A Fearsome Doubt

by Charles Todd

  Cutter said doubtfully, “I don’t know . . .”

  Rutledge moved around him to crank the motorcar and then climbed behind the wheel. “No. I don’t expect you do,” he said in resignation and, after a moment, drove away.

  HE STOPPED AT the end of the quiet street, and rubbed his face with his hands. His eyes burned, his very soul felt dry and warped.

  Remembering the question that Brereton asked him—about the secrets he uncovered in people’s lives, and how he dealt with them—he thought, I can’t pass judgment on what Nell Shaw wanted to do.

  Hamish replied, “Her husband sowed the wind, and she reaped the whirlwind.” It was a very black-and-white interpretation of tragedy. And, in its way, true.

  Rutledge dropped his hands to the wheel again. “I’ll speak to Lawrence Hamilton. He might be able to help her.”

  “It’s no’ your business. The murders in Kent are.”

  The murders in Kent—

  He ought to be pleased that he hadn’t been wrong in his judgment of Ben Shaw. But that was no consolation. Nor did it offer insight into these other deaths, or a sense of purpose and renewed dedication. There was only emptiness.

  Judgment had its well of sorrow.

  And compassion had its pitfalls.

  All the same, he was glad he hadn’t walked away from Nell Shaw, as he might have done. It would have been the coward’s way.

  For a moment he considered going to his sister’s house in the city, and staying the night there. It would offer him peace and a little comfort.

  But before the evening was over, he was afraid he’d blurt out Raleigh Masters’s accusation about Frances and Richard Mayhew. And that was not to be borne tonight.

  Instead he turned toward Kent and his empty hotel room, where only Hamish shared his mind. That was where he ought to be.

  IN THE EVENT, there was no sleep to be had.

  Dowling had left a message under his door.

  The Chief Constable called tonight after you left, wanting to speak with you. He believes there’s sufficient evidence against this Dutchman to charge him with the murders. It’s out of our hands—

  Rutledge read the words again and then crumpled the sheet of paper into a ball.

  Damn them all! he thought.

  Five minutes later, instead of trying to sleep in his bed, he was walking to the police station and asking the constable on duty for the key to the prisoner’s cell.

  If Hauser had been asleep, he showed no signs of it as Rutledge unlocked the door.

  “Wait, I’ll find the lamp,” the German said, and after a moment light bloomed in the dark room, shadows falling across Rutledge’s face.

  “Good God, man, you look worse than I do!” Hauser exclaimed.

  “I live an exciting life. As you will, shortly. The Chief Constable is preparing to charge you with the murders of three men.”

  “On your evidence?”

  “There’s damned little of that. No, on circumstantial evidence.”

  “There’s wine in the cellars. But there’s no laudanum. I poured that out, before I left the house yesterday morning, and threw the bottle into a field on my way into Marling.”

  Rutledge laughed bitterly. “I never meant for it to convict you.”

  “No. I know you didn’t. I’m beginning to get the measure of you.”

  “I wish I could say the same for you,” Rutledge answered.

  “The problem is, you’re an honest man. And you know that I am not. I am safe in believing you. But you may find yourself in trouble if you believe me.”

  “Exactly. Did you kill those men? There are no witnesses here. Not even outside the door. And any confession is your word against mine. A good barrister could claim that I had very good reasons to want to see you convicted.”

  “Elizabeth? God, I hope she won’t come into this!”

  “She has already. Dowling has found out that she lunched with you at the hotel one day and has been seen several times speaking to you.”

  “They will say I used her, to buy respectability. Yes. All right, if you want me to swear I’m innocent, I shall. On my brother’s soul.”

  His face was sober, the blue eyes intense in the lamplight.

  Hamish pressed, “Do you believe him?”

  Rutledge answered, “Does it matter?” Aloud, he added, “Tell me, does this cup of yours exist?”

