Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“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.