Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

Rutledge said aloud, “I think we ought to speak to Miss Whelkin.”

“You’ll have to come back, then. She’s off to her sister’s in Canterbury for the week. Miss Whelkin visits her every November, like clockwork. They don’t get on together. It’s a trial for both of them. But she’s bent and determined to do her duty by her kin.”

Dowling wistfully suggested luncheon at the hotel before returning to Marling, but Rutledge still had to address the problem of Nell Shaw’s daughter. Grimes and Dowling set off toward the police station, where Dowling had left his bicycle, and Rutledge walked on to the Seelyham Arms.

Margaret Shaw had managed to reach Marling on her own, but it was necessary to find her safe transportation back to London. With promises that he would not forget her mother and would visit her as soon as possible, Rutledge handed her into the carriage of an elderly and respectable greengrocer driving to London to see his dentist. He also gave her fare for a cab to take her across the river from Charing Cross.

There was trepidation in her face as she asked, “But what must I do about Mama? I can’t go home and tell her there’s nothing new, and watch her worry herself into one of her blinding headaches! She’ll be fit to be tied, if I come back empty-handed!”

Rutledge said, “Did she send you to me?”

The girl shook her head. “No, but she’d want to know where I’ve been and who I saw. She’s that strict! I’ll have to tell her-if I lie, she catches me out, and it’s all the worse. Last night she sat on the side of my bed and told me she was at her wit’s end. She had that pinched look about her eyes, as if the lamp was too bright.” She stared around her at the village of Seelyham, her gaze wandering to the stone church tower, green with moss, and the hummocky ground of the ancient churchyard. “Do you believe Papa killed those women? Truly believe it?”

As her eyes swung back to his face, she read the uncertainty there before he could control the doubt that had plagued him since the day her mother had walked back into his life.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” he said wearily.

The key to this muddle was very likely the stroke Janet Cutter had had shortly after Shaw’s sentencing-and shortly after her son’s suicide, come to that. But which piece of news had destroyed her? If the truth were known…

“Did you know George Peterson?” he asked then.

Margaret was surprised. “Hardly at all. He was grown up when I was a child, and I was rather afraid of him.”

“Because he was older?”

As if digging into her memory, she answered slowly, “He was a policeman, and Mama would threaten to call him to come and take us away if we were naughty.”

It was a common enough threat-in many households, the police had replaced the devil as a deterrent to bad behavior. Rutledge smiled.

Following her own train of thought, Margaret Shaw said, “I don’t know why Mrs. Cutter cared for Papa. He was whimsical. And I think she must have liked that.”

“How did Henry Cutter behave toward your mother?”

“Oh, he was always asking her advice. I think he admired Mama’s strength, and Papa liked Mrs. Cutter’s softness. She reminded him of growing up somewhere else, not Sansom Street. It was almost as if they’d all married the wrong people. I don’t expect to wed,” she added with a candidness that was a measure of her own lost childhood. “There’s too much heartache. It seldom comes out right!”

Rutledge drove inspector Dowling back to Marling. Halfway there the inspector began, “We don’t see many murders in this part of the country. Not like some of the towns, where there’s an uncertain element. Maidstone, for instance. Or Rochester. Dover sees more trouble, being a port where all kinds mix. The last murder in Marling was just before the war, a son who killed his father before the old fool could marry again and change his will. I understand that kind of violence. The son felt he was being cheated out of his inheritance, and the father was bent on having a pretty young wife. She knew a good thing when she saw it, and if there was blame anywhere, it lay at her door. She was greedy, not to put too fine a point on it. She saw the father could give her more than the son. Without her stirring up the pair of them, that farmer would be alive today. But the courts can’t take such behavior into account. If they could, a jury would have hanged her along with the dead man’s son.”

It was, in some ways, the story of the Shaws. A wife wanting what she couldn’t have…

Rutledge said, “It’s straightforward, at least. I once had an investigation that hinged on a lamp. Where it had actually been placed before the crime. Through a window the murderer had seen something in the room that triggered an explosive anger, jealous anger. But only because the lamp’s light illuminated it in that position. Once the lamp was moved, we saw nothing out of the ordinary. There was nothing to give her away.”

Dowling glanced at Rutledge. “Where’s our lamp, then?” he asked. “I understand what you’re saying, but I can’t apply it to our situation.”

“The roads,” Rutledge answered. “Each of the dead men had a family at home. Other eyes to see whatever transpired. It put the men out of reach, in a sense. But they were always accessible along the road. The question is, what drew each of these victims into the killer’s net? Circumstance? Opportunity? Or trickery?”

Dowling turned his head to consider the road behind them. They had nearly reached the trees where one of the victims had been discovered. Taylor. The first…

“It can’t be theft,” the inspector said, ticking off the possibilities on his fingers. “These three had little worth stealing. No one stole what they did have. And no one stands to gain from their deaths, as far as I can tell. The murders took place on different roads, different nights. That’s a vote for opportunity, not circumstance. They had the war in common, of course.”

“And there’s Jimsy Ridger,” Rutledge said.

“If someone was looking for Jimsy, he wouldn’t have to kill a man to ask where to find him.”

“He might kill a man he thought would warn Ridger.”

“Then I think it’s time we found out where Ridger is, and what he knows about this business.”

In the event, neither Dowling nor Rutledge had to search far for the missing Jimsy Ridger.

Sergeant Gibson had left a message at The Plough. It read, “In regard to the man you want: he’s not in London. Rumor has it he’s dead. My guess is that he’s in hiding. No one is prepared to say where.”

Rutledge’s reaction was, I’m not surprised…

Hamish said, “Aye. It stands to reason he’d go to ground, if there’s someone looking for him. And the man searching for Ridger may be a step ahead of you. He may ken that Ridger is in Kent…”

“Yes, it makes sense.” Rutledge took the stairs two at a time and spent the next half an hour finishing his notes about the conversation with Grimes in Seelyham. He debated driving to Canterbury to look up Miss Whelkin, and then decided against it. She would be home again in a few days.

Closing the notebook, he sought out Sergeant Burke and asked the man to draw a rough map of Marling.

It was nearly tea time when Rutledge pulled into the drive at the home of Lawrence Hamilton and his wife, Lydia. They had been his hosts when he met Raleigh Masters, and Rutledge was certain they would know as much about this part of Kent as Richard Mayhew had done.

He was surprised to find that Bella Masters was already there. She looked tired, unhappy, but her face brightened as Lydia Hamilton welcomed the newcomer and offered him a cup of tea.