  “There are records in my family. Letters. I can probably prove it was with me during the first years of the war, if someone can track down the men serving under me. But that would lead to the truth that my brother died after the cup was taken from me. It gives me a reason for murdering ex-soldiers from Kent who were in the unit that captured me. Better to believe I was here searching my family connection with England.”

  “You’ve made a tangle of your life.”

  “So I have,” Hauser answered regretfully. “But then I expected to be gone in a few days. Find Ridger, demand the cup be returned, and home again. It seemed quite simple, when I borrowed my cousin’s papers.”

  Rutledge turned back to the door. “Is there anything—anything at all you can tell me about these dead men?”

  Hauser rubbed his jaw with the tips of his fingers, feeling the beard there. “I’ve thought of little else shut away in here. Elizabeth was right, you know. I should have taken the train to London and the next boat to Holland.”

  “It would help if you’d seen something suspicious out there wandering around in the dark.”

  “I couldn’t even identify the man who stabbed me! But think about this. If you offer a man a drink that is drugged, a drink he’s not accustomed to—this wine of yours—how would you go about it?”

  “I’d have a drink first myself. To show the bottle was safe.”

  “That’s because you’re aware that it’s drugged. No. You would offer him the wine to keep out the cold. You may have driven these roads, but you haven’t walked them long after dark, as I did. At first the exercise warms you, and then you begin to feel tired. Your shoulders ache, and then your face grows cold, and your hands. The feet last. You’d be glad of a drink by and by. I cursed myself for not bringing a flask with me.”

  It was an interesting approach.

  “All right. Anything else?”

  Hauser yawned. “You’re the policeman. You’ll think of something.”

  RUTLEDGE SLEPT HARD. When he awoke to a cold and raw Thursday morning, he lay in his bed, trying to bring his mind to bear on the day’s work ahead.

  As he shaved he sorted through all the possible motives that he had uncovered—Hauser’s revenge for Ridger’s actions; guilt; compassion; and a pure and callous evil. Not the work of a madman, nor of a passionate man, but of a wary one.

  What drove ordinary people to the point of murder?

  He considered the three women who had been married to the victims.

  Had there been some collusion among them? To rid themselves of a husband who had become a stranger and a burden they hadn’t bargained for in the glamorous, exciting days of sending a soldier off to fight the Hun?

  If so, they had concealed it very well.

  And yet Mrs. Taylor had called her husband a stranger. Mrs. Webber had confessed to Rutledge that her husband had been unfaithful in France. Mrs. Bartlett spoke of being afraid to be alone, but perhaps she preferred it in some objective and well-disguised corner of her mind.

  How easy would it be to kill your own husband? Or had they drawn lots, each taking on the responsibility for a man not their own?

  Was that why the deaths had occurred on a dark road at night? Was the wine a gamble that had sucked the victim into conspiring at his own death?

  “Ye’re avoiding yon Crawford woman—”

  “I’m doing what I have been sent here to do—”

  “Oh, aye—”

  “Then I’ll talk to Mrs. Crawford. I won’t destroy a friendship on a whim.”

  AS IT HAPPENED, Rutledge’s first item of business was a brief encounter with Lawren
ce Hamilton.

  They had met in the triangular square within touching distance of the Cavalier’s broad back.

  “What brings you to Marling at this hour?” Rutledge asked after greeting him.

  Hamilton shrugged. “An errand of mercy, I expect. Elizabeth has asked me to act for this man Dowling is holding for the murders.”

  “Indeed!”

  “I’m not happy about it. But Elizabeth was adamant. And distraught. Do you know what this is all about? Lydia is very worried, I can tell you!”

  “It’s Elizabeth’s place to answer that, not mine. The man Dowling is holding is trying to keep her out of it.” He carefully avoided giving Hauser a name.

  “What’s between them? How serious is it?” Hamilton prodded.

  “There’s nothing between them as far as I know. I think Elizabeth is—infatuated.”

  “Yes, I gathered that. And the man?”

  “He’s not what you expect. In other circumstances—who knows?”

