A Fearsome Doubt ir-6

by Charles Todd

  “I can’t turn back the clock,” he said, unconsciously repeating her words. “We don’t know how this came into Mrs. Cutter’s possession. Or why. Or, for that matter, when. It’s evidence, yes, but it’s not clear proof.”

  “It’s something to be going on with! If you wasn’t afraid to find out that you are as human as the rest of us and got it wrong.”

  The truth was, he was afraid…

  And at the same time, he knew he was honor-bound to get to the bottom of this allegation.

  Stifling the turmoil that was tearing apart his own mind, Rutledge tried to put into perspective how momentous the finding of this locket must seem to the woman seated in front of him. Providing of course that her story was true But he could see no benefit for her in a lie. That was the key. She had nothing to gain by lying. And there was a driving force about her that couldn’t be counterfeited. It was there in the way she held her body, and in the small, determined eyes.

  He had never liked this woman. From the beginning of the murder inquiry, she had been a thorn in the side of authority. He tried to disregard his dislike now.

  Hamish said, “Aye, she’s an auld besom. But if it were another inspector’s case she was complaining of, what would you do?”

  Rutledge picked up his pen and uncapped it, drawing a sheet of paper forward.

  “Mrs. Shaw. Listen to me. First and foremost, we can’t search the Cutter house on your word alone-”

  “What you’re saying is that my word isn’t good enough-”

  “What I’m saying is that you took the locket from its hiding place. If I send forty men there in an hour’s time, and nothing else turns up-if there’s no more evidence to be found-then it’s your word against Mr. Cutter’s that the locket was in Mrs. Cutter’s belongings. Now or ever.”

  She said stubbornly, “I left the chain where I found it. To mark the place!”

  Rutledge nodded. “I understand that. But the chain could belong to any locket that Mrs. Cutter owned. There’s no one who can say with authority that the chain my men discover actually belongs to the Satterthwaite locket. Mrs. Satterthwaite, I remind you, is dead-”

  “There’s another side to this coin, Inspector. That I’m telling the truth.” Her eyes met his squarely. “And you’re unwilling to hear it.”

  She had backed him around again to his own possible guilt.

  He had always taken a certain pride in his knowledge of people. He knew how to watch for the small movements of the body or shifts in expression that supported or contradicted what he was told. Only a very few people lied well.

  And either Nell Shaw was among them-or she believed implicitly in what she was saying.

  Hamish said, “Aye. If you canna’ satisfy her, she’ll go o’wer your head.”

  And there were sound reasons why that must not happen. Rutledge was not the only officer who would be brought down if the Shaw case was shown to be flawed. Even if her accusations bore only a semblance of truth, the Yard was not immune from politics or personal vendettas.

  “I’m not sending you away,” he told her. “I’m searching for a practical way of getting around the rules I have to follow. I’ll give you a chit for the locket-”

  “No, never!” she declared, shoving it back in her purse and clutching that to her bosom with both arms. “It’s all I’ve got.”

  He put down the pen. “Then you must let me have a few days to look again at the file, and then to decide how best to go about this problem. I don’t have the authority to open this case myself. And it won’t do you much good to make enemies-for you will if you begin to annoy my own superiors, or Mr. Cutter. It’s to your advantage and mine to proceed with caution. Have you spoken to the barrister who defended your husband?”

  “I’ve got no money. He won’t give me the time of day.”

  “I make no promises, mind you. But I give you my word that I’ll do my best. If I can satisfy myself that there’s just cause to reopen the case, I’ll tell you so and give you the name of someone at the Home Office who will listen to you.”

  “And if you can’t?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Then you’re free to speak to anyone else here at the Yard.”

  “That’s fair. I never asked more.” There was a gleam of gratification in her dark eyes. “I’ve waited this long. A few more days won’t matter, will they?”

  5

  After Rutledge had seen Mrs. Shaw into a cab, he sat in his chair and stared out the window at the bare branches of trees that stood out stark and almost pleading against the colorless sky.

  He couldn’t have been wrong about Ben Shaw…

  And yet he had been badly shaken by that locket, and Mrs. Shaw’s ferocious defense of her husband’s innocence had rung with conviction. If he had been so certain of the man’s guilt before, how had that altered so easily?

  Hamish said, “Your wits are scattered, man, ye’re no’ thinking clearly!”

  What if he had been wrong Hamish said, “It isna’ the end of the world-”

  Rutledge retorted angrily, “It was a man’s life. You weren’t there-”

  Hamish agreed readily. “I was safe in Scotland then, and alive.. ..” After a moment he added, “She willna’ be put off.”

  Nor was he the sort of man who could quietly bury truth under a layer of lies. Rutledge faced himself now, and with that a possibility that appalled him. Like it or not, he must get to the bottom of this question of Ben Shaw’s guilt.

  Like it or not, he must find the answer, for his own soul’s comfort.

