by Charles Todd
But neither Rutledge nor Nettle had ever fully explored the background of the neighbors—what opportunities they might have had to meet the three dead women, what reasons they might have had to commit murder. There was no evidence at all that pointed in their direction, even though Henry Cutter’s wife seemed to know more about the victims than Mrs. Shaw had. She had read about them in the newspapers . . . so she claimed.
Instead he had focused on two facts: that Ben Shaw was often in the homes of the deceased. And that after he was charged, Ben Shaw had all but admitted he was the murderer.
But what if he hadn’t been—what if, afraid from the start that his wife might be guilty, he’d confessed to distract the police from her?
Hamish said, “Or fra’ someone else he cared for.”
It wouldn’t be the first time that a husband or wife risked hanging out of fear of the truth coming out. Or out of fear that the other was in danger. . . .
What if, looking deeper, Rutledge found himself thinking, he’d come across unexpected evidence that proved clearly that the most obvious pointers were not the most likely after all . . . ? In one case in ten, digging deeper brought out new facts. And yet at the time, he was convinced that he had dug deeply—
Speaking up after a long and brooding silence, Hamish said, “What if ye find that I’m no’ the first victim whose death can be laid at your door? What if this man died a worse death than mine, because ye were no’ the clever policeman you thought you were?”
As Rutledge laid the last of the pages aside, he wondered if he would come to regret his decision to retrieve the file.
But he was committed now . . . whatever he learned about himself.
6
THERE WAS NOTHING MORE RUTLEDGE COULD DO THAT DAY about his promise to Nell Shaw. Nor the next, as he drove south of London and back into Kent.
But it was like a sore tooth nagging in the back of his mind. And after he had crossed Lambeth Bridge, he made his way south and east, to the part of south London where the Shaws—and the Cutters—lived. It was familiar ground, and yet as the motorcar turned down street after street, he could see that the once prosperous working-class houses were showing signs of neglect after nearly five years of war and shortages of manpower and materials. England had impoverished herself to win, and Rutledge found himself thinking that here was the invisible cost in human suffering and hardship.
Many of the factories had shut down, and the residential streets were grim in November’s gray chill. Not even a dog wandered in the gutters sniffing for scraps.
Those who could escape had done so long ago, especially those who had found a way of prospering from the war. Those who were doomed to finish out their lives here had fallen prey to despair and hopelessness.
Among them, Mrs. Shaw and, so it seemed, Henry Cutter. . . .
Not for the first time, Rutledge asked himself how Henry Cutter’s wife had come by that missing locket.
“Ye canna’ be sure she did! There’s only one woman’s word for it.”
Rutledge replied grimly, “It wasn’t in the Shaw house when it was searched. I’d stake my career on that.”
“Aye, it’s what you’re doing.”
“The problem is, why would Shaw have given the locket to Cutter’s wife? For safekeeping when the police were crawling all over his house? It would have been safer to pitch it into the Thames.” He fell easily into the old habit of answering Hamish, of treating the voice in his head as though the dead man sat in the rear seat of the motorcar, his constant companion and a fearful presence. “Shaw wasn’t the sort to stray from home and hearth. But then no one thought he was the sort to commit murder, either.”
“People are sometimes verra’ different under the skin. If he was clever enough to kill, he might ha’ been clever enough to have other secrets.”
“The same could be said of Mrs. Shaw—or the Cutters.”
Rutledge passed the house on Sansom Street without stopping. Fog was curling in off the river, wreathing roofs and sliding over chimneys, giving the house and its neighbors a sinister air.
He told himself he hadn’t yet formulated a strategy for his opening move. Like contemplating a chess game before touching the pieces, he thought to himself. It was very like that—he couldn’t afford to choose the wrong move.
Hamish was saying, “In the end, you must speak to Cutter.”
But how to go about that without arousing Bowles’s suspicions? The Chief Superintendent was a vindictive enemy, when aroused.