  “Well. Damn the war, anyway! If Richard had come home, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  As he started to drive on toward the station, Rutledge laid a hand on the car. “I’ve a favor of my own to ask.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A Mrs. Shaw. London, Sansom Street. She’s got no money, and probably no hope of any. It’s about a will. She needs someone to act on her behalf, to protect her children’s interests.”

  Hamilton chuckled. “You’re a dangerous man, Rutledge, do you realize that? I haven’t known you a month, and now I’m dragged into a murder case and asked to take on a questionable will.”

  Rutledge smiled, and it touched his eyes, lighting them from within. “Yes, well, we’re neither of us in the law for peace of mind.”

  “Richard always said you were a philosopher.” With that he drove on, leaving his motorcar in the hotel yard.

  AS HE WALKED through the gate up to the Webbers’ door, Rutledge found himself thinking of Peter and his younger sister. What would become of them if their mother was a murderess?

  Would they suffer as the Shaw children had done? Or were there relatives to take them in and give them comfort?

  This was the distasteful part of his work. On the other hand, who had spoken up for the dead men? Who had heard their voices? Dowling was more concerned with a killer on his patch than he was with men who had slipped into oblivion. They were a blot on his record, and one to be removed. . . .

  Rutledge knocked lightly on the door.

  It was Monday morning, and Susan Webber, sleeves rolled up, was elbow deep in her tubs. She greeted him with surprise, and said, drying her arms on her apron, “I’m just finishing the wash.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt. I must ask a few more questions.”

  She led him into the room where they had talked before, sitting stiffly in a chair facing him.

  Hamish said, “You’d think she had a guilty conscience. . . .”

  But Rutledge put her nervousness down to talking to the police at all.

  “You told me you couldn’t think of anyone who might harm them, your husband or the other men. And you were not prepared to believe your husband had killed himself.”

  “Yes, that’s right. What for? Kenny knew we had little enough, with him alive!”

  “You’d managed throughout the war without him. Perhaps it would be easier to go on that way.”

  She stared at him. “Bringing up two children, without a man? Go and speak with Bobby Nester’s wife! He died of the gas, and she’s making do as best she can. She’d dreaded the day when he was gone, and she’d got nothing. And nobody! Or try talking with my Peter, when he wants to leave school and help me. And I’m telling him that schooling is his only way out of this life. People have been good to us, and I’m not denying it. Kenny would have been proud of that. But it’s not the same. It’ll never be the same again. Who’ll marry a woman with two growing children, and take on that burden?”

  There was a sincerity in her voice that made him ashamed of how little a grateful country—a war-bankrupted country—could do for its soldiers and their families. But with hundreds of thousands dead, and so many wounded to care for, proper compensation was out of the question. Even a pittance was better than nothing. . . .

  “It’s part of my duty to ask unpleasant questions,” he told Mrs. Webber. “Inspector Dowling would have done it better—”

  “No,” she said tiredly, “he wouldn’t have asked at all. But then he knows me and Peggy Bartlett and Alice Taylor.”

  “Or thinks he does?”

  She smiled faintly. “Yes, there’s that, too. I understand, Inspector. But I didn’t kill my husband. What’s between us is between us. Or was. Better or worse, the vows read. And I didn’t make it easy for Kenny to kill himself, either. Whoever did that never thought about those Kenny was leaving behind, did he? I expect the one you want doesn’t have children to bring up. Or he’d have thought of us before handing the wine to our men.”

  “At one time, I was fairly certain that Jimsy Ridger had a hand in it.”

  “That one? Jimsy always lands on his feet. His kind generally does. I can’t see him coming back to Marling. We’re none of us good enough for him now. Jimsy did well in the war, I expect. Kenny told me once that Jimsy found a teakettle full of gold buried in among the onions in some Frenchie’s garden. I expect it’s true, though Kenny swore he never saw it. Luck follows the Jimsy Ridgers of this world.”

  “Not always,” Rutledge told her. “I’ve learned that he drowned in the Thames and is buried in Maidstone.”

