Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [113]
“They’ve gone to London,” he told her, guessing. “And I can put you under arrest if I have to, to keep you here. There’s an empty cell next to Walsh.”
She rounded on him, anguish in her eyes. “I won’t talk about it, do you hear! I couldn’t tell you anything if I had to, don’t you understand? I don’t know anything! I can’t remember anything!”
Hamish cautioned, “Someone is coming.”
There was the sound of someone walking down the passage, a soft footfall. It was Mrs. Barnett. She stopped in the doorway, horrified by the sight of Rutledge clutching May Trent’s arm as she tried to fight free of his grip.
“Inspector Rutledge!” Mrs. Barnett exclaimed, moving toward them.
He looked up, speaking with the cold air of command that had served him on the battlefield when his mind had been too tired and too worn to think. “Mrs. Barnett. Sit down. Now.”
She opened her mouth, stared at them, and sat.
“There’s a photograph on the bed. The one I spoke of earlier.” He kept his grip on May Trent’s arm as he spoke. The skin was warm through the cloth of the sweater she was wearing over her long skirt. “Pick it up, and tell me if you will, whether you recognize the woman in it.”
She reached for it, turning it over, frowning at the face looking back at her. “I think—well, I know it’s a photograph of Virginia Sedgwick. Lord Sedgwick’s late daughter-in-law.”
May Trent had begun to cry, her face averted, half shielded by her shoulder.
“She was the wife of his elder son? Arthur?”
“Yes. That’s right. But why should you be harassing Miss Trent with it? She never even met this woman, as far as I know!”
“How did Virginia Sedgwick die?”
“She disappeared. No one knew where she had gone. It was whispered that she’d run away from her husband, but I know that couldn’t have been true! She just wasn’t the sort.”
Hamish said, “It’s been said of many a wife. That she wasna’ the sort. But who can be certain?”
“I don’t understand, what is this about?” Mrs. Barnett was still wearing her apron, and she wiped a smudge from the glass over the photograph. “Please, will you not let Miss Trent go?”
“Did her husband ever find Mrs. Sedgwick?”
“No. That is o say, not alive. She went down on that ship, you see. Titanic. She wasn’t using her married name, and no one thought to look under any other, until Lord Sedgwick hired someone to do what the police apparently couldn’t—” She stopped, biting her lip in embarrassment.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“My husband told me—he’d met Edwin on the train, coming back from London. Edwin was quite upset. He said his father and Arthur had gone to Ireland to bring back the body.”
“I’d read that most of the dead were buried in unmarked graves?”
“So they were. But Lord Sedgwick was convinced he could find her. For Arthur’s sake. And he must have been successful; I heard there was a service in the little church on the Sedgwick estate. The Queen sent flowers, I was told.”
Rutledge released May Trent.
Hamish rasped, “Ask her—!”
He said to her, “Does the Vicar know you were on Titanic ? That you may have met Virginia Sedgwick, and seen her drown? Or that Father James was trying to awaken your memories?”
“No! I have never told anyone here! Father James—he had clippings—he’d seen my name among the survivors, and he wanted—” She stopped, unable to go on.
“And you can’t remember what happened the night of the sinking.”
She shook her head, her dark hair spilling over her face, hiding it.
But Father James had bequeathed her the photograph. And asked that she do something about it—find the courage, as he’d put it.
The priest hadn’t believed that her memory of that night had never been regained. Or else he had hoped that given time—and over the years he thought he still had to live—she might yet remember. Still, it was a strange way to go about it—to leave a message in a Will. Once he was dead, what difference would it make?
The cuttings. The photograph. The bequest.
But why was it so important to Father James?
It went through Rutledge’s mind before he could stop himself