[Edith Horton 05] - Murder in Retreat

by Noreen Wainwright

  Tonight, the mood was rage. As soon as he stepped in the threshold, she screamed.

  “Where have you been all day, you selfish little pup? As if I didn’t have enough to cope with, stuck here, tied to the house, no money, stuck for ever, with her screaming…”

  “Mam, I’m sorry…I was trying to find John, trying to think where he might be…”

  “So, you decide to take yourself off too…oh, get out of my sight.” Her voice had risen, until she shrieked and she picked up something. It was a clothes brush that his father used to brush down his suits…and sometimes, she’d do it too, stand on her toes and reach up and brush off his father’s suit shoulders.” She hurled it at Freddie now and it caught him, right on the collar bone, a second of feeling nothing only dread until it really started hurting.

  He’d go upstairs. Lucky the upset had taken away his appetite—

  there was hardly any food in the house anyway.

  “Don’t go in, waking her up.”

  There wasn’t much chance of a baby sleeping through all that racket in a small cottage, was there? He didn’t say any more.

  He’d go in and sit by the cot for a while though.

  John

  John waited, his whole body tightly wound up in the uncomfortable bucket seat. It had got cold and he hadn’t really noticed it until he really did. It eventually took him over and he couldn’t think of anything else. Well, being afraid. That was more of a

  feeling than a thought. It was stupid too and where had it come from? Making his skin prickle and a restlessness, that almost made him exit out of the Bedford van and run. That would be insanity. All the building up to this deed and then to go and ruin it all.

  “Don’t want you turning into a mammy’s-boy, John.” His father had laughed when he said it, taking the spite out of the words. That was as far as he should go though, when he spoke about Mam. John wasn’t going to put up with any more. There was that feeling that his dad knew that too. Maybe, he even respected John because of that. Deep down. Maybe he wasn’t a bad man, not deep down. John would have to believe that because he’d burnt his boats now. Left Ellbeck for a big adventure.

  “Arse-end of nowhere,” Dad called Ellbeck. Not joking, as far as John could tell. It was tempting to argue with him. But, his dad, who’d been everywhere would tell him he knew nowt. What did he have to compare his village with?

  “There’s no going back.” He whispered the words. If he started thinking of his mother, or Cathy, or even Freddie, he would jump out of the van now, and find some way of going back. There would be a house, someone who would help him, take him to the police station. They were probably already looking for him. The police.

  His mother would have told them. The whole school would know by now and his mother would be upset. Stop. He couldn’t start thinking like that.

  There was movement in the trees and he knew the man was coming back. The driver. The man who was taking him to his father.

  Chapter Six

  Yorkshire

  “He’ll have gone off with his father,” Archie drew on his pipe, sitting in his old leather armchair, in his surgery. Edith looked at him from her perch on the hard chair by the desk. This was where her brother seemed most comfortable. Looking more at home here now, than even their father had done, and he had been a man absolutely assured of the safety of his world and his own importance in it. Not like she and Archie and their generation.

  It seemed an odd thing again to her, that Archie would be considering going to the other side of the world.

  “Josh Braithwaite did nothing but cause misery to the whole village, and especially to his wife and children when he hauled himself back here, however many years after the war it was…when he finally fetched up in Ellbeck. Cathy nearly got killed as a result and poor John frightened out of his wits. Everyone seems to think this has something to do with Josh but you know, Archie.

  I’m not completely sure, now I think about it more. John is very loyal to his mother.”

  Edith took a quick look at her watch. Somehow she’d thought, had hoped, that Henry might find a way to telephone her today. She bit her lip and held on to the sudden grasp of nervousness that could still overtake her from time to time. That had got a hundred times better and she rarely saw Dr Uxbridge anymore. But she couldn’t place where the feeling of unease originated. Was it worry about John, or was it connected with Henry’s absence? This stupid feeling that she might not see him again.

  It was late when Greene and Brown drew up outside Earnshaw’s cottage. Bill Brown was tired or he would be if he let himself think about it too much.

  “That lad knows something or else why would he have done his disappearing act from school. He’s avoiding us and that can only be because of not wanting to answer any awkward questions.”

  Greene was irritated and not making any effort to hide it and Bill had a flash of sympathy for Freddie Earnshaw. The inspector was right. It was the only explanation for the boy’s disappearance… well, not the only one but the most obvious.

  The journey between the station and Honeysuckle Cottage was a couple of miles and Brown tried to shape his worry about the Earnshaw family into the right words. Maybe he should have mentioned the strange set-up in the cottage, the minute he’d got back. It hadn’t been that simple. Inspector Greene had been out and Bill held on to the thought that the baby was well-fed and happy enough.

  He could have got it wrong. If he made too much of the feeling he’d had in the house, they’d have to do something. They’d probably start by involving one of those strange women, he’d heard about. Policewomen. They’d had them in the big cities for a while. Bill was young and he was pretty modern in his thinking compared to his mam or to Inspector Greene, anyway. But there was something very odd in a woman doing a job like that, though from what he’d heard, the policewomen were mainly involved with children and women criminals.

