A Fearsome Doubt

28

Her bleak, red-rimmed eyes stared at Rutledge, daring him to pity her.

“Ben predeceased him-” he began.

“That’s right. You can’t leave money to a dead man. But if I could prove that he’d been wrongfully hanged, if I could show he’d have been alive still if he hadn’t been taken from us, I thought I might stand a chance at the inheritance. Neville didn’t know, you see-he hadn’t kept up with Ben or us, he hadn’t ever heard of Margaret and young Ben. He was leaving it all to Ben, and Ben was dead!”

“And that’s when you decided to risk claiming you’d found the locket next door, in Mrs. Cutter’s possession.”

“I was afraid if it all went wrong, the police might think I’d taken it, and I’d be clapped in jail. But then I heard you was back at the Yard, and I thought, if I got to Mr. Rutledge, he might listen to me. With George’s suicide, it was easy to believe Janet Cutter’s son was guilty of something. And with her stroke coming when it did, it would be easy to think she knew more than she should and was guilty of letting Ben die in her son’s place.”

Hamish said, “Mrs. Shaw nearly succeeded.”

“It was wrong of you-” Rutledge began.

“Wrong be damned!” she cried, with a little of her old blazing spirit. “It was my family I cared about. Wouldn’t you fight for yours, if you had to?”

Hamish reminded him, “You fought for your men-but you didna’ fight for me!”

Rutledge retorted, “You refused to listen-you preferred to die!”

Struggling to collect his thoughts, he said aloud, “If you spoke to a lawyer-”

“And where’s the money for that to come from, I ask you! I could scarcely pay for my way to Marling, much less hire a solicitor who knows his arse from his elbow. I was desperate, and something in your face when I came into your room at the Yard made me think you’d listen. That I could make you believe in Ben.”

She had nearly done it. She had shaken him to the core, and driven him to listen to her demands, to ask questions, to revive, at least in his own mind, the trial that had left its mark on so many people.

“It was a near run thing,” Hamish was saying. “With yon Matthew Sunderland ill, and the constable guilty of theft, and Mrs. Cutter knowing what he’d done, it might ha’ turned out differently.”

“Differently, yes.” Rutledge answered silently. “But it was still Ben Shaw who put the pillows over the faces of defenseless women and smothered them!”

“Then why did ye no’ uncover the rest of the story at the time?”

“Because when George Peterson was taken on, he hadn’t told the Yard that his mother remarried. Nobody knew of his relationship to Mrs. Cutter.”

“Because he and his stepfather didna’ see eye to eye?”

It was one explanation. There might have been other reasons… Who could say what had tormented George Peterson?

As if she’d heard Rutledge’s thoughts, Nell Shaw said, “I never knew what possessed George, but something did. He was always looking for something-somewhere to belong. He was like one of them icebergs. You never saw what was below the surface, only the little bit at the top.”

She looked across at her daughter, forgotten in the anguish of the last hour. Margaret was quietly crying, lost in misery.

“You shouldn’t have heard any of this, poppet. I’m that sorry.”