Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“Your intuition is seldom wrong,” she told him.

“It may be colored, all the same. It’s not my place to ask questions, but if you could do it-quite casually-it might be a good thing.”

Frances considered him. “There’s something more here than Elizabeth Mayhew’s affairs of the heart.” Her eyes searching his face, she said again, “What’s wrong?”

Rutledge smiled wryly. What he would have liked to say was, “I may have seen a ghost. If I have, it’s no matter; I can live with ghosts,” and wait for her common sense to assure him that he had done nothing of the sort. Frances had little patience with nonsense. But her intuition was often as sharp as his own. When she jumped to conclusions, they most generally were the right ones. And the war was a part of his life he wanted very much to keep shut away from her.

Instead he answered, “There’s been a series of murders in the neighborhood of Marling. I’ve been working on the case for the Yard. No one, not even Melinda Crawford, knows who this man is that Elizabeth is attracted to. I think I’ve seen him once, from the back. Why is she keeping him a secret from her friends? Elizabeth could well be dragged into something unpleasant, if he’s using her in some fashion or isn’t quite-respectable.”

“Aren’t you overreacting just a little?” she asked, putting her jewelry on, her face hidden from him. “Is there any reason to think that this man could be involved in your murders? Have you good cause to believe he should be found and questioned?”

“Put like that,” he answered wryly, “I suppose I’m jumping to conclusions. It’s probably no more than coincidence…”

Frances was settling her hat on her carefully groomed hair, adjusting it to a becoming angle that set off her face. She’s an extraordinarily attractive woman, Rutledge found himself thinking, with their mother’s perfect skin and cameo-cut profile, the slightly arched nose and the very intelligent eyes. Once, he’d wondered if she had been in love with Ross Trevor, his godfather David Trevor’s son. Or if there was some other man who had come into her life, and taken her heart away with him. She had never spoken of it.

Just as he never spoke of Hamish, or the war, or what loneliness was.

As if reading his mind, Frances said, her eyes not meeting his in the mirror, “You know, you could do worse than Elizabeth Mayhew. You and Richard were very close. He wouldn’t have minded you stepping into his shoes. Not that I’m matchmaking-”

“That’s the very reason I can’t,” Rutledge answered after a moment. “He’d always be there. Between us.”

“Like a ghost?” she asked lightly. “Well, it’s time for me to leave. Would you mind giving me a lift? We can talk on the way.”

But they didn’t. When they reached the Mayfair restaurant, she got out, saying, “Ian. Whatever is worrying you, it isn’t Elizabeth Mayhew, is it? There’s more on your mind than her affairs. Or the murders. I think there’s a sense of guilt somewhere. I think perhaps you feel you ought to step into Richard’s shoes, for his sake. And because you won’t, you’re afraid you’re letting him down by not preventing Elizabeth from getting hurt.”

He considered and then rejected the possibility. “I feel some sort of responsibility, for Richard’s sake. We were friends for years. But a sense of responsibility doesn’t go as far as marriage.”

“Then it was Armistice Day. It unsettled a good many people, you know. You aren’t alone there.” She was searching for clues, her father’s daughter. He had been a very fine lawyer, and he had had a strong intuitive streak that both his children had inherited.

Rutledge didn’t answer.

“All the same…” She hesitated for a moment. “We all live with devils of one kind or another. I don’t know how to exorcise them. Except by surviving. Somehow, against all the odds.”

It was far too close to the mark, and she must have read something in his face, for he heard a sharp intake of breath. As if she had finally guessed what was on his mind.

“My mistakes may go to the gallows,” he told her, “the innocent along with the guilty. And they are buried. And sometimes they are resurrected.” It was said in a rueful voice, as if laughing at himself.

“The truth doesn’t change,” she told him. “Father always believed that. Still, it’s easy to alter the trappings of truth.”

“I’ll remember that.”

As his sister stepped away from the side of the car, Rutledge added, “You won’t forget about Elizabeth?”

She blew him a kiss. “Darling, I won’t forget.”

He drove off, Hamish saying in the back of his mind, “She’s no’ the common-garden variety of sisters.”

“She’d have made a damned fine barrister. Better than I would have, if I’d followed in our father’s footsteps.”

“Aye.” There was a moment of silence as Rutledge threaded his way through the thick of midday traffic. Then Hamish followed up on his earlier thought. “It is no’ very surprising she’s no’ married.”

Rutledge, glancing at his watch, decided he had time for one more call before he left London.

Henry Cutter worked at a shop where tools were designed and fabricated. His office, high above the floor where machines made any conversation impossible, was cluttered with invoices and paperwork, and there were ink stains on his fingers. A thin man with a long jaw and sunken eyes, he looked up as Rutledge entered the room, then frowned.

“I know you-” He broke off, squinting in an attempt to place the man before him.

“Rutledge. Inspector Rutledge from Scotland Yard.”

Surprise lifted his eyebrows. “That’s right! You’ve changed-” He stopped and said, instead of completing the thought, “We all have, to be blunt about it. Is there anything wrong?”

“I’ve come about an old matter. Ben Shaw’s conviction and hanging for murder. Mrs. Shaw worries about-er-a miscarriage of justice.”

Cutter sighed. “She’s got a very pretty daughter, and she’s determined for the girl to marry well. She’s asked me a dozen times in the last month what I remember about the police and all the questions we were asked. It’s as if she worries a raw wound, unable to leave it alone. Life hasn’t treated Nell kindly, you know. Still, she’s a woman who draws on hidden strength and faces up to what can’t be run from. I respect that.”

“What do you remember?” Rutledge asked, interested.

“I remember how upset my wife was,” Cutter answered. “She’d known the women. Well, not known them, if you follow me! But she’d called on them from time to time as a church visitor. Years before, when her health was better and she was more active.”

“Did she believe Shaw was guilty?”

“I never asked her.” Cutter looked away. “He was a very likeable man. Janet-Mrs. Cutter-was fond of him, in a manner of speaking.”

Rutledge found himself thinking that Cutter was not a man of grace or charm. Plainspoken and unimaginative, a plodder. He was beginning to understand why Cutter admired Nell Shaw’s strength. The question then became, was Cutter capable of murder? And why, if he had a reasonably comfortable life, should he be driven to it?

“I understand she had a son who died before she did.”

“Janet was married before. Peterson fell ill of diphtheria, when the boy was almost two years old. She was expecting another child, and she miscarried. The worst part of that was, she felt she’d let her husband down by being so ill herself. And she blamed herself that the boy had been left to the kindness of neighbors while his father was dying and his mother was miscarrying. As a result she was overly protective, to the point of smothering him. But in my opinion, he was weak from the start, was George. Never could settle to anything, and in the end, killed himself.” He stopped, surprised that he’d confided in this man who listened with an air of thoughtfulness that made confession easy, as if unjudged.