Rutledge wished Mrs. Shaw had had the sense to write to him instead of coming to the Yard in person. It would have drawn far less attention. But then he might have read the letter and done nothing, putting it down to a woman’s refusal to let go of the past. Her strong presence, tearful and demanding and fiercely certain, had affected him, as she must have guessed it would.
It might yet prove to be nothing more than that. A brooding that had consumed her to the point of believing in her own phantoms.
A widow whose husband had been hanged for murder must not have had an easy life. Nor her children. He had only to look around him to guess what privations they’d suffered.
Still, she’d survived. It showed in her toughness and her determination. He found it hard to blame her for being bitter and angry. And if she was right, if there had been a miscarriage of justice, he was as much to blame as Bowles and Philip Nettle. Perhaps more so, because he had brought the case to trial.
Everything hinged on that locket.
THE AUTUMN WEATHER was at its worst—the clear skies of Guy Fawkes Day had long since given way to a week of heavy clouds and a cold wind. Today, the breath-sucking fog seemed to follow Rutledge out of London, cloaking everything and everyone in a clinging, damp, choking vapor. It ran ahead of him toward the Downs, silent fingers reaching through the hedgerows and shrouding the trees.
He could barely see the verges of the road, and slowed for fear of running into a farm cart or lorry, invisible around the next curve. Hamish, a presence at his shoulder, was restless with the tension of driving.
“It wasna’ necessary to leave sae early! Ye’ll kill us both before this weather lifts!”
Rutledge wasn’t sure he would be sorry to wind up in a ditch, his neck broken. But his sister would mourn. And a handful of friends. And Jean, who had married her diplomat and sailed for Canada, would learn of his death on her wedding journey.
He smiled wryly at that. He had no illusions now about his former fiancée. Jean would read the news and sigh prettily, and say to her new husband, “My dear, I’ve just heard—a very dear friend has been killed on a road south of London. I—I must believe it’s a blessing. He was—he was never the same after the war, you know. I daresay—but no, that’s not fair. I should never wish to believe he’d found a way to end it—”
And the diplomat, not very diplomatically, would reply briskly, “You mustn’t blame yourself, my dear. It’s all in the past now.”
Hamish commented, his voice clear in the dim interior of the motorcar, “Aye, it’s no’ a bonny thing to say. But it might be true, nonetheless.”
Rutledge concentrated his attention on the road.
ELIZABETH MAYHEW GREETED him warmly, clucking her tongue over the weather, and saying, “I was afraid you might not come. That you’d be glad of the weather as an excuse.”
“Nonsense,” he told her, kissing her cheek. “It will lift by noon. Frances sends her love, and I’m to convince you to come to London for a few days over Christmas.”
“How sweet of her,” Elizabeth said, leading the way to the stairs. “I may do that. I’ve grown so dull of late I’ll bore her to death. But perhaps it would be good for me. We shall see.”
The house was a comfortable Georgian manor on the outskirts of Marling, a pretty village that had enjoyed its share of wealth over the centuries and still maintained an air of quiet gentility.
Set back behind a low brick wall, the gardens bedded down for the winter, the house now seemed to we
ar its age more starkly, but in summer it glowed with the warmth of the sun and with the rampant colors of perennials, with annuals sprawling at their feet. Then it was timeless and beautiful.
There had always been a welcome here, as long as Rutledge could remember. But without Richard’s voice in the passages or his long legs stretched out toward the fire after a day tramping on the Downs, there was an emptiness in the rooms that lamps and Elizabeth’s lighter voice couldn’t fill.
Rutledge had known Richard Mayhew longer than Elizabeth had, long before Elizabeth had come into the picture. In his youth, he’d played tennis here with Richard, and gone for long walks over the Downs, following old tracks and pathways whose origins were lost in time. It had seemed odd, when the summer light lingered late into the evening, to think of the ghosts whose footsteps they were following. Angles, Saxons, Romans—God knew what other now nameless tribes had passed this way. Richard had called it the spell of Midsummer. “The poets are always writing about it. I daresay the ancients worshiping the sun thought this a magic time.”
