Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“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, but 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.

He himself had never craved promotion. It was a mark of achievement, but he had long since discovered that he preferred dealing with inquiries firsthand instead of rising to the level of delegating authority to others. He had found too often that objectivity was lost with ambition, and pleasing one’s superior officer became more important than getting to the root of an issue.

Philip Nettle, who had been the first officer charged with the Shaw case-or the Winslow case, as it had begun-had complained several times that Bowles was pushing him to conclusions. “You can’t know that,” Bowles was fond of saying. “Stick with what you do know, man, and leave imagination to the press.”

“Aye,” Hamish agreed. “It isna’ always wise to look for complexity when there is none!”

Complexity, Rutledge retorted as he walked out the door, was often what saved the innocent. Judging only by the obvious facts could lead a policeman astray.

“It isn’t the guilt of a man,” he said as he turned the crank on his motorcar, “that we set out to establish, but the truth in a case. And sometimes that’s buried deep.”

“Aye,” Hamish agreed bitterly. “I wouldna’ be lying sae deep in a French grave, if there had been time to sort out the truth…”

Wincing, Rutledge put his motorcar into gear and turned out onto the street. “You gave me no choice,” he said.

“I couldna’ give you a choice,” Hamish agreed. “Else there would have been a longer list of the dead on my ain soul. I couldna’ bear it. As ye’re haunted, so was I.”

Unsettled that night, Rutledge considered what to do about the Shaws. The wisest course was to ask Mrs. Shaw to hand over the locket to Chief Superintendent Bowles and wash his own hands of decision. He could walk away then with a clear conscience. But if Bowles refused to take the matter any further, what then? Push that small, damning piece of jewelry out of his own mind, as if it didn’t exist? Pretend that there was no question about Shaw’s guilt, even though he knew there was?

He’d seen the locket. He had absolutely no doubt about its authenticity. The truth was, he wasn’t as certain that he could trust Bowles.

And whatever he decided, the rearrangement of the papers in his desk drawer had left Rutledge with a feeling that Bowles was already looking over his shoulder. Waiting-for what?

“For you to put a foot wrong,” Hamish responded. “I’d no’ gie him the shovel to bury you with.”

“I’ve been pitched into doing the devil’s work,” Rutledge said. “Any way you look at it. Bowles may crucify me for trying to find the truth. Mrs. Shaw will damn me if I walk away. And Shaw himself will haunt me until I know what happened.”

“Aye. It’s a fearsome thing, judgment. I wouldna’ be in your shoon.”

In the morning, tired and hampered by the restlessness that was Hamish’s response to Rutledge’s own uncertainties, Rutledge went back to the church where he had stopped on his first visit to Sansom Street.

The rector-the name on the door read Bailey-was in his small, cluttered office at the back of the church, and rose to greet Rutledge with a quiet interest.

“I’ve come back again,” Rutledge said, “because I have more questions to ask. They aren’t official; you can refuse to answer them, if you wish. But I need information, and there’s no other way to get it except to ask.”

“You look tired,” Mr. Bailey remarked as the light from the windows fell on Rutledge’s face. “Sleepless night, was it?”

One of many, he could have said. Instead, Rutledge admitted, “In a way. I’m on the horns of a dilemma, you see.” He set his hat on the chair beside him, and began to explain. Bailey listened in silence. Rutledge, trying to read his man, came to the conclusion that Bailey was not as struck by the events of the last week as he himself was. Or else hid his curiosity more cleverly.

“I can’t resolve your problems,” the rector said when Rutledge had finished. “I have no reason to think that Ben Shaw was innocent. And no reason to believe that he was guilty. The courts drew that conclusion, not I. I simply offered comfort to the family and helped them survive.”

“Pilate couldn’t have said it better,” Rutledge commented.

Bailey smiled. “If I judge, to what end will that come? Should I have lectured Mrs. Shaw on her poor choice of husband?”

“From what I’ve heard, he was a cut above her, but a poor provider.”

“Or perhaps he’d given her a taste for the kind of life she really wanted to live, and then walked away from it himself,” Bailey pointed out. “I never discovered why he chose to work with his hands, when he might have done much better for himself using his mind.”

“If his family rejected his wife, he may have rejected their way of life and taken up something more suitable to hers. As I remember, she was left to fend for herself from an early age. She hadn’t been given his opportunities.”

“It’s true. She had no family to speak of. Nor did Shaw, for that matter. There was a sister, but she died shortly after the hanging. And I recall a cousin, who’d run off to Australia in 1900, after a rift with his father. There was no way to reach the man, and no reason to expect that he would come, if someone had tried. I was told he hadn’t come home for his mother’s services, when she died, and he’d been as close to her as anyone. Neville, I think his name was? And whatever caused the rift, it was apparently severe.”

“Was there anything between Shaw’s wife and the neighbor, Cutter? He seemed to speak well of her, when interviewed. Few other people did.”