[Edith Horton 05] - Murder in Retreat

by Noreen Wainwright

  The ambulance men’s peaked caps and the gurney were one of the most welcome sights he’d seen in a while.

  Then, before they had finished examining Stephen Bird, a Wolseley pulled up alongside the ambulance. A uniformed policeman and another officer wearing a coat and hat got out.

  Henry focused almost completely on what the ambulance men said.

  “Would you, Wilkes?” Henry whipped round to see Brother Malcolm looking at him, his figure austere in the silvery light. He was a lonely figure, thrust into this violent and urgent situation. He must be trying to form a plan in his mind.

  “Of course.” He was glad. It would be better to do so something practical. It felt the right thing to do, accompany Bird, stay with him as much as he would be allowed.

  Stephen Bird; unmarried, damaged nerves, fragile. What on earth had he done to engender such strong feelings. A small bit of him wanted to get away from the retreat house too. It would be

  inevitable at some point, all the speculation, accusations either implied or explicit and police questioning. It would be so good to talk to Edith.

  She’d been involved with Giles Etherington’s death—and there had been that woman, that awful time when Edith had been so unwell and he’d gone to visit her at St Bride’s…He needed to concentrate on Stephen Bird now. Somehow he’d break the rules tomorrow and speak to his wife.

  Chapter Four

  John

  Everything about this felt wrong. John’s mouth was dry and he felt grubby, in the need of a wash. His mother would think that was funny. It wasn’t so very long ago she’d nagged him about washing behind his ears. How long was he meant to wait here in this Bedford van? He might have made a massive mistake in judgement. That thought made his heart thump and a sudden urge to be sick made him open the door. He breathed in the still-warm July evening air. There was no need to panic and he must not lose his nerve like this. He’d give anything to be at home though, safe, the wireless on and his mother chatting away about the village and her friends as he half listened and looked at his Eagle comic, waiting for the minute she’d push the kettle on to the hob for their cocoa and digestive biscuits.

  Yorkshire

  Edith regretted her words but hadn’t been able to help herself.

  Cathy had come downstairs in a striped pink and white summer dress and a white cardigan. She looked young and very much as she had when she’d worked for the Sowerby sisters in the village shop and post office. Almost as soon as came into the kitchen, Hannah said she was going to go upstairs to wash and change.

  “Will you let me know if the inspector comes?” Her eyes were large in her panic.

  “Of course, we will.” Edith needed to go back home for a bit but didn’t want to leave until they heard something. Surely, Inspector Greene would come out to the cottage as soon as possible. Her stomach clenched. The inspector coming out to the house might not herald good news. The idea that something bad could happen to John was difficult to think about and she didn’t want to tempt fate by even imagining anything other than some sort of misunderstanding. Wasn’t it much more likely though that he’d left home willingly, not been snatched? How easy would it be to grab a fifteen-year old boy against his will, anyway? She couldn’t see it, somehow. Hopefully, her instincts were right.

  They were in the kitchen now, on their own, and Edith’s urge to say her piece outweighed her better judgement.

  “Cathy, your mother is dreadfully upset. She’s staying calm but I’ve been here the whole night and she hasn’t had a moment’s peace or rest.”

  Before she went upstairs, Edith had seen Hannah’s face wobble, a little tremor around her mouth and pity had smote her for a woman who was after all this time, and all they’d been through together, one of her closest friends.

  Cathy’s face flushed now, and Edith regretted her words—because she was rebuking Cathy and what did she know about how the girl might be feeling?

  “I didn’t mean to snap at her but you don’t know what she’s like with John. Lads don’t talk to their mothers, of course they don’t but our John wouldn’t dream of telling Mam anything because she’s just tells him to go back to his jigsaw or his comic. She thinks he’s a six-year-old and she has done ever since Dad left—I mean since he left the last time.”

  “Does he talk to you?”

