Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [106]
But who was she? Was this the photograph that Father James had left to May Trent? There was no resemblance between the two women. Nor was there any to Priscilla Connaught. Rutledge hadn’t met most of the other women in Osterley. Frederick Gifford’s dead wife? The doctor’s daughter? Someone from the priest’s youth?
“Look on the reverse,” Hamish suggested. And Rutledge took the back out of the frame to remove the photograph. There was a date: 10 July, 1911. And he words, lightly inscribed, so as not to mar the face. Gratefully, V.
V. Victoria sprang to mind. It had been a popular girls’ name throughout the late Queen’s reign. As Mary was now, in honor of the present Queen. Vera? Vivian. Veronica. Virginia. Verity. Violet?
He ran out of possibilities.
Still, Blevins could perhaps help him there. Or Mrs. Wainer.
On the other hand—
Hamish said it for him. “I wouldna’ be in haste to show it.”
Getting to his feet, Rutledge found a flat leather case lying in a corner of the room, a coating of dust covering it, and a cobweb linking it to the frame of the bottomless chair beside it. The grip was broken at one end, but it would do.
Rutledge looked around him a last time at the “waste not, want not” philosophy of householders who store in their upper floors and attics the ruined furnishings and venerable treasures they couldn’t quite bring themselves to throw away. In the event it’s ever needed. And most of it lay there still, forgotten and unwanted, from generation to generation. Judging by the dust and cobwebs, even Mrs. Wainer seldom ventured up here. . . .
He wondered if Father James had kept that in mind when he stored the clippings and the photograph in his trunk. Or if that was where they were generally kept.
Rutledge shook the dust from the leather case, sneezing heavily, and discovered that there was a mouse hole in one corner of the leather. Human flotsam and jetsam, Hamish pointed out, sometimes served other creatures well.
Smiling at that, Rutledge set the cuttings and the photograph inside, closed the flap, and looked into the small trunk a last time—even stretching his fingers inside the torn corner of the lining on the right side—before deciding that he had the lot. He carefully repacked the clothing before going down the attic stairs.
When Rutledge walked through to the kitchen, the housekeeper was standing at the back door, in the midst of a lively conversation with the coal man. His apron, black with coal dust, matched the color of his eyes, and the bulbous nose matched the heavy chest that spread out from wide, muscular shoulders.
Rutledge’s tea was ready on a tray, the kettle steaming gently on top of the stove. An ironed, white serviette over a plate kept sliced sandwiches moist.
Hamish said, “If you didna’ stay, chances are, he will—”
And in the same instant, the coal man looked up with disappointment on his face as Rutledge stepped into the kitchen.
Rutledge said, “Mrs. Wainer, I’ve finished for the moment. I have a few papers here that I shall need to look over and return to you—”
“Papers?” She turned with some alarm, her eyes flying to the case he was carrying.
“Old cuttings, for the most part. Dated well before the War. I’ll just look through them before you box them up with the rest of Father James’s possessions. But you never know, do you, where something useful might turn up?”
She hesitated, clearly uncertain where her responsibility lay. Rutledge added, “They’re to do with shipping, not church business. Perhaps you’ve seen them on his desk. A hobby of his, was it? To study maritime affairs?” It was as far as he was willing to go, with the coal man unashamedly listening to every word.
“There was nothing like that in his desk,” she protested, but before she could ask to have a look at them the coal man stepped forward.
“Begging pardon, sir. Shipping, you said? Not that ship that sank back in ’12, was it?” His heavy hands, with coal dust thick in