavy circles under his eyes. He had found yesterday unbearably difficult.

“I sympathize.” Rutledge reached for the pot of tea, ready to pour the steaming liquid into his cup, and somewhere in the tangle of memories from the day before, one stood out clearly.

There had been three cups on the table yesterday morning—

He looked across at Sims, who was putting a rasher of bacon on a plate, while the toast browned.

“Who keeps this house for you?”

“I have a woman who comes in three times a week. Why?”

“She wasn’t here yesterday.”

“No. She’s coming around ten today. That’s why I woke you.”

“Then who was here—besides yourself and Miss Trent?”

The Vicar became very still. “You were here.” But his eyes swept down to the teacups and back to Rutledge. He didn’t lie well, as Hamish was busy noting.

Rutledge hazarded a guess. “It was Peter Henderson, wasn’t it?”

Sims said carefully, “Peter comes sometimes, yes. When he’s hungry. He often sleeps in the church if the weather’s foul. I don’t know where he sleeps the rest of the time, poor devil.”

“A cold roof over his head, the church. With stone walls and stone flooring, he’d not be very warm.”

“There’s a chest under the tower. I keep clean blankets there. He knows where to find them.” He paused. “The church has had a long history of offering sanctuary. I can do no less.”

“Miss Trent and Mrs. Barnett tell me that he roams the night more often than not. I’ve seen him a number of times myself.”

“Yes. I expect he does. Perhaps it’s easier for him, living in the dark. Fewer people to stare at him.”

“What did he see, the night that Walsh escaped?” Rutledge insisted.

Sims put down the plate and retrieved the burning toast from the stove.

“You must ask him.”

“I’m asking you.”

Sims sat down, reached for the pot, and poured tea for himself. “Look. The man’s little more than a vagrant now. Living hand to mouth. Most of the townspeople have no use for him; they think he’s beyond the pale. His own father disowned him. I do what I can, and so did Father James. But changing attitudes is much harder than preaching profound sermons on a Sunday.”

A silence followed; it was Sims who reluctantly broke it.

“Peter was in the church that night. He wasn’t feeling well, and crept in to sleep for awhile. He was still in the church when Walsh came in to hammer off his chains. Henderson heard him dragging them; he didn’t know who or what was there. His tally of kills from the War, for all I know. It must have been rather appalling. He slipped into the choir—it’s quite dark in there, and no one was likely to find him crouched among the misericords. And he moves like a wraith when he wants to.”

“Yes. That’s his training.”

“When Walsh left, he was on foot. Henderson—who isn’t a fool, by any means—had worked out who was in the church and what it must have meant. He followed, and kept an eye on him from a distance. They walked through the woods and past the barn where Trinity Lane ends. Henderson stayed with him for nearly five miles.”

“To Tom Randal’s farm.”

“Walsh didn’t go anywhere near the Randal farm. Not according to Henderson. He was moving as swiftly and quietly as he could. Walsh, I mean. Covering the ground faster than most. Peter kept up with him until he was well beyond Osterley. Then he turned back, not wanting to be spotted.”

Rutledge shook his head. “That can’t be true. The mare at the farm went missing in probably that same time frame. And it was her shoe that killed Walsh.”

Sims said, “That’s why we didn’t tell you, May Trent and I. I’ve never known Peter to lie to me, but he was very cold and hungry, walking that far, and he might have made up a story in exchange for his breakfast. It seemed—a little less like begging, I suppose.”

Rutledge got up and helped himself to the bacon and a slice of burned toast. Sims said, “There are boiled eggs in that covered dish.”

Rutledge lifted the lid and set an egg on his plate, cracking it and spooning out the yolk. He said, “What else has Henderson seen, wandering around in the dark?”

Sims buttered his own slice, frowning at the burnt taste. “He seldom talks about his life—or what he’s witnessed. I think the only reason he told me about his encounter with Walsh was his need for food and a little warmth.”

“Yes, it may be true.” Rutledge added pensively, “I should have expected that between you, you and Father James could have found work for Henderson—doing the heavier labor for old Tom Randal, for instance. And Mrs. Barnett must need someone to help with upkeep at the hotel. It’s a barn of a place for a woman on her own.”

“She doesn’t have the custom to hire anyone else, even for a pittance with room and board. Tom Randal refuses to consider help on the farm. No one else in Osterley needs Henderson. Too many people are out of work, that’s the trouble—the shopkeepers and farms can find help two a penny without turning to a man with Peter’s history. Lord Sedgwick hired him until Dick, Herbert Baker’s younger son, was fit again for light duties. The house in Yorkshire is closed while Arthur Sedgwick recovers from his own injuries—if he’s not in hospital, he’s here in Norfolk or in London. Edwin lives in London most of the year. I’ve been corresponding with a woman in Hunstanton who may take Henderson on. She and her husband own a small pub, and need an extra man. But he’s not local, you see—and she’s wary of that.” Sims said tentatively, “What are you going to do about Virginia Sedgwick? I don’t quite see Inspector Blevins rushing to find out the truth, most particularly if it involves the Sedgwick family. He won’t like that!”

“He’s already seen to it that most of Osterley believes that Walsh has paid for what he did—that justice has been served. And he has to live here. I can’t fault him for trying to put as good a face on the situation as he can.” Rutledge grimaced. “The most direct course of action would be going to Lord Sedgwick himself.”

“Good God, man, you can’t be serious?” Sims’s face was the picture of dismay. “I agreed—we all agreed—that it was worthwhile speaking to Blevins. Do you realize how powerful Sedgwick is? You’ll sink your own career, and possibly mine as well!”

Rutledge considered him. “You still don’t wish to know what’s become of Virginia Sedgwick, do you? But Sedgwick’s son may well have committed murder, and I think it’s important to give him an opportunity to refute such a charge. He’ll be a worse enemy if half the town hears before he does.” He smiled. “Thank you for breakfast— and a night’s sleep. I needed both rather badly.”

As he went to find his coat, Sims followed him to the hall. “I’m grateful for what you’re trying to do. It’s just— I’m not sure that I want to stop thinking about her being alive. I—it’s given me a kind of hope. . . .” He shrugged, as if embarrassed by the admission. “It’s hard to explain.”

But Rutledge understood what he was trying to say. He himself had never looked over his own shoulder to find out once and for all if Hamish was there. He didn’t want to know—he didn’t want to see what was there. And as long as he didn’t, he was safe.

As he buttoned his coat against the rain, he said, “What if, against all expectations, we should find that Virginia Sedgwick left her husband of her own accord and is happily settled in a cottage in Ireland, living a life she much prefers to her role as Arthur’s wife. Would he welcome her back, do you think?”

“I—don’t know. It would depend on the scandal, to a large extent.” Sims looked out at the rain and the wet trees overhanging the drive. “The Sedgwicks came from trade— they aren’t able to weather the scandals that established families can. They’ve climbed the social ladder as high as possible in three generations. But they aren’t at the top. They’ve given money generously where it would do the most good. Full acceptance, marrying into the best families, eludes them. Arthur might have, if he hadn’t foolishly fallen in love with a cousin. He might still, as a widower. I’m not sure he wouldn’t prefer to learn that she’s dead.”

“Father James pursued her disappearance with unexpected fervor.”

“No, not if you’d known him. He had a great capacity for caring. He told me once that every time he looked out at his congregation, he knew that he was not the man they believed him to be. It drove him to strive for a level of service that few of us can ever hope to emulate.”

