Watchers of Time (25 page)

The man had the air of a fixture at The Pelican, as permanent as the bench on which he sat and the table braced and nailed to the wall.

The strained face was bent over the opened paper, and neither Betsy nor the older couple helping her serve took any heed of him. He’d ordered tea, for there was a pot and a cup by his elbow. As if sensing Rutledge’s glance, his knuckles seemed to tighten on the page, crimping it.

Hamish said derisively, “He’s no’ a verra’ popular man. No doubt you’ll find you have much in common.”

“God save him, then!” Rutledge answered silently.

Betsy finally stopped at Rutledge’s little table, her manner more formal than it had been the first day he had arrived in the village. “Good evening, Inspector. Are you wishing to dine or could I bring you something from the bar?”

No longer “What would you like, love?” Rutledge smiled. “What would you recommend for dinner?” he asked her.

“You’re fortunate tonight,” she said. “There’s a roast of chicken with dumplings and potatoes, and I can tell you, there’s nothing like it this side of London!”

Rutledge felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for the woman in a book he’d once read, who had been branded with an A for Adulteress. Everyone in Osterley knew more of his business than he knew of theirs. He’d been branded with an O for Outsider—no longer the visitor who was benign, no longer the anonymous traveler who could ask questions and expect an honest answer. There was neither coldness nor rudeness in their manner, only a formality that precluded any expectation of breaking through it.

How long, he wondered, did it take a man to reach the status of “one of ours” in this village? For a policeman who hadn’t been born here, perhaps never. For a passing stranger there was welcome and courtesy. For an intruder, only suspicion. And yet Father James had come to be one of theirs. . . .

He chose the chicken with dumplings and ordered a pint to go with it.

Although he tried to keep his eyes away from the table by the window and to stop himself from speculating about the relationships of the four people sitting there, Rutledge caught himself glancing that way from time to time. The woman had a quiet vivacity, and seemed to be comfortable with both men. It emphasized the formality she had displayed toward him on the few occasions when they’d spoken.

A stranger even among strangers . . .

He turned slightly to change his line of sight. Indirectly now, he could see the lonely man sitting in the corner. He served only to reflect Rutledge’s own isolation. Hamish had struck a chord with his words.

As Rutledge watched, the man’s hands began to tremble, and he hastily shoved them out of sight under the table, dropping the newspaper as if it had burned him. Shell shock?

Rutledge shuddered, Hamish suddenly aware and challenging in his mind. He himself had so narrowly escaped from that horror. And the fierce agony of it still haunted him. To be shell-shocked was to be publicly branded a coward—a man unfit to be mentioned in the same breath as the soldier with a missing limb or shot-away jaw. A shame—a disgrace. Not an honorable wound but the mark of failure as a man. He himself had been caged with the screaming, shaking, pathetic remnants of humanity in a clinic that kept them shut firmly away from the public eye. Until Dr. Fleming had rescued him.

He made a point not to look back again. After examining the oddities that decorated the pub, and counting the number of diners, Rutledge set himself the task of cataloging from memory the framed photographs in the priest’s house. But none of those he could call to mind seemed important enough to require a codicil to a Will. Certainly most of them would go, along with the rest of his possessions, to Father James’s surviving sister, who would cherish those of the family and perhaps pass on a few to Father James’s friends. As was right.

Gifford had already indicated that Mrs. Wainer knew nothing about any bequest. But if the photograph wasn’t in the desk, it must surely be somewhere. There was no reason why Walsh or anyone else should wish to steal it. However, there might be, perhaps, some way to jog a memory the housekeeper wasn’t aware she had.

That would have to wait until tomorrow.

Unwillingly aware of the occasional quiet laughter coming from the table by the window where the dark-haired woman sat, Rutledge felt a sense of depression settle around him and he fought against it, without any help from Hamish.

Rutledge was more than halfway through his roast chicken when the woman sitting by the window got up from her table and walked toward him. He thought for an instant she was coming to speak to him and had nearly risen to his feet when he realized that her eyes were fixed on something behind him.

He turned. The man in the corner was shaking like a leaf in the wind, his shoulders jerking with it.

The woman crossed to him and sat on the bench opposite him. Reaching out, she caught his hands before he could hide them again, and began to speak to him. Rutledge, watching, had the feeling it was not the first time she’d done this. Something in her voice—whether the words or simply the sound—had a calming effect, and for a moment Rutledge thought she had actually stemmed the tide of whatever it was that drove the man into such a frenzy of trembling.

He was just turning away again when the man surged abruptly to his feet, with such force that he overturned the bench on which he sat. The unexpected clatter of the wood on the floor stopped conversation in its tracks: every head turned toward the man and the woman. And he stood there, like a hare caught in the headlamps, unable to move. His eyes were shocked, almost beyond seeing.

Rutledge rose and strode forward, reaching the man and taking his shoulder in a firm grip. The man flinched away, and the woman said sharply, but in a voice that didn’t carry beyond the three of them, “
Leave
him alone!
He’s done nothing to you!”

Rutledge ignored her. He said to the trembling man whose face had turned away, toward the wall, “All right, soldier. Let’s get some air.”

It was the timbre of his voice that got through. An officer’s voice. Steady and assured.

For a long moment the tableau was unbroken: the furious woman, the man in the throes of a breakdown, and the outsider who had interfered.

And then it altered, dissolving into movement, the woman stepping aside, lips tightly shut and eyes worried, and Rutledge seeming to walk away, without looking back, his shoulders as ramrod straight as if he still wore a uniform.

An officer expected a soldier to obey. Unquestioned loyalty to rank was the hallmark of training. Rutledge drew on that now.

Hamish said, “He won’t follow. He’s beyond heeding!”

