Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [104]
The great volumes of church records listed the names of priests and sextons, altar boys and gravediggers over the years; a compendium of who had served God and in what capacity. Later pages recorded baptisms by date, with the name given the child, the sponsoring godparents, and the parents. By accident Rutledge came across the name “Blevins,” and found the Inspector’s own baptism: pages later, that of his first child. Among the marriages were Blevins’s, Mrs. Wainer’s, and others whose names Rutledge recognized.
The deaths were more somber: George Peters, Aged Forty-seven Years, Three Months, and Four Days, died this Day of Grace, Sunday, Twenty-four August, in the year of Our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Forty-Eight, of a fall down a well shaft in Hunstanton on Saturday the twenty-third. And later on: Infant son of Mary and Henry Cuthbert, stillborn, this Fourteenth Day of March, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Two, laid to rest beside seven brothers and sisters. May God have Mercy on His Soul.
It was the chronicle of life and death in a small village, perhaps the only mark many of these people had made in their short span on earth. He found it sad to read. Jocelyn Mercer, Aged Three Days short of Her Fourteenth Year, of Diphtheria . . . Roger Benning, Aged Five Years, Two Months, and Seven Days, of Cholera . . . The last volume ended with Seven July, Nineteen Twelve. The latest must, he thought, be kept in the church vestry.
The room yielded nothing more of interest—it was, as he’d thought, a public room, where the church officers had as much right of access as the priest.
Rutledge moved on to the study. From what Blevins had told him, Rutledge knew that Mrs. Wainer had restored the scattered papers and books and other belongings to their proper places. She wouldn’t allow the police to touch them.
Rutledge thumbed through the books, studied the photographs on the table by the hearth and on the mantel. They were a record of friends and family over the years, of journeys to Wales, of the great Fells in the Lake District. He even lifted the cushions of the settle.
This room was in some respects another public place, where Father James counseled his parish or talked to young couples on the brink of marriage or heard the grieving words of widows and parents and children. Where the deacons came and discussed church affairs. Where any person might wait, and with natural curiosity, look around him. Hence even the flimsy lock on the desk, perhaps . . .
Hamish said, “But the Titanic cuttings were here, on the desk, when the doctor saw them.”
“Yes, that’s true. He walked in while Father James was examining them, most likely.” Rutledge searched through the desk with care. Nothing of interest. And no photographs, framed or otherwise. Just as the solicitor had said.
Moving on to the bedroom, Rutledge felt his usual sense of distaste. He disliked what he was about to do, hating the need to violate the privacy of the dead. But murder victims lost not only their lives and their dignity but their innermost thoughts and secrets, secrets they would have preferred to deal with, if they’d been warned they were about to die.
He himself was careful not to preserve any record of the voice in his head. There was no diary entry, no letter, not even a conversation with a friend that would distress his sister, Frances, after he was gone. Only the private files in Dr. Fleming’s office, and Fleming could be depended upon to leave them sealed.
“Was that what fashed Baker?” Hamish asked. “He couldna’ rise from his bed, and he couldna’ ask the Vicar to look into a drawer or burn a letter.”
It was something to consider. It would, indeed, explain why Father James had wanted to be so certain of Baker’s state of mind before he carried out whatever instructions he may have been given. For instance, burning an old love letter . . .
Rutledge searched through the priest’s meager belongings, the clothing in the wardrobe and the church robes folded