Charles Todd - Watchers of Time

“A local man?”

“Dr. Stephenson, yes. It’s all I could think of, that Father must have been given bad news. I waited for him to confide in me, but he never did. And then he was killed, God rest his soul, and I couldn’t help but think as they put him into the ground, he’ll not have to worry any more about the cancer.”

“Did he show signs of being ill? Coughing-complaining of pain-taking medications you hadn’t seen before?”

“No, I’d have come right out and asked him then! It was just-I don’t know-just a feeling that he was sorely troubled. I asked him the first time I found him standing in the kitchen if there was anything on his mind, and he said, ‘No, Ruth, I’m well.’ But there was something wrong. He wasn’t himself!”

“Something on his conscience, then?”

She gave him a stern and heavy look. “Priests like Father James don’t have evil on their conscience! I’d as soon believe that my own son was wicked, and him a respectable bank clerk in London!”

JUST PAST THE FIRST TURNING FOR Water Street, Rutledge saw the small board indicating Dr. Stephenson’s surgery. On impulse he pulled over and stopped, left the car out in front, and rang the bell. It would do no harm to confirm or deny Ruth Wainer’s fears.

A woman admitted him, her apron crisp and her hair tightly pulled back into a small knot. It gave her face a severity that was belied by the kind eyes. Rutledge gave his name and asked to speak to the doctor.

“His surgery is closed for the afternoon.”

“It isn’t a medical matter. It concerns a police investigation.” He showed her his identification.

She considered him, uncertain what to do. Finally, as Rutledge smiled at her, she said, doubt heavy in her voice, “He’s in his office, writing up a patient’s record to send to London. If I let you go in, you won’t keep him long, will you? The post won’t wait!”

He was taken to Dr. Stephenson’s private door down the passage and admitted into the small office, where the doctor sat at his desk, papers spread around him. He looked up, saw Rutledge behind his nurse, and said, “I don’t have hours today. Have you told him that, Connie?”

“It isn’t a medical matter,” Rutledge said. “It’s police business. I’ve been sent down by Scotland Yard.”

“The Yard, is it?” Stephenson said, giving his visitor his full attention. “Oh, very well, I can spare you five minutes! No more.” He put the cap on his pen and sat back in his chair, locking his fingers together and stretching his arms in front of him.

He was a brisk man, Rutledge thought, but not cold. And he appeared to be competent, for his eyes examined his visitor openly, and behind the short, neat beard, his mouth twitched with interest.

The nurse withdrew, closing the door, and Stephenson said, “You don’t look well, you know.” He gestured toward a wing chair.

“It isn’t surprising. I was shot some weeks ago.”

“In the line of duty?” Rutledge nodded. “That explains it, then. You still carry that shoulder a little higher, as if it’s stiff. What brings you to Osterley? This business about Father James?”

“I’ve been asked to reassure Father James’s Bishop that everything that can be done has been done in the matter of the priest’s death-”

“Then you should be speaking to Inspector Blevins, not to me.”

“On the contrary. The questions I have to ask are medical.” Rutledge’s glance moved from the prints hanging on the blue walls to the bookcase stuffed with medical treatises and texts.

Stephenson pointedly shuffled his papers. “If you are asking me in some roundabout fashion to tell you which of my patients was likely to have committed murder, I can’t help you. I’d have gone straight to Blevins if I’d had even the faintest suspicion that one of them could have been responsible.”

Rutledge smiled. “The patient I’m inquiring about is Father James himself. You were his physician. And I’ve been told that he had something on his mind shortly before his death. His housekeeper believes that he might have been seriously ill, and was keeping it from her. If it wasn’t his health that troubled him, then we have another avenue to explore. If it was, we can close that door.”

“I don’t see how his state of mind will help you find the thief who killed him. But I can assure you that Father James was as healthy as a horse, save for a few bouts of sore throat now and again. Bad tonsils, but never serious enough to require more than a box of lozenges for the soreness. They worked well enough, most of the time.”

“And yet he came here to see you several times in the weeks before he died.”

“There’s nothing surprising about that! Religion and medicine walk hand in hand, as often as not. I confer with the priest or the Vicar as frequently as I summon the undertaker. People grieving or in pain or frightened need comforting, and that’s the role of the church when medicine has done all it can.”

Rutledge let a silence fall. It expressed nothing, but Stevenson seemed to read into it a refusal to accept his offhand remarks. After a moment, the doctor added, “But you’re right. The last time or two it wasn’t an illness that brought him here-his or a parishioner’s. He wanted to ask me about a patient of mine. Man named Baker. Father James had been to see him just before he died. Afterward he began to wonder about Baker’s state of mind at the end. Far as I know, it was clear and coherent. I saw no reason to believe otherwise, and I was in attendance.”

“One of Father James’s flock?”

“Actually, no. I suppose that’s what lay behind his questions, although Father James didn’t go into the matter. Baker was staunch Church of England, but he wanted to be shriven by a Catholic priest as well as his own Vicar, and his family humored him. Father James, to his credit, attended even though it was one of the nastiest nights I’d seen in a year or more. A few hours later Herbert Baker died of natural causes-I can vouch for that-and his Will was quite straightforward. As a matter of fact, I’d been asked to witness it some years back. None of Baker’s children has complained about it, as far as I know. There was no reason to feel any concern, and I told Father James that.”

“And yet you tell me he spoke to you again about Baker.”

The doctor picked up his pen, indicating that he wanted to get back to his own work. “I just explained what happened. There was some confusion the night this patient was dying. Baker insisted he wanted a priest. The one from St. Anne’s. But it was the Vicar who sat beside the old man when he breathed his last, close on to three in the morning. Father James had already gone back to the rectory, having spent no more than half an hour with the patient. I grant you that it wasn’t the usual sort of thing, but then I’ve sat by enough deathbeds myself to know that there’s no accounting sometimes. Martin Baker sent for a priest to give his father ease. Rightly so!”

“What do you think was resting so heavily on Herbert Baker’s conscience?” Rutledge asked the question conversationally, as if out of simple curiosity.

“I expect it was no more than some youthful indiscretion. Baker had been sexton at Holy Trinity for many years, and he may not have relished spoiling the Vicar’s good opinion of him, just at the end. I’ve known more than one case where a man’s wild oats came back to haunt him on his deathbed.”

“I shouldn’t think that Father James-an experienced priest from all I’ve heard-would be overly concerned about a young man’s wild oats.”

“Father James often surprised me with the breadth of his concern for people. There was compassion to spare for any lost sheep. I found it admirable in him.” The doctor uncapped his pen. “I’ve given you far more than your five minutes. This is pressing, the report I’m writing. I have a patient in hospital in London, facing surgery. It can’t wait.”