Watchers Of Time Part 3

The priest had failed to answer the question directly.

"He's as slippery as a fish," Hamish warned.

"You're a trained and intelligent man yourself, Monsignor. Surely you've taken the question a step further. If it wasn't something Father James knew-or had told you- then it must be something in that rectory that the killer was searching for. And if he failed to find it, you must feel fairly certain that he'll come back to try again. If you're there, he won't let your presence stand in his way, just as he didn't spare Father James. What in heaven's name could Father James have kept there that would be worth one priest's life, and perhaps two? What could have put him at such risk?"

"If I knew the answer to that," Monsignor Holston said in resignation, "we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'd have told Inspector Blevins at once!"

"Then I'm left with the original police supposition that this was a breaking-and-entering gone wrong. And the people in Osterley can handle that. If I'm to present a case to my superiors that calls for the Yard's intervention, I've got to persuade them that there is very good reason to think the Yard's time is well spent here. Yes, the fact that the victim is a priest naturally weighs with them, or I wouldn't have been sent to Norwich in the first place. But the rule of thumb is that the local constabulary often knows more about the people they need to interview than an outsider could, and are therefore more likely to spot the killer."

"I have given you all the information that it's in my power to give you," Monsignor Holston replied, his austere face clouded with doubt. "I can't tell you more than that-I wish I knew knew more! And I won't lie to you, either. I will say this: Father James was a very good man. Sober and hardworking. A man of faith and deep convictions. I have a duty to him. If his murderer more! And I won't lie to you, either. I will say this: Father James was a very good man. Sober and hardworking. A man of faith and deep convictions. I have a duty to him. If his murderer can can be found, I want him found." be found, I want him found."

Hamish said, "A priest could be killed for what he knows."

It was true. . . .

Rutledge, finishing his tea, shook his head as he was offered more and set his empty cup on the tray. "There's another avenue we haven't really explored. A clergyman learns to cope with a variety of responsibilities, some of them rather onerous. There's always the chance that what happened to Father James is in some way related to his duties. And in taking them over, you may put yourself at risk as well. Someone may believe you will come to know more than you safely should."

"It's always possible, of course. The truth is, a clergyman can often make quite good guesses about what's going on in his parish. And he's often privy to confidences-never mind what he's told in the confessional. But in that confessional, he may learn the whole story. A husband is unfaithful to his wife, a clerk has cheated his employer, someone has spread a lie that hurt others, a child was not fathered by the man who believes it's his. That's the reason the words uttered in the confessional are a sacred trust. It must be a place where a person tells the truth and unburdens his soul before G.o.d. We believe in this sacrament, and we protect it with our silence. Father James wouldn't have broken that vow."

"And if a man or a woman tells the priest something, and later regrets that confidence?"

"He or she may regret having spoken. But G.o.d knew long before he or she stepped into the confessional. And the priest is sworn to silence."

"That's not always the practical answer," Rutledge told him.

Monsignor Holston removed his gla.s.ses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "No, it isn't. The practical answer is, that man or that woman may simply move to another parish, leaving behind the priest who knows the truth and finding another one who will accept this newest member of his flock at face value. One doesn't murder the priest for the secrets of the confessional. It would have changed the face of the Church hundreds of years ago if that had become the common practice." He restored his gla.s.ses to their proper place, settling them into the deep indentations on either side of his nose, then tried to smile. And failed. "Were you told that Father James was a chaplain in the first two years of the War, until he was sent home with severe dysentery in 1917? Who can be sure that the truth doesn't lie there? In the War?" Monsignor Holston turned his head again to look out at the garden, as if he half expected to find the answer he wanted in the gra.s.sy paths and the shrubbery. Or half expected to find someone standing there.

Hamish said, "He fidgets like a man with an uneasy conscience!"

Rutledge answered silently, "Uneasy? Or uncertain?" Aloud he said, "In that event, I see no reason why you should feel that you're in any particular danger."

Monsignor Holston turned from the window to Rutledge. "I have told you. It's primitive-the hair rising on the back of my neck in a dark corner of my church, or coming down the pa.s.sage here in the house when it's late and I'm alone. Sitting in a lighted room when the windows are dark and the drapes haven't been drawn, and looking up suddenly to see if someone is out there, staring in at me. It isn't real, it's all imagination. And I'm not by nature easily frightened. Now I am."

