Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [74]
Was Sedgwick afraid that Arthur’s wound would lead him to self-destruction because he, too, was shut off from what he loved doing?
Rutledge changed the subject. They spoke only once more of Father James’s death, and that in a roundabout way.
“We’ve had good weather for the most part, this autumn,” Sedgwick was saying as he pushed back his chair, favoring his gouty foot a little. “Edwin has been down a time or two, and one morning we went over to Osterley— it was the morning they found the priest’s body, actually, although we didn’t know it at the time. It had begun to clear, and we left the car up by Holy Trinity Church, then walked as far as Cley, where Evans met us again. We had a look at the dikes and the big windmill, ate our luncheon by the marshes, and came home ravenous. Couldn’t do that today. Bloody foot!”
Passing through the drawing room later, Sedgwick paused to show Rutledge a watercolor of Osterley in its prime—“One of the Chastains had it painted. It’s said to be by Constable, but there’s no provenance.” Rutledge also noticed a photograph sitting on the windowsill to his right: A man standing by the marshes, shotgun in the crook of his arm, and a setter at his feet looking up adoringly as if eager to run. If Sedgwick saw his straying glance, he made no comment. He didn’t have to. Rutledge recognized the face and the dog. Edwin, the younger son, who kept a boat in Osterley’s harbor . . .
A short time later he was on his way back to Osterley. The chauffeur had nothing to say, and Rutledge preferred his own thoughts.
Hamish, still mulling over the luncheon conversation, was busy in the back of his mind. Coming around again to the subject of Lord Sedgwick himself, Hamish said, “He’s no’ a man I’m comfortable with. He’s verra’ like Sergeant Mullins.”
It was an odd comparison. Mullins had replaced Sergeant McIver, shot in the hip and invalided home. Both Sergeants had come up through the ranks, where the heavy attrition of the Battle of the Somme had given men seniority overnight, prepared for it or not. Mullins was a seasoned soldier, careful, gruff, and humorless. He had been a butcher by trade, and could determine at a glance whether a wound was likely to see a man relieved or just patched up at the nearest aid station and returned to the lines. Sentiment seldom played a role.
Lord Sedgwick had that same quality of practical reality that had carried Mullins through the War. He took his world in stride and dealt with it without sentiment.
And yet Rutledge had sensed something else in this man, a wistful desire to be the local squire, as the Chastains had been before him. But he was tainted by his father’s roots, and villagers were often greater snobs than their betters. Money could buy some loyalties, but blue blood brought respect.
“That explains,” Rutledge answered Hamish’s line of thought, “why Sedgwick was eager to put up a reward for Father James’s killer. The Chastains would probably have done the same.”
Still, the Sedgwicks had, in two generations, gone from the streets of London to an inheritable title and weekends at Sandringham with the royal entourage. The first Lord Sedgwick, Ralph, whose antecedents had probably been of questionable bloodlines, had had to settle for an American bride for his only son. But his grandsons, with any luck, would find themselves wed to daughters of the old aristocracy, and their sons fully accepted as titled gentlemen with no lingering odor of trade about them.
Three generations, that was what it took to bridge the social gap. . . .
The future of the dynasty now rested on Arthur’s shoulders, and