Charles Todd - Watchers of Time

“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.