Rutledge had taken no more than two strides when the man moved away from the fallen bench and, with Rutledge just ahead of him, almost a shield, walked through the gauntlet of staring eyes and through the door, out into the night.

The woman, her face pale with distress, followed.

Outside, Rutledge didn’t stop until he was well away from The Pelican’s door, nearly to the quay. In the darkness of the waterside, he stood staring out to sea, not looking at the man who had stopped some little distance from him. Then he said, as if addressing a comrade, “There’s a wind coming up. But it’s a beautiful night, still.”

The man just behind him cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said roughly, as if finding it hard to speak. He hesitated. “There were too many
people
in there—”

Claustrophobia. Rutledge knew it all too well. . . .

“Yes.”

“Suddenly I couldn’t breathe—I thought I was dying. But I never do. Worst luck!”

There was almost a lightness in the words that belied their intensity. But Rutledge felt sure the man meant them. He had himself, on more than one occasion fraught with panic.

“In the War, were you?” It was a common enough question, but the man flinched.

“For a time,” he said. And then he walked away, unsteadily but strongly, as if wanting to be alone more than he needed human companionship.

The woman, watching the scene, said, “He
was
in the War. He was a sniper.”

She flung out the last word as if daring Rutledge to say anything. Daring him to condemn.

Rutledge said, “Snipers saved my life any number of times. And the lives of my men. Why should I find that so terrible?”

“Everyone else does.” Her voice was bitter. He tried to see her face, but it was hidden. The lights from The Pelican barely touched her hair, like a pale halo behind her head.

“Why?”

“He shot from ambush. It wasn’t very gallant. It was assassination, if you will.
Not the thing, you know.
” Her voice altered, twisting the words, as if she was quoting someone. He heard an echo, he thought, of Lord Sedgwick in them, but couldn’t be sure.

“He killed from ambush, yes, it’s true,” Rutledge answered her tersely. “Such men took out the machine gunners when we couldn’t. They could move in the night as silently as a snake or fox, waiting for their chance, then making their shot. Some of the other men weren’t too pleased about what they did. I suppose it must have seemed unsportsmanlike. But I can tell you they were life, when we expected to die.”

She said, surprised, “You’re a policeman. I expected you to condemn what he’d done as tantamount to murder.”

“Was it murder?” He looked out across the dark, silent marshes, listening for the sea. “I suppose it was,” he said tiredly. “Those men were deadly; they seldom missed. The German gunners never had a chance. A good many of our snipers were Scots, with years of stalking behind them. Others had a—knack for silence. For stealth. They were brave, very brave, to do what they did. I never judged them.”

“His own father judged Peter Henderson. Alfie Henderson was one of Father James’s failures. He never forgave his son, not even on his deathbed, even though Father James
begged
him to heal the breach between them. I think Alfie would have been happier if Peter had never come home from France. He believed that being a sniper had brought dishonor to the family name.”

Rutledge swore under his breath. It was often that way—people at home, soldiers’ families in particular, seldom understood what war was all about. Their gallant men marched away in crisp uniforms, caps at a jaunty angle, flags flying, and went to France to kill the Hun—
how
that was done never seemed quite as clear. Young men in the filthy trenches were not likely to write to their mothers or their young wives and tell the truth: War was neither dashing nor colorful nor honorable. It was, simply, bloody and terrible. Even the government had entered into the conspiracy of silence for as long as it dared.

Wearily he tried to explain. “The Germans actually trained soldiers as snipers. Did you know that? They had schools to teach their best shots. We quite cleverly used whomever we could find.”

Hamish was saying something, but Rutledge didn’t hear it. The woman in front of him was also speaking. He caught the last of that.

“. . . wasn’t given his job back after the War. No one else in Osterley will hire him. He’s nearly destitute and won’t accept help. Father James believed—but now that he’s dead, Mrs. Barnett and the Vicar try to see that Peter is fed. But he doesn’t want
pity
—” Her voice cracked, and she added, “It’s never the evil people, is it, who suffer? It’s always the lonely ones who are already afraid!”

She turned on her heel, going back into The Pelican to rejoin her party.

Not hungry any more, Rutledge stood there for a time in the darkness of the October night, and then walked back to the hotel. He would settle his bill in the morning.

When he came into the lobby, Rutledge was greeted by Mrs. Barnett. She gestured toward the small parlor. “You have a visitor, Inspector.”

“A visitor?” he repeated, his mind still on the darkness he’d just left. On Peter Henderson and Father James.

“Miss Connaught.”

He brought his attention back to the present. “Ah. Thank you, Mrs. Barnett.”

With a nod he walked past the stairs and to the small parlor. As he opened the door, Priscilla Connaught got to her feet and faced him, as if facing the hangman.

“I saw you with Lord Sedgwick the other morning. And then I was told you had gone back to London. Is it finished then, the reward paid and the case of Father James’s death finally closed?”

She looked as if she hadn’t slept, dark rings under her eyes and a nervous tic at the corner of her mouth. The handsome dark blue suit she wore seemed nearly black, emphasizing her pallor.

Rutledge recalled what she had told him—that with Father James dead, she herself had no reason to live. He wondered what she did each day, when not absorbed in her anger. Did she read? Write letters to friends? Or sit and stare out at the marshes, waiting for something that would never come? Peace, perhaps.

He answered with some care, “I went to London on other business. As far as I know, the probe into Matthew Walsh’s movements hasn’t been completed. There has been no mention of passing out a reward. Not in my hearing.”

“Oh.” She seemed shaken. As if she had been so very certain that she hadn’t thought beyond the need to find out if she was right.

Rutledge, studying her face, hought,
She’s in worse
straits than Peter Henderson
.
Father James was an obsession she couldn’t live without. Like a drug, only far more
deadly.