  Hamish growled, “It isna’ a matter of comfort, it’s a sair question for the conscience.” His Covenanter heritage had always projected his world in severe black and white. It was what had brought him to defy the Army and face execution rather than compromise. His strength-and his destruction.

  Ignoring the voice in his head, Rutledge considered the next step. How did one go about dredging up the past, without destroying what had been built upon it?

  This was not the first time he’d dealt with families whose anger was as destructive as it was futile, when not even a jury’s verdict could persuade them of a loved one’s guilt. But few of these families had ever brought forward what was in their eyes fresh proof of innocence.

  And on that slim balance, he was forced to confront his actions of more than six years ago.

  Hamish said, “I saw a magician once. When the troop train was held up in London, he came to entertain us. I couldna’ be certain what was real and what was false.”

  Rutledge suddenly found a memory of Ben Shaw’s defeated, exhausted face, when the prison warders brought him to the gallows. Even if he could clear the man’s name, there was no way he could restore the man’s life. Shaw was dead…

  Like so many others. The world seemed filled with phantoms, his mind shattered by them.

  Suddenly he could feel himself slipping back in the trenches, the Battle of the Somme in July 1916-the watershed of his madness.

  Hamish’s voice brought him sharply back to the dingy confines of his office at Scotland Yard, with its low shelves, its grimy windows, the smell of old paint and dusty corners heavy in the passages. With the sound of footsteps harsh on the wooden floors outside his door, and brief snatches of conversations that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

  Rutledge rubbed his face, trying to remember what Hamish had said to him. And the voice repeated, “It’s no’ unlikely that Shaw himself gave the locket to the neighbor’s wife. A love token. Mrs. Shaw willna’ care to hear that.”

  “With that telling inscription on the back? Besides, mourning jewelry isn’t the most romantic gift, is it? When Mrs. Cutter’s own husband was very much alive.”

  “A promise, no doubt, that he wouldna’ be alive much longer. It could explain why she kept it.”

  “You didn’t know Shaw,” Rutledge reminded Hamish.

  But then, had he?

  All the same, Rutledge did know his superior, Chief Superintendent Bowles. And therein l
ay a hidden snare that could be as explosive as a mine.

  The Shaw investigation had brought a promotion to the then Chief Inspector Bowles, who had used the murders to political and professional advantage. Bowles had kept himself very much in the public eye, repeatedly promising the newspapers that this vicious killer would be brought to justice with all possible speed, assuring frightened neighbors of the murdered women that everything possible was being done, publicly pressing his men to greater and greater effort.

  It was Philip Nettle who had stumbled on the connection that linked the three victims-the fact that each had at one time or another employed the services of the same carpenter when work needed to be done. A trusted man, a caring man, one who had trimmed the wicks of lamps, brought in coal for the fires, oiled locks on the doors, kept window sashes running smoothly, and generally made himself indispensable. And then betrayed their trust.

  The discovery of the murderer had once more pitched Chief Inspector Bowles into the forefront of public attention. As Philip Nettle lay dying in hospital, Bowles had made half a dozen speeches that cleverly fostered the notion that it was his own intuition that had come up with the crimes’ solution. He had given interviews to magazines and newspapers. And he had delivered the eulogy at Philip Nettle’s funeral, praising the man rather than the police officer, kissing the grieving widow’s cheek with marked condescension. She had regarded him with bitterness, convinced that Bowles’s callous demands for results had prevented her husband from making a timely visit to his doctor.

  Sergeant Gibson, reading the caption under yet another photograph in a newspaper, had said sourly within Rutledge’s hearing, “You’d bloody think the man was standing for Parliament!”

  Sergeant Wilkerson had answered, “Aye, there’s hope he will, and leave the Yard for good!”

  To order the Shaw file brought to his office on the heels of a visit by Mrs. Shaw would ring alarm bells at the Yard. Old Bowels would hear about it before the day was out, and send someone down the passage to ferret out what was going on. Hanged felons were finished business. Even if Mrs. Shaw found a hundred new pieces of evidence.

  The Yard, like the Army, demanded obedience and rigorously followed the chain of command.

  “Aye, it’s as guid an excuse as any,” Hamish taunted, “for doing nothing.”

  “Or a damned good reason for exercising caution,” Rutledge countered, getting up from his chair.

  He went himself to the vast cavern where records were kept and, after some hunting among dusty cabinets, located the folder he was after.

  With his office door shut, and no one but Hamish to observe him, Rutledge opened the file and began to read.

  At the end of it, he sat back in his chair and watched the reflection of pale November light from his windows as it played across the ugly walls.

  The sheets of paper and notes and conclusions that had been meticulously written seemed-in the light of Mrs. Shaw’s discovery-to lack conviction now. And yet in 1912, they had rung with truth No one had questioned one Henry Cutter, or his wife-except in regard to the comings and goings of Ben Shaw, his reputation in the neighborhood, and whether he was capable of killing anyone. The residents on either side of the Shaw house had had very little to say about their neighbor. They hadn’t seen suspicious goings-on and they hadn’t noticed any changes in Ben Shaw’s manner after the first murder or the last.

