A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [29]
Rutledge picked up the thread he was following. “The women were old, infirm. It was a kindness to end their pain and their loneliness . . .”
The rector shrugged. “Who can say what went through that poor man’s mind?”
“If Shaw wasn’t guilty of murder, who was? His wife? Mrs. Cutter?”
The rector turned tired but knowing eyes on Rutledge. “I don’t speculate on guilt. I try to bring comfort without judgment.”
“I’m a policeman. Judgment is my trade.”
“So it is.” The rector rose. “It has been interesting to speak with you. May I offer a word of advice? Not as a man of the cloth, but as someone thirty years your senior, and therefore perhaps—a little wiser?”
“By all means,” Rutledge answered, rising as well.
“Walk carefully. You can’t bring Ben Shaw back from the dead. He’s long since faced a judgment higher than yours or mine. Better for him to be a martyr than to open wounds you cannot close again.”
Rutledge considered him for a moment. “Yet you sent Nell Shaw to me.”
The rector smiled, a youthful look replacing the somberness. “Yes, Inspector. It’s my earnest hope that you won’t fail either of us.”
OUTSIDE THE CHURCH, Hamish said sourly, “He prefers riddles to plain speech.”
“No. I think he’s uncertain of his duty, and passed the problem on to me.”
“Or knows a truth he willna’ own up to.”
It was a cogent remark.
NO ONE ANSWERED Rutledge’s knock at Number 14, the Shaw home. He left, walking back to the motorcar, deep in thought. He had no excuse to call on Cutter, and no right. Henry Cutter would be well within his rights to complain to the Yard of harassment if he found a policeman on his doorstep asking questions about an old murder, and his wife’s possible role in it. But there was another source of information. . . .
Back at the Yard, Rutledge called Sergeant Bennett into his office. Bennett had been a constable when Ben Shaw was tried, and he’d known the people on Sansom Street better perhaps than they knew themselves. A sharp mind and a sharper memory had brought him to the attention of the Yard and seen him promoted.
Bennett was in early middle age now, of medium height and with nothing to set him apart from the ordinary man on the street he interviewed time and again. It had been his hallmark, this ability to fit in. Rutledge had seen it at work often enough. The question was, where did Bennett’s loyalties lie at the Yard? There was no way of guessing.
Hamish warned, “Then you’d best walk carefully.”
Rutledge began circumspectly, “This is in confidence, Bennett. But I’ve been looking back at the Shaw case. It seems one of the missing pieces of jewelry may have come to light.”
Bennett’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Indeed, sir!” Curiosity was bright in his eyes. “I’d a feeling he’d chucked them in the river!”
Rutledge was not about to enlighten him. “I want you to think back to the investigation—before I came into the picture. Philip Nettle was in charge of the case. Was there any suspicion that someone other than Shaw had had access to the murdered women? Mrs. Winslow. Mrs. Satterthwaite. Mrs. Tompkins.”
“There was a charwoman who did for two of them,” Bennett said slowly, digging back into his memory. “Not likely to smother anybody, frail as she was. No old-age pension for the likes of her—she worked until the day before she died. The victims went to the same church—St. Agnes, that was—when they could get about on their own. We looked at that connection closely, sir, but it went nowhere. Nor did they seem to have more than a nodding acquaintance with each other. But as it turned out, Shaw came to meet them through the church, after a fashion. The rector asked him to make some repairs for Mrs. Winslow, and on the heels of that,