A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [10]
“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?”
5
AFTER RUTLEDGE HAD SEEN MRS. SHAW INTO A CAB, HE SAT in his chair and stared out the window at the bare branches of trees that stood out stark and almost pleading against the colorless sky.
He couldn’t have been wrong about Ben Shaw. . . .
And yet he had been badly shaken by that locket, and Mrs. Shaw’s ferocious defense of her husband’s innocence had rung with conviction. If he had been so certain of the man’s guilt before, how had that altered so easily?
Hamish said, “Your wits are scattered, man, ye’re no’ thinking clearly!”
What if he had been wrong—
Hamish said, “It isna’ the end of the world—”
Rutledge retorted angrily, “It was a man’s life. You weren’t there—”
Hamish agreed readily. “I was safe in Scotland then, and alive. . . .” After a moment he added, “She willna’ be put off.”
Nor was he the sort of man who could quietly bury truth under a layer of lies. Rutledge faced himself now, and with that a possibility that appalled him. Like it or not, he must get to the bottom of this question of Ben Shaw’s guilt.
Like it or not, he must find the answer, for his own soul’s comfort.
Hamish growled, “It isna’ a matter of comfort, it’s a sair question for the conscience.” His Covenanter heritage had always projected his world in severe black and white. It was what had brought him to defy the Army and face execution rather than compromise. His strength—and his destruction.
Ignoring the voice in his head, Rutledge considered the next step. How did one go about dredging up the past, without destroying what had been built upon it?
This was not the first time he’d dealt with families whose anger was as destructive as it was futile, when not even a jury’s verdict could persuade them of a loved one’s guilt. But few of these families had ever brought forward what was in their eyes fresh proof of innocence.
And on that slim balance, he was forced to confront his actions of more than six years ago.
Hamish said, “I saw a magician once. When the troop train was held up in London, he came to entertain us. I couldna’ be certain what was real and what was false.”
Rutledge suddenly found a memory of Ben Shaw’s defeated, exhausted face, when the prison warders brought him to the gallows. Even if he could clear the man’s name, there was no way he could restore the man’s life. Shaw was dead. . . .
Like so many others. The world seemed filled with phantoms, his mind shattered by them.
Suddenly he could feel himself slipping back in the trenches, the Battle of the Somme in July 1916—the watershed of his madness.
HAMISH’S VOICE BROUGHT him sharply back to the dingy confines of his office at Scotland Yard, with its low shelves, its grimy windows, the smell of old paint and dusty corners heavy in the passages. With the sound of footsteps harsh on the wooden floors outside his door, and brief snatches of conversations that seemed to have no beginning and no end.
Rutledge rubbed his face, trying to remember what Hamish had said to him. And the voice repeated, “It’s no’ unlikely that Shaw himself gave the locket to the neighbor’s wife. A love token. Mrs. Shaw willna’ care to hear that.”
“With that telling inscription on the back? Besides, mourning jewelry isn’t the most romantic gift, is it? When Mrs. Cutter’s own husband was very much alive.”
“A promise, no doubt, that he wouldna’ be alive much longer. It could explain why she kept it.”
“You didn’t know Shaw,” Rutledge reminded Hamish.
But then, had he?
All the same, Rutledge did know his superior, Chief Superintendent Bowles. And therein lay a hidden snare that could be as explosive as a mine.
The Shaw investigation had brought a promotion to the then Chief Inspector Bowles, who had used the murders to