  “What are you cogitating about?”

  “I was thinking about women becoming police.” Bill paused, his ear on stalks, waiting for the sarcastic remarks. But they didn’t come.

  “Any particular reason you’re thinking about women police?”

  “I’m not sure.” Bill swallowed and a second’s panic overcame him.

  He should have said something before now and taken more seriously something that was linked with the other lad’s disappearance and which was out of the ordinary. It was out of the ordinary—wasn’t it?

  “Freddie Earnshaw’s cottage; the set-up there, the mother and the state of the place…it seemed wrong, sir. I mean that it seemed a mess, the house was very untidy, and, I’m not sure. I got a feeling.”

  “You got a feeling? Why didn’t you say something before?”

  The voice was calm and the tone neutral but Brown’s mouth became dry and he became aware of his heartbeat.

  “Pull over a minute, Sergeant.” How bad was this going to be? For a mad few seconds, Bill thought about pretending he hadn’t heard and just continuing driving.

  “Right, you had a funny feeling about John Braithwaite’s best friend, or at least about his family. This is the lad who has also ran away, it seems. Why haven’t you said owt until now and more importantly, what was the funny feeling?” It was hard to tell how angry the inspector was. Maybe not as much so as Bill had feared.

  “The mother was very down in herself, sir and the place was untidy, well, more than untidy. An unholy mess, really and it smelt a bit.”

  “Is that it? Your mother is a very tidy woman, Brown. A good housekeeper. When you’ve been in this game as long as me and been in as many houses—and hovels—as I have, not much surprises you.

  One woman’s normal is another’s dirty pig-sty.”

  Well, maybe he was naïve and maybe he hadn’t been in as many houses as the inspector had but all the same.

  “The thing is there was a baby, not a really small baby, about twelve months old, I’d say. I heard her cry and it came as a right shock because there weren’t any
signs of a baby in the house. I heard her cry and the woman, the mother, Mrs Earnshaw -

  well she didn’t make any move to go to the child and I thought that was odd, sir. She did after a while and the child looked happy enough. Not clean but she looked as though she was fed and that…” Greene sighed, it was hard to know whether he was outraged at him or thought he was making a fuss about nothing.

  “Drive on, Sergeant. If you get a gut feeling about something, don’t sit on it waiting to find out by magic what the right thing to do is. Whether you should take it further or keep your mouth shut, in case you look stupid. It’s a lot better to risk looking stupid than to miss passing on something that could turn out to be important.”

  Was that an admonishment or had he got off lightly? Lately, there had been a change in the way that the inspector had been with him. Right back to when they’d dealt with that odd lot at Swallow Hall, maybe even before. He didn’t act the big boss anymore. That

  was it. Brown expected to be reduced to feeling about twelve which was what it used to be like. But it had changed. He smiled, secure that his boss couldn’t see his expression, in this poor light.

  “Mrs Earnshaw, you tell us that your lad is back?”

  She’d just about mumbled something about him coming back and being worried out of her mind and having so much to put up with.

  Brown took in again, the woman’s thinness, her greasy hair and the drab clothes. Like before, something about the cottage almost stifled him and it wasn’t just the smell or the closeness of the air. It was a feeling of everything closing in. He looked again.

  At her pallor, and her eyes that would not meet yours when you spoke to her. Maybe, it was that depression that he’d heard and read about. There was an actual illness, they said now it wasn’t just that you were fed-up with life. It was more serious than that and the reason some people ended up committing suicide.

  “Well, can you get him to come down here, please; we could do with a word with him.”

  She shrugged her thin shoulders and went through the door to what must be a very small hall with a staircase. “Open the door, Brown, will you?” Inspector Greene pulled a spotted handkerchief from his trousers pocket and began dabbing at his forehead.

  Oppressive. That was the word for it, here.

  The boy who came downstairs was on the cusp of very young manhood and must have had a growth spurt. His wrists poked underneath a scruffy checked shirt and if he hadn’t had a pair of striped braces holding up his trousers, they’d fall down. His waist was non-existent and Brown remembered his mother’s quip about someone being so thin that if they stood sideways they’d be marked absent.

  “I don’t know where John is. There’s no point in asking me.”

  His tone was argumentative but you got the impression that he was frightened.

  “Calm down, son. We haven’t asked you anything yet. Stop jumping the gun.” Brown breathed more easily. Inspector Greene’s words were set to reassure rather than frighten the lad—yet, anyway.

  He looked again, at him, now perched on the edge of the chair in response to a gesture from Greene.

  He looked sad. A strange thing to think about a young fellow, standing on the brink of his life. But, he did look sad and burdened. It was becoming clearer by the minute that things had

  gone badly awry here at Honeysuckle Cottage. That wasn’t the reason they were here, though.

  “Tell me about John. What sort of a lad would you say he was?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and looked away. Then he got up and went across. He struck a match and lit the Tilly lamp. Amazing.

