“He walked in that door and paced the floor for over an hour. I didn’t ask him why—we’ve all been through that kind of personal despair. To tell you the truth, there was one family in particular that he was deeply concerned about. I thought his visit had to do with them. When he sat down in that chair, where you’re sitting now, I made some comment to that effect. He raised his head and looked at me. ‘No, they’re doing well enough just now.’ Then he added simply, ‘God works in mysterious ways. I’ve been given an answer to a question that has troubled me for years. But I can’t make use of it to set things right. It came unexpectedly, and in such a way that my choices are very limited.’ He put his face in his hands and I could see that he was under a great strain. I asked, ‘Would it help to speak to the Bishop?’ and he said, ‘That door is shut, but there may be another that will open.’ And so I went back to the report I was writing, to give him a little space. Half an hour later he was gone, and that was the end of it.”

“But you guessed—did you not—what he was referring to.”

“Not then.”

Rutledge waited.

Monsignor Holston said, “It wasn’t until the funeral Mass for Father James that I first heard the name Baker.”

“During the service?” Rutledge was surprised.

“Actually, a young woman came up to me afterward to say that she didn’t know Father James well, but that she had attended the Mass from a sense of duty. He’d given her father comfort as he lay dying, even though Herbert Baker wasn’t a Catholic. She felt she was returning a kindness, in her own fashion. She was quite shy, stammering out the story, but I thanked her for coming and told her that Father James would have appreciated her thoughtfulness. And it was true. Later on I asked Sims, here, about her. Dr. Stephenson overheard and added that Father James had come in to the surgery to inquire about Baker— whether his mind was clear at the end. His point was that Father James had been a conscientious priest, but I read more into the conversation than Stephenson realized. Because I knew the one other bit of information that mattered.”

“That Herbert Baker had been coachman—and sometimes chauffeur—to Lord Sedgwick’s family,” Rutledge said.

“Everyone in Osterley could have told you that, if you’d asked. No, that it was Herbert Baker who drove Virginia Sedgwick to King’s Lynn, the day she disappeared. At her particular request.”

The Vicar, listening apprehensively, sat back with a sigh. But Monsignor Holston had no more to say.