A Fearsome Doubt

by Charles Todd

  It was typical of her to have planned an afternoon that would please both her guests. Elizabeth was poring over the photographs with exclamations of delight.

  Rutledge, as keen an observer of human nature as Melinda Crawford, wondered if she had also set out to recapture a time far removed from war on this day of all days—as if she knew what was going through his mind. It was an extraordinary kindness.

  He smiled and tried to remember that sunny afternoon for her sake, and succeeded in making her happy. Whether he had succeeded in convincing her that she had chased away all the dark shadows he couldn’t tell.

  Hamish said, “I wouldna’ wager my pay on it.”

  ON HIS RETURN to London on the evening of Wednesday, twelve November, Rutledge went directly to the Yard instead of his flat. At this hour, in a city the size of London, the police presence at the Yard was as strong as it was at midday, and he was greeted jovially as he strode down the passage to his office.

  Sergeant Gibson, whose irascible manner concealed a very clever mind, said, “’Ware the wolf at the door!” as he passed.

  And Inspector Raeburn paused to warn, “If you’ve come for peace and quiet, better leave now.”

  Indeed, there was an air of orchestrated urgency about the place. Another inspector stopped long enough to say, “Old Bowels scents promotion. He’s been summoned to the Home Office tomorrow, possibly something to do with that rash of fires in Slough. They found a body when the ashes cooled this morning, and the hope is it’s the fire-setter, not a hapless victim. Seven firms have been burned out so far, and we’re frantically searching for a link connecting them.”

  “You’ll find it soon enough,” Rutledge responded as he reached his office. With so many men out of work and wages very low as Britain tried to regain her capacity for peacetime industry, bitterness often turned to trouble, and labor disputes became volatile. Fire setting was not uncommon.

  Hamish pointed out, referring to the Shaw investigation, “It isna’ a good time to bring up the past.”

  It wasn’t. Rutledge shut his door against the mayhem and sat down at his desk. He had made notes from the Shaw file, and with luck there would be a few free hours in the morning to visit one or two of Mrs. Shaw’s neighbors. Discreetly.

  He drew the sheets of paper out of his drawer and prepared to read through them again, seeking any missed clue. He had given himself two days to find a sense of perspective about the case. Instead, other emotions had driven it from his mind. And yet, with the commemoration of the Armistice safely behind him, almost as if turning a leaf in a mental book, he felt a return to a sense of balance.

  Hamish, reflecting Rutledge’s tiredness from the drive out of Kent, doubted there would be anything worthwhile to be found in his notes. “For ye read them on Sunday, and you’re no’ so puir a policeman that you couldna’ see it was all trim and proper then.”

  Still, Rutledge persevered.

  But the pages were not in proper order. And an extraneous letter, an invitation to a retirement dinner for another officer, was in among them.

  It had been lying on his blotter Sunday when he had walked out of the room. In plain sight.

  He stared at the sheets in his hand, trying to remember how he had left them. Hamish was right about one thing—he wasn’t so poor a policeman that he would mix up his files like this. He had learned early on in his career that a meticulous attention to detail was essential to giving evidence in court. A muddled record of any investigation was a death knell—the defense would swoop down on the policeman like an eagle after prey, and tear him apart.

  Pages two and five had been reversed. He sorted through them again. One. Five. Three. Four. Two. And just after five, that extraneous letter.

  A thought struck him then. And with it came cold alarm.

  Someone had been in his office and gone through his desk in his absence.

  What had they been looking for? And in their search, had they taken note of this sheaf of pages—or simply set it aside while hunting for another file?

  More to the point, what present inquiry of his was urgent enough that new information couldn’t wait three days for his return?

  He thumbed through the copied notes again. He had nothing to hide. The original file had been returned to its cabinet, after he had abstracted the information he wanted. He had disturbed no one—he had left no particular trail.

  In fact, he had simply tried to be circumspect, knowing Chief Superintendent Bowles would be the first to be annoyed by any resurrection of his own past—the inquiry that had begun his climb to his present position.

