[Edith Horton 05] - Murder in Retreat

by Noreen Wainwright

  After settling in to married life in Ellbeck. Edith is happy when Henry goes on retreat to Staffordshire, knowing that spiritual renewal is an essential part of a busy vicar’s life. However, after meeting fellow priests, Henry soon realizes most have their own secrets and deep troubles to reflect upon. His sense of unease is vindicated when he discovers there is a murderer in St.

  Chad’s House, and he is reluctantly drawn into the mystery.

  At home, Edith is plunged into a crisis when the son of her housekeeper, and friend, disappears. A figure from the past has been in contact with the boy, and both women fear for his safety.

  Adding to Edith’s distress, she worries about Henry and is unable to dismiss the deep concern she feels about him and what is happening at St. Chad’s.

  Will Edith and Henry's involvement in the troubles affect their relationship? Can they survive the seemingly endless struggles and find their way back to each other?

  MURDER IN RETREAT

  An Edith Horton Mystery, #5

  Noreen Wainwright

  Published by Tirgearr Publishing

  Author Copyright 2018 Noreen Wainwright Cover Art: EJR Digital Art (http://www.ejrdigitalart.com) Editor: Sharon Pickrell

  Proofreader: Debbie Robbins

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  This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, incidents are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  DEDICATION

  For my husband, Brian, whose support at the time I was writing this book has meant so much.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To all my writing friends. Mutual support is crucial.

  MURDER IN RETREAT

  An Edith Horton Mystery, #5

  Noreen Wainwright

  Chapter One

  December

  In the shop, this morning, Marjorie and Prudence Sowerby had treated Edith in a way that made her veer between wanting to shout at them and crying because their sweetness was nearly too much. People in Ellbeck coped with what had happened by being kind to one another. A terrible thing had happened to one of them and it brought the best out in them all.

  The village was beautiful; the snow that had fallen for two days, made the place look such a different version of itself that everywhere you looked, you wondered if you’d ever really seen the small panes of the village shop window or the rounded shape of the butcher, Dick Searle’s Austin. The striped awning over the front of the shop and post office was bowed in the middle from the weight of the snow, reminding Edith of a countrywoman’s apron when she had gathered apples from an orchard.

  What was happening to her? Where had all these queer, random thoughts come from? The shop was quiet at least but the smell from the paraffin heater and the fug of heat it created made Edith nauseated.

  “What a day,” Marjorie said and coughed as Prudence came out from behind the post office counter with a dining room chair they kept for the elderly or infirm.

  “Sit down for a minute, Miss Horton. You don’t look at all the thing…if you don’t mind me saying.”

  Marjorie clicked her tongue and muttered about fussing but Edith was glad of the chair and the rush of saliva to her mouth and the feeling of the world fading out passed quickly.

  “It’s today, isn’t it?” Marjorie put a hand on Edith’s shoulder as soon as her sister had fussed off into the kitchen, saying that she was going to get a drink for all of them.

  She had seen Dora Brown, Sergeant Brown’s mother, on her way to the shop, and even Inspector Greene. The village had come out in force.

  July 1937

  My Dear Edith,

  The first thing to say is that I am missing you terribly and questioning my sanity in putting such distance between us so soon into our marriage. I hope all is well in Ellbeck. I am missing the village too, my parishioners, Julia and Peter, Archie and Hannah; oh, everybody. You, most of all, my dear Edith. One good thing has come out of my retreat (apart from, I hope, some spiritual reinvigoration); it has reminded me of what I have. My life was good and fulfilling before but it has been blessed so much more for having you in it.

  I’d better give you a brief account of life here at St Chad’s.

  The house is four miles outside of Lichfield, so almost striking distance of the great Cathedral. I don’t know if you’ve been to Lichfield Cathedral, dark and Gothic and towering on the outside, inside warmer, filled with wood, lots of wood, and marble and everywhere you look, signs of the craftsmanship of those previous centuries, where today’s mechanisation wasn’t even a dream but I suppose labour was freely available and boys spent years in apprenticeship to stone-masons and carpenters.

  It reminded me, funnily enough, of our trip to Whitby, last month, when we said much the same thing about the abbey there.

  There are eight of us on the retreat and we remain silent during the day apart from when we take part in services. After supper at six, we have the opportunity to socialise.

  I will tell you about the two characters who interest me most.

  The first is a young curate, Roland Weston. He makes me feel old and dull, Edith. I like him but he has the light of the zealot in his eyes and he can be rather hard work, at times. He works amongst the poor of Birmingham and I think he must feel that the rest of us are little more than Anglican parasites, lolling about conducting a few services here and there and opening village fetes. I suppose he has a point. However, I am little more tolerant of his youth and idealism than some of the others are, especially, Stephen Bird, a chap about my own age who had a bad war and has woken us up on one occasion with his night terrors.

