Watchers of Time (15 page)

“Toward the house next door,” Hamish observed.

Rutledge thanked her and started up, becoming aware of how little noise he made on the solid treads—a muffled step, a sound you’d miss if you weren’t listening for it.

When he’d reached the landing, he turned. Mrs. Wainer was still standing by the parlor doorway, unwilling to remember what lay at the top of the stairs. There was an expression of deep grief on her face. Then she walked away down the passage, as if turning her back on what he was about to do.

The second door to the right led into a large study, with a bank of long windows covered with heavy velvet draperies that shut out the light. Rutledge was reminded suddenly of what Monsignor Holston had said, that the room had spoken to him of evil. Whether what he sensed now was evil or not, he couldn’t say, but the dimly lit room seemed—not empty. Waiting.

Hamish said, “It isna’ the corpse, it’s been taken away. But the spirit . . .”

“Perhaps.” Rutledge hesitated, and then, shutting the study door behind him, crossed the carpet to pull the draperies open, watching the wooden rings move smoothly down the mahogany rod with the familiar
click-clicks
. Brightness poured into the room, and that odd sense of something present there was banished with the light.

He found that his feet were set in a scrubbed and faded portion of the carpet, where someone must have tried to remove the blood that had puddled from Father James’s head wound. An onerous duty for the grieving woman downstairs. Rutledge stepped away from it, then looked at it in relation to the windows.

If the victim had been struck down just there and from behind, he must have been
facing
the window. His back to his attacker. Rutledge went to test the latch, and then look out—almost directly into the windows opposite, where he could see an old woman in a chair, knitting.

Everyone described Father James as middle-aged but fit. But Walsh was a very large man. Even if help had come, what could even one of the strapping sons next door have done? It had taken four men at the police station to subdue Walsh. And by the time anyone had reached the study, the priest would have been dead. Yet if he was as capable as all the people who knew him had claimed he was, he would have abandoned any hope of aid, and tried to deal with the intruder in some fashion.

“If he wasna’ afraid of the man,” Hamish said, “he wouldna’ have called for help. If he was afraid, he’d ha’ kept an eye on him!”

“Yes, that’s what I’d have done,” Rutledge answered him. “Even if he knew the intruder, he’d have been wary . . .” Or—too certain of his powers of persuasion?

“Here, if you need the money that badly, take it, and go
with my blessing. . . .”

“It’s easier to smash the back of a head—when there’s no face staring into yours,” Hamish pointed out. “With the bayonet, we didna’ look into the face.” And that was also true. Dead center, twist, withdraw. A belt buckle above the blade, not a pair of human eyes . . .

So why had the priest turned away? Toward the windows, rather than toward the intruder?

Only an exceptionally trusting man would have done that.

“Look, I’ll turn my back, and let you walk out of here.
Return the money if and when you can; there are others
who need it as much as you do. . . .”

Still, to say that, Father James must have had a very good idea who was threatening him. Yet how far could a frightened man trust in return? Had it been a calculated risk, then? To calm whoever stood there, rather than agitate him?

Or had his assailant said,
“Turn your back, and let me
go”
—then lost his nerve?

Rutledge listened to his intuition, and heard no reply.

The room, then. He slowly turned to study it. Not only had the drawer been broken open, the room had been ransacked.

If the priest had caught the intruder with the tin box pried open and the money in his hand, and offered him safe passage out the door, when had the room been torn apart? It must have happened
before
Father James came up the stairs. But why, when the locked desk drawer was the most logical place to begin a search and would have yielded the small tin box straightaway?

If the room had been turned upside down
after
the priest was dead, why not take a few minutes more to search through the rest of the house? The small clock in the parlor—the gold medal around the priest’s neck— whatever other easily pocketed windfalls came to hand— these had been left behind.

Why had ten or fifteen pounds satisfied a killer? If Walsh needed that much to finish paying for his cart and would take nothing else—why kill the priest?

Hamish said, “When you came in, your first act was to open yon draperies.”

Rutledge looked again at the windows. “Yes. And if Father James had done the same, the killer would then have been presented with his back, before they had even spoken to each other.”

He examined the rest of the room. One closed doorway led to the priest’s bedroom, as he found by opening it. Simple furnishings—a hard single bed, a wooden crucifix above the headboard, and a much-used prie-dieu against the wall of the study. An armoire between the windows and a low, matching chest at the foot of the bed. A chair stood beside a small bookshelf, and Rutledge crossed to read the titles. Religious texts, for the most part, and a collection of biographies: Pitt the Younger. Disraeli. William Cecil—the great secretary to Elizabeth the First. And a selection of poetry. Tennyson. Browning. Matthew Arnold. O. A. Manning . . .

He turned away and opened the only other door. It led to a bath. Rutledge closed that and went back to the study. Here were the broken desk and a chair, to one side of the passage doorway. A horsehair settee with two straight-backed chairs at angles beside it faced the hearth. In the corner beside the bedroom door stood the private altar. The candlesticks were there, polished to shine like molten sunlight, but the police had taken away the crucifix used as a weapon. A darker spot on the wood marked its dimensions. It would have been heavy. And one blow would have sufficed. Two at most . . .

Hamish said, “A man could stand unseen between that altar and the wall. If the room wasna’ lit.”

Rutledge was already looking at the space. He wedged himself in it. A broad man could just fit himself in there. And a thin one . . . But could Walsh?

“Yon priest in Norwich?” Hamish had not liked Monsignor Holston. “Perhap he canna’ return to the scene of his crime.”

“If he’d stood in the bedroom, whoever he was,” Rutledge speculated, “until the priest had turned his back to attend to the drapes, it would have taken the murderer a half dozen steps to close the distance between them. Even accounting for Walsh’s longer strides. And wary, alert, Father James would have sensed he was coming. The first blow wouldn’t have hit the back of his head—it would have struck him in the temple.”