As Rutledge thanked Sims again and walked out into the rain, Hamish said, “Aye, Priscilla Connaught’s shadow fell across the priest’s pulpit every time he stepped into it.”

“A pity he never told her,” Rutledge answered silently.

CHAPTER 27

HAMISH SAID, AS RUTLEDGE CLIMBED BEHIND the wheel, “If it wasna’ Walsh who killed the priest, you’re up against a canny murderer. He kens how to cover his tracks.”

“No loose ends to stumble over,” Rutledge agreed. “When Blevins allowed himself to be blinded by anger, he tied his own hands. He went looking for a monster.” Rutledge turned out of the vicarage gates. “And he found himself one.”

Hamish answered, “It willna’ be to your credit if you fail.”

“I won’t fail,” Rutledge answered grimly. “Sedgwick should have destroyed that Egyptian bas-relief instead of moving it out to the gardens. It gave me the key to Father James’s actions—a Watcher. After that, it was only a matter of time before the rest made sense.”

A milk wagon lumbered by on the main road. In the rain the backs of the horses were burnished copper.

Rutledge braked. “In this weather—”

He reversed the motorcar, backing as far as the gate to Holy Trinity. The grass under his feet as he crossed the churchyard to the north porch door was heavy with rain, and his shoulders were soaked by the time he reached the shelter of the church door. Opening it, he brushed the water from his face before he stepped inside.

“Henderson? Inspector Rutledge. I’d like to speak with you, if you’re here.”

His voice echoed in the silence, almost an obscenity in the peace of the nave and the soft patter of rain against the stained glass. This morning, dark as it was, the colors were deeper and richer, but without life.

Rutledge waited.

Then he heard someone near the choir. “I’m here. Give me a minute.”

Peter Henderson, rising from a pew, tried to straighten his coat and brushed a hand over his hair before walking toward Rutledge. “What do you want?”

“Verification. That’s all. The Vicar tells me that you saw Walsh the night he came in here to hammer off his chains.”

“Yes.”

“Was he alone?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you follow him, when he left?”

“I knew who he was. I’d seen him at the fair at St. Anne’s. I thought it best.”

“Where did he go?”

“Up the lane, into that copse of trees. Past the houses. He was bearing west, and south. It’s the direction I’d have taken, in his shoes. It’s mostly pasturage, beyond the houses, and easy walking.”

“He never turned east, while you were following him?”

“No. Why should he? It would be going into a box.”

Rutledge nodded. He looked down at Peter Henderson’s shoes. They were old. Worn . . .

He said, “Walsh stole a mare from a farmer just east of Osterley. Why would he turn back on himself to do that?”

Henderson shrugged. “I’ve told you what I saw. I can’t tell you what he did after I broke off and walked back to Osterley.” He had an odd dignity, standing there in his creased and worn clothes. A man shunned by others because he happened to be very good at killing from ambush. It wasn’t deserved, the judgment local people had inflicted upon him. And yet this was his home, and villagers were often tied, emotionally if not financially, to their roots. The money in the tin box at the rectory would have been a treasure trove to him. He could have gone anywhere with ten or fifteen pounds in his pocket. Had it been tempting?

Hamish said, “I canna’ believe it. Nor do you. It was a rifle he used in the War. Distant killing, that.”

“Fair enough, then. Henderson—” Rutledge paused. “Were you at the rectory, the day Father James was killed? Waiting to see him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’d heard of work in Wells. I wanted to ask him to write a letter for me.”

“Had he written letters before?”

“Once. The Vicar has written them, too.”

“Where did you wait?”

“Mrs. Wainer was just leaving. It was growing dark by then. I stood by those overgrown bushes, so as not to frighten her. Someone else came looking for Father James. I left then, not wanting to push myself forward.”

He’d stood in the lilacs—“those overgrown bushes.” It wasn’t one of Walsh’s cronies acting as lookout, after all; it was a man wanting help to find a job. Rutledge said, “Who came?”

“Mrs. Barnett, from the hotel, but she only tapped at the door. When Mrs. Wainer didn’t answer, she stepped into the kitchen and called, then closed the door and left.”

“Mrs. Barnett never went beyond the kitchen?”

“Not as far as I could tell. She wasn’t there much above a minute.”

“Was there anyone else?”

Henderson said reluctantly, “Yes. Lord Sedgwick came to the front door and knocked.”

“You saw his car?”

“No, I never did.” His voice was level, a soldier reporting to his commanding officer. “But I saw him walk up the drive. Then he came round to the back. Along the far side of the house, not close to where I was standing. He was looking up at the windows of the conservatory next door. They were dark. Then he went in through the kitchen, calling to Father James. He must have gone on to the parlor, to wait. Or leave a note. That’s when I left.”

“And you never saw Father James that night?”

“Well, yes, I did. He was on his bicycle, riding back to the rectory. He waved, and I walked on.”

“You didn’t tell him he had a visitor?”

“It wasn’t my place.”

Hamish said, “Blevins wouldna’ believe it was a local man there in the shrubs. He wished it to be Bolton, the scissor sharpener. Or Iris Kenneth.”

Rutledge said, “I’m driving to The Pelican. Would you like a lift?”

Henderson’s face brightened. “Give me five minutes. To clear up.”

“I’ll wait in the car.”

Rutledge turned and walked back to the motorcar, hardly noticing the rain.

Once he’d dropped off Henderson, Rutledge drove back to the hotel, retrieved his umbrella from his room, and walking briskly, went directly to the police station.

He found that he was not the only visitor.

A youngish woman in a black coat over a green traveling dress was sitting in front of the Sergeant’s desk, her face buried in an overlarge handkerchief, supplied by a red-faced Blevins across the desk from her.

The Inspector looked up as Rutledge came through the door. “Whatever it is, it can wait.” He gestured toward his visitor. “This is Iris Kenneth. She traveled up from London to—er—see Walsh. I’ve just given her the news.”

Iris Kenneth raised her face from the handkerchief, her eyes watery and red-rimmed, turning to stare at the newcomer.

Blevins said, “This is Inspector Rutledge, from Scotland Yard.”

She nodded a faint acknowledgment and said to Blevins, as if she had been interrupted in the middle of her grief, “I was so angry with him! Matthew. For sacking me. But I decided that if I stood by him now, he might take me on again, after. He wasn’t a bad man to work for. He enjoyed posing in his costume and being admired. I was jealous.”

“He wasn’t likely to be taking on a helper ever again,” Blevins said. He cast a wary glance at Rutledge. “He was more likely to find himself waiting for the hangman.”

Fierce in Walsh’s defense, Iris Kenneth cried, “But I told you, Matthew wasn’t a murderer! He wasn’t a bully, he didn’t have a temper!”

“Yes, I know, Miss Kenneth. Several times.”

She began to cry again. Rutledge, standing by the door, could read the embarrassment in Blevins’s face. Over the woman’s head, the Inspector shot him a pleading glance for help. “I don’t know what you want me to do, Miss Kenneth,” he said plaintively. “I can’t tell you what the arrangements are for a funeral. Not just at the moment. But if you’d like to take a room—”

She glared at him through her tears. “I don’t have the money to stay—or to bury Matthew. I spent nearly every penny coming here—I’ve barely enough to see me back to London!”

Hamish said, “He’s no’ a man for the ladies. He doesna’ ken that it’s no’ so much Walsh’s dying as it is the disappointment of her expectations. She canna’ face what to do now.”

