A Fearsome Doubt: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery - Hardcover

Todd, Charles

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0553801805 ISBN 13: 9780553801804

Publisher: Bantam, 2002

Synopsis

Bestselling author Charles Todd has earned a special place among mystery’s elite writers with his acclaimed series featuring Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge, a former soldier seeking to lay to rest the demons of his past in the aftermath of World War I. But that past bleeds into the present in a complex murder case that calls into question his own honor...and the crimes committed in the name of God, country, and righteous vengeance.

A Fearsome Doubt

In 1912 Ian Rutledge watched as a man was condemned to hang for the murders of elderly women. Rutledge helped gather the evidence that sent Ben Shaw to the gallows. And when justice was done, Rutledge closed the door on the case. But Shaw was not easily forgotten.

Now, seven years later, that grim trial returns in the form of Ben Shaw’s widow Nell, bringing Rutledge evidence she is convinced will prove her husband’s innocence. It’s a belief fraught with peril, threatening both Rutledge’s professional stature and his faith in his judgment. But there is a darker reason for Rutledge’s reluctance. Murder brings him back to Kent where, days earlier, he’d glimpsed an all-too-familiar face beyond the leaping flames of a bonfire. Soon an unexpected encounter revives the end of his own war, as the country prepares for a somber commemoration on the anniversary of the Armistice. To battle the unsettled past and the haunted present at the same time is an appalling mandate.

And the people around him? among them the attractive widow of a friend, a remarkable woman who survived the Great Indian Mutiny; a bitter, dying barrister; and a man whose name he never knew—unwittingly compete with the grieving Nell Shaw. They’ll demand more than Rutledge can give, unaware that he is already carrying the burden of shell shock? and the voice of Hamish MacLeod, the soldier he was forced to execute in the war. The killer in Marling is surprisingly adept at escaping detection. And Ben Shaw’s past is a tangle of unsettling secrets that may or may not be true. Rutledge must walk a tortuous line between two murderers...one reaching out to ruin him, the other driven to destroy him.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Todd is the author of Watchers of Time, Legacy of the Dead, A Test of Wills, Wings of Fire, and Search the Dark. He lives on the East Coast, where he is at work on the next novel in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series, A Cold Treachery.

From the Back Cover

Praise for the novels of Charles Todd

Watchers of Time
“One of the best historical series being written today...in the grand tradition of English murder mysteries.”
--The Washington Post Book World

“With his tortured detective Ian Rutledge and the ghost who inhabits his mind--Charles Todd has swiftly become one of the most respected writers in the mystery genre...The pair is unique among sleuths.”
--The Denver Post

Legacy of the Dead

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

“Readers will continue to be captivated by Todd’s portrait of the dangerously unraveling detective, and his equally incisive evocation of the grieving postwar world.”
--Publishers Weekly

Search the Dark

“Todd’s Ian Rutledge mysteries are among the most intelligent and affecting being written these days.”
--The Washington Post Book World

Wings of Fire

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

“Truly captivating.”
--The Drood Review of Mystery

“Rich and beautifully nuanced.”
--Library Journal

A Test of Wills

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

“A first novel that speaks out, urgently and compassionately, for a long-dead generation...A meticulously wrought puzzle and a harrowing psychological drama.”
--The New York Times Book Review

“More than an ordinary whodunit, this literate thriller raises disturbing issues of war and peace.”
--The San Diego Union-Tribune

