Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [39]
Father James had spoken of the dead man’s Will . . .
What if one of the inheriting children had no right to the family name?
“Aye. That,” Hamish answered his thought, “would be a serious matter.”
Or had another name that had been kept hidden for a lifetime—
Was that the secret the dying man wanted to impart to Father James? To leave behind a record of a child’s true heritage?
Was it that responsibility that had kept the priest pacing the rectory floor at night? Surely he might have felt he owed some duty there.
If it was a Confession, Father James wouldn’t have spoken of it to Monsignor Holston. He was bound by his vows not to tell anyone, even another priest. Or even to seek comfort in his own quandary. But Monsignor Holston might have been aware of some distraction, of a heavy burden that was never brought into the open. . . .
It was an interesting dilemma, what to do about a Confessed sin.
And where there was a Will, there was a solicitor who had drawn it up. If there were dark secrets in the Baker family, perhaps he would also have a few of the answers. If there were none to be found . . .
“We’re back again to the War,” Hamish said without enthusiasm. “You ken, better than most, what secrets soldiers bring home with them. Or what secrets a man might confess before battle, no’ expecting to survive it!”
And how to find such a needle in a haystack of returned veterans?
Yet that same needle might have found Father James, nearly a year after the War had ended. . . .
Because he’d come to a bazaar?
The next morning Rutledge left the Norwich hotel and drove back to Osterley, Hamish battering at the back of his mind.
Rutledge hadn’t slept deeply the night before, unable to find a comfortable position. His chest had throbbed relentlessly, torn muscle overtired from fighting the wheel (Frances would have had his head if she’d known) and refusing to be eased.
Consequently he’d been subjected to a long and unpleasant interlude every time he’d roused enough to turn over. Hamish, for one reason or another, had taken a dislike to the damp, dreary weather and was in full form.
If he wasn’t comparing the rounded green land of this part of Norfolk to the great barren mountains and long glens of Scotland, he was reviewing the circumstances surrounding the death of Father James or mulling over the conversation with Monsignor Holston or Inspector Blevins. Awake, Rutledge was unable to let down his guard. Asleep, pain found him again in an endless, restive circle.
Hamish, Rutledge discovered he was thinking at some point, was a malevolent spirit with no need for sleep.
This morning, fighting a headache from the unpredictable shifts in subjects, some of them seeming to lie in wait for him and aimed with a deadly accuracy, others following the unsettled state of his own thoughts, Rutledge was glad to see a modicum of sunlight sifting through the overcast. It seemed to foretell a lifting of the clouds in his mind.
Hamish seemed to find it more to his liking as well. As the land changed a little, announcing their approach to the sea, Hamish unexpectedly said, “It isna’ a verra’ pleasant thought, returning to London. I canna’ ken why people live in cities, jammed cheek by jowl like so many sheep off to market!”
Rutledge agreed. His cluttered office was claustrophobic when rain ran down the soot-blackened windows, shutting him in with the lamplight and the musty smell of cigar smoke and wet wool. When it rained, Old Bowels’s moods were as unpredictable as the shifts in Hamish’s trains of thought.
Nor was he eager to return to Frances’s watchful care. His sister was a master at concealing her worry behind a light facade of humor, but he knew her too well to be taken in by it. He said aloud, in the silence of the motorcar—a habit he found nearly impossible to break— “I’ll be here at least one more day. It will do no harm.”
A lorry, bound from King’s Lynn to Norwich, sent an arc of muddy water across Rutledge’s bonnet as it passed in the southbound lane. He blinked as the spray washed