Rutledge stepped toward her chair. “Miss Kenneth, it’s been a very difficult morning for you. A cup of tea and an hour’s rest at the hotel will help. I’m sure Inspector Blevins will meet with you in the afternoon.”

Blevins glowered at him, and she caught it.

Iris Kenneth’s shoulders slumped. “I could use a cup of tea,” she said. “This has been a terrible shock—!”

“I’m sure it has. Mrs. Barnett, at the hotel, is very kind. She’ll see that you’re taken care of.”

She looked more closely at the tall man by the door. He could read her eyes as they swept over his face and across his shoulders, and back again.

With the resourcefulness of her class, she recognized that she would make no headway with the stolid man behind the desk. And she was desperate, willing to try any port in the unsettled climate of her life just now. She got to her feet with some grace and said, “You’re very kind. If the Inspector here—” She groped for a name.

“Blevins,” he said, relief already spreading across his features. “Inspector Rutledge is right, Miss Kenneth. Take your time and you’ll soon see your way clear again.” The false heartiness in his voice was almost insulting.

“—Blevins,” she acknowledged, “will give me a little more of his time later?”

“Oh, yes, to be sure,” he said hurriedly, rising from his chair to escort her to the door.

Rutledge glanced at Iris Kenneth and then said cryptically to Blevins, “I’d come to ask. The doctor was satisfied that it was the mare’s shoe that was the cause of death?”

“Oh, yes. There’s no doubt. I’m completely satisfied.”

Rutledge nodded.

Holding the umbrella over his companion’s hat, Rutledge took her arm to guide her toward the hotel. “I’m sorry that you’ve come so far,” he told her, “to hear such tragic news.”

“He wouldn’t have killed anyone. Much less this priest! Matthew was always on his best behavior at church bazaars, superstitious, if you like. And he never cared for being penned up—I’m not surprised he escaped! A big man like him? In such a small space? It would have been torture!”

Rutledge though , God! I’d have tried to escape, too. Shut in away from the air and the light—smothered by the walls—

Hamish said, “Ye ken, murderers are always locked away. If they’re half mad, like you, it’s the cell, it’s no’ the rope.”

Iris Kenneth kept up her earnest defense of Matthew Walsh all the way to the hotel, one hand holding her skirts out of the rainwater washing down the street toward the quay. When they reached the door, she looked out at the marshes, and Rutledge could feel her shudder through the arm inside his. “What a dreary place,” she remarked. “Enough to turn anybody into a murderer, living here long enough!”

Mrs. Barnett stepped out of her tiny office and said, “Good morning, Inspector, you’re about early on such a nasty day. I believe Miss Trent and Monsignor Holston have been waiting for you in the lounge. Shall I bring tea to warm you up?”

“Meanwhile, I’ve brought you another guest—”

She reluctantly took charge of Miss Kenneth, eyeing her with some dismay. In the calm, gracious lobby of the hotel, Iris Kenneth’s style was decidedly out of place, garish, her voice a little loud, her clothes a little shabby, her face rather too heavily made up for a country town. Her rouge and the line of kohl beneath her eyes had run from her tears, giving her a clownish expression of surprise.

Iris Kenneth seemed equally reluctant to give up Rutledge’s company. She said, “You will take me back to see Inspector Blevins later?”

“Yes. And see you safely on your way back to London,” he promised, undone by the fear in her eyes. It was real, not feigned.

This woman had lived a life with little security, on the edge of poverty as often as not, and never climbing to the dizzying heights of the great names of the legitimate stage. It had already taken its toll in her skin and in the hard lines around her mouth. He remembered all too well the woman dragged from the Thames. Had she chosen the water rather than falling into prostitution? If Iris was despairing enough of her future prospects to swallow her pride and anger, and come to offer Matthew Walsh her support, she was desperate indeed.

Hamish said, clicking his puritanical tongue, “You’re a fool, and will be taken for one!”

“Hardly,” Rutledge answered curtly.

He left Miss Kenneth in Mrs. Barnett’s care and walked into the lounge, where May Trent was writing a letter at the small white desk and Monsignor Holston was reading a book. They looked up, their faces mirroring an expression of impatience.

“Where have you been?” Miss Trent asked. “We expected to see you at dinner last night or breakfast this morning!” There was neither censure or anger in her voice, but he detected an undercurrent of strain.

“I’ve been busy, I’m afraid,” Rutledge replied. “I’ve spoken with the Vicar, for one, and Peter Henderson after that. Peter tells me that Walsh walked away from Holy Trinity through the trees just south of the vicarage, and past the houses there, taking a southwesterly course, where he could make good time in the pastures beyond.”

May Trent said, “But you said Walsh hadn’t done any such thing! You said he’d taken that poor farmer’s horse! That’s why we said nothing—”

Monsignor Holston interjected, “If Walsh had come across a search party, he might have doubled back, found himself some faster means of getting out.”

“In his shoes, doubling back could mean certain capture. There were farms ahead—”

Mrs. Barnett came in with tea. “I’ve settled Miss Kenneth for now,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she sleeps for an hour or so. She tells me she came all the way from London. It must have been a very difficult journey for her!”

Rutledge said, “Thank you. Er—I understand you went to see Father James, the same day that he died.”

“No, that’s not true—” She paused. “Oh. You mean to the rectory! I stopped to ask Ruth Wainer if I might borrow a roasting pan for the weekend, when there would be a christening party here. I didn’t expect to find Father James in—at that hour, he’s usually in the church.”

“Did you go to the kitchen door? Or to the front of the rectory?”

“To the kitchen door, of course. I was hoping Ruth hadn’t left.”

“Did you see anyone near the house when you went there?”

She smoothed the collar of her gray dress. “I don’t recall seeing anyone else. Should I have?”

“Peter Henderson was there, near the lilacs, waiting to speak to Father James.”

“No. But of course I wasn’t looking for him, was I? Why didn’t he speak?”

“Did you meet a member of Lord Sedgwick’s family, by any chance?”

She considered the question. “Not Lord Sedgwick, no. I did pass his motorcar near Gull Street. I didn’t see who was in it, the lamps were right in my face, and it was traveling fast. It went on toward Wells, as far as I could tell. Occasionally that chauffeur of his takes it to The Pelican, if Lord Sedgwick is out of town. It could have been Edwin. He’s a fast driver, like his brother.”

“Do you know the Randal farm?”

“Oh, yes. Everyone does. I used to buy cut flowers from his wife, for the dining-room tables. She was a wonderful gardener.”

“Whose property is adjacent to Randal’s, to the south?”

“My guess is it belongs to the Sedgwick family. Lord Sedgwick has made a practice of buying up acreage when he can. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear he’s bought the Randal property, when Tom’s too old to run it himself. There’s no close family, you see.”

What she’d told him agreed with the map he’d seen in Blevins’s office. “Thank you, Mrs. Barnett. You’ve been very helpful!”

“Will you be staying in for lunch?” Her glance ran around the room.

“Yes, if that’s convenient,” Rutledge answered for them.

“You know something we don’t,” Holston said, as the door closed behind Mrs. Barnett.

“Little things. Henderson saw Lord Sedgwick arrive at the rectory just after Mrs. Barnett left. When there was no answer to his knock, Sedgwick went inside. Furthermore, if Sedgwick’s property adjoins the Randal farm, it’s very likely he’d also know about the horses—and that the old man is hard of hearing.”

