A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [48]
She marched to the door, Margaret trailing after her, apologetic and at the same time defensive. The girl cared about her termagant mother, and she was worried.
“Please, can’t you at least listen?” she seemed to say as she turned, her eyes pleading in place of her voice.
Rutledge said, “Let me make arrangements for your return—”
Mrs. Shaw wheeled to face him. “I mayn’t have much else, Inspector, but I have my pride. If you won’t help my Ben, I don’t want your charity!”
“I will help,” he heard himself saying. “But as one man, I can’t promise that I’ll accomplish miracles.”
“We aren’t looking for miracles. We’re looking for fairness.”
She walked away, her head high, her body chunky and compact. Her daughter followed after her, uncertain what to do, uncertain how to help. Watching her, Rutledge was reminded suddenly of her father. Ben Shaw had had that same lost-dog manner, that resigned acceptance of whatever fate had thrown at him, deserved or not. He had been afraid and wary and patient, as the law ground to its foregone conclusion of guilt, and he had not had the spirit to fight on.
Life—or years of marriage to a woman of a different class and upbringing—had defeated Shaw long before the judgment of the courts. Shaw was one of the victims, not one of the shapers of events. If he had killed those women, he had done it in desperation for the money his family needed. He had accepted the court’s decision with a crushed spirit that didn’t know where to turn for solace. And he had gone to his death a pale shadow of the man he could have been.
Ben Shaw had never fought. He had never tried to stem the march to the hangman in any way.
It had been seen as a sign of his guilt. His acceptance of the right of the Law to punish him for what he had done.
Hamish said, “Aye, a victim.” Then, echoing Mrs. Shaw, he asked, “How will ye sleep with Ben Shaw on your conscience? I canna’ follow you there—but he will.”
Rutledge closed the door of the sitting room behind him and walked through the foyer of the hotel. He was no longer hungry. Standing on the street outside, he tried to decide what to do. He was in the midst of one investigation, and bedeviled by another. He should be clearheaded and have his wits about him, and instead he was having to face himself in ways that he had never thought possible.
Mrs. Shaw was a master at one thing if nothing else—she knew the demon of guilt would be his undoing.
And the tenuous connection he had been trying to build for the Marling murders had slipped, unnoticed, from his mind.
14
IN THE END, RUTLEDGE TRACKED DOWN THE SHAWS AND drove them back to Sansom Street, himself. Mrs. Shaw had protested, but he had swept that aside and handed her daughter into the rear of the motorcar—to share the seat with a restless Hamish.
Mrs. Shaw was silent most of the way, her black hat and coat giving her the air of a lump of coal capriciously shaped in human form.
“This won’t change my mind,” she said once. “I won’t be cozened by a kindness into forgetting what’s due me and my family.”
“No one is trying to cozen you,” Rutledge replied. “I have business in London.”
But she made no answer to that, as if she didn’t believe him.
WHEN THE SHAW women had been returned to their home, Rutledge went in search of his sister Frances. She was dressing for a luncheon and called to him from her bedroom, “Ian, is it urgent?”
“In a way.” He went upstairs.
She came out of the dressing room wearing a very stylish suit and carrying a matching hat in her hand. Sitting down to brush her hair, she said, “You look tired, darling. What’s wrong?”
He took the chair by the pair of windows overlooking the square and the houses that stood around it. “Elizabeth Mayhew. Has she said anything to you about a new man in her life?”
Frances’s eyes met his in the dressing-table mirror. “Interesting!