Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [29]
“You can feel the water,” Hamish said. “It must be verra’ bitter here in winter. Raw with an east wind.”
“Sometimes,” Rutledge agreed. “When the storms roll in.”
Back on the main road, Rutledge braked as he came to the police station, but the sign hadn’t been removed from the door. He drove on to St. Anne’s and got out of the car, staring up at the rectory. Cupolas and mock turrets and gingerbread gave it a frivolous air that the simpler lines of the Victorian frame seemed half ashamed of. There were carvings at the peak of the gables, and he told himself that if the builder had found a place to add gargoyles, he’d have done it. And yet the whole seemed far more pleasing than any one part.
Next to the rectory was a fair-sized flint house with a small glass conservatory now flecked with moisture from an array of tall plants inside. Most certainly the home of the neighbor who had been away on the night of the priest’s murder. The windows on that side of the rectory looked across a narrow stretch of grassy lawn almost into the windows of the larger house.
But the rectory windows also looked down the lawn to the road. Had Father James seen someone there, someone he believed would hear his shout? A laborer walking home from the fields? A constable on patrol?
Hamish said, “Was it luck that the family was no’ at home? Or did the killer choose his time because of that?”
“Yes, it’s possible,” Rutledge answered. “If he’d been watching the house for several days.”
The next three houses were more modest in design, curving toward a house closest to the point that must have been part of the port buildings in its heyday. A small hotel? Or a customs house. A placard nailed to a board and neatly lettered in white identified it as a rooming house in its present incarnation. Across the street from where he stood, there were five flint houses, built for comfort more than style.
Rutledge walked up the short path to the rectory door. The knocker, he discovered, was a bit of whimsy as well: a coffin. He let it drop, and the echoing ring of sound startled him, deep as a bell tolling. Hamish, responding to his unspoken thought, said, “It must ha’ been the last owner’s, an undertaker’s.”
Rutledge was about to answer him when the door opened and a small white-haired woman dressed in black warily asked his business.
He explained who he was, offering his credentials for her inspection. She glanced at them with relief and then stood aside to allow him to enter a dark hall with two doors on either side of a wide staircase of worn mahogany. A passage ran down beside the stairs to a third door at the back end of the hall. Mrs. Wainer opened the one to her right and invited him into a small parlor, with a gesture offering the sofa as the most comfortable seat. It was a room of surprisingly lovely proportions, with long windows facing the church, a selection of old but well-cared-for furniture, and an oak mantelpiece that rose nearly to the high ceiling. This was ornately carved with ferns and acorns and leaves, and Rutledge wondered if it had come from an even older house.
The scent of lemon wax pervaded even the upholstery and rose to greet him as he sat down. The sheen on every wooden surface spoke of the brisk application of a polishing rag, and there was no dust on the green leaves of the large plant in one corner. Hamish eyed it with dislike. “Yon’s the ugliest aspidistra I’ve ever clapped eyes on.”
Rutledge was in agreement. It seemed to thrive without beauty, out of place here, but certainly well fed and watered.
Mrs. Wainer was saying, as she stood before him like a schoolmistress, “Did I understand you rightly? Scotland Yard, you