And so it had been. Before the war had come and swept it all away.
Now the house seemed sad without Richard, and Rutledge found himself wondering if it wouldn’t be wiser if Elizabeth closed it for a time and took a smaller place in London. Away from the memories. But perhaps those memories were comforting. . . .
As his own were not.
She was saying, “And I must apologize—but we’ve been invited out to dine, and I couldn’t tell them no. With the Hamiltons—you remember them?—and of course Mrs. Crawford will be there. She’s coming up from Sussex, just to see you.”
Melinda Crawford was one of the most remarkable women he’d ever met. As a child she’d survived the siege of Lucknow, during the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857. An inveterate and fearless traveler, she had seen more of the world than most men. Rutledge had always been immensely fond of her. Her memory was as sharp as ever it had been, her tongue as tart, and her company as charming.
Elizabeth, reading his expression, said wryly, “Richard adored her, too. I think she took his death harder than I did.”
It would be an unexpected treat to see Mrs. Crawford again. But not tonight. He was too tired and his mood too dark for polite conversation. “It was a rather long drive—” he began, and then stopped. “Would you like to go?”
She made a face. “Not really. But Bella Masters has been having a very difficult time, and we’ve been trying to cheer her up a bit. Raleigh will come to dine, but Bella can’t get him out of the house otherwise. She hasn’t said, but I have the awful feeling that he’s dying. And nobody quite knows what to do.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“A very stubborn infection. It cost him his toes, and then his foot, and now he’s about to lose his leg close to the knee. Blood poisoning. He has some sort of apparatus to wear in place of his foot, but he hates it. Bella tries to pretend all is well, which doesn’t help. It’s Lydia Hamilton’s turn to entertain them, and she couldn’t make up her numbers. I’m afraid Raleigh isn’t always very good company. We’re the martyrs thrown to the lions.”
“In that case, by all means, we’ll go,” Rutledge assured her.
She seemed relieved, but said only, “Then come into the sitting room and we’ll have our tea in comfort, before it’s time to dress. I’ve something to show you—”
Henrietta, the spaniel, had just presented Elizabeth with puppies, five of them, still blind and squirming and noisy. They lay in a box near the hearth, and Henrietta rose to greet Rutledge before warily allowing him to admire her family. Elizabeth was on the floor beside the box, clearly entranced, giving him the name of each tiny ball of fur.
He could hardly tell one from another, except by the liver-colored spots, but dutifully gave his attention to each in turn, while Henrietta licked his hand and watched attentively as Elizabeth lifted her brood one by one and held the newborns up for his inspection. He found himself thinking that Elizabeth herself would have made a wonderful mother, but there had never been any children in her marriage. Richard had been philosophical about it. “Early days,” he’d said. But time had run out.
When the maid brought tea, Elizabeth went to wash her hands and Henrietta climbed gratefully back into her box, nosing each of her treasures, as if to reassure herself that none had gone missing. Rutledge leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Hamish, in the back of his mind, was saying something about Richard. He ignored it, and tried to put London and the Yard out of his thoughts for the evening. It would not do to drag the Shaws into Elizabeth’s uncomplicated world, and yet Rutledge found himself wishing he could talk to her as he would have done to her husband. A barrister, Richard would have understood Rutledge’s dilemma and heard the story out without criticism or comment. Elizabeth would worry over Ben Shaw’s innocence as well as his guilt, and leave the subject more tangled than it was. . . .
She came back into the room just then and, seeing him with his eyes closed, said briskly, “You need your tea!” and proceeded to pour him a cup.
Hamish said, “A wee dram o’ whisky would do more good.”
THE WHISKY CAME at the Hamiltons, a stiff drink that Lawrence Hamilton handed him with the admonition “You’ll need this!”
Elizabeth had gone upstairs to speak to Lydia, and the two men were alone in the drawing room.
Rutledge said, “I hear Masters hasn’t been well.” He had met the man a time or two in the courts, but hardly knew him at all.
