A Fearsome Doubt

16

After depositing the sodden Holcomb at the Marling station, Rutledge went on to The Plough. He felt tired and restless, a man at loose ends. Afraid of his past now, and afraid for his future. He had been very certain he was right in the Shaw case. How many others had he botched, in blind belief that his experience and intuition were infallible? Would he botch this one as well? He felt like getting as drunk as the man on the road. Except that he knew it would not buy peace.

Hamish said, “Judgment is no’ a safe profession.”

“My father said that to me once,” Rutledge remembered as he walked up the stairs toward his room. “He said the law was only as good as the men who devised it and the men who carried out the burden of it.”

He turned down the passage, stopping before his door and staring at it for a moment before opening it. What is there about the Shaw case that isn’t satisfactory? Why have I been digging into the past and doubting everything that was done? He shut the door behind him and walked to the window. It looked down the back garden, bleak in the November darkness, with the stumps of cabbages and the withered leaves of carrots and the ferny yellowed wisps of asparagus. As dead as his spirits tonight.

The answer was not hard to find. When self-doubt awakens, it feeds on itself…

Rutledge said aloud, under his breath, “Shaw was guilty. I know that for a certainty.”

Yet he’d uncovered other possible motives now. It was Pandora’s box, an overturned case where everything that spilled out pointed accusing fingers at him for not seeing them before…

Hamish reminded him, “Mrs. Shaw is a verra’ persuasive woman.”

That was true. The fact that she was unattractive in every sense, and that he had disliked her from the start, had perhaps shaped his view of her and of events. Then and now. But she had aroused such guilt in him-such a fierce doubt of his own abilities-that he was unable to see his earlier actions as clearly as he had done when Philip Nettle’s death had first thrust the affair into his hands.

Rutledge turned away from the window and fumbled for the lamp on the desk, watching the flame bloom and brighten his room. The brass bed gleamed, and the white china of the washstand pitchers reflected a golden light.

With Bowles baying for results, there had been unnatural pressure on the investigating officers. Results, results, results. They had worked nearly around the clock, interviewing, cataloging statements, going back again to ask other questions, trying to sort through the simple lives and the tangled activities of everyone who had had contact with the elderly victims for the previous two years. The dustman, the man who brought the coal, the grocer’s boy who delivered boxes of goods, the butcher’s boy, the woman who came to clean and to cook one meal a day, the man bringing the post, the visitors from charities and churches, nurses who came to see to bedsores or bathe their patients. The chimney sweep-It had been an endless task, sorting through the sheets of closely written notes collected from all the officers assigned to the murders.

And yet Shaw had slowly emerged, slowly been identified, his life probed, his activities examined, until the timing had damned him.

He had maintained that when he left, each of the women was still alive.

But coincidence could be stretched only so far. And Shaw’s way of life had been changed by the small pieces of jewelry and silver frames and bits of flatware that had been sold to men whose own livelihood lay in convenient memory loss and a rapid dispersal of questionable goods to other dealers.

Not one of them had described Ben Shaw. The man was forty. Young. Graying. Balding. A woman, they thought. Working-class. No better than she should be. Shabbily dressed and poor, but with a posh accent. Hard to trace, these remnants of a dead victim’s life, without help. But one or two had come to light in the windows of small shops, noticed by eagle-eyed young constables eager to make their mark…

One of those constables had been Janet Cutter’s son by her first marriage. George Peterson. The suicide…

Rutledge paced the floor, his mind absorbed in the past.

Hamish scolded, “Ye canna’ solve the problem, gnawing at it like an auld dog wi’ a shinbone! There’s work to be done here. You canna’ ignore it!”

Rutledge recalled Mrs. Taylor’s weary face, and the uncertain future of young Peter Webber.

Hamish was right. This was not the first time he’d had to juggle cases, when there was heavy pressure for answers. There had been times before the war when he hardly slept at all. And one of those times was the Shaw case.

Where had that mourning locket spent the last six years?

He looked at his watch, decided Dowling might still be at his desk. Leaving the room, he ran lightly down the staircase in the main lobby, and strode out the door, turning toward the police station. The evening was beginning to clear, a sharp wind brushing out the rain. Brushing out the cobwebs as well? Hamish wanted to know.

Inspector Dowling was just turning to walk home. Rutledge called his name and the man stopped, looking around.

“I’m late for my tea,” he said, “and I’m tired.”

“Come to the hotel and have dinner with me. I need to talk to you, and this is as good a time as any.”

Torn between his obligations at home and the chance of a fair meal, Dowling stood there in the street, his face a picture of his struggle. “Yes, all right, then. I’ll meet you at The Plough. I ought to tell my wife I’ll be late.”

He walked on, and Rutledge retraced his steps to the hotel. Halfway there, he encountered Elizabeth Mayhew on the street.

“Ian!” she said, startled. “What on earth-”

“I’m in Marling for the present. Assigned to deal with these murders.”

“Oh…” She bit her lip, as if uncertain what to do, whether to invite him to dine with her-or perhaps to stay at her house for the duration.