  No. It wasn’t Bowles; there would be no reason for him to come to Rutledge’s office. If he’d needed a folder, he would have sent someone else to locate it.

  And whoever it was, no doubt in a hurry, had sifted through the drawer’s contents with only one thing on his mind: satisfying Bowles.

  Rutledge went through his entire desk with great care. As far as he could determine, nothing was missing. The files he was presently working on were as he’d left them. Whatever had been taken must also have been returned.

  Coincidence.

  It was the only explanation. . . .

  But neither he nor Hamish found it satisfactory.

  10

  THE NEXT MORNING RUTLEDGE REPORTED FOR DUTY, AND then at midday, after a meeting ended earlier than expected, he found his way again to the street of soot-blackened houses where the Shaws had lived their entire married life. Winter sun splashed the roofs and walls, bringing out every flaw, like an aging woman who had ventured out too early into the merciless morning light. Even the mortar of the bricks seemed engrained with coal smoke, and in the windows, white lace curtains mocked it.

  Number 14 was very like its neighbors, upright and lacking any individuality that would offer a hint about the occupants within. The iron knockers on several doors were Victorian whimsy, mass-produced rather than a reflection of personal taste. One house possessed an urn-shaped stone pot that had held pansies in the summer, their withered stems falling over the sides like a bedraggled veil, but most of the street seemed not to care about the image it presented. The white lace curtains were a last pitiful attempt at pride, but there was no money to spend on frivolous ornamentation.

  Rutledge left his motorcar a block away and continued on foot, hoping to attract as little notice as possible. But now and again curtains twitched as the women of Sansom Street inspected the stranger with suspicion. He was as much an outsider here as he might have been on a street in Budapest—outsiders seldom brought anything but trouble. Particularly well-dressed ones with an air of authority.

  He walked on to the end of the street where a church stood like a beacon, its early Victorian tower rising above the dingy roofs. The door needed paint, and the stained-glass windows were grimy, but when Rutledge stepped inside and opened the door to the nave, he was surprised to find the interior as bright and polished as any church in Westminster. His footsteps echoed on the flagstone as he walked down the aisle, and something large and black rose like a goblin from the chairs below the pulpit.

  A scarecrow of a man, his robes flapping and his face flushed, called, “Good morning! Is there any way I can help you?”

  The rector rose to his full height, a feather duster in his bony hand and a cobweb across his chest like a lace collar. His white hair, in disarray, looked like a ruff. The smile was genuine, if wry.

  Rutledge said, gesturing around him, “This is truly a sanctuary.”

  “Well, yes, we try to manage that. My wife had a committee meeting this morning, and I’m frightfully poor at dusting, but one tries.” He paused. “What brings you to St. Agnes?”

  “Curiosity, I suppose,” Rutledge said slowly. “I understand you buried a parishioner not long ago. A Mrs. Cutter, Janet Cutter.” It was a guess, and apparently on the mark.

  “It’s been three months since she was laid to rest,” the rector said, riffling the feather duster between his hands and sneezing briskly. �
�Her husband has taken it hard. Not being used to fending for himself, everything at sixes and sevens. Are you acquainted with the Cutters?”

  “I’ve met them. My name is Rutledge. I had occasion to speak with them—some six years ago.”

  The rector nodded. “That would be near enough to the time that Ben Shaw was arrested. I was at the trial when the verdict was brought in. I recall seeing you there.” He left the words like a gauntlet between them.

  Rutledge smiled. “Yes. You have a very good memory.”

  “In my calling—as in yours, I’m sure—a good memory is a necessity.” He put the duster down behind the steps to the pulpit and said again, “What brings you here?”

  Rutledge took a chair in the first row. “I don’t know. Recently I received information that intrigued me. And like a good policeman, I follow my instincts.”

  “Then Mrs. Shaw took my advice,” the rector responded. “I wondered if she would.”