"Did you serve with the same units that Father James did?"

"I never went to France. I worked among the wounded here in England as they were being sorted out when the ships came in. Most of them were in too much pain to do more than accept a cigarette and a little compa.s.sion, some rea.s.surance that G.o.d was still watching over them." Monsignor Holston shook his head. "You're probably right, I'm not thinking very logically about any of this. But somewhere in this muddle there must be an explanation for Father James's murder and my own strange sense that something's wrong. wrong." He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. You're a very clever man, Inspector Rutledge. You'll sort it out. I am rea.s.sured that Scotland Yard has sent us its best."

And that was all that Monsignor Holston was prepared to say.

Leaving the rectory, Rutledge paused to speak to Bryony as she showed him to the door. Around them the house was silent, shutting out the sound of the rain and the echo of shovels sc.r.a.ping against stone out in the street. "I understand that Father James was well thought of."

"Now there was a black day, when Father was killed! I've not got over the shock of it. Well thought of? Of course he was, and well loved, well respected, too!" She took Rutledge's hat and coat from the chair beside the door and held them to her as if they offered comfort. "You can ask anyone."

"People always speak well of the dead," he told her gently. "Even a priest is human, and sometimes frail."

"As to that, I wouldn't know! I'm not one to go around looking for failings. I can tell you Father James was a patient man, and generous. If someone had come to him with a tale of hard luck, he'd have given them the money, they needn't have killed him for it! It'll turn out to be a stranger, mark my words. A cruel and unG.o.dly man with no regard for his own soul." Her eyes remained on his, as if expecting him to make a p.r.o.nouncement that would set her mind at rest.

"A non-Catholic? Is that what you're saying?"

"Neither Protestant nor nor Catholic, in my view-no churchgoing man would murder a clergyman, would he? I'm saying that whoever it was killed Father James wasn't hungry or in debt. He was calculating and self-serving, with a devil in him. Or Catholic, in my view-no churchgoing man would murder a clergyman, would he? I'm saying that whoever it was killed Father James wasn't hungry or in debt. He was calculating and self-serving, with a devil in him. Or her. her. Women can be terrible cruel sometimes. Are there so many of those walking about that it takes all this time for the police to track down the right one? It's been days now since Father's death, and what have the police got to show for it? I call it a crying shame!" Women can be terrible cruel sometimes. Are there so many of those walking about that it takes all this time for the police to track down the right one? It's been days now since Father's death, and what have the police got to show for it? I call it a crying shame!"

"Surely they've tried."

"Oh, as to trying, now, I'd agree with you there. They've tried. But they're not what I'd call clever clever men." She moved to open the door for him, letting in the damp and the reek of the filthy mud being piled high at the roadside. "Housebreaking and petty theft, fire-setting or a.s.sault-they'll find the culprit, because chances are he's done it before. But that's not men." She moved to open the door for him, letting in the damp and the reek of the filthy mud being piled high at the roadside. "Housebreaking and petty theft, fire-setting or a.s.sault-they'll find the culprit, because chances are he's done it before. But that's not clever, clever, is it? It's only a matter of knowing where to look!" is it? It's only a matter of knowing where to look!"

"And in this case, perhaps only a matter of finding out who has extra money jangling in his pocket, the money he stole from Father James," Rutledge responded reasonably. "Six of one-"

"Is it, now?" She tilted her head to look up at him. "Father James was a family man, did they tell you? This past August his sister presented her husband with three little ones, and Father James was always helping out with the babes. What's she to do now, with winter coming on and no one to come and stay a few days, when one's sick of the croup and she's up all the night? You might speak to Mrs. Wainer. She was Father James's housekeeper, and a more decent woman you'll never meet. Ask her about walking into the study and finding him there stiff and cold, blood all over the place. And for all she knew, the killer lurking in the bedroom, ready to strike her down as well! If you've set Monsignor's mind at rest just now, it would be a kindness to rea.s.sure her, too. And only a few hours out of your way, mind!"

"Where will I find her?" He stepped through the doorway as she handed him his coat and hat. He could feel the blowing mist on his face, fine as silk against his skin.