Monsignor Holston said, “I don’t follow you—are you telling me that Sedgwick arranged for a horse to be available to Matthew Walsh, once he escaped?”

“No,” May Trent said slowly, watching Rutledge’s face. “No. He thinks someone else rode that mare.”

She was quick. . . .

“It’s possible,” Rutledge agreed. He saw again the hammer wound on the dead wife’s temple. All those years ago— Reaching into his experience and deeper into his intuition, he said, “When Matthew Walsh escaped from his cell, it was seen as an admission of guilt. If he was killed before he could be recaptured and tried, all the better. With his death, the investigation would be closed. As it has been! If he’d been retaken and sent to Norwich for trial, anything could have gone wrong.”

“Insufficient evidence to convict him?” she asked, intrigued. “Then you’re saying that someone went after Walsh, and caught up with him not long after the mare cast her shoe—” Her face changed. “But, look here, if Walsh wasn’t riding it, he wouldn’t have been the one the mare kicked!”

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Rutledge smiled. “After luncheon, I intend to pay a call on Lord Sedgwick.”

Monsignor Hols on said, “Good God, are you telling me that his son Arthur is behind all this killing? I’ve met the man—you’ll never sell him to a jury as a cold-blooded murderer! Charming and very well liked.”

“We were all searching for Walsh. And by sheer luck someone caught up with him. In my opinion that’s what happened. There’s a torn patch of grass, just a few feet from where the body lay. Some sort of struggle went on there. But no one’s going to tackle a man Walsh’s size, it would be suicide. Unless Walsh was on foot, and his killer was on the mare.”

“Which brings us back to Lord Sedgwick. If he was at the rectory when Father James was killed,” May Trent said, “then he’d want Walsh dead.”

Monsignor Holston said, “No. What I think Rutledge is saying is that just as Peter Henderson was a witness, so was Sedgwick. Without necessarily knowing the importance of what he saw.”

May Trent’s eyes, on Rutledge and speculative, were skeptical.

Rutledge looked at his watch. “We have five minutes before the dining room opens. I should go upstairs and change out of these wet clothes.”

As he closed the lounge door behind him, he overheard Monsignor Holston commenting to May Trent, “When I asked my Bishop to send for the Yard, I thought I was doing something good. What have I unleashed? ”

Luncheon passed in relative silence, each member of the small party lost in his or her own thoughts.

Over the main course May Trent said suddenly, “I’m going with you. When you call on Lord Sedgwick.”

“It’s not a very good idea,” Rutledge answered.

“It probably isn’t,” she agreed. “All the same, I’m going.”

But they were held up. A fire in one of the houses west of Water Street jammed the road with firefighters and a tangle of buckets, people, and frightened horses. The pouring rain, dropping out of a gray and light-absorbing sky, soon accomplished what the firefighters couldn’t, and the smoking, blackened rafters filled the air with the reek of burned wood as they loomed starkly against the clouds. But much of the house survived, and a great many of its contents had been saved.

One of the men fighting the blaze was Edwin Sedgwick, sleeves rolled high, face smeared with sweat and soot. As Rutledge joined the line, passing buckets from the well, Edwin shouted orders and encouragement, taking charge as if by right, and showing unusual skill at coordinating the mob of people.

Observing when he could, Rutledge saw that Edwin’s skill lay not so much in cajolery or good-humored bandinage but in the role of the local squire, the natural leader everyone turned to in time of trouble or danger. It was a role Edwin’s father played to the hilt, and the son had learned well. He took full advantage of it now.

Hamish said, “He’s no’ sae overbearing as his father.”

As Rutledge spelled an older man needing a breather, he agreed with Hamish. Command came more naturally to Edwin, as if by this generation it was bred in the bone, not learned.

Edwin was everywhere at once, taking as many risks as the next man and not complaining about lending his weight where it was needed. A hand on a tired shoulder, a word of support, swift advice, a cry of warning.

Hamish, whose independent Scottish spirit seldom allowed him to bow his neck to any man, commented, “He’s no’ the elder brother. He willna’ be the laird in his turn.”

Rutledge cast a glance around, to find May Trent not in the motorcar watching from a safe distance but busy comforting the distraught woman lamenting the overturned lamp that had started the fire.

Picking up the thread of Hamish’s remark again, he found it interesting. While Arthur had been buried in Yorkshire’s dales with his young wife or racing across France, Edwin’s had been the face that Osterley had seen most frequently.

This presented a different aspect of the man Rutledge had encountered returning from boating in the marshes with his dog and drinking alone in the lounge bar of a tiny hotel outside Norwich. What had taken Edwin there?

Hamish answered, “Mischief.” And perhaps there had been a woman with him that night.

Their work done, the firefighters began the onerous task of cleaning up the muddy yard and trying to get the salvaged belongings under cover.

Edwin Sedgwick accepted the gratitude of the householder as if it were his due, noblesse oblige, and to satisfy the general euphoria, he shook hands with all comers. When he reached Rutledge, he smiled and added, “Thanks for your help. We needed every man.” Treating him casually, as an outsider.

Nothing in his demeanor indicated that he was aware of Rutledge’s close observation, but Rutledge had the feeling that Edwin Sedgwick, like his father, was a man used to battling the world and winning. He would be mindful of the smallest detail.

As Rutledge turned to collect May Trent, Sedgwick retrieved a motorcycle from the side of a tree, and roared away toward East Sherham. In the distance, caught by the echoes of the rolling land, the sound dulled from thunder to a quiet chuckle.

It was Hamish who called his attention to that.

Rutledge spent what was left of the afternoon asleep in the chair in his bedchamber. He was awakened by Mrs. Barnett in time to arrange for Iris Kenneth to speak to Blevins again, and it was close to six when he saw her off to King’s Lynn in a lorry that had brought boxes of hams to the butcher in Osterley and as far east as Cley. He also made certain that she had money enough to make the journey in reasonable comfort, and she thanked him profusely.

“Matthew wouldn’t have hurt anyone,” she said earnestly. “That Inspector Blevins won’t believe me, but I hope you will. I can’t say any fairer than that!”

He helped her into the lorry. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you, Miss Kenneth.”

At the last moment she leaned down, speaking for his ears alone. “I owe you. And I pay my debts. A friend of mine did a bit of work once for a man in Norfolk. I never knew what village, but he was rich, and he paid her well to impersonate a lady. But she never did live to enjoy the money. I always thought he’d killed her. Two months later, they found her in the river, like that poor girl you thought was me. Naked as the day she was born, and drowned.”

“When was this?” he asked, his curiosity aroused.

“It was before the War. About two years before the War. I’d like to see you find the bastard yourself, and put that sanctimonious policeman’s nose out of joint. Serve him right to be made to look a fool! And a bit of his own back for Matthew.”

And she was gone, the empty lorry lumbering down the road in the rain like a drunken walrus. May Trent, who had stepped out in the shelter of the hotel doorway, said, “She’ll manage, you know. Her kind always does. Somehow.”

“We more frequently find them floating in the Thames. I hope to God she’s not taken out of the water one day soon.”

Rutledge opened the umbrella and held it over her head as they walked to the yard, where the motorcar stood waiting. He was hearing Monsignor Holston’s admonition, offered quietly in the lobby of the hotel.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” he said. “That’s what Father James did.”

Hamish had silently answered in Rutledge’s mind. “Aye. It’s worth heeding.”

