A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [50]
“Then it was Armistice Day. It unsettled a good many people, you know. You aren’t alone there.” She was searching for clues, her father’s daughter. He had been a very fine lawyer, and he had had a strong intuitive streak that both his children had inherited.
Rutledge didn’t answer.
“All the same . . .” She hesitated for a moment. “We all live with devils of one kind or another. I don’t know how to exorcise them. Except by surviving. Somehow, against all the odds.”
It was far too close to the mark, and she must have read something in his face, for he heard a sharp intake of breath. As if she had finally guessed what was on his mind.
“My mistakes may go to the gallows,” he told her, “the innocent along with the guilty. And they are buried. And sometimes they are resurrected.” It was said in a rueful voice, as if laughing at himself.
“The truth doesn’t change,” she told him. “Father always believed that. Still, it’s easy to alter the trappings of truth.”
“I’ll remember that.”
As his sister stepped away from the side of the car, Rutledge added, “You won’t forget about Elizabeth?”
She blew him a kiss. “Darling, I won’t forget.”
He drove off, Hamish saying in the back of his mind, “She’s no’ the common-garden variety of sisters.”
“She’d have made a damned fine barrister. Better than I would have, if I’d followed in our father’s footsteps.”
“Aye.” There was a moment of silence as Rutledge threaded his way through the thick of midday traffic. Then Hamish followed up on his earlier thought. “It is no’ very surprising she’s no’ married.”
Rutledge, glancing at his watch, decided he had time for one more call before he left London.
HENRY CUTTER WORKED at a shop where tools were designed and fabricated. His office, high above the floor where machines made any conversation impossible, was cluttered with invoices and paperwork, and there were ink stains on his fingers. A thin man with a long jaw and sunken eyes, he looked up as Rutledge entered the room, then frowned.
“I know you—” He broke off, squinting in an attempt to place the man before him.
“Rutledge. Inspector Rutledge from Scotland Yard.”
Surprise lifted his eyebrows. “That’s right! You’ve changed—” He stopped and said, instead of completing the thought, “We all have, to be blunt about it. Is there anything wrong?”
“I’ve come about an old matter. Ben Shaw’s conviction and hanging for murder. Mrs. Shaw worries about—er—a miscarriage of justice.”
Cutter sighed. “She’s got a very pretty daughter, and she’s determined for the girl to marry well. She’s asked me a dozen times in the last month what I remember about the police and all the questions we were asked. It’s as if she worries a raw wound, unable to leave it alone. Life hasn’t treated Nell kindly, you know. Still, she’s a woman who draws on hidden strength and faces up to what can’t be run from. I respect that.”
“What do you remember?” Rutledge asked, interested.
“I remember how upset my wife was,” Cutter answered. “She’d known the women. Well, not known them, if you follow me! But she’d called on them from time to time as a church visitor. Years before, when her health was better and she was more active.”
“Did she believe Shaw was guilty?”
“I never asked her.” Cutter looked away. “He was a very likeable man. Janet—Mrs. Cutter—was fond of him, in a manner of speaking.”
Rutledge found himself thinking that Cutter was not a man of grace or charm. Plainspoken and unimaginative, a plodder. He was beginning to understand why Cutter admired Nell Shaw’s strength. The question then became, was Cutter capable of murder? And why, if he had a reasonably comfortable life, should he be driven to it?
“I understand she had a son who died before she did.”
“Janet was married before. Peterson fell ill of diphtheria, when the boy was almost two years old. She was expecting another child, and she miscarried. The worst part of that was, she felt she’d let her husband down by being so ill herself. And she blamed herself