"She's at the rectory still, though I don't know for the life of me how the poor woman can walk through the door. It's her duty to be there, she says. Every day. Just as if Father James was still alive. Osterley is the name of the town. Surely they told you that in London? It's closer to the sea in the north, and easy enough to get to from here." Her eyes were shrewd. "Easier, of course, to go back to London satisfied you've done your duty by us. There's many would do that. Somehow I don't think you're one of them!"

And with that she bade him a good day and closed the door.

Rutledge turned the crank and got into his motorcar, out of the rain. And then he surprised himself by sitting there, considering what Bryony had said, the motor idling under his gloved hands as they rested on the wheel.

He hadn't antic.i.p.ated being drawn into the life or the death of this man. It wasn't the task that had been set him. . . .

Go to Norfolk to rea.s.sure the Bishop that the police are doing their job properly. doing their job properly.

And instead he'd been expected, he thought wryly, to perform a small miracle or two. Find a true explanation for the murder of the priest-and then track down the killer.

He didn't envy the local man, Blevins, struggling to conduct an investigation in a climate of disbelief that refused to accept simple murder for what it really was, a commonplace calamity, not the stuff of legends.

But even as he tried to make light of Bryony's forceful plea and Monsignor Holston's fears, Rutledge couldn't escape the fact that their intensity had touched him.

Hamish said, "Aye, but it will pa.s.s, with the mood."

Which was probably true. The thing was, Bryony had made it very hard for him to walk away.

Instead, he put the motorcar in gear and turned the bonnet north instead of south toward London, driving on to Osterley.

As a schoolboy, learning to draw the map of Great Britain, Rutledge had been taught that the island resembled a man in a top hat riding a running pig. The top hat was the northern part of Scotland-the Highlands. The man's head and body were the Lowlands and the Midlands of England. The pig's head was Wales, its front feet the Cornish peninsula, its hind feet the downs of Kent. And its rump was East Anglia, the great bulge of Ess.e.x, Suffolk, and Norfolk jutting out into the North Sea toward the Low Countries.

It was a picture he and his schoolmates had found diverting, endlessly practicing their drawing of the pig and its rider, unaware that the effort sealed forever in their minds the geography of their country.

Now, as he covered the miles between Norwich and Osterley, Rutledge watched the raindrops collect on his windscreen and resisted Hamish's efforts to draw him into a debate over the interview with Monsignor Holston. He didn't want to delve into the priest's motivations or Bryony's. The earlier mood (as Hamish had predicted) was wearing off, and in its place was a rising doubt about his own judgment. He hadn't been cleared for a return to full duty-and his instructions had been to travel to Norwich. Nothing had been said about continuing north.

Old Bowels would have his liver if he upset the local man on a whim and brought the wrath of the Chief Constable down on both their heads. On the other hand, Rutledge could say with some certainty that he had made precious little progress in "rea.s.suring" the Bishop's representative. The Monsignor wouldn't have settled for less than a full-blown investigation by the Yard, given any choice in the matter. If a visit to Osterley was what it took to satisfy him of the Yard's faith in Inspector Blevins, there would be no official objections to that.

But Hamish wouldn't be put off. "It's no' the body that's standing in your way! Ye havena' put Scotland out of your mind. Ye werena' ready to return to work because you werena' ready to face living!"

"The bandages are off," Rutledge answered flatly. "By the time I'm back in London, the police surgeon will be satisfied that the medical leave can be rescinded."

"Aye, but watching yon fine doctor cut away bits of bandage is no' the same as coming to grips with yoursel'."

"I'll deal with Scotland. When I'm back in London."

"Oh, aye? Then tell me why we're driving north again?"

It was a pretty route, leaving Norwich to follow country lanes through gently rolling hills. Many of them hid small flint or brick villages in pocket-size valleys. And the still-green meadows on the rounded hillsides were sheltered by a line of trees, where fluffy cl.u.s.ters of Norfolk sheep dotted the landscape, their fleece thickening for the winter. So unlike France, with its broken walls and stark chimneys lining the roads from the Front. He could almost pretend that it was 1914, and nothing had changed. But of course it had. There was never any going back.

To Hamish this was "soft country"-peaceful and prosperous, where a living came more easily than in the harsh, often barren landscapes of the Highlands. That very harshness, in Hamish's opinion, had made the Scots formidable fighting men.

Norfolk had produced fine soldiers, too, Rutledge reminded him. But as far as Hamish was concerned, training and blood were two very different factors in the making of an army. One could be taught-the other was in the very bone.