CHAPTER 28

AS HE WAS ABOUT TO CRANK the motor, Rutledge said to May Trent, “I’ve just thought of something. I’ll be back shortly.”

He turned and walked with long strides to The Pelican.

Ten minutes later, he was back with Peter Henderson, who nodded at May Trent and climbed into the rear seat of the car without a word.

Hamish was a hum of wordless admonition in Rutledge’s mind, reminding him that this night’s work could become a debacle.

Dusk was falling quickly, the rain shifting for part of the way to a drizzle that seemed to coat the motorcar and its passengers in tiny drops of moisture. As they passed down the avenue of trees in East Sherham that led to the gates of the Sedgwick estate, Rutledge slowed to a walking pace. And Peter Henderson, like a wraith, was out of the car and gone in the mist before May Trent had even turned to see what was happening.

The gatekeeper, reluctant to come out in the rain, called from his doorway, “Who’s there?”

“Inspector Rutledge. Lord Sedgwick is expecting me.”

The man, a hood over his head, hurried to open the gate and let them through. Rutledge drove on. Halfway down the looping drive to the house, he said to his passenger, “If you’ve changed your mind, you can stay in the car. I don’t expect this to take very long.”

“No. I have a stake in this. In a way.”

“As you wish.” But he was not pleased with her answer.

The house was in darkness, save for lights on the first floor and in the hall. He lifted the knocker on the door and let it fall. The two of them huddled under the umbrella as they waited. Hamish was a constant barrage now in the back of Rutledge’s mind, like very distant thunder, warning him to walk carefully.

May Trent said, “I think it’s turning colder.” As if to prove her words, her breath came out in a small white puff. She shivered.

The door opened, the housekeeper holding the lamp high to see their faces in the shadow of the umbrella.

“Inspector Rutledge and Miss Trent. To see Lord Sedgwick,” he said briskly.

She said, “It’s such a nasty night, isn’t it! Do come in. I’ll let His Lordship know you’re here.”

They stepped into the hall, the umbrella dribbling a tiny stream of water across the floor as Rutledge furled it and left it outside. The housekeeper was gone only a few minutes. She led them to the salon, with its broad windows and the dark, wet sweep of the lawns beyond.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They politely declined.

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

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

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

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

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

“Her body was never recovered?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamish said, “He canna’ be shaken.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamish said, “Watch your back!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How could he have got it so wrong?

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

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

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

“Yes. By all means.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rutledge said, his mind working at speed, “When you were playing night games outside the vicarage windows, to keep Sims silent, did you see Walsh dragging his chains to the garden shed?”

“Why should I frighten Sims?” Edwin demanded. “I reserved that for Holston, who knew Father James too well. It was very likely Peter Henderson who hung about the vicarage, not me. But yes, I was coming back from Cley on my motorcycle when I saw Walsh hurrying toward the church.” He glanced at his watch. “Your time is up. It doesn’t matter to us what you do with the knowledge you have. The risk is yours. Your medical history might be of interest in certain quarters. And prospects for publication of Miss Trent’s manuscript may be unexpectedly limited. What else lurks in your future is, of course, unforeseeable.”

“I spent four years in the trenches,” Rutledge answered contemptuously. “I daresay I shall survive the Sedgwick family. I’d set my house in order if I were you.”

He turned to look one last time through the rain-streaked panes of the French doors and across the wet lawns of the lovely unseen gardens. Then he walked unmolested between Edwin and Arthur and over the threshold.

CHAPTER 29

BUT IT WAS ON THE THRESHOLD that Rutledge stopped, facing the elegant room and its three occupants. “Let me remind you, gentlemen, that there are many ways that a man can be judged. I leave you to the tender mercies of the Watchers out there in the dark. When you begin to feel them—and you will—you’ll start to turn on each other. It will happen. It’s only a matter of time.”

A stolid wall of baneful resistance met him. Sedgwick was flushed now, a look of frustration and malevolence in his face. Arthur was resigned, his eyes on the carpet, but there was no remorse in his stance. Edwin, first looking from his father to his brother, turned on Rutledge a hungry glance. He was already bringing to bear a formidable determination.

For an instant, Rutledge thought Edwin might be the first to break ranks.

But the moment passed.

Rutledge leaned against the closed door, feeling the cool rain, breathing in the damp, heavy air.

It wasn’t finished yet.

Concerted murder. It was, as Monsignor Holston had claimed, violent and primeval. This family cared for nothing but their power, their will. It had made them implacable, cold-blooded. Virginia Sedgwick had been doomed from the day her husband discovered he’d been deceived. Her family was to blame, too—for their selfishness in pushing a bewildered child into the ranks of Consuela Vanderbilt and Jennie Randolph: a fortune traded for a title, nevermind happiness.

Hamish said, of the night, “I didna’ think they would let you go.”

Rutledge answered, “They haven’t. They just didn’t want to dirty the carpets.”

A voice out of the rain called tentatively, “Inspector Rutledge?”

He had forgotten that May Trent was waiting in the motorcar.

He found her shivering in her coat. “I’m so very glad to see you!” she exclaimed. “It’s been more than five minutes— I thought you weren’t coming at all.”

“I was safe enough.”

She laughed nervously. “It’s been frightful, out here in the dark. I’ve seen and heard all kinds of things! Mostly my overworked imagination, but that’s small comfort.”

He turned the crank, and when he took his place beside her, behind the wheel, she said, “Where’s Peter? We aren’t going to leave him, are we? It’s a long, wet walk back to Osterley.”

“Actually, he was outside the French windows. Just beyond the terrace. He knows where to meet me.”

He waited. The rain dripped from the trees as the wind stirred them. And somewhere, they could hear what sounded like a woman crying. It was a peacock, out on the grounds, but May Trent caught his arm. “I’m frightened. More frightened than I was in there!”

“You shouldn’t be. That was a very brave thing to do in there. Facing your demons in front of the Sedgwicks.”

“I didn’t face any demons. I lied, for Father James’s sake,” she confessed. “Listening to what was being said, I suddenly realized what it was that he’d actually expected me to remember. I did it for him. I think he’d already guessed that she wasn’t on board. She couldn’t have been, could she, if she was already dead? Father James had talked to Herbert Baker by that time, and he was nearly sure. But he hoped I could give him proof—”

Rutledge took out his watch, but couldn’t see the face in the darkness.

“Shouldn’t we return to Osterley soon?”

“It’s barely been a quarter of an hour. Give it a little longer.”

“Give what a little longer?” she said, her gloved hands snuggled into her coat pockets for warmth.

“I’m not sure.”

It was nearly forty-five minutes later when Hamish, behind him, heard something. Rutledge stiffened, straining to catch the direction of the footfalls.

Then Peter Henderson walked swiftly around the corner of the house and climbed into the rear seat. “He’s coming,” Henderson said.

“Who’s coming?” May Trent asked. “It’s Edwin you’re waiting for, isn’t it?”

Still they waited. And then the door of the house opened on a long rectangle of light that seemed to reach toward them. A man stepped out into the silvery path it made across the wet slate walk.

He seemed relieved to find Rutledge there. He came to stand beside the motorcar, looking in at Rutledge, the rain falling harder now, like tears on his face.

It was Arthur Sedgwick.

