Watchers of Time (44 page)

With visible effort, Priscilla Connaught roused herself from her silent misery. “Yes. I can’t stay here. I’ve caused these kind people enough distress already. But I don’t know that I can walk. My foot still hurts.”

“I’ll help you, then—”

Her eyes were red-rimmed and dark with pain. “I just want to go home. Will you take me home? Please?”

“Yes. If that’s what you want.” It would probably be best to summon the doctor to her, rather than bring her into a reception room full of staring people.

With the help of Mrs. Danning at the doors, Rutledge managed to half-carry Miss Connaught out of the house and set her in his motorcar. Mrs. Danning provided a pillow for her injured foot, and stepped back, as if glad to wash her hands of her troublesome guest. He went back to the house with Mrs. Danning, promising to see that both the shawl and the pillow were returned and making arrangements for the car to be retrieved later.

The farmer’s wife began to collect the cups and spoons from her kitchen table, her face creased with worry. “Who is it that’s dead? I couldn’t make head nor tail of her story! Should we ought to summon the police? She wouldn’t hear of a doctor for herself, and we didn’t know about anyone else being in the car!”

Rutledge said, “I’m not certain exactly what happened. Dr. Stephenson will give her something to make her rest. Then we’ll be able to sort it out.”

He was on the point of saying more, but Mrs. Danning’s face cleared and she nodded. “I’ve heard he’s a good man. He’ll see her right.” Then she added, “When my husband pulled her out of that car, she begged him to look for a horse. She thought she’d struck it. But there
was
no horse. Nor any other injured party! He searched for near on to a quarter of an hour, to satisfy her, and never saw any sign of a horse!”

“A Norfolk Gray mare was stolen from a stable outside of Osterley last night. If you should find her, please send word to me as soon as possible.” But he’d already seen the mare. And she showed no sign of injury.

Rutledge turned the crank and climbed into his seat. Priscilla Connaught pulled the gaudy shawl closer as he circled the yard and began the long, rough descent down the drive to the main road. “I’m sorry,” he said, glancing at her. “I’ll make the journey as comfortable as I can.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she answered tonelessly, shrugging deeper into the folds of the shawl, her chin invisible. They rode in silence for a very long time. She hardly noticed when they passed her car and the farmer with his team, though Rutledge waved to him. And then she seemed to throw off some of the lethargy that wrapped her in bleak despair, as if the tea had finally helped.

He thought she might be recovering a little of her usual strength, and was encouraged. When she turned to stare at him, he offered her a brief smile.

She didn’t appear to see it.

“You were in the War!” she said fiercely.
“Tell me how
to die!”

He thought of all the men he’d watched die. And tried to shake off the dark cloud that settled over his spirits.

“There’s no easy way,” he said bitterly. “Trust me. I know.”

When they had reached the marshes, turning toward Osterley, Rutledge said in a neutral tone, as if discussing the weather, “What happened to the horse?”

She turned to look at him. “What horse?” she asked, frowning. “I don’t remember a horse. . . .”

Dr. Stephenson came at once in answer to Rutledge’s summons, and listened with concern as the Inspector explained what had happened to Priscilla Connaught. Then the doctor took the stairs up to her bedroom, where she lay with the shades down, her face turned to the wall.

When he came down half an hour later, drying his hands on a pale yellow towel embroidered with white violets, he walked into the sun-bright parlor and took the chair by the window. The room was pretty, with walls of a very soft cream, accented by the deep blues of the upholstery and carpets, and a pale climbing rose entwined in the matching drapes. A woman’s room, and yet empty of the small treasures that usually adorned such an ornate mantelpiece or filled the polished tabletops. In a way it seemed to reflect Priscilla Connaught’s empty life. She had, over the years, collected nothing but misery.

“That’s a nasty cut on her head. It could be serious—I’d not be surprised if there’s some concussion. Bruises,” Stephenson told Rutledge. “And a good many more will likely show up. She’s already sporting deep bruising on the shoulder and hip. But nothing appears to be broken. The ankle has been sprained, and I’ve taped that to reduce the swelling.”