  Poor chap. He was telling me that this is now an unusual occurrence and that he was treated most successfully by a nerve specialist based in Edinburgh. He is a vicar in a small church in Scotland and I would imagine, has found his niche after some

  difficult years. He does not always have a great tolerance of young Roland’s sermonising. I hope I have acted the peacemaker.

  There is a very good-looking chap, by the name of David Fallon—

  the type women find attractive. I haven’t taken to him and that’s nothing to do with his looks. There are two chaps from Derbyshire with whom I have exchanged no more than a few sentences. Then there is the elderly Canon Richardson and I’ll tell you more about him when I next write.

  I look forward to hearing from you and I will write again tomorrow. Thankfully, we have our own small bedrooms and it is a pleasure actually, to escape here for an hour and write to you.

  With much love to you, Edith,

  Henry

  Yorkshire

  Edith folded the letter and put it into the envelope. She’d read it again, later. She hadn’t known what this would be like, their first time apart in almost a year of marriage. Missing Henry had swept in and surprised her. More than surpris
ed. Wasn’t it strange, how you could change from a fairly self-sufficient person to one who felt unsettled without another being close? If they weren’t careful, they were in danger of turning into one of those smug couples who made others feel uncomfortable, those on their own, principally. No, she wouldn’t get like that because she had been on the outside looking in on those couples herself, for a long time.

  “Lemonade,” Hannah put the tray down on the gate-legged, white trellis table.

  “Thank you, Hannah. I’m glad you brought two glasses. Take the weight off your feet, for a minute and tell me again about John’s scholarship and Cathy’s teacher training.”

  Hannah looked at her and frowned. “I will but I would have thought you’re far more taken up with what the doctor is planning to do, to be worrying about my two.” Hannah often mentioned her other employer, Edith’s brother Archie’s plans. Come to think of it, it must be unsettling for her not knowing whether she was going to lose part of her income. She had remained as Archie’s housekeeper also, when Edith had married Henry and moved across to the vicarage.

  “I am, taken up with it, of course I am. But, maybe I need a bit of distraction. Maybe the build up to his leaving has gone on too long, you know, prolonging the agony.”

  She was right. It was over a year since Archie had first brought up his plan of going to Canada. There were periods of time in the past twelve months when he had stopped talking about it and they all wondered if he was having second thoughts.

  He’d been present at two weddings in that period, she and Henry and Julia and Peter. Julia…there was a time when it looked like she and Archie might end up together. But, that wasn’t destined to happen. If you took one look at Julia and Peter together now, it was clear that destiny, on this occasion, knew what she was doing.

  “Cathy qualifies as a properly trained teacher in the not-too-distant future and she is keen to move, you know, Miss Horton…”

  Hannah put her hand over her mouth and smiled. “Sorry, Edith. I mean. she wants to work in a city school, if you please. Make a difference. I can’t fault her, I suppose but I’m going to miss her dreadfully.”

  She put her glass to her lips, a shadow of sadness crossing her face, just for a second. Blink and you’d miss it.

  “You’ll have John for a while longer though.”

  Hannah smiled and chased away the shadows.

  “I will. John won’t be going anywhere for at least the next year.”

  Henry closed his bible; tried to think of this morning’s reading.

  But, life here today, in England, Europe, kept intruding. They were supposed to concentrate on meditation and prayer, to turn away from the clamour of the world and the news. But, he struggled badly with it. Edith told him he was addicted to his newspapers and spent too much time worrying about things he couldn’t affect.

  Maybe she was right and she couldn’t talk really because she was equally interested, though what fascinated her most of all was the working of the minds of the likes of Hitler and here in Britain, Mosely. What made them think in the way they did and most of all, what was it about them that made so many people hail them as compelling leaders?

  Henry couldn’t rid himself of the black feeling he had about the way the world was going; about the terrible price the allies had extracted in victory from the German nation. It said in the bible that one should be gracious in victory.

  He heard furious whispering and footsteps, approaching along the narrow footpath that led to his seat. He instantly coughed. The last thing he wanted was for someone to think he was hiding

  himself out here waiting to eavesdrop on his fellow residents of St Chad’s.

  They were here for two weeks. The first ten days were by way of being a retreat. Then they would have their conference. A lot of speeches, no doubt and enthusiasm. He hoped so. It did you good to be sometimes shaken out of your own certainties and your routines.

  There was the most evocative smell of sweet peas and a couple of bees hummed, mostly out of sight. Henry saw Armstrong the gardener, dressed as usual in a tweed jacket, plaid shirt and moleskin trousers, regardless of the intense July heat.

  Wonder what he thought of these clergymen all needing respite from their work, and spiritual refreshment? Probably that they were a load of feather-bedded milk-sops.

