A Fearsome Doubt

by Charles Todd

  It was a long dark drive, and weather was moving in from the east, a damp wind laden with the promise of heavy rain before dawn. Staying awake was a problem. And he was nearly certain that this was a wild-goose chase, another dramatic reminder from Nell Shaw that her husband’s fate ought be his foremost priority. On the other hand, he couldn’t risk ignoring Margaret’s cry for help.

  To fill the time he turned to the past.

  What had really passed between Shaw and the women he had been accused of smothering? Why had he been tempted to kill each of them? Need? His wife’s ruthless prodding to provide more and more opportunities for their children?

  Hamish said, “You canna’ know the answer to that. But at a guess, he comforted himself with their condition.”

  “Yes, I can understand that. Those women weren’t going to recover, and they were probably afraid of dying alone and neglected, of lying there until someone came in and found them. They must have looked forward to his visits.” He’d learned early on that murderers often could convince themselves of the rightness of what they had done.

  “Still, there’s the connection with Mrs. Cutter. Was her son involved? Was she trying to protect him? Or did she use him to try to put the blame on Mrs. Shaw?”

  “Aye, the locket. George Peterson could have pocketed that. To gie to his mother.”

  “Yet she never used it against the Shaws. Why did Peterson kill himself? Because he didn’t like police work, as we’ve been told? Or was there more to the story?”

  “He wouldna’ be the first policeman to die by his own hand.”

  It was true. After the first long months of working with the worst of human nature, of seeing violent death and recognizing evil for what it was, a callous disregard for the lives and property of others, either a policeman developed a hard shell against the nightmare of his job or he began to drink. Sometimes when the shell cracked or the drinking failed to dull the mind, a man withdrew into himself, and built not a shell but a wall against any emotion at all. Or he put an end to all of it.

  Rutledge himself, drawn to law enforcement because of a firm belief that the police had the power to give the dead a voice, to offer in a courtroom the evidence of the scene and the body, had discovered soon enough that he was losing his objectivity. And it had been a long, difficult climb to a level of professionalism that had allowed him to function without losing his humanity.

  Young George Peterson might never have succeeded in reaching that level. . . .

  As the lights of London came closer and he could see the city shining in the misting rain, the smell of the river borne on the wind and the heavy odor of coal fires hanging between the clouds and the rooftops, he turned toward Sansom Street and finally pulled up in front of the Shaw house.

  Every light seemed to be burning, the house startlingly lit like a beacon. In the West End, it would signify a party. In Number 14, Sansom Street, it was an omen.

  Rutledge got out of the motorcar and stretched his shoulders, postponing the moment of walking up to the door and lifting the knocker.

  Margaret Shaw was there as if she had been waiting just on the other side, and he walked into the narrow hall.

  A passage led to the back of the house, with narrow stairs climbing to his right and doors into rooms standing open on his left.

  Margaret was in tears, her face red and streaked, as if she’d been crying for hours.

  “Mama is upstairs,” she said. “I’ve been that frantic. I think it’s her heart!”

  “You should have called a doctor, not me,” he said, and then regretted it.

  “The doctor came,” Margaret told him. “And left. He said it was something she’s eaten. He gave her a digestive powder—she won’t touch it, she says it’s poison, and she just lies there clutching her chest and asking God why he deserted her.”

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “Mama sent him to stay with a friend. I don’t know what excuse she made, but they agreed to keep him for a day or two.”

  Rutledge followed Margaret up the stairs and into a bedroom that faced the street.

  The bedclothes were rumpled and tossed, half on the floor, half covering the fully clothed woman lying in their midst. Her hair was a bird’s nest, tangled and spiked with sweat, her shirtwaist and her skirt wrinkled and twisted.

  As he walked toward the bed, she turned her head to see who was there, and froze.

  “Dear my God!” she cried, staring at him, and sat up with such hope blazing in her eyes that Rutledge turned away.

  He said to Margaret, “Bring your mother water and towels. A brush for her hair. Then put her in that chair—” He gestured to the single chair by the door. “I’ll wait downstairs.”