Reading the dismay in her eyes, he said gently, “I’ve a room at the hotel. Come and dine with me one night. But not this evening, I’ve got a meeting with Dowling.”

“He’s a good man,” she said distractedly. “I’d heard they had sent someone down from London. I never dreamed it might be you!”

“And the puppies. They’re thriving?” It was the first thing that came into his head. Their old easy companionship had evaporated like the evening’s mists, and he felt nearly as awkward as she evidently did.

“Yes-they’re growing-they’re quite adorable, actually, playful and sleeping less now that their eyes have opened-” She stopped, as if after such an enthusiastic report she felt she ought to invite him to come and see Henrietta’s brood for himself. The silence stretched out, as she searched for something else to say.

“I mustn’t miss my meeting,” he said. “Will you leave a message at the hotel desk, when you’ll be free for dinner?”

Relieved, she replied, “Of course. I’m-I’m glad you’re here, Ian. I look forward to dinner-”

And then she was gone, a quick smile begging for understanding as she went on down the street in the direction of the church.

He turned to look after her, saddened by the change in their relationship. But if there was someone, a new man in her life, then there would be little room left for Richard’s old friends. And he could appreciate that sea change. If he were courting a young woman whose late husband’s friends were in the picture, their presence would cause a certain degree of unease. Particularly judging whether the widow was yet free of the past, and what his own role would become if she wasn’t…

But he wasn’t courting Elizabeth. He was watching her fade from his life, a pleasant memory that was no longer his to enjoy.

Richard, Rutledge said to himself as he turned again and walked on to the hotel, it’s not my place to play dog in the manger. Elizabeth must make her own way.

But the sadness lingered. And a certain unacknowledged responsibility. He remembered what his sister Frances had said: “You’re afraid you are letting Richard down…”

Hamish remarked, “She’s no’ on her way to the altar. Only in the direction of yon kirk.”

And it was true. Time enough to worry later.

Dowling regarded the Plough’s menu like a starving man faced with a banquet.

Rutledge watched in amusement as the inspector chose very carefully, as if half afraid such an opportunity might not come his way again.

After they’d ordered, Dowling leaned back in his chair. “Sergeant Burke has told me about Peter Webber. How much faith do you put in what the boy had to say?”

“I don’t know,” Rutledge answered honestly. “But it’s a place to begin. Tell me, do you know someone called Jimsy Ridger?”

“Good God, how did you come to hear of him?”

“Apparently someone has been asking for him.”

“As in, someone who might be our murderer?”

As their soup was set before them, Rutledge replied, “It’s hard to judge. But rather a coincidence, don’t you think? Tell me about Ridger.”

Dowling spooned up the carrot-and-onion soup with great gusto, then said, “He’s not local. Never was. As a boy he came with the hop pickers out of Maidstone, a rough sort of child with a bullying nature and a particularly unclear concept of personal property. There were innumerable complaints about him. The hop pickers often camped or caravaned, you see. There were precious few things worth stealing, but it was easy enough if you saw a man’s pipe you fancied, or a silver bangle forgotten on a bench, even a bit of ribbon for the hair. Most of the adults, and the children who were old enough to work, were too tired to be overly troublesome, but the younger ones, with too much energy and too little guidance, were always skirting trouble. Ridger might have become the ringleader, if he’d been clever enough to go about it in the right way. But he was always out for himself. For our sakes, I was always glad he hadn’t seen his golden opportunity.”

“He came in the autumn, then, for the picking?”

“And sometimes the haying before that. Depended on the weather, you see, when one finished and the other began.” He finished his soup with a sigh of satisfaction.

“At any rate,” Dowling went on, “Ridger was soon off to fairer fields of endeavor. He ran away to London with an older boy, and his mother didn’t have the energy to care. Nothing was ever proved against Ridger. But there was a trail of near misses. Petty theft, some minor forgery, cheating old women out of their savings-the sort of trouble a boy is likely to fall into, running with the wrong crowd.”

“I’m surprised you followed his career.”

Dowling grinned. “Hardly that. From time to time I’d be contacted by London when they’d run out of likely places to look for him.”

“He kept his ties in Kent?”

“I doubt he cared tuppence for Marling. It was more a case of going to earth when London got too warm for him. One spring he came back to work in the orchards, and after that he moved on to the hop gardens. He disappeared one day and then was back in the autumn with a swollen eye and a cut on his chin deep enough to leave a scar. I suppose he never had a home of his own in the true sense. His mother was a decent enough woman, but she produced children like rabbits and never seemed to know where half of them were. They fell into rivers and out of trees and over walls-we’d clean them up and send them back to her for a scolding.”

Rutledge said, “Not a vicious man, then, Ridger.”

Dowling frowned. “No, I’d not call him vicious. On the other hand, Ridger was out for himself. And that sort can sometimes turn violent.”

“He was in the war?”

The woman serving tables brought them a platter of roast chicken, and Dowling’s eyes gleamed with hungry relish. He fell to with an apologetic smile.