“Why was Monsignor Holston afraid in the church, as well?” Hamish persisted, but Rutledge was looking again at the shadows between the drapes and the altar’s tall back.

“I don’t know. That someone would hide in a confessional after the service—enter through the vestry door, and wait for the service to end.” He tried to concentrate again. Even if the draperies had been drawn and the lamps were not lit, Father James couldn’t have missed the signs of a search. Paper on the floor would have gleamed whitely, even in low light. And what householder would have crossed that scatter of papers and books and furnishings to go to the window? His first act would probably have been to call out,
Who’s there?
And to stand on the threshold, waiting.

In that case, the intruder had been in the bedroom and would have had to call to the priest to lure him nearer. Beside the altar, the slightest movement would have drawn the priest’s wary eyes immediately. And yet, the crucifix— the weapon—had come from the altar, not the bedroom. Unless the intruder had already armed himself . . .

It was a puzzle. And more than a few of the pieces failed to fit.

Rutledge went to the desk and examined the broken drawer. It was savagely butchered. A shard of wood still hung at an angle, though someone had tried to make it appear tidy by pushing it nearly back into place. He looked at the small lock. Mrs. Wainer was right. Hardly worthy of the effort put in to breaking it so severely.

“Unless,” Hamish told him, “it was done in haste, for fear of being caught.”

“He shouldn’t have been caught. Mrs. Wainer had gone and the priest was usually at the church at that hour. Whoever it was should have had a clear run. . . .”

Twist the evidence another way: the force of the blows that killed Father James.

A man of more than average strength, driven by fear, would have struck with what appeared to be savagery in an ordinary person. And that pointed a finger directly at Walsh. The Strong Man . . .

The thing was, only two people knew exactly what had happened here. One of them was the victim, unable to tell his side of the story. The truth, if it was to be found, had to be dug out of the silence of the killer. And the traces of his presence that could be read in his motive.

It was easy to understand why Blevins was so pleased to have such a likely suspect under lock and key. Walsh had been in the rectory before. Walsh had extraordinary strength. And Walsh was in need of money to pay for his cart.

But how many Inspectors had seen their early proofs slip through their fingers like sand, leaving them with nothing to take before a magistrate?

Rutledge looked around the room one last time, thinking about Monsignor Holston rather than Father James.

Why had Holston wanted the Yard to take over the investigation, or at the very least, to supervise its progress? To find out something he himself couldn’t tell the police? Or to protect something he was afraid the local people might discover? A policeman from London had no insight into the residents of Osterley, and could easily miss a small and seemingly insignificant bit of evidence that Inspector Blevins would recognize instantly.

But if Monsignor Holston died next, because he had known—or guessed—too much, how quickly the investigating officers would jump to the conclusion that the connection between the two victims must be their calling— and not shared knowledge. A priest killer—mad, beyond the pale. Kill a third priest, and there would be no shadow of a doubt. Even if the third had been selected at random. Misdirection—the sign of a clever mind.

Hamish said, “But I canna’ think that’s verra’ likely, if there’s already someone about to be charged.”

“I agree. But it might explain why Monsignor Holston is so afraid.”

Surveying the windows again, Rutledge went on. “If it was nearly dark, with no lamps burning, Father James might have drawn the drapes before lighting one. And if the damage was done
after
the murder, there would have been nothing to alarm the priest as he walked in here. The desk drawer would have been out of his line of sight. Which would mean that the
killer
was surprised . . . not the priest.”

“There’s another way it could ha’ happened. If the killer was
waiting
for the priest.”

“Which puts an entirely different complexion on it, doesn’t it?” Rutledge replied thoughtfully.

Monsignor Holston was right about one thing. There was something odd about this murder scene. It told conflicting stories about the sequence of events. Were the drapes open—or closed? Was the lamp on the desk burning? Where had the killer been standing? And when had the room been torn apart? Had the priest seen his killer? Or had he been struck down before he was aware that he was in danger? Had the murderer come here for the money in the desk—or for something else altogether?

A sieve through which a defense lawyer could walk at will . . .

Rutledge found Mrs. Wainer in the kitchen, staring out the window that looked out onto a stand of lilacs, the back garden, and beyond that, to the churchyard.

She turned as he came in.

He asked her to show him where the footprint had been found, and she pointed to the largest lilac bush on one side of the lawn. Its branches arched and then dipped nearly to a grown man’s waist. And there was a bare spot where the grass didn’t grow, just by it. The shadows of the bush would have made an excellent place to watch the house. . . .

Rutledge asked the housekeeper if she left the lamp in the study lit when she went home each evening.

“No, not that night, if that’s what you’re asking me. And I think about it time and again. I wasn’t sure, you see, when he might be coming back, and I didn’t want to leave it burning untended if he was going to be very late.” She hesitated and then said anxiously, “Do you suppose it made any difference?”

“No, I’m sure it didn’t. A policeman makes an effort to be thorough, when picturing the scene in his mind. And the draperies. Were they left open or were they shut?”

“They were shut,” she replied firmly. “That’s what I do when I leave of an evening, except in the summer when there’s light well past nine.”

“What did Father James generally do when he came in? Did he walk in this way or through the door at the front of the house?”

Rutledge took a moment to look around him. It was a friendly room, painted a very pale green, like early spring leaves, and the curtains at the windows were a rose pink. Feminine, in a way, but not exclusively so. Had Mrs. Wainer had a voice in choosing the colors? Most certainly she had a hand in its care. The great iron stove was polished like rare furniture, the table well scrubbed beneath the hanging lamp, the stone sink empty of unwashed dishes. A small rag rug lay by the door, for wiping feet. It, too, was spotless.