  The place looked better. Brown supposed that the dark and dingy corners disappeared and the room was much less grubby. The boy was in shadows too. Maybe it had been more than a distraction tactic that made him light it.

  “He’s just normal. Just a boy.” Freddie didn’t sit back down again but stood in front of the cold grate, his hands closed into fists.

  The clock ticked and the boy shifted where he stood. Still, the inspector said nothing. If he was trying to unsettle the lad, it worked.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, sir.” Freddie’s voice had risen. A bit in between, boy and man in that way that made the hair stand on the back of your neck and at the same time give you a pang for the vulnerability.

  “Well, he didn’t take a notion on him, Freddie, out of the clear blue sky and decide to go off, did he?”

  “I don’t know, I can’t read his mind, can I and he doesn’t tell me everything he is thinking.”

  There was a lot of bluster. Brown wanting the chance to talk to Freddie alone. Inspector Greene wasn’t being as intimidating as he could be but Brown could have done better.

  The boy’s mother sat in the corner of the room, the odd flicker of the lamp catching the small circle of pallor of her face. Not for a second could you ignore the fact that she was there. You could feel the tension emanating from her and it wasn’t much of a leap to thinking that she and her son had been arguing before Brown and Greene had come. It was likely. She wasn’t going to be happy about his disappearance.

  “How many of you live in the house, Mrs Earnshaw?”

  She got up without warning and came and stood before her son.

  “I could swing for you, our Freddie, I really could. Don’t you think I have enough of my plate? Now you go mixing yourself up with a young lad running off, then you stay out all the day long and to cap it all, you bring the police round to my door.”

  “Mam, it isn’t my fault John went missing.”

  Now, she began to cry and it grew louder and you felt that she was just about to let it all get out of control when Freddie got up and put an arm around her. For a moment, she seemed about to shake him off, grabbing at his arm. But the sobbing died down and she sat in the chair that Freddie had got up from.

  For a few moments, it had been all about the intense exchange between mother and son. He and Inspector Greene may as well not have been there.

  Then Freddie got up from where he had been crouched down by his mother’s chair.

  “There’s Mam and me and the baby, Joy. She’s nearly one. There’s Joe, my older brother but he’s almost never here. Before you ask about my dad, don’t. You’ll only upset her. He bailed out. That’s it. That’s why the place is a tip and why she’s so upset.” His voice held something, a strength of emotion that was difficult to place. It might be anger or it might be something else.

  Desperation maybe.

  Inspector Greene called it a day, then, frustrating as that was.

  But, without distressing the woman further they couldn’t keep asking questions that didn’t elicit any useful response from Freddie. Unless, it was an act—all an act to get rid of them.

  “You haven’t got much to say, for yourself.” They were on the short journey back to Ellbeck.”

  “Just thinking, sir,” For once, Brown didn’t feel obliged to explain himself further. He was thinking. Thinking about the terrible burden parents sometimes put on the shoulders of children, weighing them down and making them old before their time.

  Yorkshire

  Henry sat in the chapel as Brother Malcolm stood before them, on the steps of the altar rather than the pulpit.

  So, he was stepping up to the mark. There was a time, not too long ago, when it looked like this wasn’t going to happen. The police were no longer a presence at St Chad’s, though Henry knew that didn’t mean they were not still investigating the attack on Bird. Just that they had gone as far as they could here and now.

  Bird was being transferred back from the hospital tomorrow—at his insistence. It seemed an extraordinary thing to do. But, maybe there really wasn’t anywhere else for him to go. The thought of that gave you a pang and Henry had a grateful thought for his wife, albeit he was irritated with her at the moment. It might not be fair but was she ever actually at home?

  “Gentlemen. I have been speaking to Inspector Jardine and he wishes us to carry on as nor
mal.”

  There was a murmuring behind Henry.

  “Well, maybe not as normal, quite... We have a few days to get through before the conference. I was obviously consulting with the bishop about whether we should abandon the retreat and call off the conference, whether the police might even need to take over St Chad’s for instance. But it seems that isn’t what’s required either by the police or the bishop. Carry on as normal, is the advice.”

  “I for one, do not feel safe, I didn’t before and even less so now. Mmm… This is a terrible muddle, altogether.” Canon Ephraim Richardson, making it all about himself, as usual, Henry didn’t even chide himself for his intolerance, this time.

  “None of us are happy about what happened, Canon—Stephen Bird, least of all. I’m passing on what the inspector said but nobody is obliged to stay, of course. Maybe take some time, tonight, say to think the matter through and we can talk at breakfast in the morning. In the meantime, should any of you wish to speak to me privately, I will be available in my room for the next couple of hours. I will close with a prayer.” He closed his eyes and clasped his hands in front of him.

  “Let us pray…” Henry caught Larry Harrison’s eye as they left the chapel and without words, they both headed for the back door that led to the paths and gardens behind St Chad’s.

  “I can’t reach my wife,” That was not what Henry had intended to say—not at all. A sign of how much he had relied on speaking to Edith and how much he was building this up into a big thing. He had only tried to telephone her twice, for goodness sake.