  It was unexpected. Rutledge asked, “She came to see you?”

  “Yes, she was quite disturbed. She wasn’t sure what to do, and I told her to begin with the police. Not with Henry Cutter. It was, after all, a police matter.” The rector’s long, narrow face gave little away. He took another chair, moving it slightly to face Rutledge.

  Their voices echoed in the emptiness of the church, and Rutledge had an uneasy feeling that if Hamish spoke, the words would echo as well. A shiver passed through him.

  The rector was saying, “Toward the end of her life, Janet Cutter was a woman with something on her conscience. It kept her restless, even with the morphine for the pain. But she never spoke to me about whatever worried her, and I have no reason to believe it was murder. I tell you that because I don’t want you to jump to conclusions the evidence fails to support.”

  “Did you believe Ben Shaw was a murderer?” Rutledge asked bluntly.

  The rector turned away. “I don’t know the answer to that. Truthfully. Ben was not a willful murderer. It wasn’t in his nature. But few of us know what temptation will do, when we’re faced with it and we think there are no witnesses to it. He wanted more for his family than he could afford to give them. Did that lead him to theft and murder? I would like to think it didn’t. But then the facts were quite clear. Still, he could have been led. The opportunity was there. And the temptation.”

  Rutledge picked up the thread he was following. “The women were old, infirm. It was a kindness to end their pain and their loneliness . . .”

  The rector shrugged. “Who can say what went through that poor man’s mind?”

  “If Shaw wasn’t guilty of murder, who was? His wife? Mrs. Cutter?”

  The rector turned tired but knowing eyes on Rutledge. “I don’t speculate on guilt. I try to bring comfort without judgment.”

  “I’m a policeman. Judgment is my trade.”

  “So it is.” The rector rose. “It has been interesting to speak with you. May I offer a word of advice? Not as a man of the cloth, but as someone thirty years your senior, and therefore perhaps—a little wiser?”

  “By all means,” Rutledge answered, rising as well.

  “Walk carefully. You can’t bring Ben Shaw back from the dead. He’s long since faced a judgment higher than yours or mine. Better for him to be a martyr than to open wounds you cannot close again.”

  Rutledge considered him for a moment. “Yet you sent Nell Shaw to me.”

  The rector smiled, a youthful look replacing the somberness. “Yes, Inspector. It’s my earnest hope that you won’t fail either of us.”

  OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, Hamish said sourly, “He prefers riddles to plain speech.”

  “No. I think he’s uncertain of his duty, and passed the problem on to me.”

  “Or knows a truth he willna’ own up to.”

  It was a cogent remark.

  NO ONE ANSWERED Rutledge’s knock at Number 14, the Shaw home. He left, walking back to the motorcar, deep in thought. He had no excuse to call on Cutter, and no right. Henry Cutter would be well within his rights to complain to the Yard of harassment if he found a policeman on his doorstep asking questions about an old murder, and his wife’s possible role in it. But there was another source of information. . . .

  Back at the Yard, Rutledge called Sergeant Bennett into his office. Bennett had been a constable when Ben Shaw was tried, and he’d known the people on Sansom Street better perhaps than they knew themselves. A sharp mind and a sharper memory had brought him to the attention of the Yard and seen him promoted.

  Bennett was in early middle age now, of medium height and with nothing to set him apart from the ordinary man on the street he interviewed time and again. It had been his hallmark, this ability to fit in. Rutledge had seen it at work often enough. The question was, where did Bennett’s loyalties lie at the Yard? There was no way of guessing.

  Hamish warned, “Then you’d best walk carefully.”

  Rutledge began circumspectly, “This is in confidence, Bennett. But I’ve been looking back at the Shaw case. It seems one of the missing pieces of jewelry may have come to light.”

  Bennett’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Indeed, sir!” Curiosity was bright in his eyes. “I’d a feeling he’d chucked them in the river!”

