Watchers of Time (17 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s her full name?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hamish said, “She’s verra’ agitated!”

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

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

“Then I’ll join you shortly.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A woman who would stand out wherever she was.

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

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

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

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