“The head injury. Serious enough to confuse her memory?”

“I can’t say. The woman is suffering from more than the effects of the car running into the ditch—agitation and emotional collapse, to head the list. The sedative I’ve administered will keep her quiet for some hours, and we’ll see whether she’s calmer then.” He paused. “The right eye is turning black now. She won’t want to look into her mirror for awhile. And I took a stitch or two in another cut on her scalp. Bit of glass lifted a flap of skin and hair. I daresay she’ll have a headache for a day or so. I’ll find someone to sit with her. Ellen Baker should do, she’s gentle and has a way with her. High-strung women like Miss Connaught aren’t always the best of patients.”

Rutledge said, “You may want to make another choice. She was looking for ways to kill herself. She ran into that ditch on purpose, from what I could learn, and she believes she’s killed a man.”

Stephenson’s eyebrows rose. “Does she now! I could tell she’d been weeping. I didn’t know the rest of it, and she didn’t volunteer anything. Why does she want to kill herself? Because of this man Walsh? Doesn’t make any sense! Didn’t realize she even knew him!”

Rutledge felt the fatigue burrowing deep into his very bones. “It has nothing to do with Walsh. Not directly. But there’s a strong sense of guilt. Real or fancied, I don’t know. I think she ought to be—watched.”

“In that case, I’ll send for Mrs. Nutley. She’s had seven sons, all of whom have battled their way through life, and she’s nursed everything from broken bones to depression to drunken stupors. She’ll manage well enough.” He crossed the room to stand at the window, looking out at the marshes. “It’ll rain before dinner.” He turned back to Rutledge. “There’s a narrow line between love and hate sometimes, you know. And it can be crossed unwittingly.”

“I can’t tell you what’s behind it. She’s—a very private person.” And he wasn’t prepared to break her confidences. Not yet.

“That isn’t much help. I’d need to know what signs to look for!”

Rutledge rubbed his face with his hands. “All I can tell you is that she went out last night”—was it only last night?—“to look for Walsh. She was—one of Father James’s flock, and afraid the man would escape justice. And somewhere between that time and dawn this morning, she believes she killed someone and she tried to kill herself.”

“Went out on her own? I can’t see Blevins allowing that!”

Rutledge was too close to exhaustion to fight a battle of wits with this very sharp man. “He didn’t know. Ask him yourself, if you like.” Whatever secrets Priscilla Connaught possessed, if the good doctor hadn’t stumbled over them in ten or twelve years, it was a salute to her deep and abiding need for privacy.

But Dr. Stephenson’s curiosity was, quite frankly, aroused.

“Then what did she say when you walked into the farmhouse?”

“That someone was dead. And she’d tried to miss the horse. But later on she was confused about the horse, whether it was there at all.”

It was a bald account. Rutledge left it at that.

Dr. Stephenson grunted. “Well, the accident itself could have caused confusion between what she intended to do and what she did do.” He took out his watch and looked at it, sighing. “I’ve a long day ahead of me. I’ve had two men brought in with broken bones, and a woman hysterical enough to deliver prematurely. And that doesn’t count the scrapes and cuts and sprains from people wandering around in the dark most of the night! I’ll send my nurse to find Mrs. Nutley and see that Miss Connaught is cared for. If you’ll wait here for half an hour?”

“How long do you think it will be before her mind is clear?”

“Hard to say,” Stephenson replied, considering. “Wait until tomorrow before questioning her again. She may be making more sense by then.”

When he was gone, Rutledge looked in on Priscilla Connaught and then sat in a chair in the room across the passage from hers. He intended to watch; instead, he fell heavily asleep.

When Mrs. Nutley arrived, letting herself in quietly, he forced himself back to wakefulness. But it was hardly more than that. She clicked her tongue when she saw him. A motherly woman with a strong face and an awesome air of competence, she said, “If you know what’s best for you, you’ll get yourself in that spare bed over there and go back to sleep.”