Even in the trenches Hamish had been fond of citing examples-some of them ranging back to the twelfth century-of Scottish prowess in battle. It was, Rutledge thought, a way of life that had seldom brought prosperity or contentment to the Highlands, but in pride and fierce spirit, it had bred a full measure of courage.

The miles rolled away behind them, and then the road Rutledge was driving wound through a cut in a hill and unexpectedly came to an end facing a broad expanse of marshes, as flat as they were striking and bronzed now with the coming winter's palette of red-brown and yellow and old gold. He paused at the junction to stare out across them, thinking to himself that for such a small country, England had its share of beauty.

Here the road went either right toward Cley or left toward Hunstanton, running along the landward edges of the marsh as far as the eye could see. Rutledge turned left, feeling the wind coming in from the northwest, bearing with it the cries of gulls out along the ridge of dunes by the sea. Rounding a curve a few miles farther on, Rutledge found himself in the outskirts of a small, sprawling village, lying under a sky that looked like a great gray bowl, holding in the light from the unseen water beyond the marshes to his right.

This wasn't the famous "Constable sky," those broad horizons that the artist had made his signature: vast banks of clouds filled with delicate color that somehow emphasized the simplicity of the ordinary lives he chose to paint. Farm lads fishing or tired horses drawing a haywain across a tree-shaded stream, each caught in his workaday world-rustic beauty unaware of the grandeur overhead.

Here the sky was self-effacing canopy, accepting its more prosaic role of joining sea and land even when the sea was nowhere to be seen. But it was out there, beyond the marshes that had taken root on the salty, wet silt it had left behind. This part of Norfolk had fought long battles with the forces of wind and water, which had often changed the shape of the coastline. A village might lie on the sh.o.r.e this century and find itself miles away from the sea in the next.

The first scattering of houses led him next into the village of Osterley. To his left a great flint church stood high on a gra.s.sy knoll, well above the main road and looking down across it to the houses that marked the waterfront. A church, Rutledge thought, that must have been built by the wool trade and heavy coastal shipping. There were a goodly number of these cathedrals in miniature in Norfolk, which had seen a flourishing economy in its day. If he remembered his history correctly, Osterley had been one of the great ports in the Middle Ages, and some of those riches had gone into the clerestory and the strong soaring towers, creating a sense of light and power at the same time.

Rutledge turned up the lane leading to the church, driving up the hill for a better look. A sign posted by the churchyard gate told him that this was Holy Trinity.

Someone-a woman-walked out the church door, a notebook in her hand, and shielding her eyes, looked up at the clerestory. The way the wind played with her skirts and the long coat she wore, Rutledge got the impression that she was slim, fairly young, and attractive. It was there in the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her head, though her hand and arm hid her features.

"There must be a fine view from yon tower," Hamish said. "It's verra' high."

"A landmark from the sea as well, I should think." The town of Boston in Lincolnshire had used its church tower as a beacon for centuries.

The woman walked back into the church. Frances, Rutledge thought, would have approved of the hat she was wearing. Dark red, with silver and blue feathers on one side that gave it a stylish air. He was tempted to get out and pay a visit to the church, to see her better. Just then a man came up the hill from the village, not by the road but through the churchyard, and went inside. A workman from the look of him, wearing a smock and heavy shoes. She'd been waiting for him, perhaps.

He turned his attention back to the terrain.

Ahead of the motorcar's bonnet, the lane disappeared into a small copse. He thought there must be five or six houses scattered beyond it, but decided not to trust his axles to that twisting, rutted stretch of muddy road. He could just see a few chimneys rising above gabled roofs, and at the far end, what might have been a barn, judging from its bulky silhouette.

Across the lane from the church stood the vicarage, half hidden behind a flint wall, its drive disappearing into old trees that gave some hint of its age.

He turned the motorcar and went back down the lane to the main road. Just on the corner of a street to the right-Water Street, the sign informed him-stood the police station.

Rutledge pulled up in front of it, and got out to pay his courtesy call on Inspector Blevins. But there was a notice posted on the door, dated this morning: Gone to Gone to Swaffham. In the event of an emergency, contact East Swaffham. In the event of an emergency, contact East Sherham police station. Sherham police station. A number was given. A number was given.

He opened the door and looked inside. The front room was silent, uninviting as a place to wait.