  Cathy looked at her and shrugged. “A bit. But, if you’re asking me if I knew he was planning to leave home, the answer is I didn’t. Something’s been up though—that’s as plain as the nose on his face, except to Mam, because like I say, she never listens to him.”

  Edith heard Hannah’s footsteps coming down the stairs at the same time as the noise of a car approaching the cottage. Hannah went to the door, her hair coming down from where she’d hastily pinned it up.

  Edith heard the sound of her opening the door and voices, her tone, high and anxious and the lower tones of men’s voices.

  “They found his school bag,” They had all come back into the kitchen, Inspector Greene, the young sergeant and Hannah.

  “Oh, no. Oh my God.” For the first time, Hannah really gave way and her voice rose almost hysterically Cathy flew to her side before Edith had a chance to take it all in—Hannah’s despair and the implications of what Inspector Greene had said.

  “Where did you find it?” She directed her question at him and there was relief on his face when he looked back at her.

  “It was close to the stop where John gets off the school bus.”

  Lots of questions flew into Edith’s head. Hannah had sat down now, at the kitchen table, hands folded in front of her, her face taut. Cathy still crouched down by her side.

  There was a horrible feeling, thinking about that bag. It had been like that in the war, nursing, coping with the sights, sounds and smells and then being undone by the contents of a man’s pocket.

  “Try not to get into a state, Mrs Braithwaite. It might not be as significant as we first thought. According to more than one of the lads, it isn’t that unusual to chuck the schoolbags on the side of the road while the lads skip off to kick a ball around or whatever else they get up to…I’m not too sure, it’s a long time since I was a schoolboy, not like the sergeant here.”

  “But yesterday, the other lads must have seen him do that, must have seen whatever he did next?”

  “We’ll speak to them again today. Here we have the advantage, too. By the time the bus gets to Ellbeck, a lot of them have got off already. There’s only maybe half-a-dozen of them left.

  “Someone must have seen where he went after he dropped his schoolbag, Inspector Greene?”

  Cathy had become mature. The way she spoke to the inspector showed more confidence in the presence of authority than her mother had. You could easily imagine her in the schoolroom in a few years’ time.

  “We’ll talk again to them like I said. In the school, together and each on his own, as well. Make it clear how serious this is.

  Boys often mistake loyalty as being the most important thing there is—comes of all this stuff they read, all those Boys’ Own adventure stories.

  “What can I do, though, Inspector?”

  Hannah got up, suddenly, startling Cathy who got up from where she crouched by her mother’s chair.

  “I can’t sit here any longer waiting. It’s driving me mad. All night was bad enough…I can’t spend any longer, staring at the door, the window…waiting for the sound of a car in the lane, feeling as though…” She put the palm of her hand to her forehead in a gesture that was so unlike her. In another woman it might have looked dramatic but Hannah must be near the edge of what she could deal with.

  Staffordshire

  It was an odd time for nobody to be at home in the vicarage.

  Henry’s disappointment was out of all proportion. Edith may just

  have gone to the shop - she might have dropped over to Archie’s surgery. He hadn’t planned on ringing her. She couldn’t be expected to read his mind.

  The disappointment hit him
with a belt of tiredness. He had been all fired up on his return from the hospital, thinking that soon he’d be able to talk it over with Edith. He’d filled her in on Bird and the other characters in the retreat house. He’d told her about young Roland Weston and the very good-looking Fallon, about Bird’s disturbed nights and about Fiona Elliott. He didn’t think he’d mentioned Canon Richardson—until now there hadn’t been much to say about him. As for the two clergymen from Derbyshire, Finn and Patterson—he kept mixing them in his mind so they hadn’t made that much of an impression.

  He replaced the receiver, the tiredness crashing over him. He’d had little sleep before young Roland woke him and the rest of the night had been made up of long minutes of tedious waiting combined with flashes of heightened anxiety. Bird had remained unconscious throughout the journey. Stafford Hospital had been eerily quiet, with impressions of swishing doors and uniform dresses, white coats and that hospital smell. He’d been asked the same questions over and over and heard himself repeat the same sentences; he didn’t know the patient well and didn’t know anything of any history, either medical or family.

