Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

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Rutledge slept hard. When he awoke to a cold and raw Thursday morning, he lay in his bed, trying to bring his mind to bear on the day’s work ahead.

As he shaved he sorted through all the possible motives that he had uncovered-Hauser’s revenge for Ridger’s actions; guilt; compassion; and a pure and callous evil. Not the work of a madman, nor of a passionate man, but of a wary one.

What drove ordinary people to the point of murder?

He considered the three women who had been married to the victims.

Had there been some collusion among them? To rid themselves of a husband who had become a stranger and a burden they hadn’t bargained for in the glamorous, exciting days of sending a soldier off to fight the Hun?

If so, they had concealed it very well.

And yet Mrs. Taylor had called her husband a stranger. Mrs. Webber had confessed to Rutledge that her husband had been unfaithful in France. Mrs. Bartlett spoke of being afraid to be alone, but perhaps she preferred it in some objective and well-disguised corner of her mind.

How easy would it be to kill your own husband? Or had they drawn lots, each taking on the responsibility for a man not their own?

Was that why the deaths had occurred on a dark road at night? Was the wine a gamble that had sucked the victim into conspiring at his own death?

“Ye’re avoiding yon Crawford woman-”

“I’m doing what I have been sent here to do-”

“Oh, aye-”

“Then I’ll talk to Mrs. Crawford. I won’t destroy a friendship on a whim.”

As it happened, Rutledge’s first item of business was a brief encounter with Lawrence Hamilton.

They had met in the triangular square within touching distance of the Cavalier’s broad back.

“What brings you to Marling at this hour?” Rutledge asked after greeting him.

Hamilton shrugged. “An errand of mercy, I expect. Elizabeth has asked me to act for this man Dowling is holding for the murders.”

“Indeed!”

“I’m not happy about it. But Elizabeth was adamant. And distraught. Do you know what this is all about? Lydia is very worried, I can tell you!”

“It’s Elizabeth’s place to answer that, not mine. The man Dowling is holding is trying to keep her out of it.” He carefully avoided giving Hauser a name.

“What’s between them? How serious is it?” Hamilton prodded.

“There’s nothing between them as far as I know. I think Elizabeth is-infatuated.”

“Yes, I gathered that. And the man?”

“He’s not what you expect. In other circumstances-who knows?”

“Well. Damn the war, anyway! If Richard had come home, this wouldn’t have happened.”

As he started to drive on toward the station, Rutledge laid a hand on the car. “I’ve a favor of my own to ask.”

“What’s that?”

“A Mrs. Shaw. London, Sansom Street. She’s got no money, and probably no hope of any. It’s about a will. She needs someone to act on her behalf, to protect her children’s interests.”

Hamilton chuckled. “You’re a dangerous man, Rutledge, do you realize that? I haven’t known you a month, and now I’m dragged into a murder case and asked to take on a questionable will.”

Rutledge smiled, and it touched his eyes, lighting them from within. “Yes, well, we’re neither of us in the law for peace of mind.”

“Richard always said you were a philosopher.” With that he drove on, leaving his motorcar in the hotel yard.

As he walked through the gate up to the Webbers’ door, Rutledge found himself thinking of Peter and his younger sister. What would become of them if their mother was a murderess?

Would they suffer as the Shaw children had done? Or were there relatives to take them in and give them comfort?

This was the distasteful part of his work. On the other hand, who had spoken up for the dead men? Who had heard their voices? Dowling was more concerned with a killer on his patch than he was with men who had slipped into oblivion. They were a blot on his record, and one to be removed…

Rutledge knocked lightly on the door.

It was Monday morning, and Susan Webber, sleeves rolled up, was elbow deep in her tubs. She greeted him with surprise, and said, drying her arms on her apron, “I’m just finishing the wash.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt. I must ask a few more questions.”

She led him into the room where they had talked before, sitting stiffly in a chair facing him.

Hamish said, “You’d think she had a guilty conscience…”

But Rutledge put her nervousness down to talking to the police at all.

“You told me you couldn’t think of anyone who might harm them, your husband or the other men. And you were not prepared to believe your husband had killed himself.”

“Yes, that’s right. What for? Kenny knew we had little enough, with him alive!”

“You’d managed throughout the war without him. Perhaps it would be easier to go on that way.”

She stared at him. “Bringing up two children, without a man? Go and speak with Bobby Nester’s wife! He died of the gas, and she’s making do as best she can. She’d dreaded the day when he was gone, and she’d got nothing. And nobody! Or try talking with my Peter, when he wants to leave school and help me. And I’m telling him that schooling is his only way out of this life. People have been good to us, and I’m not denying it. Kenny would have been proud of that. But it’s not the same. It’ll never be the same again. Who’ll marry a woman with two growing children, and take on that burden?”

There was a sincerity in her voice that made him ashamed of how little a grateful country-a war-bankrupted country-could do for its soldiers and their families. But with hundreds of thousands dead, and so many wounded to care for, proper compensation was out of the question. Even a pittance was better than nothing…

“It’s part of my duty to ask unpleasant questions,” he told Mrs. Webber. “Inspector Dowling would have done it better-”

“No,” she said tiredly, “he wouldn’t have asked at all. But then he knows me and Peggy Bartlett and Alice Taylor.”

“Or thinks he does?”

She smiled faintly. “Yes, there’s that, too. I understand, Inspector. But I didn’t kill my husband. What’s between us is between us. Or was. Better or worse, the vows read. And I didn’t make it easy for Kenny to kill himself, either. Whoever did that never thought about those Kenny was leaving behind, did he? I expect the one you want doesn’t have children to bring up. Or he’d have thought of us before handing the wine to our men.”

“At one time, I was fairly certain that Jimsy Ridger had a hand in it.”

“That one? Jimsy always lands on his feet. His kind generally does. I can’t see him coming back to Marling. We’re none of us good enough for him now. Jimsy did well in the war, I expect. Kenny told me once that Jimsy found a teakettle full of gold buried in among the onions in some Frenchie’s garden. I expect it’s true, though Kenny swore he never saw it. Luck follows the Jimsy Ridgers of this world.”

“Not always,” Rutledge told her. “I’ve learned that he drowned in the Thames and is buried in Maidstone.”

“Did he now!” she said, with some surprise. Something in her face changed. “What I wouldn’t have given to be there, at his funeral!”

Rutledge had no better luck with Peggy Bartlett or Alice Taylor. Though Mrs. Taylor was more unsettled by his questions.

“I don’t understand why you’d want to believe any such thing!”

“It isn’t what I believe,” he answered. “It’s what I must do, ask unpleasant questions and suggest unpleasant possibilities.”

“Yes, well, you must be desperate to think one of us turned murderer.”

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