Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“There’s another side to this coin, Inspector. That I’m telling the truth.” Her eyes met his squarely. “And you’re unwilling to hear it.”

She had backed him around again to his own possible guilt.

He had always taken a certain pride in his knowledge of people. He knew how to watch for the small movements of the body or shifts in expression that supported or contradicted what he was told. Only a very few people lied well.

And either Nell Shaw was among them-or she believed implicitly in what she was saying.

Hamish said, “Aye. If you canna’ satisfy her, she’ll go o’wer your head.”

And there were sound reasons why that must not happen. Rutledge was not the only officer who would be brought down if the Shaw case was shown to be flawed. Even if her accusations bore only a semblance of truth, the Yard was not immune from politics or personal vendettas.

“I’m not sending you away,” he told her. “I’m searching for a practical way of getting around the rules I have to follow. I’ll give you a chit for the locket-”

“No, never!” she declared, shoving it back in her purse and clutching that to her bosom with both arms. “It’s all I’ve got.”

He put down the pen. “Then you must let me have a few days to look again at the file, and then to decide how best to go about this problem. I don’t have the authority to open this case myself. And it won’t do you much good to make enemies-for you will if you begin to annoy my own superiors, or Mr. Cutter. It’s to your advantage and mine to proceed with caution. Have you spoken to the barrister who defended your husband?”

“I’ve got no money. He won’t give me the time of day.”

“I make no promises, mind you. But I give you my word that I’ll do my best. If I can satisfy myself that there’s just cause to reopen the case, I’ll tell you so and give you the name of someone at the Home Office who will listen to you.”

“And if you can’t?” she asked suspiciously.

“Then you’re free to speak to anyone else here at the Yard.”

“That’s fair. I never asked more.” There was a gleam of gratification in her dark eyes. “I’ve waited this long. A few more days won’t matter, will they?”

After Rutledge had seen Mrs. Shaw into a cab, he sat in his chair and stared out the window at the bare branches of trees that stood out stark and almost pleading against the colorless sky.

He couldn’t have been wrong about Ben Shaw…

And yet he had been badly shaken by that locket, and Mrs. Shaw’s ferocious defense of her husband’s innocence had rung with conviction. If he had been so certain of the man’s guilt before, how had that altered so easily?

Hamish said, “Your wits are scattered, man, ye’re no’ thinking clearly!”

What if he had been wrong Hamish said, “It isna’ the end of the world-”

Rutledge retorted angrily, “It was a man’s life. You weren’t there-”

Hamish agreed readily. “I was safe in Scotland then, and alive.. ..” After a moment he added, “She willna’ be put off.”

Nor was he the sort of man who could quietly bury truth under a layer of lies. Rutledge faced himself now, and with that a possibility that appalled him. Like it or not, he must get to the bottom of this question of Ben Shaw’s guilt.

Like it or not, he must find the answer, for his own soul’s comfort.

Hamish growled, “It isna’ a matter of comfort, it’s a sair question for the conscience.” His Covenanter heritage had always projected his world in severe black and white. It was what had brought him to defy the Army and face execution rather than compromise. His strength-and his destruction.

Ignoring the voice in his head, Rutledge considered the next step. How did one go about dredging up the past, without destroying what had been built upon it?

This was not the first time he’d dealt with families whose anger was as destructive as it was futile, when not even a jury’s verdict could persuade them of a loved one’s guilt. But few of these families had ever brought forward what was in their eyes fresh proof of innocence.

And on that slim balance, he was forced to confront his actions of more than six years ago.

Hamish said, “I saw a magician once. When the troop train was held up in London, he came to entertain us. I couldna’ be certain what was real and what was false.”

Rutledge suddenly found a memory of Ben Shaw’s defeated, exhausted face, when the prison warders brought him to the gallows. Even if he could clear the man’s name, there was no way he could restore the man’s life. Shaw was dead…

Like so many others. The world seemed filled with phantoms, his mind shattered by them.

Suddenly he could feel himself slipping back in the trenches, the Battle of the Somme in July 1916-the watershed of his madness.

Hamish’s voice brought him sharply back to the dingy confines of his office at Scotland Yard, with its low shelves, its grimy windows, the smell of old paint and dusty corners heavy in the passages. With the sound of footsteps harsh on the wooden floors outside his door, and brief snatches of conversations that seemed to have no beginning and no end.

Rutledge rubbed his face, trying to remember what Hamish had said to him. And the voice repeated, “It’s no’ unlikely that Shaw himself gave the locket to the neighbor’s wife. A love token. Mrs. Shaw willna’ care to hear that.”

“With that telling inscription on the back? Besides, mourning jewelry isn’t the most romantic gift, is it? When Mrs. Cutter’s own husband was very much alive.”

“A promise, no doubt, that he wouldna’ be alive much longer. It could explain why she kept it.”

“You didn’t know Shaw,” Rutledge reminded Hamish.

But then, had he?

All the same, Rutledge did know his superior, Chief Superintendent Bowles. And therein lay a hidden snare that could be as explosive as a mine.

The Shaw investigation had brought a promotion to the then Chief Inspector Bowles, who had used the murders to political and professional advantage. Bowles had kept himself very much in the public eye, repeatedly promising the newspapers that this vicious killer would be brought to justice with all possible speed, assuring frightened neighbors of the murdered women that everything possible was being done, publicly pressing his men to greater and greater effort.

It was Philip Nettle who had stumbled on the connection that linked the three victims-the fact that each had at one time or another employed the services of the same carpenter when work needed to be done. A trusted man, a caring man, one who had trimmed the wicks of lamps, brought in coal for the fires, oiled locks on the doors, kept window sashes running smoothly, and generally made himself indispensable. And then betrayed their trust.

The discovery of the murderer had once more pitched Chief Inspector Bowles into the forefront of public attention. As Philip Nettle lay dying in hospital, Bowles had made half a dozen speeches that cleverly fostered the notion that it was his own intuition that had come up with the crimes’ solution. He had given interviews to magazines and newspapers. And he had delivered the eulogy at Philip Nettle’s funeral, praising the man rather than the police officer, kissing the grieving widow’s cheek with marked condescension. She had regarded him with bitterness, convinced that Bowles’s callous demands for results had prevented her husband from making a timely visit to his doctor.

Sergeant Gibson, reading the caption under yet another photograph in a newspaper, had said sourly within Rutledge’s hearing, “You’d bloody think the man was standing for Parliament!”

Sergeant Wilkerson had answered, “Aye, there’s hope he will, and leave the Yard for good!”