  “No—!”

  “Mrs. Shaw, for your own sake and your daughter’s—you’re in no state—”

  Nell Shaw stretched out her hand. “No, don’t leave me! You’ve got to help me. I can’t do it all myself. I can’t anymore!”

  “Mrs. Shaw—”

  “What does it matter to them? Janet Cutter is dead. Her son George is dead—It won’t matter to them if the slate is wiped clean for my Ben, and their names are substituted for his!”

  “I can’t perjure myself—”

  “Is it perjury? Look at my girl! Am I to put a dead woman ahead of my living flesh? It could have been that bitch next door! It could have been her as easy as it could have been my Ben! And they can’t hang her, can they? They won’t dig up her corpse and hang her in the prison yard! All you have to do is tell the police that you was wrong, that there’s proof now that she did the murders—”

  “They’ll want to know how she did it—what opportunity she had. Why she should have killed the women—there had to be a reason—”

  “Her son, then! Good God, he’s a suicide, he must have had it on his conscience, and after my Ben was hanged, he couldn’t bear it any longer—he took his own life.” She was on her knees on the mattress, begging. “There’s the locket, you saw it! Love—in the tall chest there, the top drawer! Give it to him and let him take it to the Yard. He can tell them what the truth is, and get the verdict reversed, and clear your father’s name. Give it to him!”

  Margaret went to the drawer and opened it, her hands trembling as she searched among the handkerchiefs and gloves. Finding what she sought, she brought it to Rutledge, her face strained and on the verge of tears again.

  Rutledge opened the handkerchief to look at the contents. The locket fell through his fingers and onto the floor. As he bent to retrieve it, cold metal and stone in his hand, he thought, God forgive me. I don’t know what to do!

  And yet he did. Out of the shadows had come an answer. The only answer he had failed to explore. He had examined the possibility of the Cutters—of Janet Cutter’s dead son—even of Mrs. Shaw herself being the true killer. He had never looked at Ben Shaw, except as a victim. . . .

  As he straightened up, he said, “Mrs. Shaw. Where had your husband hidden this locket?” There was a different note in his voice.

  Hamish said, “’Ware!”

  Rutledge thought she was going to die then.

  “We searched the house,” he said implacably. “We never found it. Where was it?”

  Nell Shaw crumpled before his eyes.

  Covering her face with her hands, she lay back in the bed and thrashed, moaning, from side to side. From an angry demanding harridan, she had become diminished, a woman without spirit and without hope. Margaret ran to her, throwing an accusing glance at him.

  Hamish said, “It canna’ be true—!”

  Rutledge answered grimly, “You weren’t there!”

  He left the room, and went down the stairs. In the kitchen, the remainders of a meal lay on the table, greasy plates, scraps of sausage and bread. He took the kettle, filled it with fresh water, and set it on the stove, then opened cupboards until he found cups and saucers.

  As he took them down, he could see that his hands were shaking.

  Guilt—

/>   He thought then about what Tom Brereton had said about guilt—about the need to work it out.

  But why had Mrs. Shaw suddenly taken it into her head to remove the locket from its hiding place and put it in among Mrs. Cutter’s clothing?

  Why?

  To what end?

  Yes, it would make a difference in her children’s lives as well as her own to clear her husband’s name, but the passion driving her had been ferocious—

  He reviewed everything he knew or had learned about the Shaws. And Margaret’s words came back to him . . .

  “She went next door to help Mr. Cutter as he’d asked, and when she came home she looked sick, as if she was about to lose her dinner. She was that upset, she locked herself in her room. I’ve only known her to do that twice before. The day Papa was taken away, and the day the letter came.”

  “What letter?”

  “I never saw it. But after she read it, she cried for hours. Then she came out of her room and was herself again.”

  The teakettle sang a cheerful note, startling Rutledge back into the present.

  Mrs. Shaw had judged him well, he thought. And with a cleverness born of desperation, she had found the one chink in his armor: his understanding of Ben Shaw’s broken spirit, his fatal willingness to doubt his own judgment.

