Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

Mrs. Shaw had already answered his next question but Rutledge said quietly, “How did he die?”

He could feel Hamish stirring in the back of his mind.

“He drowned.” After a moment, looking down at his hands, Cutter added, “Lost his footing and fell into the sea while walking by the harbor one night. That was the official finding, accidental drowning. It saved his mother from the pain of learning it was suicide. According to the police, George had been drinking heavily, and there was a suspicion that he’d been despondent. At any rate, he was fully clothed, and it was after midnight. They put as good a face on it as they could. But I always felt Janet suspected the truth. She was never the same after that.”

“He was the first policeman on the scene of one of the Shaw murders.”

“Yes, that’s true. He came to his mother the night after Mrs. Winslow was found dead. Cried like a baby. Janet told me afterward that he had a horror of dead bodies. He didn’t like touching them.”

Hamish said, “It doesna’ ring true. He was a constable-”

As if he’d been a party to the conversation, Cutter went on, “I could never understand that-George had elected to go into the police force, he must have known what it involved!” He shifted the papers on his desk. “I could never understand him, for that matter. Janet told me he took after his father. She thought that might have something to do with it. But George and I never saw eye to eye.”

“Tell me about him.”

Cutter said sharply, “The man’s dead. You can’t be worried about anything he could have done!”

“I’m interested in the man who was constable when Mrs. Winslow was killed. I’ve only just discovered that he was related to neighbors of the Shaws.”

Taking a deep breath, Cutter replied, “Well. I don’t know that it makes any difference, now. He was the kind of child who ran headlong to do something he wanted to do, and only thought better of it later. He was never in serious trouble, but he was always unsettled and unpredictable. Never really good at anything. Janet thought the sun shone out of him, and that was that. I was glad when he left home. We had a happier life then.”

“Mrs. Shaw found a locket in a drawer belonging to Mrs. Cutter. Did she tell you that?”

“A locket? No, she never mentioned it. What kind of locket?” His eyes were suddenly wary. “Janet’s jewelry?”

“A piece of mourning jewelry, belonging to one of the dead women. It was missing at the time Shaw was arrested.” Husbands seldom rummaged in their wives’ lingerie, as Hamish was pointing out.

Cutter was saying, with rising alarm, “Here, she’s not trying to say my wife had anything to do with those deaths! I won’t believe that! Not of Nell! You’re trying to stir up trouble-”

“Nell Shaw brought the locket to me because it was missing evidence,” Rutledge replied without emphasis.

“I’d like to see it!”

“I’m sorry,” Rutledge answered, unwilling to tell Cutter that Mrs. Shaw had kept it. “I can’t show it to you.”

“Look. I can’t help but feel sorry for her, she’s had a rough deal. Shaw tried, but he wasn’t like us-he wasn’t used to hard work, his body wasn’t what you’d call strong. All the same, it’s far too late to save Ben or his family.”

The door opened and a man stepped into the office. From the look of him, and from Cutter’s sudden stiffness, Rutledge realized that he must be the owner. Holly? Was that what the Cutter maid had called him? The man stared from Rutledge to the account books Cutter had put aside, and he asked, “Something I can do for you?”

Rutledge rose. “Thank you, no. Mr. Cutter has kindly given me the directions I need.” Cutter shot him a grateful glance and rose also.

Rutledge left, closing the door behind him, but he could feel the owner’s eyes burrowing into his back.

Hamish grumbled, “I canna’ see what’s been gained.”

Rutledge answered. “It’s odd, that time can change the direction of an investigation so radically. We should have known about George Peterson! ”

Hamish retorted, “It’s you changed, nothing else.”

There was no response to that. He made his way through the busy shop and out into the street.

It was raining again when he reached Marling. Rutledge left the car at the hotel, realizing that he’d missed his lunch and his tea. He found a small shop down the road from the police station and went in, asking what they could provide in the way of sandwiches, late as it was. The woman behind the counter settled him at a small table for two, and bustled away to the kitchen.

Except for four women sitting at a table near his, the shop was empty, although a couple came in a few minutes afterward, laughing and shaking out the rain from their coats.

For a time the four women were silent, as if wary of the strange man almost in their midst. They couldn’t know who he was, not yet. He hadn’t met many of the villagers; there was nothing for the local gossips to pick up. He could almost hear the unspoken speculation about who he was and what business he might have in Marling. The natural curiosity that strangers sparked in a small town was lively. Even his voice was out of place, an educated London accent.

Rutledge’s tea and sandwiches arrived. He thanked the shop owner and poured a steaming cup, watching the tea swirl up to the lip.

When they had exhausted their silent conjectures, the women quietly picked up the thread of their earlier conversation. At first Rutledge, busy with his sandwiches, ignored what they were saying, and then realized almost too late that they were in the middle of a discussion of the funeral they had just attended. Something about their cryptic references alerted him in time to hear one comment in particular.

“… wasn’t as if none of us knew the circumstances!” This from the woman who had her back to Rutledge.

“A crying shame,” a woman wearing a black feathered hat replied, setting down her cup of tea and reaching for another iced cake. “I don’t know what’s to become of us, with the roads unsafe and murderers on the loose!”

Hamish said quietly, “They havena’ said whose death it was they mourned. But I’m thinking…”

Rutledge cast a swift glance in their direction, noting who was speaking.

The feathered hat’s neighbor on the left, smoothing her black gloves on the table beside her, nodded. “I won’t let my Harold walk as far as the pub of a night. And he’s fuming about it something fierce.”

The fourth woman, who was wearing spectacles, agreed. “Who on earth would want to kill a soldier back from the war? I ask you. He’s suffered enough!”

“Aye,” Hamish noted. “It’s as I thought.”

The first woman said, “It’s a Bolshevik plot, that’s what it is! Look what happened to their own royal family-slaughtered along with those pretty little girls! And the tsar a cousin of King Edward!”

“As was the Kaiser,” the glove smoother snapped. “My father always said foreigners are never to be trusted!”

Hamish agreed, “It was the same in Scotland. We looked with suspicion on the other clans, the next glen o’wer.”

The woman wearing spectacles sighed. “I pity the Taylors. Alice and her children never had two pennies to rub together, but she always put a good face on it. What are they to do now?”

Taylor was the first man killed…

The black hat nodded, setting the feathers bobbing in concert. “I’ve some mending and sewing I’ll ask her to do for me. She’s a good needlewoman, and taking in sewing will tide her over until the oldest boy can work.”

“It mustn’t appear to be charity!” The speaker took off her spectacles, polishing them. “We must be careful about that. And we might consider ordering our Christmas goose from Susan Webber. I’m told her poultry is very nice.”