Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [151]
The Vicar said unexpectedly, “I thought it was better for her just to go. Father James and I quarreled over that. He wanted to find her, and I told him I’d have no part in it.”
Hamish said, “Aye, it’s the difference in age between the two men. Both wanted to play knight, but no’ in the same fashion.”
Rutledge silently agreed. It was that male vulnerability to their own protective instincts. To save the damsel from the dragon—the dragon, in this case, Arthur Sedgwick’s seeming indifference to his beautiful young wife—and somehow make her life better. Priest or layman, it didn’t matter. Each man had responded to Virginia Sedgwick.
Monsignor Holston pushed his plate away. “There’s a more practical side, you know. It’s my understanding that she had a considerable inheritance, from a grandmother who had heavily invested in railroads among other things. What was the disposition of that, if she died? Or—if she just disappeared? And another question—why didn’t her family in America raise a hue and cry, when she went missing?”
“No one could foresee that her ship would sink!” the Vicar said.
“Father James told me in late 1912 that she wasn’t listed among the passengers,” Monsignor Holston replied. “That is, not until after the inquiry. Sedgwick hired someone to look into the matter for him, and he finally found her name. This would explain why Father James was so interested in what Miss Trent could tell him.”
Rutledge said, “Why was there a problem?”
“There was a record of her purchasing her fare, but none of her boarding the ship. Apparently there was some confusion over names.”
May Trent said unexpectedly, “If I had wanted to get away, and money wasn’t an issue, I’d have paid my fare, and then taken another ship. Or no ship at all. Virginia Sedgwick could very well be alive and still in England.”
Hamish said quietly, “Or dead, having never left England.”
Rutledge, pursuing that thought, asked, “In which case, if Herbert Baker changed his mind on his deathbed, and told Father James the truth about that journey from Yorkshire to King’s Lynn—or even what happened in King’s Lynn itself—it must have been very difficult for Father James to hold his tongue. And it’s quite possible, isn’t it, that someone doesn’t want the truth about Virginia Sedgwick to come out?”
Monsignor Holston replied slowly, “I hadn’t considered that. But it explains why I’ve been uneasy since I saw Father James dead. If you are not a Catholic—if you don’t understand the sanctity of Confession—it would be natural to believe that Father James told me or even the Vicar here whatever he’d learned from Baker . . .”
Sims spoke up suddenly, his face unhappy, eyes torn.
“There’s another part of the story.”
“Virginia Sedgwick was—a lovely child. I don’t think Arthur Sedgwick realized that when he met her in Richmond. She told me she was always surrounded by cousins, brothers, sisters—they seldom had the opportunity to be alone, she and Arthur. And in company, she was shy, she spoke softly, and she had the gift of listening. What’s more, her grandmother, worried about her future, had left her a fortune. Rich, beautiful—and not—not truly whole.”
They stared at him. In his mind, Rutledge heard Lord Sedgwick’s dismissive words: “Attractive simpleton, that’s what she was.” Rutledge had taken it as hyperbole—but it was the truth.
“They brought her to England for the wedding, you know,” Sims said wearily. “Her family. A very fashionable affair in London. I don’t think Arthur ever realized that she was—simple. Until they went away on their wedding journey. Her family had made certain they were never alone together.”
May Trent asked, “How do you mean? Simple?”
“Virginia—she’d had a fever as a small child. The family blamed it on that. They swore it wasn’t hereditary. But by that time Arthur was married to her, and he