Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [156]
She said faintly, “You look like a dead man yourself.”
“Yes, I rather feel like one.” He smiled. “Don’t you think it’s time you told me what lay between you and Father James?”
Biting her lip, she turned away. “I told you once before. It doesn’t have anything to do with his death. Only with mine.”
“What did he ask you to do? What ruined your life?” he pressed her.
It was unfair to force her in her present state—as Hamish was pointing out—but he was afraid that when she regained her strength, she would be more than a match for the police.
She glanced at Mrs. Nutley. “I’m half drunk with whatever it is she’s made me swallow. I can’t keep my mind clear!”
He could see it in the pupils of her eyes. Mrs. Nutley, her hands folded in her apron, was unruffled. “It’s only what the doctor instructed me to give her.”
“I understand.” To the patient he added, “Would you like Mrs. Nutley to leave the room? I’m sure she’ll be glad to give us a moment.”
“Yes. No.” Priscilla Connaught fell silent, closing her eyes against his inspection. And then unexpectedly she opened them and said in a despairing voice, “It was so long ago. Nobody cares, nobody remembers. Not anymore. But that doesn’t make the hurt go away!”
He could see the pain in her face, stripping away what was left of her youth, and turning her almost as he watched into a very different woman. “Do you know what loneliness is, Inspector?”
He answered quietly, “I’m afraid I do. It’s how I live.”
She embraced herself with her arms, drawing them across her chest as if they offered a measure of comfort, leaning into them as if desperate for human warmth. “I loved a very fine man. We were to be married. I was over the moon with joy.”
He knew what she meant. He’d watched the same joy wash over Jean when he’d asked her to marry him. On Saturday next she’d be married to someone else. He didn’t want to be in London then—
Priscilla Connaught’s voice startled him, stronger now and thick with grief. “And then one day Gerald came to me to say that he had had an—epiphany—of sorts. A revelation. I asked him what it was, and he said he had always been drawn to the Church, and now he knew that that was where he ought to be. It was what God wanted him to do. I told him if this was what he wanted, of course he should follow his vision. We could marry when he finished his studies. But he explained that he wanted to become a Catholic priest. There couldn’t be any marriage, now or later. He broke off our engagement.”
“And you blamed Father James for persuading him?”
She squeezed her eyes tightly to hold back the tears, as if on the back of the lids, the past was still vivid and clear. “He wasn’t a priest then. He was only John James. But he was Gerald’s best friend. I went to him and asked him to persuade Gerald not to do this. He told me the best thing I could do for Gerald if I loved him was to let him go. Let him enter the priesthood.”
The tears began to fall, but her eyes were shut still, closing Rutledge out. “So I let him go. I—I truly believed that once he had his way, once he’d embarked on his studies, he’d quickly discover that it wasn’t what he wanted after all. I was convinced that he loved me too much for this— this fancy—to last. I gave him my blessing and let him go !”
Rutledge waited in the bitter silence that followed, uncertain whether or not she had finished. He could imagine how she must have felt, abandoned for what—to a woman—seemed an inexplicable rejection of her and her love.
Finally she opened her eyes and looked across at him.
Her voice was shaking so much he wasn’t sure he heard her clearly. “In his last year before being ordained, Gerald killed himself. And neither God nor I had him, in the end. I couldn’t torment God. I tormented Father James instead. Gerald’s death lay at his door, and every time he looked at my face in his congregation, he was unable to forget how wrong he’d been, how he’d failed Gerald, and me—what, in his sanctimonious faith in his own judgment, he’d done