Reviews

This brilliant and gripping whodunit may well be the best of Todd's six Rutledge novels (Watchers of Time, etc.). Featuring as its protagonist a Scotland Yard inspector who is among the walking wounded after his WWI traumas, the series has always been compelling. This time, Todd ratchets up the psychological pressures by raising doubts about the one aspect of Rutledge's life that he has felt secure about: his prewar accomplishments as a policeman. The widow of a convicted killer, who went to the gallows for preying on the infirm elderly, confronts him with a missing jewelry piece found in a neighbor's possession, suggesting that Rutledge helped execute an innocent man. Reopening the inquiry requires caution not only because of the soul-searching it provokes, which threatens to shatter the inspector's tenuous grasp on sanity, but also because the case contributed to his superior's promotion. This old mystery becomes only one of the puzzles Rutledge must resolve when he's ordered to investigate the poisoning deaths of three disabled soldiers. The solutions to both sets of crimes are logical, satisfying and unexpected, but it is the character of Rutledge himself-intuitive, exquisitely sensitive to mood, the emotions of others and the significance of what is left unsaid-that makes this both an outstanding historical mystery and literate period fiction.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Todd's sixth work featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge is a well-crafted addition to his popular historical series (e.g., Watchers of Time). Rutledge is taken aback when a persistent Nell Shaw brings him new evidence that could clear her late husband's name. Had Rutledge and his fellow policemen inadvertently sent an innocent man to his death six years earlier? Reconsidering the pre-World War I case serves to distract the inspector from his current assignment: determining who is killing maimed ex-soldiers in the peaceful countryside in Kent. Rutledge is sidetracked as well by his friendship with Elizabeth Mayhew, the widow of an old school chum. Elizabeth's feelings for a mysterious stranger further complicate Rutledge's investigation. Todd expertly demonstrates how shadows from the past intersect with unsolved murders in the present, revealing tantalizing details about Rutledge's wartime experience in France along the way. Here, Todd downplays the role of Hamish (the dead soldier who lives on in Rutledge's mind), but he remains a key player in the series. A pleasure to read; highly recommended for all public libraries and collections of historical mysteries.
Laurel Bliss, Yale Arts Lib.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge may be the only sleuth in detective-fiction history to have a ghost as his sidekick. Hamish MacLeod, late of the Scottish brigade, whom Rutledge ordered executed for insubordination during the Great War, provides acerbic commentary on Rutledge's actions and thoughts, effectively underscoring Rutledge's psychological torment. Rutledge's habitual angst is stretched to the breaking point in the latest in this series, when the inspector has reason to fear that he sent the wrong man to the gallows seven years before, in 1912. The hanged man's widow presents Rutledge with new evidence that seems to place the blame on another serial killer. Fearing for his sanity, Rutledge must examine the new evidence and investigate the murder of two ex-soldiers in Kent. Both sets of serial killings become eerily intermeshed. Todd skillfully interweaves an acute psychological portrait with a compelling puzzle. Intelligent and intense history-mystery, at the level of Anne Perry and Bruce Alexander. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

AUGUST 1912

LONDON

The prisoner was standing in the dock, face strained, eyes on the foreman of the jury. His fingers gripped the wooden railing, white-knuckled, as he tried to hear the portly, gray-haired man in the jurors' box reading the verdict. But the roaring in his ears as his heart pounded hard enough to suffocate him seemed to shut out the words. He swallowed hard, then leaned forward a little, concentrating on the juror's lips.

"--guilty on all charges--"

The foreman's voice rose on the last four words, as if he found them distasteful, his glance furtively flicking toward the accused and away again. A greengrocer, he was not sympathetic to theft and murder.

The prisoner's face swung toward the judge as he lifted the black silk square and settled it neatly on his heavy white wig, prepared to pass sentence.

". . . taken from this place . . . hung by the neck . . ."

The prisoner blanched, and turned in anguish toward his wife, seated in the gallery watching, her gloved hands clenched tightly in her lap.

But she offered no comfort, staring straight ahead. Her face was closed and empty. He couldn't look away. His sister, on the far side of his wife, was weeping into her handkerchief, hunched into her grief, but he hardly noticed. It was his wife's coldness that riveted him.

He thought, "She believes it now--"

Inspector Ian Rutledge, the young officer from the Yard whose evidence had all but placed the rope around Ben Shaw's throat, turned away and quietly left the courtroom.

He did not enjoy sending any man to his death. Even this one, whose crimes had shocked London. At such a time he was always mindful of his father, a solicitor, who had held strong views on the subject of hanging.

"I don't believe in it. Still, the dead had no choice in their dying, did they? The murderer did. It's on his own head, what becomes of him. He knew from the start what justice would be meted out to him. But he always expects to avoid it, doesn't he? There's an arrogance in that which disturbs me more than anything else--"

Ben Shaw hadn't been arrogant. Murder hadn't set well on his conscience. Hanging might come as a relief, an end to nightmares. Who could say?

Certainly not Rutledge himself--he had never taken a life. Would that alter his view of murder, would it in any way change his ability to understand a crime, or his attitude toward the killer? He thought not. It was the victim who had always called out to him, the voiceless dead, so often forgotten in the tumultuous courtroom battle of guilt versus innocence.

It was said that Justice prevented Anarchy. Law established Order.

Cold comfort to the elderly women Ben Shaw had strangled in their beds.

Still, the silenced victims had not gone unheard in this courtroom. . . .


5 NOVEMBER, 1919

MARLING, KENT

The bonfire had been piled high with the debris from a dozen gardens and enough twigs and dead boughs to outlast the Guy. The celebrants were gathered about the square, talking and laughing as if the gruesome spectacle they were about to witness was far more exciting than frightening. The match had yet to be tossed into the pyre, but two men in flowing wigs and faded satin coats awaited the signal. Their sober faces were flushed with wine and duty. The taller leaned toward his companion and said in a low voice, "All this hair itches like the very devil!"

"Yes, well, at least your shirt fits! This lace will end up strangling me, wait and see! I'm ready to kill whoever thought up this charade."

"Won't be long now."

It was the close of Guy Fawkes Day, and tonight the stuffed effigy of a traitor was about to be paraded around the village square and then thrown into the flames.

Bonfires were a long-standing English tradition, marking the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when the real Guy Fawkes had been caught with his coconspirators attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament and King James with them.