He handed Rutledge the umbrella he’d left by the door. “I don’t want to hang,” he said after a moment. “But I’m the one who’ll die next. One way or another. My spine is wrecked; I won’t live to old age. I’ll never father a child. Edwin won’t wait very long for the title. He wants it too badly; he has for as far back as I can remember. And my father grieves for a man who raced like the wind, and never thought twice about danger and dying. That’s gone, too.”

Rutledge said nothing.

Arthur Sedgwick said, “Can you protect me? If I agree to testify against them?”

“I can try.”

“They tried to persuade me for the good of the family to take a pistol to my head. ‘Driven by despair over my back.’ Hush it up. Inspector Blevins doesn’t want Walsh resurrected. He wouldn’t dare to point a finger at us. My death would be a nine day wonder and then fade away.”

He walked around the front of the motorcar and joined Henderson in the rear seat. Rutledge turned on the headlamps. The occupants of the car were ghostly in the reflected glow, after the pitch-black of the night.

As Rutledge turned the wheel and started down the drive, Arthur said, “I’ve always hated those damned baboons in the garden. They stare at me as if they can look through the flesh and blood into my very soul. I could see them tonight, watching. I always know they’re there. I’d promised myself that when I inherited the title, I’d destroy that damned stone. But my father has always had some sort of superstitious regard for it, like the Chastains did.”

They reached the gates and drove through.

May Trent asked Rutledge, as if it had suddenly occurred to her, “But what’s going to happen now?”

“You’ll see. I wish you’d stayed in Osterley. You wouldn’t have been dragged through this.”

“It was not your choice,” she replied. “It was mine. I’d let Father James down once.”

Rutledge pulled off the road in a wide patch of brush, the stiff dry fingers scratching against the paint, a shower of raindrops, dislodged from the branches, sprinkling down on the car. Then he drove deeper into the thickest shadows and switched off his headlamps. “Be very quiet.”

In a few minutes a motorcar came flying down the road from the direction of the Sedgwick gates, roaring past them like a thunderbolt. It disappeared into the darkness. From what Rutledge could tell, there were two people in the front.

Arthur Sedgwick said, “They’re hunting for me already.” There was a mixture of resignation and despair in his voice. “There are weapons in the house. Shotguns—”

Rutledge said, “No, they’re hunting me. But your turn will come. Where is your wife buried?”

“In the marshes. I killed her, but I couldn’t bear to bury her there. Edwin did it for me. He goes out there in the boat from time to time, to be sure she’s still there.”

Beside Rutledge, May Trent gasped.

After a moment, Rutledge said, “Sedgwick, we’re taking you straight to Norwich. Henderson, as soon as we reach Osterley, I’d like you to find Monsignor Holston at the hotel and tell him to come to Holy Trinity. We’ll meet him there by the church. Ask Mrs. Barnett, if you will, to send my luggage on to London, and Miss Trent’s as well. Then go to the vicarage and stay there out of sight. Will you do that?”

Henderson agreed.

“And thank you,” Rutledge added. “For tonight’s help.”

There was unexpected pride in Peter Henderson’s voice. “My pleasure. And I’ll keep my mouth shut, you can be sure.” He slipped out to crank the engine.

They waited by the church, its towers high and black against the sky. Arthur Sedgwick was morosely silent, Rutledge tense and watchful.

The bark of a fox was sharp and close. May Trent said quietly, “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

“There’s no choice. The Yard has to make this arrest. If I leave it to Blevins, he’ll lose another prisoner. Arthur Sedgwick will be safest in Norwich.”

Rain was falling hard again by the time a very wet and somber Monsignor Holston climbed into the seat Peter Henderson had vacated not ten minutes before.

“You’d better get out of here,” the priest warned. “As fast as you can! Edwin is searching the town. Peter told me a little of what has happened. He’s already gone to ground. They’ll never know he was protecting your back outside their windows tonight. He’ll be safe enough.”

The motor, rumbling quietly in the darkness, picked up a stronger note, and the motorcar drove down Trinity Lane to the main road and headed east, for the turning to Norwich.

But it was a very long time before Rutledge stopped listening for the echo of another vehicle behind him. . . .

If you enjoyed WATCHERS OF TIME, the fifth

mystery in Charles Todd’s mesmerizing series featuring

Inspector Rutledge, you won’t want to miss any of

Todd’s superb novels.

Turn the page for a tantalizing preview of

A FEARSOME DOUBT

Available in hardcover from Bantam Books.

CHAPTER 1

AUGUST 1912

London

THE PRISONER WAS STANDING IN THE dock, face strained, eyes on the foreman of the jury. His fingers gripped the wooden railing, white-knuckled, as he tried to hear the portly, gray-haired man in the jurors’ box reading the verdict. But the roaring in his ears as his heart pounded hard enough to suffocate him seemed to shut out the words. He swallowed hard, then leaned forward a little, concentrating on the juror’s lips.

“—guilty on all charges—”

The foreman’s voice rose on the last four words, as if he found them distasteful, his eyes furtively flicking towards the accused and away again. A greengrocer, he was not sympathetic to theft and murder.

The prisoner’s face swung towards the judge as he lifted the black silk square and settled it neatly on his heavy white wig, prepared to pass sentence.

“. . . taken from this place . . . hung by the neck . . .”

The prisoner blanched, and turned in anguish towards his wife, seated in the gallery watching, her gloved hands clenched tightly in her lap.

But she offered no comfort, staring straight ahead. Her face was closed and empty. He couldn’t look away. His sister, on the far side of his wife, was weeping into her handkerchief, hunched into her grief, but he hardly noticed. It was his wife’s coldness that riveted him.

He thought, “She believes it now—”

Inspector Ian Rutledge, the young officer from the Yard whose evidence had all but placed the rope around Ben Shaw’s throat, turned away and quietly left the courtroom.

He did not enjoy sending any man to his death. Even this one, whose crimes had shocked London. At such a time he was always mindful of his father, a solicitor, who had held strong views on the subject of hanging.

“I don’t believe in it. Still, the dead had no choice in their dying, did they? The murderer did. It’s on his own head, what becomes of him. He knew from the start what justice would be meted out to him. But he always expects to avoid it, doesn’t he? There’s an arrogance in that which disturbs me more than anything else—”

Ben Shaw hadn’t been arrogant. Murder hadn’t set well on his conscience. Hanging might come as a relief, an end to nightmares. Who could say?

Certainly not Rutledge himself—he had never taken a life. Would that alter his view of murder, would it in any way change his ability to understand a crime, or his attitude toward the killer? He thought not. It was the victim who had always called out to him, the voiceless dead, so often forgotten in the tumultuous courtroom battle of guilt versus innocence.

It was said that Justice prevented Anarchy. Law established Order.

Cold comfort to the elderly women Ben Shaw had strangled in their beds.

Still, the silenced victims had not gone unheard in this courtroom . . .

CHAPTER 2

5 NOVEMBER 1919

Marling, Kent

THE BONFIRE HAD BEEN PILED HIGH with the debris from a dozen gardens and enough twigs and dead boughs to outlast the Guy. The celebrants were gathered about the square, talking and laughing as if the gruesome spectacle they were about to witness was far more exciting than frightening. The match had yet to be tossed into the pyre, but two men in flowing wigs and faded satin coats awaited for the signal. Their sober faces were flushed with wine and duty. The taller leaned towards his companion and said in a low voice, “All this hair itches like the very devil!”

“Yes, well, at least your shirt fits! All this lace will end up strangling me, wait and see! I’m ready to kill whoever thought up this charade.”