After a few mouthfuls, he answered, “He joined the army here in Kent, with the rest of the men hereabouts. He told Sergeant Burke at the time that he felt closer to them than to his friends in London. Or trusted them more, is my guess. Still, Ridger had a wonderful way with him, when it suited him. He could call the birds from the trees, as my grandmother was fond of saying. And from all reports, he was a good soldier. And the best scavenger in the regiment.”

Rutledge had known more than a few of those himself. A Scot in his company, a man called Campbell, had a knack for disappearing and then coming back hours later with a full haversack. Tins, biscuits, matches, even a cold roast hen with cold potatoes, probably scooped up from some French farmer’s abandoned kitchen. Campbell had found dry socks after a week of rain, and gloves in the middle of winter, and whisky for those too well to go back to aid stations and in too much pain to stand their duty. Officers tried to keep the thievery to a minimum, but what they didn’t see they couldn’t stop.

“What became of Ridger after the war?” Rutledge asked.

“He’s back in London, I expect.”

“Unless he’s gone to earth again,” Hamish suggested, “and someone thinks he’s in Kent…”

The Campbells of this world, excellent scavengers though they were, occasionally forgot the rules and made enemies.

Dowling ordered a flan for his dessert, and Rutledge settled for a plate of cheese.

The inspector sighed as he put down his spoon. “I must thank you,” he said with a wry smile. “I feel blissfully content.”

After Dowling had left the hotel, Rutledge searched for the man who usually served behind the desk. Haskins was his name, and he had just finished his own meal in the kitchen, his napkin still under his chin. He pointed out the telephone, and Rutledge put in a call to London.

Sergeant Gibson’s gruff voice came over the line. “Yes, sir, you wanted to speak to me?”

“I’m looking for a man named Jimsy Ridger.” Rutledge gave Gibson a brief sketch of Ridger’s background and history. “He’s probably in London, and he may have returned to his old ways. Or he may have acquired a new name and taken up a more respectable line of work. But someone will know how to find him, even so.”

Gibson chuckled. “He wouldn’t be the first to turn respectable, and find old friends on his doorstep. Anything else, sir?”

“He’s a personable man, with a scapegrace way about him when he puts his mind to it.” He added as an afterthought, “He could be passing himself off as an ex-officer rather than a common soldier.”

Gibson noted it. “Not many of them in the stews of London,” he retorted dryly. “I’ll see what I can come up with, sir. But it will take a little time.”

Rutledge gave him the number at The Plough and rang off.

As he walked up the stairs, Hamish said, “Yon Ridger is a wild-goose chase, like as not.”

“True enough,” Rutledge answered. “In police work, we often close more doors than we open. On the other hand, Will Taylor was killed hours after he was questioned about Ridger. And our drunken friend tonight had been asked about him. I don’t want to find Ridger appearing as our cooked goose in the middle of a trial.”

The night’s dreams were a mixture of unsettled thoughts and emotions-the sounds of gunfire in the dark, the flashes of light, the arcing descent of flares, the first finding shots of artillery, and Rutledge was hunched behind the barrier of the trench wall, waiting for a lull to go over the top. The living Hamish was with him, and others long since dead, and he tried to keep up their courage as the minutes wore on. And then he was standing in a twilit Kent road, talking to Alice Taylor, and searching through the hop fields for the boy, Peter Webber. Mrs. Shaw was sitting in the car, a baleful presence, with her daughter weeping in the seat beside her.

Rutledge woke with a start, his body wet with sweat, his eyes searching the room for something-anything-that was familiar. He had no idea where he was.

And then the shape of the window and the pale light of a moon feeling its way through the thinning clouds brought him back to The Plough Hotel and the small village of Marling.

He got up and washed his face.

Hamish, lurking in the shadows of the room, said something, and Rutledge shook his head. Hamish repeated, “It’s almost dawn.”

So it was.

Rutledge said, “The summer dawns came early at the Front. You never liked them.”

“There was no’ much worth seeing when the light strengthened. Except for the dead, and the wire, and the men coughing with the damp.”

“Or the gas rolling in.”

“Aye.” The Highland Scots, used to the open hills, had been good at spotting the telltale sweep of a German gas attack. All their lives they’d seen sea mists, and that particular floating gauze that was ground mist in the valleys. They knew the feel of the air before these blew in. And they knew the different feel of the air before the gas came toward them on still mornings when the wind wouldn’t disperse it too quickly.

Hamish had often been the first to cry a warning. They had fumbled for their masks, shielding any bare skin, and waited for the attack to pass over them. Anyone too slow, anyone with an ill-kept mask, breathed in the fumes and felt the linings of his throat and lungs burn with a fire that was unforgiving. The damage, once done, lingered for whatever remained of a man’s life.

Looking back at the past in that odd moment, there was something besides the haunting voice and the haunted man in the quiet, dark room. That bond that held together soldiers over millennia, the shared experience of the devastation of war.