Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [87]
“Why not?” Rutledge asked.
“His Lordship’s far above taking up Inspector Blevins. Proud man, like his father. And he was as mean as they come! My grandmother was parlor maid to the Chastains, that lived in the hall before the first Lord Sedgwick took it over. When she married the coachman, they was given a grace-and-favor cottage in the village, for life. No such thing when I married my Ted. Head gardener, Ted was, and the old lord—Ralph, this ’un’s father—he knew the gatehouse cottage was coming open, and he never said a word. But this ’un’s wife, she tried to make up for it, and was kind enough to give me a brooch to wear on my wedding day.” The old woman fumbled in her shawls, and held out a lovely little enameled brooch, a hunting scene of hounds and horsemen over a fence after the fox. “That’s an American hunt, that is. Not one of ours. See the fence? Wood railings! You can tell by the fence!” She had remembered exactly what she’d been told about the little brooch, and it was a prized possession, one she wore when calling on friends.
Rutledge admired it, and she beamed with pleasure. Then, as class-conscious in her own way as any member of the aristocracy, she added spitefully, “They both married Americans, you know. The present lord and his son Arthur. Couldn’t find no titled English lady that would have them, smelling as they did of London trade. It wasn’t old money, you see.” She glanced at Mrs. Wainer’s pursed lips. “Well, I should say the present lord found himself a well-born bride over there, and she was very kind. Died of her appendix, she did. Mr. Arthur’s was a love match, they tell me. He went one summer to visit his cousins on his mother’s side and fell in love with one of them.” She ended triumphantly, “And I met that one, too. A pretty little thing, shy as a violet. But Ralph’s wife—Charlotte, I think her name was—was long dead when he was given the title. Just as well; they say she was no better than she ought to be. A Londoner, she was.”
Mrs. Wainer threw an apologetic glance at Rutledge, and said, “Now, then, Martha, let me warm up your tea!” She rinsed the pot and turned to lift the kettle, pouring the steaming water over fresh leaves.
But Mrs. Beeling was delighted with a new audience. “Arthur’s wife is the one that drowned. On that ship that went down. She ran off from Arthur, they say, though no one knows quite why, except that he was away in France racing whenever he could and she must have been lonely, out in the middle of nowhere like she was!”
“Here, in East Sherham?” Rutledge asked, encouraging her.
“Lord love you, not here. They lived over to Yorkshire, where Arthur had bought a house after the marriage. He never got along with his brother, Edwin. I wondered if Edwin didn’t care for his sister-in-law more than he should. The story was, he’d head to Yorkshire on that motorcycle of his, as soon as Arthur set out for France. Both were motorcycle mad one time or another. Noisy, smelly machines, to my mind. Edwin still has one; I’ve seen it.”
Mrs. Wainer brought the fresh pot of tea and added more small cakes to a plate. “Now, you help yourself, Martha, and I’ll just see the Inspector out.”
Mrs. Beeling was still enjoying herself. “I don’t quite know why he took you up in his car,” she added, returning to more recent events, perplexed. “Unless it was to hand over the reward money he put up for Father James’s murderer.”
“As far as I know, there’s been no reward given to anyone,” Rutledge said.
She nodded sagely. “I’m of two minds about yon Strong Man. I was at the bazaar, and he never exchanged more than a word with Father James, and him decorated like a clown—”
“But he was in this house in the afternoon,” Mrs. Wainer said earnestly. “I found the Strong Man wandering about inside this house!” She cast a resigned glance in Rutledge’s direction. “That’s what alerted Inspector Blevins to look for him.”
“Yes, and a dozen other people were in here as well. I saw Lord Sedgwick’s son come to have a