  Rutledge was not about to enlighten him. “I want you to think back to the investigation—before I came into the picture. Philip Nettle was in charge of the case. Was there any suspicion that someone other than Shaw had had access to the murdered women? Mrs. Winslow. Mrs. Satterthwaite. Mrs. Tompkins.”

  “There was a charwoman who did for two of them,” Bennett said slowly, digging back into his memory. “Not likely to smother anybody, frail as she was. No old-age pension for the likes of her—she worked until the day before she died. The victims went to the same church—St. Agnes, that was—when they could get about on their own. We looked at that connection closely, sir, but it went nowhere. Nor did they seem to have more than a nodding acquaintance with each other. But as it turned out, Shaw came to meet them through the church, after a fashion. The rector asked him to make some repairs for Mrs. Winslow, and on the heels of that, Shaw was contacted directly about the other two.”

  Which, as Hamish was pointing out, might explain the rector’s unwillingness to involve himself in the past. . . .

  “Shaw was a member of the same church?”

  “He’d repaired the vestry door after a storm warped it, worked on the footing for the baptismal font when it cracked. But he wasn’t local, you know. Grew up in Kensington, and still had ties there, even attending services there in preference to St. Agnes. Mrs. Shaw was said to like that very well; she’d not cared for the local church, seeing herself as above it.” His mouth twisted. It was apparent he had not been among Nell Shaw’s admirers. “But after his marriage, Shaw appeared to have severed ties with his family. Or they severed theirs with him.”

  “Mrs. Shaw must have been a member of St. Agnes at some time. As I recall, she’d grown up two streets over from Sansom.”

  “Had been a member as a girl, yes, sir. There’s a story that was set about, that she went into service in Kensington, and married the son of the house. The truth was, she worked in a corset shop and took a purchase round to the house one day, for his mother. The mother wasn’t at home. When Ben told his future wife that, bold as brass didn’t she claim she was feeling faint and could she come in and sit for a few minutes?”

  Intrigued, Rutledge asked, “How did you discover all this?” It hadn’t been included in the written reports.

  “It was told me by the neighbor’s wife, Mrs. Cutter. I discounted it until I spoke to a neighbor of Shaw’s mother—she was still living in the same house—and she confirmed the corset version.” Bennett looked pleased with himself, rocking back on his heels. “Still, that had no bearing on the murders.” It was an afterthought, the policeman overriding the man.

  “What was your opinion of the helpful Mrs. Cutter?”

  “Now, there was a deep one! Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, bu
t she’d just let slip a bit of the story, see, and then wait for you to pry the rest out of her. As if she was reluctant to finish what she’d begun.”

  Rutledge had met others of Mrs. Cutter’s ilk in his career.

  “Did she know the three dead women?”

  “Odd that you should ask that, sir,” Bennett answered, scratching his dark chin. “She swore she didn’t. But she went to that same church, didn’t she? Had done, for twenty or more years.”

  Rutledge smiled. “Any chance that she might have been tempted to murder them? After all, her situation was hardly better than the Shaws.”

  Bennett considered the question as he studied Rutledge. “As to that, I can’t say. But Mr. Nettle, God rest his soul, remarked once, ‘I’d not care to be in Mr. Cutter’s shoes, if he strayed too far from hearth and home!’ ”

  Interested, Rutledge asked, “And had he strayed? Or been tempted to stray, do you think?”

  “He was the only one defended Mrs. Shaw. Most of the street couldn’t abide the woman. I was never sure what to make of that, to tell you the truth, sir! Except that she was a strong-natured woman. That sort often attract weak men.”

  AS HE WAS leaving the Yard for the day, Rutledge found himself thinking about Bennett’s last comment. He wished there was a viable excuse for calling on Cutter, but without making his interest in the Shaw case too apparent, there was nothing he could do at this early stage. As Hamish had warned him several times that day, he ought to watch his step. Bennett was very likely trustworthy, but he was also ambitious. And Rutledge had learned from his first day at the Yard that ambition ran rampant in the passageways and offices.