Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [107]
“As I remember there was a reference to Titanic,” Rutledge replied guardedly. “Yes.”
“Then if I might offer a word, sir?” There was a diffident smile on his face. “My daughter, she’s got herself a fine situation in London. Father James—God rest his soul!—asked if she might do him a small favor, and he sent her twenty pounds to buy up all the London papers and cut out whatever there was about the ship’s sinking and the inquiry. He wanted every word she could find. And she must have sent him dozens of cuttings, sir, by post every week.”
Rutledge opened the case and pulled out the cuttings, laying them on the table and spreading them with one finger. “Like these?”
The coal man came closer, peering down his nose as if shortsighted. “Aye, I shouldn’t be at all surprised, though I never saw ’em. Jessie sent them straight to the rectory.” He paused, and when Rutledge didn’t move the cuttings, he added, “When t’other ship was torpedoed, that Lusitania, my daughter wrote him to ask if he wanted her to do the same again. But he thanked her and said he’d seen enough of tragedy. His very words.”
“And so it would be your guess, would it, that this was a passing fancy?”
“He never spoke to me about that ship!” Mrs. Wainer seemed hurt that she’d been left out of his confidence. “It was the talk of England, and I don’t remember he ever said anything more than what a pity it was.”
“But do you recall seeing the letters coming from London?”
“As a rule, Father James collected the post,” she explained. “But you’d have thought, if they were that important, he might have asked me to be on the lookout for them.” She peered down at the cuttings again. “I’d have put them in a scrapbook for him if he’d wanted me to. It’s just not like him not to say a word!”
“And no’ like him to lie to the doctor,” Hamish added, an echo of Rutledge’s own thought.
Turning to the coal man, Rutledge asked, “Did you ever tell anyone about the favor your daughter was doing for the priest?”
The jowly face flushed. “No, sir!”
“It would be natural—a matter of pride!”
“My work takes me into any number of houses, sir,” the coal man said with a certain dignity, “and I never gossip about one to t’other. Ask Mrs. Wainer if she’s ever heard me gossip!”
Mrs. Wainer shook her head. “No, he never does.”
Rutledge collected the cuttings once more and put them back in the case. “Thank you, Mrs. Wainer. You’ll have these papers back within the week. I shan’t have time for tea after all. Do you mind?”
She was still more than a little concerned about the papers, but said doubtfully, “If they’ll help in any way, sir, then by all means . . .”
Rutledge spent the next hour in his room, going through the yellowing cuttings. They were dated in an untrained hand, with the name of the newspaper or magazine written underneath. The coal man’s daughter? Another—the priest’s?—had underlined names of passengers, marking each with an S noting survivors, an X noting the recovered and identified dead, and an M for known missing. This was a sad and depressing list, but those who had not been recovered were sometimes mentioned by name—the wealthy, the powerful, the famous. There were hundreds with no grave but the sea and no one to ask about them— or grieve for them. Whole families lost together.
Which was, in a sense, more haunting, but at the same time perhaps, kinder.
Rutledge put the cuttings aside for a moment and stood by his windows looking out at the marshes. He glimpsed Peter Henderson walking along the quay, head down, shoulders hunched, and wondered if the man had a home to go to. And then recalled that his family had cut him off. Where then did he live?
His mind on the clippings again, Rutledge felt a sadness that came from touching the tragedy of others. One could claim that it was fate, the invincible weight of the iceberg and the unsinkable ship colliding on a cold night in the North Atlantic, where there should have been no such danger at that time of the year.