Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [79]
“My first Inspector told me that women preferred drowning because it didn’t hurt and it didn’t mar the face. When I saw my first corpse from the river, I knew he was wrong. We never identified her. No one could have.”
Rutledge went to his flat and slept for two hours, then headed north again. But when he reached Colchester, he pulled into the dark yard of the Rose and Crown and slept until dawn. It was nearly dinnertime when he reached Osterley. The muscles in his chest ached, and his stomach rebelled at the thought of a formal meal at the hotel. After washing up, he walked down to The Pelican.
The cool night air, with its tang of the sea and the earthy scent of the marshes, welcomed him like an old friend.
CHAPTER 13
THE PELICAN WAS BUSY WITH THE dinner hour, noisy with voices and laughter and the rattle of dishes, and crowded with local people. The bar had a line of patrons leaning on their elbows and talking to or over each other. One seated on a wooden stool held a little gray-and-white dog in his lap. The tables near the windows were occupied by small groups of diners already served or waiting their turn.
Among them was the woman he had seen at the church two days ago—was it only two?—sitting with several men and another woman, just finishing their soup.
They were deeply immersed in their conversation and no one looked up as Rutledge walked past. He took a small table nearer the bar, where he would feel less confined by the press of people. The tiny island of space around him was a welcomed relief. Hamish, sensing his unease, argued warily for a return to the hotel.
“For it willna’ do to make a scene here!”
“I won’t,” Rutledge answered shortly. But he could feel himself tensing as more customers came in, one group searching for a table, a smaller one heading for the bar, hailed warmly by friends. As he watched them pass, he noticed in the back corner, occupied with a newspaper, the man he’d seen at the quay feeding the ducks and, another time, here alone in the same seat. Crowded as the room was, no one asked to sit with him.
The man had the air of a fixture at The Pelican, as permanent as the bench on which he sat and the table braced and nailed to the wall.
The strained face was bent over the opened paper, and neither Betsy nor the older couple helping her serve took any heed of him. He’d ordered tea, for there was a pot and a cup by his elbow. As if sensing Rutledge’s glance, his knuckles seemed to tighten on the page, crimping it.
Hamish said derisively, “He’s no’ a verra’ popular man. No doubt you’ll find you have much in common.”
“God save him, then!” Rutledge answered silently.
Betsy finally stopped at Rutledge’s little table, her manner more formal than it had been the first day he had arrived in the village. “Good evening, Inspector. Are you wishing to dine or could I bring you something from the bar?”
No longer “What would you like, love?” Rutledge smiled. “What would you recommend for dinner?” he asked her.
“You’re fortunate tonight,” she said. “There’s a roast of chicken with dumplings and potatoes, and I can tell you, there’s nothing like it this side of London!”
Rutledge felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for the woman in a book he’d once read, who had been branded with an A for Adulteress. Everyone in Osterley knew more of his business than he knew of theirs. He’d been branded with an O for Outsider—no longer the visitor who was benign, no longer the anonymous traveler who could ask questions and expect an honest answer. There was neither coldness nor rudeness in their manner, only a formality that precluded any expectation of breaking through it.
How long, he wondered, did it take a man to reach the status of “one of ours” in this village? For a policeman who hadn’t been born here, perhaps never. For a passing stranger there was welcome and courtesy. For an intruder, only suspicion. And yet Father James had come to be one of theirs. . . .
He chose the chicken with dumplings and ordered a pint