Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

But what if he hadn’t been-what if, afraid from the start that his wife might be guilty, he’d confessed to distract the police from her?

Hamish said, “Or fra’ someone else he cared for.”

It wouldn’t be the first time that a husband or wife risked hanging out of fear of the truth coming out. Or out of fear that the other was in danger…

What if, looking deeper, Rutledge found himself thinking, he’d come across unexpected evidence that proved clearly that the most obvious pointers were not the most likely after all…? In one case in ten, digging deeper brought out new facts. And yet at the time, he was convinced that he had dug deeply Speaking up after a long and brooding silence, Hamish said, “What if ye find that I’m no’ the first victim whose death can be laid at your door? What if this man died a worse death than mine, because ye were no’ the clever policeman you thought you were?”

As Rutledge laid the last of the pages aside, he wondered if he would come to regret his decision to retrieve the file.

But he was committed now… whatever he learned about himself.

There was nothing more Rutledge could do that day about his promise to Nell Shaw. Nor the next, as he drove south of London and back into Kent.

But it was like a sore tooth nagging in the back of his mind. And after he had crossed Lambeth Bridge, he made his way south and east, to the part of south London where the Shaws-and the Cutters-lived. It was familiar ground, and yet as the motorcar turned down street after street, he could see that the once prosperous working-class houses were showing signs of neglect after nearly five years of war and shortages of manpower and materials. England had impoverished herself to win, and Rutledge found himself thinking that here was the invisible cost in human suffering and hardship.

Many of the factories had shut down, and the residential streets were grim in November’s gray chill. Not even a dog wandered in the gutters sniffing for scraps.

Those who could escape had done so long ago, especially those who had found a way of prospering from the war. Those who were doomed to finish out their lives here had fallen prey to despair and hopelessness.

Among them, Mrs. Shaw and, so it seemed, Henry Cutter…

Not for the first time, Rutledge asked himself how Henry Cutter’s wife had come by that missing locket.

“Ye canna’ be sure she did! There’s only one woman’s word for it.”

Rutledge replied grimly, “It wasn’t in the Shaw house when it was searched. I’d stake my career on that.”

“Aye, it’s what you’re doing.”

“The problem is, why would Shaw have given the locket to Cutter’s wife? For safekeeping when the police were crawling all over his house? It would have been safer to pitch it into the Thames.” He fell easily into the old habit of answering Hamish, of treating the voice in his head as though the dead man sat in the rear seat of the motorcar, his constant companion and a fearful presence. “Shaw wasn’t the sort to stray from home and hearth. But then no one thought he was the sort to commit murder, either.”

“People are sometimes verra’ different under the skin. If he was clever enough to kill, he might ha’ been clever enough to have other secrets.”

“The same could be said of Mrs. Shaw-or the Cutters.”

Rutledge passed the house on Sansom Street without stopping. Fog was curling in off the river, wreathing roofs and sliding over chimneys, giving the house and its neighbors a sinister air.

He told himself he hadn’t yet formulated a strategy for his opening move. Like contemplating a chess game before touching the pieces, he thought to himself. It was very like that-he couldn’t afford to choose the wrong move.

Hamish was saying, “In the end, you must speak to Cutter.”

But how to go about that without arousing Bowles’s suspicions? The Chief Superintendent was a vindictive enemy, when aroused.

Rutledge wished Mrs. Shaw had had the sense to write to him instead of coming to the Yard in person. It would have drawn far less attention. But then he might have read the letter and done nothing, putting it down to a woman’s refusal to let go of the past. Her strong presence, tearful and demanding and fiercely certain, had affected him, as she must have guessed it would.

It might yet prove to be nothing more than that. A brooding that had consumed her to the point of believing in her own phantoms.

A widow whose husband had been hanged for murder must not have had an easy life. Nor her children. He had only to look around him to guess what privations they’d suffered.

Still, she’d survived. It showed in her toughness and her determination. He found it hard to blame her for being bitter and angry. And if she was right, if there had been a miscarriage of justice, he was as much to blame as Bowles and Philip Nettle. Perhaps more so, because he had brought the case to trial.

Everything hinged on that locket.

The autumn weather was at its worst-the clear skies of Guy Fawkes Day had long since given way to a week of heavy clouds and a cold wind. Today, the breath-sucking fog seemed to follow Rutledge out of London, cloaking everything and everyone in a clinging, damp, choking vapor. It ran ahead of him toward the Downs, silent fingers reaching through the hedgerows and shrouding the trees.

He could barely see the verges of the road, and slowed for fear of running into a farm cart or lorry, invisible around the next curve. Hamish, a presence at his shoulder, was restless with the tension of driving.

“It wasna’ necessary to leave sae early! Ye’ll kill us both before this weather lifts!”

Rutledge wasn’t sure he would be sorry to wind up in a ditch, his neck broken. But his sister would mourn. And a handful of friends. And Jean, who had married her diplomat and sailed for Canada, would learn of his death on her wedding journey.

He smiled wryly at that. He had no illusions now about his former fiancee. Jean would read the news and sigh prettily, and say to her new husband, “My dear, I’ve just heard-a very dear friend has been killed on a road south of London. I-I must believe it’s a blessing. He was-he was never the same after the war, you know. I daresay-but no, that’s not fair. I should never wish to believe he’d found a way to end it-”

And the diplomat, not very diplomatically, would reply briskly, “You mustn’t blame yourself, my dear. It’s all in the past now.”

Hamish commented, his voice clear in the dim interior of the motorcar, “Aye, it’s no’ a bonny thing to say. But it might be true, nonetheless.”

Rutledge concentrated his attention on the road.

Elizabeth Mayhew greeted him warmly, clucking her tongue over the weather, and saying, “I was afraid you might not come. That you’d be glad of the weather as an excuse.”

“Nonsense,” he told her, kissing her cheek. “It will lift by noon. Frances sends her love, and I’m to convince you to come to London for a few days over Christmas.”

“How sweet of her,” Elizabeth said, leading the way to the stairs. “I may do that. I’ve grown so dull of late I’ll bore her to death. But perhaps it would be good for me. We shall see.”

The house was a comfortable Georgian manor on the outskirts of Marling, a pretty village that had enjoyed its share of wealth over the centuries and still maintained an air of quiet gentility.

Set back behind a low brick wall, the gardens bedded down for the winter, the house now seemed to wear its age more starkly, but in summer it glowed with the warmth of the sun and with the rampant colors of perennials, with annuals sprawling at their feet. Then it was timeless and beautiful.

There had always been a welcome here, as long as Rutledge could remember. But without Richard’s voice in the passages or his long legs stretched out toward the fire after a day tramping on the Downs, there was an emptiness in the rooms that lamps and Elizabeth’s lighter voice couldn’t fill.