  “Did he now!” she said, with some surprise. Something in her face changed. “What I wouldn’t have given to be there, at his funeral!”

  RUTLEDGE HAD NO better luck with Peggy Bartlett or Alice Taylor. Though Mrs. Taylor was more unsettled by his questions.

  “I don’t understand why you’d want to believe any such thing!”

  “It isn’t what I believe,” he answered. “It’s what I must do, ask unpleasant questions and suggest unpleasant possibilities.”

  “Yes, well, you must be desperate to think one of us turned murderer.”

  “I am desperate,” he admitted. “I need to find the truth before there’s another death.”

  “I heard there’s someone taken in charge. If that’s true, why are you wasting time over the likes of me?”

  “Because the evidence against him is not satisfactory.”

  “Whose fault is that?” she demanded. “Not mine!”

  RUTLEDGE DROVE FROM his last call, the Bartlett house, toward Melinda Crawford’s home on the Sussex border.

  She was in a chair by the windows watching the play of light across the lawns and the distant Downs.

  “It’s very beautiful,” she said, turning as Shanta ushered him into the sitting room. “I don’t know why. I’ve seen far more exotic landscapes in my time. How is Elizabeth?”

  “I don’t know.” He sat down in the chair she indicated and closed his eyes. “Will you answer a question honestly?”

  “Of course. You know that.”

  He opened his eyes. She saw the wretchedness in them, and caught her breath for an instant.

  “Was there ever anything—anything between Richard Mayhew and my sister?”

  She regarded him for a moment. “Who told you there was? Elizabeth?”

  “I’d—rather not answer that. Not yet.”

  Melinda Crawford said, “I can tell you truthfully that I never saw any relationship between them that exceeded the bounds of friendship. I think they cared greatly for each other. But that was all.”

  He couldn’t be sure whether it was a denial—or an affirmation that she herself had not witnessed any untoward relationship in spite of her own doubts.

  It troubled him.

  “It’s not precisely the answer I wanted to hear,” he said after a moment.

  “Are you asking me if they were lovers?”

  “Yes,” he replied baldly.

  “I
don’t know, Ian. But I can tell you that they never gave me any cause to suspect them of misbehavior.” She smiled. “My dear, do you think either Frances or Richard would be so stupid as to arouse suspicion, if they were intent on adultery?”

  “I’d always wondered why Frances hadn’t married. It never occurred to me that she couldn’t marry the man she loved.”

  “Ian, who told you this? You must always consider the source when there’s malicious gossip.”

  “That’s just it. I have. And I don’t believe it, I don’t want to believe it. But it’s there, a worm niggling in the back of my head, and I can’t walk away from it.”

  “Someone has set out to hurt you. I ask you again, was it Elizabeth?”

  “No. If she’d even suspected, I think I’d have guessed. She’s not a very good liar.”

  “Well, that makes me feel a great deal more cheerful!” She glanced out the window again and then said, “And the murderer. Have you found him yet?”

  “Not yet.” There was a wariness in his voice. He couldn’t prevent it.

  “And our German friend?”

  “I haven’t got any name to put forward in place of his. The Chief Constable is eager to close the investigation, and he will. After that, it’s all in the hands of the courts.”

  “Who is taking the brief?”

  “Elizabeth has asked Hamilton.”

  Mrs. Crawford nodded. “Yes, a good choice. I do rather wish she’d asked Raleigh Masters.”

  Surprised, Rutledge said, “I thought his health had forced him to give up his practice.”

  “So it did. But he needs such a challenge right now. It might be the salvation of him.”

  “At the German’s expense,” Rutledge answered ruefully.

  “Why are you so ambivalent about this man?”

  “Am I?” he asked, startled.

  “I think you are. I’ve never known you to be indecisive. What did you do to Hauser in the war?”

  “I nearly got him killed,” he answered, getting up to pace the room.

  “But he didn’t die, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t owe him a life, do you?”