“No, he hasn’t. And it’s been difficult for him. Not only the loss of his limb, but the constant pain and the dragging down of his spirits. He had to give up the law, you know, and that was possibly worse than amputation. He loved his work.” Lawrence was square, fair, with a ruddy complexion. “Still, he’s a man of uncertain moods. Always was, for all I know, but now it’s noticeable. Lydia and Elizabeth and a few other friends have tried to make his illness bearable for Bella—”
He broke off as the maid ushered in another guest. Melinda Crawford swept into the room with grace, a tall woman, slim now with age, and wearing the evening dress of another reign: gray silk, with lace high to the throat and binding the sleeves at her wrists. Her white hair, piled high in shining waves, was still thick, and the handsome blue eyes were unclouded. The beautiful ebony cane in her left hand was more affectation than necessity.
She greeted her host with warmth, and then regarded Rutledge with interest. “You survived the war, then. Why haven’t you been to see me?”
Rutledge answered, “First I had to find my way back into civilian life.” But it was Hamish that he had wanted to hide from her. Melinda Crawford had seen war, had nursed the wounded and comforted the dying when she was only ten; her experience was so vast that he had been afraid she would instantly read his secret in his eyes.
He went to kiss her cheek, and she held him off for a moment, studying his face. “Ah. And have you found your way?” She let him kiss her then, and took his arm as he led her to the small French love seat.
“I don’t know. I expect you’ll tell me?”
She laughed gently. “War has done nothing for your manners, I see. But it’s good to have you back. Lawrence, is that sherry I see at your elbow?”
He brought her a glass and she sipped it. “One of the privileges of age,” she declared, “is to be able to drink a glass or two of wine without a lecture on moderation. This is quite good, Lawrence. I shall require the name of your wine merchant.”
Lawrence chuckled. “Indeed. He’s the same as yours.”
“Ah, but he never treats me as well.”
Hamish, taken aback by Melinda Crawford, was silent, trying to make up his mind about her. Rutledge, drawing up a chair next to the love seat, said, “I’ve missed you.”
“At my age,” she agreed, “four years is a very long time. I wasn’t sure I would live to see you again.” She studied his face once more. “But the wicked seem to thrive in this world, and I’m stil
l here. Thank you for your letters, and the books of poems. I treasured both.”
“I thought you might like the poet. O. A. Manning.”
“She’s dead now, I’ve heard.”
He answered simply, “Yes.”
“A tragedy among so many tragedies. There’s never time to mourn. I remember in India there were so many burials we couldn’t cry anymore. It was almost the same here, after this war. And you’re back at the Yard, I’ve heard that as well. You forgot my birthday this year.”
“I didn’t forget. I didn’t know what you would have liked. Frances sent a gift from both of us. Nightgowns suitable for a queen, if I have it right. Silk, in fact, from the East. Appropriate, she felt.”
“Very beautiful,” Melinda Crawford agreed. “Most of all, I would have liked your company for a few hours. But then I’m selfish, aren’t I, when so many people are being murdered these days.” Her eyes twinkled, but there was an undercurrent of sorrow behind the words.
The aging face was serene, and told him nothing. But he had a glimpse, brief as a butterfly’s touch, of the loneliness of this extraordinary woman.
She would not have wanted him to see it.
7
BEFORE HE COULD ANSWER, THE DOOR OPENED, AND A MAN and woman came in, followed by a young man of perhaps thirty.
Lawrence made introductions, and Rutledge studied Raleigh Masters. The barrister had been heavyset. Now his jowls drooped like a bloodhound’s and his clothes fit rather too loosely. His brown hair was streaked with gray and his frame was a little stooped, although that might have been from the crutches under his arm.
He swung into the room, a powerful man still, and undaunted, it seemed, by his infirmities. “Hallo, Mrs. Crawford, good to see you again, my dear. Forgive me for not shaking hands, Mr. Rutledge, but I have not yet learned the knack of these sticks.”