"Aye, and for how long?" Hamish asked querulously. Rutledge closed the door again.

Starting the motorcar, he decided his time would be better spent exploring the village and calling on Mrs. Wainer. That could be viewed as an extension of his original brief-putting Bishop Cunningham's mind at rest-rather than an infringement of the local man's investigation.

Water Street clearly went down to the quay. It ran along there for some distance before turning back to the main road, as if disappointed by what it had found at the harbor. But he pa.s.sed that turning and stayed on the main road, interested in the size and general layout of Osterley. It appeared to be prosperous enough, no ugly areas of run-down housing or noticeable poverty, but without signs either of money to waste on ostentation.

There were some half a dozen streets running inland to his left, short streets for the most part, although he thought that Sherham Street went on to the next village, for it appeared to vanish over the hill into farming land. Two streets turned to his right, Old Point Road and Marsh Lane. Down Old Point Road he saw the second church in the village, and decided that it must be St. Anne's.

And then as suddenly as he'd come upon Osterley, he was out of it.

A muddy farmyard on the right, a house half glimpsed on a rise to his left, and the main road west dropped sharply down a hill and ran along the marshes that spread to his right as far as the horizon.

Even Hamish was struck by the splendor of the view, and Rutledge turned into a small stony cul-de-sac to look out at the scene. Gra.s.ses and marshes covered the land like a rough brown-gold blanket, and a few stunted trees bowed before the wind, on the point of giving up against its force. The gra.s.ses moved as if with a will of their own as the wind ran capriciously through them. Here ducks and geese and sea birds owned the silence. A thin line of white at the very fringes of the marshes marked the sea. It was wildly beau iful, and Rutledge thought, Here is something man hasn't destroyed. Here is something man hasn't destroyed.

Hamish said, "Aye, but give him time!"

A small falcon rose from the thick gra.s.s to fly some twenty yards, then hover with beating wings above its unsuspecting prey. Rutledge watched it swoop, and then take off again with a dark smudge hanging from one claw. A mouse?

The stillness was broken only by the wind sweeping in from the sea, and he thought he had caught the sound of waves rolling in, a deep roar that was felt as much as it was heard, like a heartbeat. The sense of peace was heavy, and the sense of isolation.

A formation of geese, out over the surf, flew like a black arrow toward Osterley.

Following them with his eyes, Rutledge remembered the lines of poetry from which the words had come. They ran through his mind almost without conscious thought: "Across the moon the geese flew, pointing my way, / A "Across the moon the geese flew, pointing my way, / A black arrow on the wing. / But I was afoot and slow, / And black arrow on the wing. / But I was afoot and slow, / And stumbled in the dark. By moonset, I was left, / Alone and stumbled in the dark. By moonset, I was left, / Alone and sad, still far from the sea . . ." sad, still far from the sea . . ."

O. A. Manning had been writing about a man's desperate struggle against despair.

Here in the marshes, watching the wedge of geese, it seemed to be possible to reach the sea after all. . . . He felt his spirits lift.

"Unless," Hamish told him harshly, "it's only an illusion. . . ."

CHAPTER 5.

IGNORING HAMISH, RUTLEDGE SPENT ANOTHER FIVE or ten minutes there, his eyes scanning the marshes. But now it seemed devoid of life, the spell it had cast broken.

He got out to crank the motor. Under his feet was a bed of stones, white round pebbles that, when split, showed their opaque, flinty core. Many of the towns along the North Sea had been built of such stone, hard and durable at the center.

As the motor came to life and he turned to walk back to the driver's side, he found himself thinking about Bryony again. The housekeeper had told him that the police had got nowhere. Why had no one in Osterley come forward with information about the priest's death? It was a crime that any community should instantly condemn, the kind of sudden death that drove people to lock their doors at night and look askance at their neighbors and remember small events that might be pieced carefully together until the puzzle was solved.

"I saw a man . . ."

"I overheard such and such while waiting to pay my account at the greengrocer's . . ."

"Father James told me one day after Ma.s.s . . ."

A village thrived on prying. Privacy was an illusion protected by silence.

Rutledge turned the car once more and went back the way he'd come.

The answer to his question seemed to be that they had no information to give, the residents of Osterley. Or they had closed ranks around the murderer of the priest.

"But that's no' likely," Hamish pointed out.