Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [152]
Rutledge said, “And he didn’t like the feeling of being cheated.”
Sims agreed. “It may explain why he spent so much time in France, racing with his friends. Why he left Virginia behind in Yorkshire, isolated from his friends and from London Society. Reading between the lines, I gathered that this was the reason behind his brother Edwin’s frequent visits when Arthur was away. He was making damned sure that the simpleton didn’t fornicate with the servants or the stableboys, and produce a half-wit bastard who would inherit the family title!”
Monsignor Holston, after much persuasion, agreed to return to Osterley with them and speak to Inspector Blevins.
It had been a heated argument “I can’t see that it will do much good. So much of it is speculation,” the priest protested. “Father James is dead, Baker is dead—for all we know, Mrs. Sedgwick is dead. All we may succeed in proving is that the chauffeur, Baker, was cajoled into letting his passenger flee her husband, there in King’s Lynn. And there’s no crime in that.”
Rutledge argued, “It isn’t a question of convincing Blevins. It’s a matter of strategy. If there is sufficient doubt, he must reopen his investigation.”
“How will you begin?” May Trent asked.
Turning to the Vicar, Rutledge asked him, “Think back. Herbert Baker was your sexton. Can you recall when Mrs. Baker was ill-enough to be placed in a sanitarium for her tuberculosis? You must have visited her then!”
Sims rubbed his eyes. “She was very ill in November 1911, I think, and they didn’t expect her to live through the winter. With sanitarium care, she did.”
“By the spring of 1912 then—when Mrs. Sedgwick went missing—Baker could see that continued care was essential to keeping his own wife alive?”
“He never expected miracles,” Sims corrected Rutledge. “She was dying.”
“Yes. She’d have been dead in November without that care. She survived two years with it. That mattered to a man who loved his wife very deeply.”
Sims responded, “Herbert Baker was a decent man— loyal.”
“How did he define loyalty?” Rutledge persisted. “If someone convinced him he was acting in Virginia Sedgwick’s best interests, would he shut his eyes?”
Sims said, “He’d never harm her!”
“But would Arthur Sedgwick feel the same way?”
The argument had ended there.
It was crowded in the car, and Hamish, in the rear seat with the two men, was restless and not in the best of moods.
Rutledge drove like an automaton, beyond exhaustion. May Trent sat in the seat beside him, head bowed, lost in her own thoughts. Once she turned to him and asked, “If Virginia Sedgwick was—simple—how did she manage to elude Baker, find her way to London, and arrange to sail on the next ship leaving for America?”
Sims answered, leaning forward with one hand on the back of her seat. “It’s what worried Father James. Why he feared she might be dead. God knows, Arthur received plenty of sympathy. He could have married again any time, an eligible young widower with more money than he knew what to do with, and no children to share in it? But he’d been burned once. He stayed clear of any entanglements.”
“And what did you think?” Rutledge asked him.
There was a long silence. “I thought perhaps Edwin Sedgwick had engineered her flight. I was jealous. I had wanted her to turn to me. I wanted to be the shining knight on the white horse who rescued her. I sat there alone in the vicarage and told myself that she’d been more clever than I knew. And I asked myself what she’d given Edwin in return. I’m not very proud of it. But it’s the truth.”
Monsignor Holston added unexpectedly, “She’s never been declared dead, you know. It was all kept very quiet. Father James wrote to her family in America. They swore Virginia hadn’t come home. They’d agreed with Lord Sedgwick’s decision to hire people to look for her and were satisfied that it was very possible she had been lost at sea. But Father James was convinced early on that if she had arrived safely,