But there was still too much to be done.

Blevins was working in his office when Rutledge walked through his door. He looked up with a sour expression and said, “I thought you’d be asleep by now. I wish to God I was.”

“If I look as weary as you do, we’re both a fine pair of sleepwalkers.”

“Matched set.” Blevins leaned back in his chair. “The doctor in Hurley tells me Walsh was probably kicked by the horse and died where he stood. The loose shoe fits rather roughly into the wound in his skull, even though it wasn’t the one that did the damage. The doctor’s not sure what the angle was, of course, when the kick was delivered. What matters was a luck of the strike. Delivered just exactly at the wrong place for any chance of survival. Death by misadventure.”

Rutledge said easily, “Any sign of other injuries? A fall—running into something in the dark?”

Blevins laughed. “You don’t give up, do you? London told me that, when I asked for you. All right, just for the hell of it, why should there be?”

“The searchers seemed to have had a rough night of it,” Rutledge answered, taking the other chair and sitting down. He hadn’t had breakfast, he remembered. Only the sandwiches that Mrs. Barnett had put up for him when he’d gone to find Priscilla Connaught. “Does Walsh have any family? Have you notified anyone that he’s dead?”

“There’s the scissor sharpener. I doubt he’d walk to the corner to help Walsh, now that he’s dead. What’s in it for him? With no real proof that he was the lookout while Walsh riffled the study, he’s home free.”

“There’s Iris Kenneth. She might know if Walsh had any family.”

“Yes. Well, do you want the task of going to London to fetch her? She’s not likely to come north on her own!”

“I suppose you’re right. Still—”

“If you’re on your way there,” Blevins said, watching Rutledge’s face, “you might do me the courtesy of calling on her yourself.”

After a moment, Rutledge made a last effort to break through the emotional barriers that Inspector Blevins had set up.

“Put aside your personal feelings about Walsh—and about the death of Father James. If you’d walked into the study of a stranger that morning, how would you have described the body lying by the window?”

“The same way. An intruder had struck hard and fast, out of fear of being recognized. Matthew Walsh won’t be giving us the answer to
why
he did it—but I don’t suppose, in the scheme of things, it makes much difference. He ran. That’s guilt.”

Rutledge said quietly, thinking it through, “The killer— Walsh, if you like—didn’t strike once, looking to buy time for an escape. He
meant
to kill.”

“Yes. It was deliberate. Makes me sick to think about it!”

“On the other hand, if there hadn’t been any money in the tin box in the desk—if it had been spent or given away by that time—how would you have decided on the motive for murder?”

Blevins said impatiently, “The same way.”

“No, you couldn’t have looked at it the same way! There was no money in the desk, nothing to draw a thief to the study. Nothing for Walsh or anyone like him to slip into the rectory to steal.”

“You’re setting up a scene that didn’t exist! Walsh couldn’t know that, could he? See it my way for once! Walsh was desperate—this was his last hope of finding the sum he needed to finish paying for that bloody cart. He may have killed in a fury when he discovered the box
was
empty!”

“If this had happened before the bazaar—” Rutledge began.

“All right! Let’s take your position and examine it. A dead man and no tin box would tell me there was another reason, a personal reason, to kill that priest. But I knew Father James too well—and in all your questioning,
you
still haven’t answered that one, either!”

Blevins, tired as he was, couldn’t make the leap of imagination. Hamish said, “You canna’ expect it from him. He was too close to the victim.”

Rutledge took a deep breath, thinking,
Hamish is right
.

“If Father James knew something that worried him— possibly involving a police matter—would he come to you with it?”

“Of course he would! I’d be the first person he’d turn to,” Blevins answered with a lift of pride.

But he hadn’t—and for the same reason: Father James, too, had known the Inspector’s limitations as a man and as a policeman.

Rutledge said, “I hear there’s a chance that Monsignor Holston will replace Father James until a suitable choice can be made. I’m driving to Norwich later. Shall I tell him that Walsh has died?”