A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [119]
“No—!”
“Mrs. Shaw, for your own sake and your daughter’s—you’re in no state—”
Nell Shaw stretched out her hand. “No, don’t leave me! You’ve got to help me. I can’t do it all myself. I can’t anymore!”
“Mrs. Shaw—”
“What does it matter to them? Janet Cutter is dead. Her son George is dead—It won’t matter to them if the slate is wiped clean for my Ben, and their names are substituted for his!”
“I can’t perjure myself—”
“Is it perjury? Look at my girl! Am I to put a dead woman ahead of my living flesh? It could have been that bitch next door! It could have been her as easy as it could have been my Ben! And they can’t hang her, can they? They won’t dig up her corpse and hang her in the prison yard! All you have to do is tell the police that you was wrong, that there’s proof now that she did the murders—”
“They’ll want to know how she did it—what opportunity she had. Why she should have killed the women—there had to be a reason—”
“Her son, then! Good God, he’s a suicide, he must have had it on his conscience, and after my Ben was hanged, he couldn’t bear it any longer—he took his own life.” She was on her knees on the mattress, begging. “There’s the locket, you saw it! Love—in the tall chest there, the top drawer! Give it to him and let him take it to the Yard. He can tell them what the truth is, and get the verdict reversed, and clear your father’s name. Give it to him!”
Margaret went to the drawer and opened it, her hands trembling as she searched among the handkerchiefs and gloves. Finding what she sought, she brought it to Rutledge, her face strained and on the verge of tears again.
Rutledge opened the handkerchief to look at the contents. The locket fell through his fingers and onto the floor. As he bent to retrieve it, cold metal and stone in his hand, he thought, God forgive me. I don’t know what to do!
And yet he did. Out of the shadows had come an answer. The only answer he had failed to explore. He had examined the possibility of the Cutters—of Janet Cutter’s dead son—even of Mrs. Shaw herself being the true killer. He had never looked at Ben Shaw, except as a victim. . . .
As he straightened up, he said, “Mrs. Shaw. Where had your husband hidden this locket?” There was a different note in his voice.
Hamish said, “’Ware!”
Rutledge thought she was going to die then.
“We searched the house,” he said implacably. “We never found it. Where was it?”
Nell Shaw crumpled before his eyes.
Covering her face with her hands, she lay back in the bed and thrashed, moaning, from side to side. From an angry demanding harridan, she had become diminished, a woman without spirit and without hope. Margaret ran to her, throwing an accusing glance at him.
Hamish said, “It canna’ be true—!”
Rutledge answered grimly, “You weren’t there!”
He left the room, and went down the stairs. In the kitchen, the remainders of a meal lay on the table, greasy plates, scraps of sausage and bread. He took the kettle, filled it with fresh water, and set it on the stove, then opened cupboards until he found cups and saucers.
As he took them down, he could see that his hands were shaking.
Guilt—
He thought then about what Tom Brereton had said about guilt—about the need to work it out.
But why had Mrs. Shaw suddenly taken it into her head to remove the locket from its hiding place and put it in among Mrs. Cutter’s clothing?
Why?
To what end?
Yes, it would make a difference in her children’s lives as well as her own to clear her husband’s name, but the passion driving her had been ferocious—
He reviewed everything he knew or had learned about the Shaws. And Margaret’s words came back to him . . .
“She went next door to help Mr. Cutter as he’d asked, and when she came home she looked sick, as if she was about to lose her dinner. She was that upset, she locked herself in her room. I’ve only known her to do that twice before. The day Papa was taken away, and the day the letter came.”
“What letter?”
“I never saw it. But after she read it, she cried for hours.