“Won’t be long now.”

It was the close of Guy Fawkes Day, and tonight the stuffed effigy of a traitor was about to be paraded around the village square and then thrown into the flames.

Bonfires were a long-standing English tradition, marking the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when the real Guy Fawkes had been caught with his co-conspirators attempting to blow up Parliament and King James with it.

A macabre way of reminding schoolchildren, as they went round their villages and towns collecting pennies to buy Roman candles, what becomes of traitors.

As a rule it was a family affair, held in the back garden, the fire as fat or sparse as the family could manage, the Guy dressed in cast off clothes stuffed with straw. In too many households during four and a half years of war the celebration had dwindled to a token affair, the dearth of able bodied men and the hardships of families struggling to survive without them making the effort increasingly a burden. The village of Marling had decided to revive the custom with a public flourish.

Ian Rutledge had given his share of pennies to the local children this morning, while Hamish, in his head, disparaged the whole affair. “It’s no’ a Scottish tradition, to waste guid firewood. It’s too hard to come by.”

Remembering the barren, stone-scarred mountains where Hamish had grown up, Rutledge said, “When in Rome . . .”

“If ye came for Hogmany, now, a good fire on the hearth was hospitality after a long ride in the cold.”

Rutledge knew the Scottish holiday, the last day of the year when the children demanded gift cakes and the whisky flowed freely—and not necessarily whisky upon which any tax had been paid. He had commanded Scottish troops in the war, and they had brought their traditions as well as their traditional courage with them. He had turned a blind eye on more than one occasion, the policeman subverted by the compassion he felt for his homesick men—many little more than boys—trying to forget how short their lives were destined to be by remembering home.

Tonight, 5 November, he wasn’t on duty in London, he was standing among the revelers in an attractive village high on the Downs and beside him was the widow of a friend who had died in the Great War. She had invited him to come down for the occasion. “You must, Ian! It will do both of us a world of good. It’s time to put the war behind us, and try to rebuild our lives. . . .”

He had no life to rebuild, but she did, and Frances, his sister, had urged him to accept the invitation. “Elizabeth has mourned for two years. It won’t bring Richard back, will it? I think we should encourage her, if she’s ready to shut the door on all that. And it will do you good as well, to see more of old friends. You’ve buried yourself in your work for months now!” The last accusing. And then Frances had added hastily, “No, I’m not matchmaking. She would do as much for either of us, if we were in need, and you know that as well as I do.”

It was true. Elizabeth was one of the most generous people Rutledge knew. Richard Mayhew had been very fortunate in his choice of wife.

She was a slim woman in her late twenties, with sparkling dark eyes and a wry sense of humor. Her presence was brightness and warmth and a belief that life could be good. It was—almost—contagious.

And just now, he was in need of warmth and brightness, to chase away other shadows . . .

Clinging to his arm in the press of people, Elizabeth was saying, “Richard loved all this, you know. He loved tradition and the . . .”

Rutledge lost the thread of her words as the Guy, flamboyant in dress and hanging from a long pole, was brought into the square and carried triumphantly around the unlit fire. A deafening shout of approval rose, and as Rutledge glimpsed the painted mockery of a face, its wild eyes and flaring nostrils, the grinning mouth, the bits of someone’s wig straggling about the ears, he had to laugh. What was lost in talent had been made up in exuberance.

“Aye, exuberance,” Hamish agreed, “with a wee touch of Auld Clootie . . .”

The devil. Only a Scot with generations of Covenanters in his family tree would make such a comparison.

Rutledge responded silently, “The first James was your king as well as ours. Or have you forgotten?”

Hamish, considering the matter, replied, “We didna’ care o’er much for him.”

The Guy was closer now, dancing a jig on the pole, and Elizabeth was laughing like a girl. “Oh, Ian, look, he’s wearing those masquerade clothes I found in the attics and donated to the committee. Wouldn’t Richard have been delighted—”

On the far side of the crowd, someone had lit the fire, and the flames began to fly through the dry brush, reaching for the harder wood. Applause greeted them. In the garish light, the Guy took on a realistic life of its own, the straw-stuffed limbs jerking in time with the booted feet of its minders as it was paraded before an appreciative audience. Shouts of approval and the word “Traitor!” mingled with laughing cries of “Into the flames with him!” and “God save King James and Parliament.” The shrill, giggling voices of children taunted the Guy, a counterpoint to parents warning their offspring not to venture too close to the fire: “Mind now!” or “Stand clear, do!”

And in the light of the flames, lit just as garishly as the Guy, was a face that Rutledge’s gaze passed over—and returned to— and recognized—

But from where?

He went cold with a sense of shock he couldn’t explain. A knowledge that was there, buried deep in the brain, concealed by layers of denial and blank horror. And yet rising to the surface with the full force of his being was a single realization—he didn’t want to know the answer —

There was danger in searching for the answer—

He stood motionless, his body rigid, his arm stiffening in Elizabeth’s grip. But she was entranced by the spectacle, and unaware. He was physically caught up in his surroundings, the voices of people on every side of him, the heavy smell of smoke as the wind blew it his way, the warmth of Elizabeth’s hands on him, the coolness of the night air, the rough feel of the wool coat across his shoulders, the shadowed brick facades looming above him—and at the same time, emotionally, he was firmly locked in a private hell that mirrored the flames rising into the black sky above. As the seconds passed, it seemed for a fraction of an instant that the eyes of his enemy sought and found his before moving on. The odd light lent them a ferocity that stunned him.

As if acknowledging a connection between them, a connection built on—what?

And how did he know this was an enemy?

“Gentle God,” Rutledge whispered under his breath— and then the face vanished, a will o’ the wisp in the November night, a figment of murky imagination lost in the smoke. Suddenly he doubted his own senses.

He had seen it—Dear God, surely he had seen it!

Or—had it been no more than a fleeting memory from the last days of the war—a moment’s aberration, a flash of something best buried in the dim reaches of his mind, best unresurrected?

In this past week uneasy memories had surfaced and disappeared with disconcerting irregularity, as if the approaching anniversary of the Armistice had jarred them into life again. Rutledge was not the only soldier who was experiencing this phenomenon—he’d heard two constables who had survived the trenches warily questioning each other about lapses in concentration. And several men in a pub dancing uneasily around who was sleeping well and who wasn’t. There had been the officer sitting on a bench by the Embankment, staring at the river water with such obsessive fascination that Rutledge had stopped and spoken to him. The man had travelled a long way back to the present, and looked up at Rutledge as though wanting to ask, “Were you there?” And saying instead, “The water’s bitter cold and gray today, isn’t it?” It was almost a confession that drowning had been on his mind.

As if uncertain, all of them, whether or not they were going mad and grateful to discover they were not alone in their fears. As if that made it more tolerable, not being alone . . .

Just this need had sent him down to Kent.

He found himself searching among the villagers gathered in a ring around the fire’s blazing gold and red light, but the face he sought was no longer there. Not now.

Not ever?

Hamish, alarmed and accusing in the back of his mind, was exclaiming, “It canna’ be. Ye’ve gone o’wer the edge, man!”

Badly shaken, Rutledge had lost sight of the perambulating Guy, making a lap on the far side of the bonfire. Now the grotesque effigy was coming round once more, a final circuit while the lengths of harder wood smoked and began to burn hot enough to consume the fire’s prey.

