A Fearsome Doubt

4

The shock of her certainty, the ferocity with which she faced him, were overwhelming.

And as the implication of her words sank in, Rutledge felt cold.

If this locket had been found in someone else’s possession at the time of the trial, what difference might that have made to the outcome?

He tried to find something to say. Something that would dispute her conclusions. Or support his own position Hamish warned him. “It’s no’ wise to be o’wer hasty.”

The small, deadly bit of gold jewelry glittered on his desk, mocking Rutledge, seeming to take on a life of its own.

They had searched the Shaw house from top to bottom-the locket had never been found. Was not there. He would have sworn to that under oath.

Yet here it was-all these years later Where had it been? And why?

And, gentle God, did it matter?

Yes, it mattered-if he had hanged the wrong man.

When Rutledge failed to answer her, Mrs. Shaw regarded him with disdain. “You don’t want to believe me, is that it? Because my Ben was hanged for a murderer, you think I’m no better than he was!” She leaned forward. “Well, it won’t wash, do you hear me? I’ve come to ask for my rights, and if you won’t help me, I’ll find someone who will!”

“Mrs. Shaw,” he said, forcing himself to think clearly, “I have only your word that this locket was found among the belongings of Mrs. Cutter. You should have left it there-”

“And risk having him find it? I’m not stupid, Inspector. If he killed those women and not my Ben, what’s to stop him from killing me, if I let on what I’d done? As it was, I had to pretend to a faintness, to get out of that house.”

“We spoke with the Cutters-”

“Yes, and so you did. Did you expect him to say, ‘You’ve got it all wrong, Inspector, it wasn’t Ben, it was me!’?” Her rough mimicry of a man’s voice mocked him.

Rutledge said reasonably, “If you are right, why would Mrs. Cutter have kept this piece of jewelry? She must have realized that it was dangerous, given the fact that her husband may have been a murderer.”

“Because she was sickly, that’s why, and didn’t want to be left alone! Better to sleep with a murderer than to sleep alone, and not have bread on the table when you wake up! It was the only bit he couldn’t sell, wasn’t it? Maybe it was her hold over her husband. And as long as he didn’t know what had become of it, she was safe.”

“It’s not a very sound theory,” he argued.

Mrs. Shaw looked him over, weighing up the clothes he wore as if she knew their value to a penny. “You’ve never known want, have you? Never worried at night where the rent was coming from or how you would pay the butcher, and what you was going to do about worn-out boots. I can tell you what happens to a woman on her own!”

And he could see for himself the suffering in her face.

But how much of what she’d told him about the Cutters was her need to find absolution for her husband?

The truth was, he didn’t want to believe her. The bedrock of his emotional stability, the only thing that had brought him back to sanity after France, was the Yard, and the career he’d built there before the war. By 1914, his reputation had been shaped through solid achievement, unlike his undeserved glory in the war, where he had been driven half mad and shaken to the core by endless slaughter. To lose his career now He had never been a hero. But he’d been a damned good detective.

Hamish mocked, “Aye, so ye say. You’re no’ sae perfect, none of us is-”

“You weren’t there; you don’t know anything about this case!” Rutledge retorted in anger. “You weren’t there!”

Mistaking the direction of his sudden flare of anger, Mrs. Shaw prodded defiantly, “If you killed my Ben wrongly, you owe me restitution. My children have gone hungry without him, and I’ve had nothing to give them, no way to offer any life at all. It’s my children I’m defending. It’s too late now for Ben.”

Struggling with his own vulnerability just now when the war seemed to have returned with unexpected and extraordinary force, and against his will already half convinced by the intensity of the widow’s determination, Rutledge made an effort to explain how the Yard would see her demands. He said, “We can’t reopen a case-”

“You can!” she told him, interrupting. “Here’s a wrongful death, and I have the proof. What’s to become of me, and my children? Why should Henry Cutter go scot-free while we suffer for what he did?”

The locket lay between them, tearing his life apart as well as hers.

It couldn’t be true. He’d been careful. So had Philip Nettle.

How could he destroy the past, when that was all he had?

And yet… and yet if he had failed Ben Shaw, what then? Why should his past be sacred? Untouchable?

Nell Shaw got to her feet, a middle-aged woman with nothing to be gained by coming to him, except relief from her personal tragedy. An unattractive woman with no graces, who would always provoke dislike and even loathing.

“I’ve a daughter of marrying age. I’ve a son looking to be apprenticed. I’ve done for them the best I could these last years. But there’s no money to see them right. I barely kept food on the table. And no one’s willing to lift a finger for them-not for the offspring of gallows’ bait. We might as well have gone to the hangman along with Ben.” She began to fold the handkerchief over the locket, as if shielding it from his eyes. “I see I’ll find no help here. Well. There’s other strings to my bow.”

“I can’t turn back the clock,” he said, unconsciously repeating her words. “We don’t know how this came into Mrs. Cutter’s possession. Or why. Or, for that matter, when. It’s evidence, yes, but it’s not clear proof.”

“It’s something to be going on with! If you wasn’t afraid to find out that you are as human as the rest of us and got it wrong.”

The truth was, he was afraid…

And at the same time, he knew he was honor-bound to get to the bottom of this allegation.

Stifling the turmoil that was tearing apart his own mind, Rutledge tried to put into perspective how momentous the finding of this locket must seem to the woman seated in front of him. Providing of course that her story was true But he could see no benefit for her in a lie. That was the key. She had nothing to gain by lying. And there was a driving force about her that couldn’t be counterfeited. It was there in the way she held her body, and in the small, determined eyes.

He had never liked this woman. From the beginning of the murder inquiry, she had been a thorn in the side of authority. He tried to disregard his dislike now.

Hamish said, “Aye, she’s an auld besom. But if it were another inspector’s case she was complaining of, what would you do?”

Rutledge picked up his pen and uncapped it, drawing a sheet of paper forward.

“Mrs. Shaw. Listen to me. First and foremost, we can’t search the Cutter house on your word alone-”

“What you’re saying is that my word isn’t good enough-”

“What I’m saying is that you took the locket from its hiding place. If I send forty men there in an hour’s time, and nothing else turns up-if there’s no more evidence to be found-then it’s your word against Mr. Cutter’s that the locket was in Mrs. Cutter’s belongings. Now or ever.”

She said stubbornly, “I left the chain where I found it. To mark the place!”

Rutledge nodded. “I understand that. But the chain could belong to any locket that Mrs. Cutter owned. There’s no one who can say with authority that the chain my men discover actually belongs to the Satterthwaite locket. Mrs. Satterthwaite, I remind you, is dead-”

“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?”