  Like a tightrope walker fighting for his balance, he had been swayed by the wind of her vehemence, uncertain, unable to ask for help or support from his superiors, a man caught in a dilemma that cast doubt on the one part of his life he needed most to believe in—his career. The perfect foil to Nell Shaw’s intentions.

  But why?

  Hamish said, “She learned that you had survived the war—”

  Rutledge shook his head. It went beyond that.

  He poured three cups of tea when the pot had brewed, and set them on a tray with sugar and milk, then took it upstairs.

  NELL SHAW WAS sitting slumped in the chair by the door as Margaret struggled to make up the bed alone. Rutledge set the tray on top of the tall chest, carrying a cup to her.

  It was hot and sweet, and she drank it thirstily.

  Margaret, with the bed straightened up, sat forlornly on one end of it and sipped at her tea as if afraid it might be poisoned. She looked old, worn, an image of herself far into the future. Rutledge felt sorry for her.

  He said, taking his own cup and going to stand by the window, “I think we need to get to the bottom of this matter.”

  Nell Shaw, drained of emotion, said, “You’ve destroyed us. You know that.”

  “No. That began when your husband murdered three helpless women.”

  “He done them a favor. You don’t know the truth. You don’t know how they lay there day after day, with nobody to talk to, nobody to see to them except my Ben and the old charwoman who cleaned a little and cooked a bit. He’d come home of a night and shake his head with the pity of it. He said, once, ‘It would be a mercy if they was released from this life. I’ve prayed that it would come.’ But it never did.”

  “Where was the locket hidden?”

  “It was pinned to my corset, under my petticoat. In a little sack along with some other money he’d picked up as well.”

  “Why in God’s name did you try to shift the blame to Mrs. Cutter?”

  “I never liked her! And that son of hers, the policeman, he stole more from those houses than my Ben ever did. Some of the possessions listed as missing we never had. But there was no way to prove what we suspected. That bitch betrayed me, to save her precious George, and he went and killed himself from shame. It got her back, a little, for him to die almost the same week as my Ben. I didn’t see any reason why, with both of them dead, I couldn’t use them the way they’d used us!”

  Hamish broke in. “You canna’ be sure that’s the truth, either!”

  Rutledge said, “You could have told one of us—one of the officers here to find evidence—what you suspected.”

  “Not without letting on that we knew which he’d stolen, and which he hadn’t. We was afraid to. George was a policeman—who would have listened to the likes of us?” She raised her head and stared at him. “You can still set this to rights. With a little help, we could still clear my Ben.”

  “Why is it so important to you?”

  “I told you—my children! Look at that girl of mine, and tell me I was wrong!”

  “And what about the letter?”

  For the second time that evening, her face turned gray with shock. Her lips tightened; she said nothing.

  Hamish, already ahead of Rutledge, said, “That letter wasna’ to her—it was to her deid husband!”

  “You might as well tell me,” Rutledge said. “I’ve guessed most of it. Ben’s cousin who went to Australia is coming home, and you thought he might be willing to help you, if you could prove you’d been wronged. . . .”

  She glared angrily at him. “That’s charity!”

  “Then what did this man want?”

  “He didn’t want anything. Neville was dying, and he wrote to Ben to tell him that he’d always admired him for staying home and making a good life for himself here, carrying on the family name with pride. He was ashamed of the way he’d spent his own youth, and he said God had punished him for that, taking his son at Gallipoli. We never even knew he’d married! But he must have, and he took the loss of his son hard. And he wanted to leave his money, all of it, a whole bloody fortune, to Ben—for old times’ sake!”

  28

  HER BLEAK, RED-RIMMED EYES STARED AT RUTLEDGE, DARING him to pity her.

  “Ben predeceased him—” he began.