  Mrs. Cutter-her given name was Janet-had unexpectedly provided one important clue. The two Shaw children had been taken out of the local school and put into better ones, a small private school for the son, and an academy for the daughter. An inheritance, Mrs. Shaw had claimed, from Shaw’s late uncle. Records turned up no such inheritance-the uncle had died in debt twenty years before, leaving his young son no choice but to emigrate. It was not long before Inspector Nettle was digging deeper into Ben Shaw’s sudden financial windfall.

  This had been the point on which the evidence had turned. The Shaws had been a struggling family until just after the first body was found. A Mrs. Winslow. Many of her belongings had been unaccounted for, but it was believed at the time of her death that most of these had been sold to enable her to continue to live independently in her own home. It was not until the second murder, of Mrs. Satterthwaite, that the police had begun to draw a wider net and stumbled on the Shaws. It was the third murder that had concentrated attention on Ben Shaw’s activities on the three nights in question.

  Especially after Mrs. Cutter had provided the most important reason to concentrate there. But no one had wondered why she was so cooperative…

  Could it have been to her advantage?

  A shocking thought. That he could have sent an innocent man to the gallows on the basis of a woman’s perverted evidence. Rutledge closed his eyes against the pale light, looking back instead into the darkness of the past.

  He had been so sure of his evidence and Nettle’s. So thoroughly convinced of the man’s guilt was he that his certainty was palpable in the courtroom. A well-thought-out investigation, the judge had applauded in his summation to the jury. For there had been no reason to connect the Cutters with the three women. Certainly, no evidence in that direction!

  What could have been Henry Cutter’s motive for murder? His style of living hadn’t altered, but the Shaws’ had.

  After the sudden death of Inspector Nettle, Rutledge had interviewed the neighbors again, including Henry and Janet Cutter. Nettle had been in increasingly severe pain for several days, covering it with wry humor and massive doses of cathartics. He often scrawled his notes in a shaking hand that was hard to follow. Rutledge had left nothing to chance. He had backtracked to substantiate each fact.

  Mrs. Cutter had not had kind words to say for Mrs. Shaw (“a nosy and overbearing woman with few saving graces”), but she claimed that Mr. Shaw had never demonstrated any vicious tendencies that would account for his killing elderly women. “Kind to animals, and all that,” she’d said to Rutledge, bewildered. “A good father, too, and he put up with that wife of his when no one else would. Always after him to do better with his life, provide for his family. It doesn’t seem right that the smallest sign of wickedness didn’t show in his face or his ways! How are we to know, I ask you, if there’s no sign to warn us?”

  And then she had added, almost as an afterthought, that last damning sentence. “And he did provide for his children. It hasn’t been six months since they were put in better schools, never mind the cost!” She had repeated it for Rutledge’s edification. “Not six months!”

  The first murder had occurred just seven months before…

  Henry Cutter had described Ben Shaw as a man clever with his hands, always called on by his neighbors when something failed to work. “And I’ve never known him to take a ha’penny for what he done. Never saw him drunk, nor known him to strike his wife. It seems queer that he’d kill helpless old ladies for what he could scavenge in their houses…”

  “What he could scavenge” had been over a hundred pounds’ worth of jewelry and small, portable treasures that could, in the right quarter, be sold without questions asked.

  But Henry Cutter, in the notes, had called Mrs. Shaw a kind and loving wife, “and Ben would have done anything for her, he cared that much for her.”

  Kill and steal to give her the kind of life she goaded him into providing? Rutledge had, at the time, wondered if Mrs. Shaw wasn’t equally guilty for hounding her husband to desperate measures to keep her satisfied. But there was no law in English jurisprudence to cover that crime, even if she had.

  Certainly their house had shown an influx of money that their combined income-his as a carpenter and hers as a shopkeeper’s assistant-couldn’t explain. But there were the small jobs that Ben Shaw did, for it seemed that he did charge when his services were sought by those well able to pay. He had never kept an accounting of what he’d earned in that fashion. His wife had probably spent most of it on clothes for the children, better schools, and certainly better food than their neighbors en
joyed.

  Someone had told Rutledge-a neighbor two houses away-that she’d heard that Ben Shaw had come from better stock than his wife, who “had pulled him down, if you want the truth. Common, she is,” determined though she was to give her children opportunities to rise above their station. “I’ll say that for Nell Shaw, she never tried to hold either of them back, on her own account!”

  Rutledge would have put his money on Mrs. Shaw as the killer, if there had been the slimmest chance of that. He hadn’t liked her, for one thing, and he’d felt some sympathy for her husband after enduring her sharp tongue in the early stages of the investigation. Nell Shaw had been angry, defending her family like an enraged tigress, accusing the police of failing at their own duty and having nothing better to do than badger a poor man into night terrors.

  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.”