Over by the bronze statue of a mounted cavalier that stood at the point of the square where the main road curved away from the High Street, there was hilarity as a police sergeant gathered older boys around him and gave his orders. The bronze cavalier’s back was turned on the antics of his descendants, his face haughty and withdrawn under the brim of his plumed hat, the metal arch of his nose and the smooth sweep of his cheekbones highlighted by the fire’s blaze.

As the first Roman candles went streaming noisily skyward from the cluster of children, Rutledge flinched. At the Front, flares had been used o test the wind—

The crack! and the rat-a-tat-tat of the smaller charges sent his heart rate soaring. He felt exposed, caught out in the open, as the sounds of war surrounded him again. His immediate inclination was to shout orders to his men, to bend into the run that would carry him across No Man’s Land—

Elizabeth, suddenly aware, looked up at the tension in his face and cried, “Oh—I didn’t think—are you all right? It’s only the children—”

Rutledge nodded, unable to trust his voice.

Just then the Guy went sailing into the heart of the blaze, like a living creature struggling to escape as the heat rushed toward him. The onlookers were ecstatic, roaring at the top of their lungs as the straw-stuffed figure jerked and twisted as if in torment. The candles streamed wildly above the tongues of flame, and the noise was deafening.

Rutledge was still scouring the faces illuminated by the flames. A policeman was trained to observe, to remember the shape of a nose, the width of a mouth, the way the eyes were set and the height of the forehead.

He couldn’t have been wrong, there had to be someone who bore a faint resemblance to the man he’d seen. Something had triggered that memory, something had reached somewhere deep in his past and dredged it up.

But there were only strangers here, appearing and disappearing in the smoke like wraiths, none of them familiar, all of them solidly alive, villagers with every right to be here enjoying the night.

In God’s name, it had surely been a ghost . . .

He knew about ghosts—

People were milling around him now, slapping each other on the back, celebrating, calling out to friends, pressing him toward the fire, into the heart of the crowd. Mind-numbing to a man who was claustrophobic. Someone who knew Elizabeth came past and thrust a glass of long-hoarded champagne into their hands, shouting something Rutledge couldn’t decipher in the din. He drank the champagne quickly, to steady himself. What was happening to him? Why had a perfectly normal evening gone so badly wrong?

Hamish said, “It’s November—”

As if that explained everything.

And in a terrible way it did. Last November Rutledge had been in the trenches of France, he and his men abandoned by hope, and bitter, too tired to relish the successes of the Americans or to believe the whispers of a peace.

The doctors had warned him there would be flashbacks, that he would from time to time find himself reliving what was best forgotten. “Sometimes as vividly as life,” Dr. Fleming had cautioned him. “And far from unnatural.”

Easy for Fleming to say, sitting in his sparsely furnished surgery surrounded by stacks of folders of the living dead, the men who had come home shattered in body or spirit.

Locked in by the crowd, his body confined on all sides by people oblivious to his sense of suffocation as the claustrophobia gripped him, wanting to break through them to space and air, fighting to draw a full breath, Rutledge struggled with panic. Even Elizabeth, chatting with a neighbor, was pressing against him, her body warm with excitement and the heat of the fire.

The nightmare surrounded him, unending, like torment meted out carefully to make the pain last. He felt like the Guy, helpless and a spectacle.

And then the Guy was consumed, the flames began to die back, and the euphoria of the evening seemed to wane as well. Women began to collect reluctant children, and men with rakes and brooms went to brush some of the ashes back towards the center. Voices could actually be heard over the din and the crowd started to move in different directions, freeing him at last.

Elizabeth, her face pink from laughter, looked up at him and said gratefully, “Thank you for coming, Ian! I couldn’t have faced it on my own. Although it’s time I learned, isn’t it?” She was holding his arm again, her fingers like individual bands of steel gripping him.

And then as swiftly as he had seemed to suffocate, his mind cleared and he was himself again. He put his hand over hers and managed a smile.

As she moved away to speak to someone else, Rutledge scanned the far side of the smoking remains of the fire for a last time, but the face was not there. The man was not there.

Surely he never had been—

Elizabeth said, turning to look behind her, “Did you see someone you know? Do you want to try to catch him up?”

“No—!” Rutledge answered abruptly, and then added at Hamish’s prompting, “I—a trick of the light, that’s all. I was wrong.”

It was surely something about the night that had disturbed him, and the noise and the acrid smell of the fireworks lingering in the smoky air. There was no one there—

“He canna’ be,” Hamish reminded Rutledge. “He’s dead. Like me!”

Dead. Like me!

Rutledge hesitated, on the point of asking Hamish what he knew—what he might have seen. Then—or just now.

But before he could frame the words, he stopped himself.

What if this had nothing to do with the war?

After a very fine dinner with Elizabeth and three of her friends at the hotel just along the High Street, Rutledge drove back to London. Introductions and the subsequent settling into chairs as everyone exclaimed over the success of the evening had given Rutledge time to collect himself and present a polite, pleasant facade in spite of his unsettled state of mind.

It was something he was becoming increasingly good at doing, finding the right mask for his terrors.

Caught up in their own excitement, no one at the table noticed his long silences or made anything of his distraction. He was the outsider among them, and they included him from kindness, expecting nothing in return. He overheard one of the women as she leaned towards Elizabeth and murmured, “He’s absolutely charming! Where did you find him?” as if he were a new suitor.

His hostess had replied dryly, “He was Richard’s best man. I’ve known Ian for ages. He’s been a great comfort.”

For Elizabeth’s sake, he was glad to find himself accepted. He couldn’t have borne it if he’d embarrassed her. Yet it could have happened all too easily.

Frances had been wrong—he was not ready to meet old friends and pick up the threads of an old life. There were too many walls that shut him off from people who remembered a very different man called Ian Rutledge.

Still, Elizabeth had not let him go without making a promise that he’d be back on 10 November.

“You will ask for leave, I hope,” she asked anxiously, a reminder. “And Chief Superintendent Bowles will agree, won’t he?”

“I see no reason why not,” Rutledge responded, bending his head to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be here. If I can.”

What he didn’t tell her was that he’d have made certain that he was not in London on 11 November with or without leave.

But on the long drive home, watching the headlamps pick out the verges of the road and pierce the heavy shadows of trees and hedgerows, Rutledge had found himself seeing again and again the face he’d carried with him since the bonfire.

It lingered against his will, as if once having surfaced it refused to be stuffed down once more into the bleak depths from which it had risen. And there was no respite, for traffic was too light to distract him. The cloudy, moonless night seemed to be its ally, and even Hamish was silent. By the time Rutledge reached the outskirts of London, the shoulders and chest attached to the face had fleshed themselves out, bit by bit gathering substance like a reluctant ghost. They belonged not in the proper English clothing Rutledge thought he’d glimpsed tonight, but in a torn and bloody uniform.

And Hamish said, as if he’d been waiting for Rutledge to reach this point, “I’d no’ pursue it. There were sae many . . .”

In the pale morning light, as he made his way to Scotland Yard the next day, Rutledge realized he had arrived at the same conclusion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHARLES TODD is the author of A Test of Wills, Wings of Fire, Search the Dark, Legacy of the Dead, A Fearsome Doubt, and Watchers of Time. He lives on the East Coast, where he is at work on his next novel of British historical suspense, The Murder Stone.

ALSO BY CHARLES TODD

A Test of Wills*

Wings of Fire

Search the Dar

Legacy of the Dead*

A Fearsome Doubt*