  There had been more urgent questions about what had happened to Bird and he got sick of his own voice trying to explain the circumstances. If he ever, in any unlikely future circumstances, had any influence over hospitals or medical staff, he would plead with them to talk to each other and not waste time and energy repeating each other’s questions.

  In the end, the police had sent transport for him and a young Indian doctor assured him it would be best for him to go home for a while. He began to feel that he was under their feet. “Is he out of danger, then?” The doctor shrugged and slowly shook his head side to side with the solemnity of a man twice his age.

  “Now, we wait for him to wake up, then we can assess whether or not there’s any damage. His vital signs are good and we will stitch him up.”

  The thought of ringing Edith was all that had kept him going.

  Brother Malcolm had let him use the telephone in his office. “I think I’ll have to lie down for a bit,” he told the man, now.

  “Did you manage to contact any of Bird’s family?” He’d thought about that. They had all had to give details when they had checked into St Chad’s; next of kin and details of the clergyman who was standing in in their absence.

  “I spoke to his brother—I’m afraid he showed very little interest. It was disconcerting, not at all what I was expecting.

  There is an elderly mother and he did say he’d let her know. I suppose that’s something. There was something very sad about the poor man, don’t you think? Bird, I mean.”

  It was true. Bird walked about as though on the edge, a lot of the time. It wasn’t only the nightmares that haunted him. Henry had seen the tic that made Bird move his head to one side and draw his right shoulder up. You saw it more as the day drew to a close. Maybe it was set off by tiredness.

  Brother Malcolm moved to his desk, looked down at the drawers.

  “It’s early in the day but could you do with a drink, Wilkes?”

  Henry supressed the look of shock threatening to cross his face.

  This was turning out to be a strange retreat in all sorts of ways. What the heck. It couldn’t make him any more tired than he already was and it might just calm his mind enough to help him sleep. “I will, thank you.”

  “David Fallon didn’t return. It is most odd and in the circumstances…well, the police asked a lot about him, whether I’d noticed any tension between them, between him and Bird. To tell the truth, Wilkes, I’m not always the most observant of people.”

  That was a strange admission from someone in Brother Malcolm’s position. Or, maybe not. The retreat house was so established with its bells and regular service and meal times that Malcolm’s role was straightforward. The truth of it was that he could have a nice, stress-free role for himself here with little likelihood of people in distress banging on the door, something that happened frequently out in the world.

  Even the thought of getting back there, to normality, hit Henry with the sharpness of a craving. He needed to distract himself. I wondered if maybe Fallon was becoming close to Mrs Elliott? I saw them together.”

  There was no response and Henry knew he had misjudged. Either the other man didn’t believe him or didn’t want to admit it.

  “I don’t know what you saw or imagined, Wilkes but Fiona Elliott is a decent woman who had had more than her share of unhappiness.

  The last thing she’d do would be to get entangled with a married man and David Fallon is a married man. I hope rumours aren’t spreading—that’s the last thing we need, especially at the moment. Henry felt the flush, deep in his cheeks and reckoned he hadn’t been soundly put in his place since he was about twelve.

  “Well, I clearly misinterpreted it. I just saw them walking, and well…” he shrugged, kept his voice light.

  After the whiskey, which had affected him as much as three such measures would normally, he felt floaty, light-headed, almost beyond tiredness. He went outside, ten minutes in the fresh air before he hit his pillow. With luck, he wouldn’t see anybody. The police wanted to talk to him too but there was little he could tell them.

  There was a small walled garden behind the main building. It was a scented garden, designed years ago by a blind monk. It was the most restful part of what really was an idyllic place—where only man was vile as Reginald Heber once said. How true that was proving. He passed the kitchen garden, with its rows of beans in flower now and its orderly layout. Henry smiled. Edith had a love for vegetable gardens.

  He saw the top of a woman’s head. Fiona Elliott. He swallowed.

