Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [50]
Rutledge thanked her gently and walked back through the house to let himself out the front door. Halfway down the passage he heard a sob and hesitated. But her grief was private. There was nothing he could do or say to assuage it.
And his place in Osterley was clearly marked out—he came and went a stranger by the door at the front of the house.
CHAPTER 9
WHEN RUTLEDGE ARRIVED AT THE POLICE station twenty minutes later, after leaving his motorcar at the hotel, he found Inspector Blevins sitting in his cramped office finishing a stack of sandwiches and a steaming thermos of tea. “Missed my lunch,” he said, gesturing to the sandwich wrappings. “Someone was reported shooting out in the marshes, and that’s not allowed. I spent well over an hour tramping through the bloody reeds looking for the fool. My wife took pity on me and brought me these. Care for one?”
“Thanks, no. I ate at the hotel. Is it safe to walk out to the sea?”
“If you’re local, I suppose it’s safe enough. I wouldn’t recommend it. Too easy to lose yourself, and then I’d be out searching for you.” It was a friendly warning.
Putting the cap back on the thermos of tea, Blevins looked up at Rutledge and away again. “There’s been a complication,” he said. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Father James had two sisters—Sarah and Judith. Judith died in the influenza epidemic. Sarah is married and has young children. There was a telephone message here at the station this morning from Sarah’s husband, man by the name of Hurst, Philip Hurst. I’ve met him a time or two. Steady and reliable. The message was, he’d call back after Mass. And he did, just before the damned shooting started in the marshes.”
Blevins stopped fiddling with the thermos and set it aside. “Interesting conversation. Hurst told me that one of Judith’s favorite stories as a child was Jack the Giant-Slayer, Father James undoubtedly filling the role of Jack in his sister’s eyes. Sarah claims he must have read it to her dozens of times. But that’s neither here nor there.”
He seemed to be avoiding coming to the point, as if he found it distasteful. Rutledge waited.
“When he was in France, Father James wrote often to both sisters, and Sarah remembers one letter in particular, where he told Judith that he’d finally met the ‘Giant.’ There was even a line drawing in the margin with Father James dwarfed by this stick figure. And there was some other nonsense about the story, and that was it.”
“You’re telling me that Walsh is this ‘Giant’?”
“God, no! Father James was joking, reminding his sister of their childhood. This Giant could have been anyone he’d seen—a Punjabi for all we know! A good many of the Highlanders were damned tall, for that matter. But now I’ve got to find someone in the War Office to look up records to see if Walsh could have met Father James in France. They won’t like that, but if it’s true, I need to know about it before I’m made a fool of in the courtroom. It doesn’t change anything, even if he did!”
“You’ll have to question everyone at the bazaar again. To see if the two men recognized each other that day.”
“I don’t see how it was possible for Walsh to recognize Father James—he was dressed as a clown to entertain the children, and his face was painted. But of course Father James could well have remembered him.”
Hamish reminded Rutledge, “Mrs. Wainer spoke of clown’s paint. He was still wearing it when he handed her the bills and coins they’d taken in.”
So she had. Rutledge regarded Blevins, trying to read his face. “Asking Walsh is the simplest way to find out,” he observed.
“You can’t ask him anything without being cursed and abused. Better to find out from the War Office than give that clever bastard some way of crawling out of this charge!”
“Does Sarah Hurst still have the letter?”
“It was written to Judith, who showed it to her, and there’s no way of knowing if Judith kept it. Much less what’s become of it since she died. But Hurst thought we ought to