Charles Todd - Watchers of Time

He sat down by the window that looked out across the marsh and counted a flight of some dozen ducks coming in to what must be a pool hidden somewhere among the tall grasses. The barmaid had disappeared into the kitchen, and he heard the rattle of cutlery and dishes.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness created by smoke-blackened beams and tables, he realized that he wasn’t alone. Another man sat in a corner nook by the bar, his head bent over a newspaper. Rutledge wasn’t certain whether he was reading it or using it as a barrier against conversation.

Decoratively, The Pelican contained the flotsam and jetsam of a seafaring port: an iron anchor in one corner, several ships’ models suspended from the beams, a handful of blue-and-white Chinese plates resting on shelves nailed to the walls with haphazard artistry, carved seabirds of every shape and size perched on the wide windowsills as if trying to find a way through the glass.

A stuffed greylag goose, enormous and showing signs of moth, occupied one end of the bar, with a sign around his neck advertising a Norfolk ale.

There were even odd bits and pieces from around the world, hung wherever they might fit. A great hammered-copper dish from Morocco or Turkey, set above the hearth, was large enough to serve an entire family without crowding. A small elephant sat in one corner, carved from teak and caparisoned in fraying velvet, with tiny silver bells in the fringe. What appeared to be a water buffalo’s horned skull was mounted above the door. And on another wall, curved knives in ornate sheaths shared honors with a hideous mask from somewhere in Africa, leering through shell-rimmed eyes and mouth.

It gave the public house a decidedly eccentric air, as if more than one seaman had settled his account with whatever souvenirs he had in his kit.

Hamish commented, “I canna’ say the goose is an encouragement to a man’s drinking.”

The barmaid came toward the table with Rutledge’s lunch-chunks of freshly baked bread and sharp cheddar cheese, a pickle, and a pot of mustard. As she set them before him, she tilted her head to the room at large and said, “We’re generally busier than this, but it’s market day at East Sherham, and most people won’t be back before two o’clock.”

She went to draw his pint, and added, friendly gossip that she was, “Here on business, are you?”

He answered that he was, and she continued to chatter for a few minutes longer, telling him that she had been born in Hunstanton and had come to Osterley with her husband, who had since died fighting a house fire, and that she and her two daughters had found a good home here. She seemed to ignore the man in the corner, as if he was another fixture along with the elephant and the mask.

Rutledge said, “I was shocked to hear that a priest was murdered in Osterley a week ago. It doesn’t strike me as the sort of town where such a thing could happen.”

She shook her head. “I never thought it, either. None of us has got over it, I can tell you. I keep my girls close, and lock the doors at night. If he’d kill a priest, he won’t stop at children, will he? I shudder to think what sort of devil could do such a thing! I haven’t slept deep since it happened.”

Rutledge was on the point of asking her another question when a group of men strode in, hailing her with accounts of their success bidding on a pair of rams at the sale in East Sherham and eager to relive it blow by blow. She went off to serve them, and listened with good grace to their rambling story of the day’s best bargain. Underlying their enthusiasm was a more somber thread of strain, and they seemed to be intent on ignoring it. Their laughter was a little loud, a little forced. The barmaid-Betsy, they’d called her-soon had them settled with pints to celebrate their success.

Rutledge decided, from the strong noses that marked each weather-beaten face, that they were father and sons. He finished his meal amid the general hilarity and a rash of newcomers bringing their own news of the market. It was, as far as he could tell, the only topic of conversation of interest just now: who was there, what they’d bought or failed to buy, how the prices ran, and any gossip gleaned. For an hour or so, the shadow of the priest’s death was being resolutely lifted.

The man at the corner table had not moved, as far as Rutledge could tell, nor had he turned a page in the newspaper. No one encouraged him to join in the good-humored banter or asked him to drink with them.

Settling his account, Rutledge left the pub and went out to start his motorcar.

“It doesna’ appear to be a town with dark secrets,” Hamish said. “And they didna’ stare at you-a stranger- with suspicion.”

“Interesting, wasn’t it? But then market day generates its own excitement. When the euphoria of a bargain wears off and night begins to fall, people will begin to look over their shoulders again.” He’d been to towns where the silence hung heavy as mist, faces shut and unfriendly, where there was no distraction from fear and uncertainty. Here there seemed to be a determined refusal to acknowledge that Osterley had been touched by evil. He wondered why.

Where Water Street turned at harbor’s edge to run back up to the main road, there were two horse-drawn carriages outside the green-grocer’s shop, and a lad from the butcher’s next door was carrying a bulky package out to deposit in a pony cart, accompanying a woman dressed in black with a small touch of cream at her wrists and collar. An elderly woman stepped out of the greengrocer’s with a large basket filled with her purchases, and turned to walk up toward the main road. Rutledge thought she might be Mrs. Wainer. But there was no one to ask.

“You can feel the water,” Hamish said. “It must be verra’ bitter here in winter. Raw with an east wind.”

“Sometimes,” Rutledge agreed. “When the storms roll in.”

Back on the main road, Rutledge braked as he came to the police station, but the sign hadn’t been removed from the door. He drove on to St. Anne’s and got out of the car, staring up at the rectory. Cupolas and mock turrets and gingerbread gave it a frivolous air that the simpler lines of the Victorian frame seemed half ashamed of. There were carvings at the peak of the gables, and he told himself that if the builder had found a place to add gargoyles, he’d have done it. And yet the whole seemed far more pleasing than any one part.

Next to the rectory was a fair-sized flint house with a small glass conservatory now flecked with moisture from an array of tall plants inside. Most certainly the home of the neighbor who had been away on the night of the priest’s murder. The windows on that side of the rectory looked across a narrow stretch of grassy lawn almost into the windows of the larger house.

But the rectory windows also looked down the lawn to the road. Had Father James seen someone there, someone he believed would hear his shout? A laborer walking home from the fields? A constable on patrol?

Hamish said, “Was it luck that the family was no’ at home? Or did the killer choose his time because of that?”

“Yes, it’s possible,” Rutledge answered. “If he’d been watching the house for several days.”

The next three houses were more modest in design, curving toward a house closest to the point that must have been part of the port buildings in its heyday. A small hotel? Or a customs house. A placard nailed to a board and neatly lettered in white identified it as a rooming house in its present incarnation. Across the street from where he stood, there were five flint houses, built for comfort more than style.

Rutledge walked up the short path to the rectory door. The knocker, he discovered, was a bit of whimsy as well: a coffin. He let it drop, and the echoing ring of sound startled him, deep as a bell tolling. Hamish, responding to his unspoken thought, said, “It must ha’ been the last owner’s, an undertaker’s.”