A macabre way of reminding schoolchildren, as they went round their villages and towns collecting pennies to buy Roman candles, what becomes of traitors.

As a rule it was a family affair, held in the back garden, the fire as fat or sparse as the family could manage, the Guy dressed in cast-off clothes stuffed with straw. In too many households during four and a half years of war the celebration had dwindled to a token affair; the dearth of able-bodied men and the hardships of families struggling to survive without them made the effort increasingly a burden. The village of Marling had decided to revive the custom with a public flourish.

Ian Rutledge had given his share of pennies to the local children this morning, while Hamish, in his head, disparaged the whole affair. "It's no' a Scottish tradition, to waste guid firewood. It's too hard to come by."

Remembering the barren, stone-scarred mountains where Hamish had grown up, Rutledge said, "When in Rome . . ."

"If ye came for Hogmanay, now, a good fire on the hearth was hospitality after a long ride in the cold."

Rutledge knew the Scottish holiday, the last day of the year, when the children demanded gift cakes and the whisky flowed freely--and not necessarily whisky upon which any tax had been paid. He had commanded Scottish troops in the war, and they had brought their traditions as well as their traditional courage with them. He had turned a blind eye on more than one occasion, the policeman subverted by the compassion he felt for his homesick men--many little more than boys--trying to forget how short their lives were destined to be by remembering home.

Tonight, 5 November, he wasn't on duty in London; he was standing among the revelers in an attractive village high on the Downs, and beside him was the widow of a friend who had died in the Great War. She had invited him to come down for the occasion. "You must, Ian! It will do both of us a world of good. It's time to put the war behind us, and try to rebuild our lives. . . ."

He had no life to rebuild, but she did, and Frances, his sister, had urged him to accept the invitation. "Elizabeth has mourned for two years. It won't bring Richard back, will it? I think we should encourage her, if she's ready to shut the door on all that. And it will do you good as well, to see more of old friends. You've buried yourself in your work for months now!" The last accusing. And then Frances had added, hastily, "No, I'm not matchmaking. She would do as much for either of us, if we were in need, and you know that as well as I do."

It was true. Elizabeth was one of the most generous people Rutledge knew. Richard Mayhew had been very fortunate in his choice of wife.

She was a slim woman in her late twenties, with sparkling dark eyes and a wry sense of humor. Her presence was brightness and warmth and a belief that life could be good. It was--almost--contagious.

And just now, he was in need of warmth and brightness, to chase away other shadows. . . .

Clinging to his arm in the press of people, Elizabeth was saying, "Richard loved all this, you know. He loved tradition and the . . ."

Rutledge lost the thread of her words as the Guy, flamboyant in dress and hanging from a long pole, was brought into the square and carried triumphantly around the unlit fire. A deafening shout of approval rose, and as Rutledge glimpsed the painted mockery of a face, its wild eyes and flaring nostrils, the grinning mouth, the bits of someone's wig straggling about the ears, he had to laugh. What was lost in talent had been made up in exuberance.

"Aye, exuberance," Hamish agreed, "with a wee touch of Auld Clootie . . ."

The Devil. Only a Scot with generations of Covenanters in his family tree would make such a comparison.

Rutledge responded silently, "The first James was your king as well as ours. Or have you forgotten?"

Hamish, considering the matter, replied, "We didna' care o'ermuch for him."

The Guy was closer now, dancing a jig on the pole, and Elizabeth was laughing like a girl. "Oh, Ian, look, he's wearing those masquerade clothes I found in the attics and donated to the committee. Wouldn't Richard have been delighted--"

On the far side of the crowd, someone had lit the fire, and the flames began to fly through the dry brush, reaching for the harder wood. Applause greeted them. In the garish light, the Guy took on a realistic life of its own, the straw-stuffed limbs jerking in time with the booted feet of its minders as it was paraded before an appreciative audience. Shouts of approval and the word "Traitor!" mingled with laughing cries of "Into the flames with him!" and "God Save King James and Parliament." The shrill, giggling voices of children taunted the Guy, a counterpoint to parents warning their offspring not to venture too close to the fire: "Mind now!" or "Stand clear, do!"

And in the light of the flames, lit just as garishly as the Guy, was a face that Rutledge's gaze passed over--and returned to--and recognized--

But from where?

He went cold with a sense of shock he couldn't explain. A knowledge that was there, buried deep in the brain, concealed by layers of denial and blank horror. And yet rising to the surface with the full force of his being was a single realization--He didn't want to know the answer--

There was danger in searching for the answer--

He stood motionless, his body rigid, his arm stiffening in Elizabeth's grip. But she was entranced by the spectacle, and unaware. He was physically caught up in his surroundings, the voices of people on every side of him, the heavy smell of smoke as the wind blew it his way, the warmth of Elizabeth's hands on him, the coolness of the night air, the rough feel of the wool coat across his shoulders, the shadowed ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0553801805
• ISBN 13: 9780553801804
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304