  Had he been as prurient, as gossipy as Brother Malcolm implied?

  She sensed him there. You could tell by the way her back stiffened and she turned round, wiping her hands on a hessian sack she’d wrapped around her waist. It looked utilitarian, at odds with her slight feminine appearance. She always wore lipstick and her hair, dark blond, neatly waved. There was something in her face though. Hardness might be a strong way to put it but whatever it was, a wariness or a cynicism, it matched her manner.

  “Brother Malcolm said you spent the night at the hospital with Reverend Bird. Is he any better?”

  “He hadn’t woken up, not when the police brought me back. But, his vital signs are good, so that’s a positive sign.” He looked at her, willing her to go, to let him go to bed. At the very least, she could say something, not just stare at him in that way that made him want to squirm. Sweat prickled on his top lip. It wasn’t even all that warm, yet. It was this woman.

  “David Fallon has gone missing. Did you know that?”

  “He didn’t turn up at supper or evensong and yes, Brother Malcolm mentioned that he didn’t return at all in the night.

  “The police were interested. I can imagine he’ll be suspect number one.” She laughed.

  The sweat cooled on Henry’s top lip.

  “Surely, they will see through it, Reverend Wilkes? Surely they can’t be quite that dim? I mean if he wanted to draw attention to himself, he couldn’t have done it better. Would any intelligent man attack someone then disappear?”

  “What do you think, Mrs Elliott? Do you think an intelligent person would do that? Or it is just us, only the police that would be so dim as to think that?”

  They both jolted and Henry spun round to see the policeman, inspector, Henry thought, still wearing a trilby hat, a gabardine, surely that would be too hot later? But, then, something in the air of the morning had changed and Henry tasted the leaden flavour of an impending storm.

  “Can I have a word, Reverend Wilkes? I’m sorry, I know you’ve been up all night. I won’t keep you long.”

  He didn’t look again at Fiona Elliott. Her lips tightened in ill-temper and she went back into the vegetable garden.

  “There’s that summer house. Will that do?” Henry didn’t want to go back to the house yet. When he did go back, he wanted to meet nobody, just go to his ro
om, put his head down and sleep.

  “Of course. It’s Inspector Jardine, by the way.” There was a trace of Scottish in his voice. He held his arm out, courteously, for Henry to lead the way.

  “I’m relying on you, Brown. I want you to talk to these lads.

  You’re more likely to speak their language than I am.” That was true. Bill Brown took a deep breath. Again, he had the thought that this case was going to provide his chance to step out from the big man’s shadow. God, he should not be thinking like this. A young lad was missing and all the time, each hour that passed, that was more worrying. It was ten o’clock in the morning. If John had gone back to some other lad’s house, it would have come to light by now.

  The school master wanted him to talk to the whole school but that wasn’t what he had been instructed to do.

  “Don’t waste time talking to the whole school in the hall or any of that palaver. I only want you to talk to the boy’s class, the boys on the bus home with him, his friends, especially.”

  The teacher hovered, making Brown nervous. What was it about schoolmasters? It would be better if the man left him to it. But, that wasn’t going to happen so he had better get on with it.

  Standing at the front of the class, Brown felt like he’d gone to the wrong side of the counter in Sowerby’s shop. Looking out at the wooden desks, the boys in rows, maps on the wall and the smell of boys and school, he was taken back to his own schooldays.

  The boys sat up straight, alert and probably glad of the break from lessons. Either the parents valued education highly or these boys were bright. Otherwise they would be out working by now.

  “You’ll all know by now, lads, that John Braithwaite went home on the bus, after school as usual. He got off the bus at Pinner’s Cross but he never reached home. The alarm wasn’t raised for a time as, well, you’re not little kids, are you? His mother made a mistake too and thought he was going to a friend’s house. I don’t expect anyone to say anything now, if they don’t feel comfortable about doing so but Mr Grieves.” He glanced at the teacher, sitting at the other side of the blackboard.