“Papers?” She turned with some alarm, her eyes flying to the case he was carrying.

“Old cuttings, for the most part. Dated well before the War. I’ll just look through them before you box them up with the rest of Father James’s possessions. But you never know, do you, where something useful might turn up?”

She hesitated, clearly uncertain where her responsibility lay. Rutledge added, “They’re to do with shipping, not church business. Perhaps you’ve seen them on his desk. A hobby of his, was it? To study maritime affairs?” It was as far as he was willing to go, with the coal man unashamedly listening to every word.

“There was nothing like that in his desk,” she protested, but before she could ask to have a look at them the coal man stepped forward.

“Begging pardon, sir. Shipping, you said? Not that ship that sank back in ’12, was it?” His heavy hands, with coal dust thick in the cracks and creases, worked at his apron, as if not accustomed to speaking to his betters before spoken to.

“As I remember there was a reference to Titanic,” Rutledge replied guardedly. “Yes.”

“Then if I might offer a word, sir?” There was a diffident smile on his face. “My daughter, she’s got herself a fine situation in London. Father James—God rest his soul!—asked if she might do him a small favor, and he sent her twenty pounds to buy up all the London papers and cut out whatever there was about the ship’s sinking and the inquiry. He wanted every word she could find. And she must have sent him dozens of cuttings, sir, by post every week.”

Rutledge opened the case and pulled out the cuttings, laying them on the table and spreading them with one finger. “Like these?”

The coal man came closer, peering down his nose as if shortsighted. “Aye, I shouldn’t be at all surprised, though I never saw ’em. Jessie sent them straight to the rectory.” He paused, and when Rutledge didn’t move the cuttings, he added, “When t’other ship was torpedoed, that Lusitania, my daughter wrote him to ask if he wanted her to do the same again. But he thanked her and said he’d seen enough of tragedy. His very words.”

“And so it would be your guess, would it, that this was a passing fancy?”

“He never spoke to me about that ship!” Mrs. Wainer seemed hurt that she’d been left out of his confidence. “It was the talk of England, and I don’t remember he ever said anything more than what a pity it was.”

“But do you recall seeing the letters coming from London?”