  Two people were walking towards him now. One of the few women who worked in the house, and a middle-aged clergyman, also on retreat, who Henry had tried and failed to get to know. The man, David Fallon was from a North London parish. He appeared to have many things in common with Henry, including the fact that he had also served in France twenty years ago. They had several mutual acquaintances and must have almost crossed paths on a couple of occasions.

  It soon became embarrassingly obvious that David Fallon intended to keep his relationships with his fellow-residents on a formal and distant footing. He had fascinated Henry though. His were the kind of looks you really didn’t get to see much, outside the picture houses. His features were perfectly symmetrical and his build, tall and muscular without an ounce of fat.

  If he was keeping his distance from the other clergy, he had apparently formed a closer acquaintance with Fiona Elliott. But, at this moment, whether it was Henry’s presence or not, there was a coolness, an edgy feeling between them. She looked down and didn’t acknowledge Henry, her face, high in colour and averted.

  Barrows nodded and the pair of them walked just a bit too quickly past him.

  She was a widow, in her forties with a grown up son and lived in a private flat at the top of the solid sandstone house.

  St. Chad’s House was built in the seventeenth century, set in parkland, well settled into the landscape in the Staffordshire countryside. The retreat house was not the first incarnation of St Chad’s. It had been a convent and a boarding school and there were still signs of former occupation in the layout of classrooms, now used as conference rooms and odd bits of graffiti, on the walls of sheds; shaky initials, boys daring the harsh punishment regime of the time, in the cause of making their mark.

  Henry began to think he could conjure up the past inhabitants by closing his eyes and drifting away. Could he hear the singing of the nuns at Compline, or the shouts of the schoolboys from the playing fields? Once again he shook himself. He needed to go back inside, go to the chapel and then, write again to Edith.

  She had been encouraging when he tentatively mentioned this retreat. That was a curious thing about getting married later in life. Presumably, when you got married, in your early twenties, as most people did, you worked all this sort of thing out as you went along. When you were older, there was almost a tendency to err too much on the side of not getting in the other person’s way; not hindering them from living their own life. He hoped that was the reason Edith had urged him to go on this retreat.

  “I understand it, I think. The intensity of your role here, in Ellbeck. You’re never away from the job, are you, Henry?” In the months since they had married, she’d been shocked at the way the doorbell or the telephone could and did impinge at any hour of the day or night.

  She must have been used to it, to an extent. She’d lived with her brother, Archie, the local doctor ever since the war and managed his surgery. There, the telephone would also break into her sleep and people would come to the door, not always at surgery times.

  Hopefully, she hadn’t swapped one life filled with intrusion for an equally disrupted one.

  Yorkshire

  Edith sat with her textbook, trying to concentrate. The day had been too hot and as always, the heat of high summer robbed her of energy. She had opened the vicarage doors, front and back. The moths weren’t out yet and thankfully, the flies had eased.

  The sound of the telephone cheered her. She must have been subconsciously looking for a reason to abandon her studies. What an absolutely hopeless student she was at times.

  “Edith, I’m sorry to bother you,” Her nerve endings instantly reacted. The voice was Hannah’s and she so
unded troubled. It was unheard of for her to telephone. She wasn’t on the phone, for one thing.

  “It’s John. He didn’t come home from school, Edith.”

  “Would he have gone to one of his friends?”

  Edith looked at her wrist, at the watch that her fiancé, Alastair had given her, all those years ago.

  It was almost a quarter past eight.

  “That’s what I thought for a while. He’d mentioned something about a match and going back with Freddie Earnshaw after, back to his house. They were going to work on an Airfix model. Then I started thinking and I realised that was tomorrow night, not tonight. So, I came round to Hauxwell’s farm and they let me use their telephone. Seth is having a drive round now, down to the school.”

  Edith felt a tightening at the base of her throat. The threatening sensation of mounting panic. This wasn’t about her.

  They had been told in her psychology class about the fight and flight mechanism. She’d turn this sensation into something good, into sharp thinking. The thought of Seth Hauxwell driving around the lanes between the village and Braithwaite’s house made her blood freeze. Anything he found wouldn’t herald good news.

  “What have you done so far? Have you managed to contact any of his friends yet?”

  “No, you’re the first. You see, Cathy has gone to Skipton for the night to stay with a girl she met on a course. I thought you’d know what to do and…you and John…oh, Miss Horton, Edith. I have such a worried feeling about this.”

  Edith knew what Hannah would be thinking…the boy’s father…been away for years after the war, location a local mystery, rumours of prison. Then he’d come back a number of years ago and caused misery all round, especially to his wife and children.

  “Stay put, Hannah, and I’ll come straight round to the Hauxwell’s. We’ll make a plan.”

  The night stretched out ahead of Henry. Funny enough, the praying and services, despite the number of times his mind wandered during them, were easier than the enforced socialising. He looked around the parlour. The huge fireplace was empty of flame though someone had put a fussy looking flower arrangement in it. One of the walls, perpendicular to the door was completely taken over by bookshelves.