A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [107]
“Ah! So that’s why you were looking at the files! Indeed.”
“It was a matter of luck,” Rutledge agreed, “to hear someone of Masters’s caliber discuss the legal implications of a crime. Particularly one I’d worked on.”
Wary, Bowles’s voice changed. “And what did he have to say?”
“He’s of the opinion that Sunderland was one of the most brilliant legal minds of our age.”
“I would have to agree with him. Dining out is all well and good, you know, but you’re there to find a cold-blooded murderer. I’d prefer to see more progress made on that front!”
“Indeed, sir!”
Bowles rang off, and Rutledge hung up the telephone with unusual care.
Hamish said, “He went through your desk. Or someone reported to him.”
“But he isn’t quite sure what brought Mrs. Shaw to the Yard . . .”
“Else, he’s waiting for your heid to be well into the noose—”
RUTLEDGE WENT TO call on Mrs. Bartlett and Mrs. Webber. Alone and overworked, the widows looked older than their years.
Hamish said distastefully, “I’d no’ want to be a policeman. I’d no’ want to question the grieving.”
“It’s the only way to find a killer. Sometimes.”
“Oh, aye? And ye’d be happy telling your ain secrets?”
Susan Webber, brushing her auburn hair back from her forehead with one hand, was holding on to the shy little girl burrowing into her mother’s skirts with the other. Peter’s sister . . .
“It was kind of you to let Peter ride in your motorcar,” she said as she led Rutledge into the parlor and turned up the lamp. It smoked, as if it needed trimming. A basket of folded laundry sat on a table in the passage, and there was evidence that cabbage was part of their dinner menu. He could smell it boiling.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said, “but I’m sure you are as eager to have an answer to your husband’s death as we are.”
She said, “What good will it do, then? It won’t bring Peter’s father back, and it won’t make my life any easier. Kenny might as well have died in the war. I’d got used to him being away, after the first year. Then he was back, and he needed more care than these two.”
He looked up to see Peter standing quietly in the doorway.
“Is there anything you can tell me, Mrs. Webber, that might be useful? Did your husband have any enemies—or any friends he didn’t trust?”
“Kenny wasn’t back home long enough to make enemies! And his friends were in the war with him. Or dead. I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt him. Or us. And why would he stop along the road somewhere and drink wine? He never liked wine, it made his stomach raw.”
“He may have learned to like it in France.”
She shrugged. “Kenny learned to like a lot of things in France, didn’t he, that I didn’t know about. The French pox, for one. He was cured. He said. It was Jimsy’s doing, that’s what I was told. Jimsy got him a surprise for his birthday. It was a surprise, right enough.”
“Did you know Ridger well?”
“Him?” Her voice was contemptuous. “He was one of the hop pickers. My mother would have locked me in my room if I’d shown any interest in that direction! One summer when Jimsy was twelve, he helped Kenny’s pa to build a fence, and Kenny’s ma was kindhearted and let him stay to supper many a night. I don’t think Jimsy ever forgot that, and he was always respectful of Kenny. That’s what Kenny said when I railed at him about the whore. That Jimsy knew he was homesick and down, because they was going into the line again the next morning and Kenny had a premonition he’d be killed. But he wasn’t, was he?”
As Rutledge left, Peter followed him out into the front garden, staring longingly at the motorcar at the gate.
Rutledge showed him how the crank was turned, and let him peer into the driver’s seat at the gauges on the panel. When Peter hopped down to the road again, Rutledge got behind the wheel.
Peter said, “One night I saw my pa come home in a motorcar. He’d been working out on one of the farms. I was at the window watching for him. He said he liked riding in it and would do it again, if he got the chance.”
“When did you see this motorcar? Do you remember?”
The child smiled shyly