Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [102]
Rutledge said, “I don’t believe you were necessarily wrong about the sense of evil there in the study. My only question from the beginning has been, why should evil reach out to touch a parish priest in a small town, hardly more than a village, on a bleak and marshy stretch of coast? That’s the answer I have to find.”
Monsignor Holston started to say something, then bit back the words. Instead he reached out and clapped a hand on Rutledge’s shoulder. “I’ll make a bargain with you—with the devil, as it were. If you come to me with the truth, and I recognize it, I’ll tell you so.”
And with that he was gone, leaving behind an air of contradiction that was the closest this Norwich priest could come to openness.
CHAPTER 16
NEEDING AIR TO CLEAR HIS MIND, Rutledge walked as far as the quay. He was trying to pin down what it was that disturbed him about Monsignor Holston’s vehement defense of his dead colleague and friend.
It was the subtle way in which the investigation was being manipulated.
Don’t look here—don’t look there. He didn’t do anything wrong, you needn’t explore that. Like a puppet master trying to untangle the strings of an obstreperous character who wouldn’t play his role properly.
If it wasn’t the church—if it wasn’t the man—if it wasn’t the parish—if it was not a fall from moral grace— then the only explanation left was a theft.
Or another crime that had been committed and that had never been exposed . . .
Hamish said, “Whatever it was that worried Father James, it couldna’ ha’ been a murder—there hasna’ been one!”
“Yes,” Rutledge said slowly. “All right, what if it’s true that the priest knew of a crime?” He remembered the Egyptian bas-relief at East Sherham Manor. The Watchers of Time. The baboons who saw all that men and the gods did, witnesses—but without the power to condemn or judge.
What if the priest had become just such a witness? What if he had heard something that, bit by bit, had led him to knowledge that was dangerous? Like a bobby who walked the London streets, a priest knew his parishioners by name and face and nature. He knew the good in each person; he knew the temptations they faced. The needs and passions and hungers, the envy that drove some and the greed that drove others. He knew what they confessed to him, and what by observation he had grown to understand about them.
It was an intriguing possibility—and for the first time, it brought together a good many of the seemingly disparate facts.
Father James’s noticeable uneasiness before the murder, the unexplained sequence of actions in the priest’s study, and the seeming difficulty in finding a connection with anyone who might have a personal reason for killing him.
“If he didna’ have any proof of what had been done, whatever the crime was, then he couldna’ go to the Inspector with suspicion. But someone might ha’ feared he would.”
“Yes. Especially since Blevins was a member of his church. Secrets have more than one kind of power . . .”
A very clever piecing together of a puzzle—that had destroyed Father James, in the end.
The only question was: What crime had Father James stumbled over, and if the evidence of it had died with him, then where were the small signs of his knowledge that must surely have existed somewhere?
Or had the killer found them when he overturned the study, and taken them away along with the bazaar funds that were kept in the desk?
A few pounds that provided an apparent motive—but were just an opportune shield for the real motive.
Hamish reminded him: The theft had sent Inspector Blevins off on a wild-goose chase that had yielded a suspect.
“And Walsh could still be the man we’re after . . .”
That would be irony, if he was.
But how long had it taken Father James to weave together the strands of truth that had turned into knowledge?
Begin with the bazaar, Hamish advised.
“No, I’m going back to the study,” Rutledge told him.
He set out for the police station to ask permission of Inspector Blevins.