  “That’s right. You can’t leave money to a dead man. But if I could prove that he’d been wrongfully hanged, if I could show he’d have been alive still if he hadn’t been taken from us, I thought I might stand a chance at the inheritance. Neville didn’t know, you see—he hadn’t kept up with Ben or us, he hadn’t ever heard of Margaret and young Ben. He was leaving it all to Ben, and Ben was dead!”

  “And that’s when you decided to risk claiming you’d found the locket next door, in Mrs. Cutter’s possession.”

  “I was afraid if it all went wrong, the police might think I’d taken it, and I’d be clapped in jail. But then I heard you was back at the Yard, and I thought, if I got to Mr. Rutledge, he might listen to me. With George’s suicide, it was easy to believe Janet Cutter’s son was guilty of something. And with her stroke coming when it did, it would be easy to think she knew more than she should and was guilty of letting Ben die in her son’s place.”

  Hamish said, “Mrs. Shaw nearly succeeded.”

  “It was wrong of you—” Rutledge began.

  “Wrong be damned!” she cried, with a little of her old blazing spirit. “It was my family I cared about. Wouldn’t you fight for yours, if you had to?”

  Hamish reminded him, “You fought for your men—but you didna’ fight for me!”

  Rutledge retorted, “You refused to listen—you preferred to die!”

  Struggling to collect his thoughts, he said aloud, “If you spoke to a lawyer—”

  “And where’s the money for that to come from, I ask you! I could scarcely pay for my way to Marling, much less hire a solicitor who knows his arse from his elbow. I was desperate, and something in your face when I came into your room at the Yard made me think you’d listen. That I could make you believe in Ben.”

  She had nearly done it. She had shaken him to the core, and driven him to listen to her demands, to ask questions, to revive, at least in his own mind, the trial that had left its mark on so many people.

  “It was a near run thing,” Hamish was saying. “With yon Matthew Sunderland ill, and the constable guilty of theft, and Mrs. Cutter knowing what he’d done, it might ha’ turned out differently.”

  “Differently, yes.” Rutledge answered silently. “But it was still Ben Shaw who put the pillows over the faces of defenseless women and smothered them!”

  “Then why did ye no’ uncover the rest of the story
at the time?”

  “Because when George Peterson was taken on, he hadn’t told the Yard that his mother remarried. Nobody knew of his relationship to Mrs. Cutter.”

  “Because he and his stepfather didna’ see eye to eye?”

  It was one explanation. There might have been other reasons . . . Who could say what had tormented George Peterson?

  As if she’d heard Rutledge’s thoughts, Nell Shaw said, “I never knew what possessed George, but something did. He was always looking for something—somewhere to belong. He was like one of them icebergs. You never saw what was below the surface, only the little bit at the top.”

  She looked across at her daughter, forgotten in the anguish of the last hour. Margaret was quietly crying, lost in misery.

  “You shouldn’t have heard any of this, poppet. I’m that sorry.”

  29

  RUTLEDGE LEFT HALF AN HOUR LATER. AS HE CAME OUT into the street, he found Henry Cutter standing by the motorcar, staring up at the Shaw house.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, his face pale and shaken. “I heard such terrible screams. What’s happened?”

  “Mrs. Shaw wasn’t well. Her daughter sent for me.”

  “For the police?” Cutter asked, frowning. “Not the doctor?”

  “He came and went,” Rutledge said. “But this wasn’t within his province.”

  “I don’t think she’s ever got over what happened to Ben.”

  “No.” He was on the point of telling Cutter about the locket. Instead he asked, as if merely curious, “She told me that your stepson also was troubled beyond the ordinary.”

  “I never understood him. Janet claimed I never tried, but he made it too difficult, and I gave up. I thought everything would be better after he’d killed himself. But it wasn’t. It killed my wife, too. That and Shaw’s hanging. She took that hard. She had airs and graces, my wife did. In some ways she should have married Shaw, not me. I’ve always been a plain man.” He looked up at the brightly lit windows again. “Are you sure they’re all right?”

  Rutledge would have liked to tell him the truth, but again he stopped himself. “You might call in the morning, and ask if there’s anything they need.”