A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [67]
It was Nell Shaw’s daughter.
She simply stood there, prepared for rejection.
“Miss Shaw?” he said tentatively. He dredged his memory for a name, and somewhere in the mists of the past, he remembered that she was called Margaret.
Her face, clouded with uncertainty, cleared as he recognized her. “It’s my mother,” she said hurriedly. “I’m so terribly worried about her.”
With a repressed sigh, he asked, “Is she ill? Shall I ask the doctor to come to the hotel?” Nell Shaw was, he thought, a better tactician than half the generals at the Front—But then, as Hamish was pointing out, perhaps she had a better cause. After all, Rutledge was the man who had brought her husband to judgment—and thus to his death. Shifting the burden of his self-doubt to her shoulders, blaming her for demanding what she perceived as justice, was shirking his duty to himself and to the Law.
“I’m sorry—No, she’s in London. I came down alone.”
Thanking God for small mercies, he said more sharply than he’d intended, “I must drive to Seelyham. My business there can’t wait. I’ll have to take you with me. We can talk on the way.”
She hesitated, as if half afraid of him, gnawing her lip like a child.
“Margaret,” he said more gently. “Would you prefer to wait here until I come back? I can’t promise how long it will be. On the other hand, if you drive with me, there won’t be any distractions or interruptions. We can discuss what’s wrong with your mother along the way, and I’ll see you safely home from Seelyham.”
Flushing with embarrassment and gratitude, she nodded, and Rutledge handed her into the passenger’s seat before turning toward the main road out of the village.
As they passed the ironmonger’s, a man leaning wearily against the wall stared blearily at them. Rutledge recognized the drunk, Holcomb, from the night before. Belching heavily, the man turned on his heel and shambled on.
Rutledge wondered if the man was sober enough to make any better sense now. But he couldn’t stop.
Picking up the thread of Margaret Shaw’s earlier remark, he asked, “Why are you worried about your mother?”
“It’s like an obsession,” Miss Shaw told him earnestly, as if relieved to find someone who would listen. She was not as hard as her mother, nor as intelligent, he thought. Sheltered—by choice or by circumstances—she was not worldly, in the true sense. And he wondered if she really understood why her mother was so adamant that the past be expunged.
“Clearing your father’s name?” He glanced toward her.
Her face reddened again. She had that kind of fair complexion that registered shifts in emotion easily. “She’s convinced Papa didn’t kill anyone . . . she can’t sleep, she can’t eat—it’s all she thinks about!”
“How long has this been going on? All these years? Or since she found the locket?”
“She’s always railed against the jury. But since the locket she’s been like a madwoman.”
“Tell me about finding the locket.”
“There’s nothing to tell. 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. Then she came out of her room and was herself again.”
“A letter your father had written?”
She frowned. “I don’t see how it could be. It only came this autumn. But I overheard her tell Mr. Cutter that a cousin was dying. She said, ‘Everyone is gone. There’s no one left.’ ”
“And what has been your feeling all these years? About your father’s guilt?” he asked quietly, without judgment.
She shook her head. “I never cared whether Papa was guilty or not. It didn’t matter. When they took him away, I wept all night. I hated the police, I hated you. He was my father—I didn’t know how we were