[Edith Horton 05] - Murder in Retreat

by Noreen Wainwright

  “It is ridiculous, Larry but I’m worried about her and feel she is in danger or something has happened to prevent her answering when I telephone. I have no grounds to think that, at all, but…”

  “I’m not surprised. The tension in this place and then the attack on Bird. I’m feeling the pressure myself. Try again later, or maybe in the morning. She’ll be just going about her day-to-day life. Being here, in this tinder box…it affects you, I think even how you see time. I find it difficult to tell sometimes whether I’ve been here days or weeks. Didn’t your walk today give you some perspective, getting some fresh air and exercise? I should have joined you. It’s easy to forget there’s a world away from St Chad’s.” Henry hesitated, though not for long. He needed to speak to someone about the encounter he’d had with the farmer and what he’d said about Canon Richardson.

  “I mean who on earth would have any reason to wish the man ill?”

  “Sit down for a minute, shall we? This heat isn’t doing me any good and it hasn’t cooled down much, for all that it must be nine o’ clock. I think Richardson will be trotting off to see Brother Malcolm and be the first to hand in his dinner pail.” He laughed.

  “Not the best choice of words…I don’t mean that anything terrible is going to happen to him. But, unless he’s playing some strange game, indeed, I do believe that he is frightened. The odd thing, of course, is that it was Bird who was attacked and not the Canon. So, he’s right about there being danger here but wrong about the victim.

  Henry thought about trying to reach Edith in the morning but stopped shy about asking to use the telephone again. His sleep was restless and he struggled to rid himself of the feeling of dread. It was focused on his wife but he examined that and admitted to himself that his nerves were on edge at the moment and it was simply the fact of her unavailability that made him connect his sense of dread with her. It was much more likely that being in this place was what unnerved him.

  David Fallon was back in the morning, not quite looking as suave as normal but not looking either like a deranged attacker who had left a fellow-priest for dead.

  The time was well past for pussy-footing around each other and Henry followed the other man when he left the old-fashioned dining room which still held much of the house’s school past in its length and high ceiling. You could almost hear the echo of boys’ high voices.

  “Wilkes, you want a word?” Fallon stopped and turned around.

  Henry didn’t think he imagined the irritation on his face. Well, tough luck. A member of their group had been attacked and this man, who clearly clashed with Stephen Bird, had taken himself off, suspiciously close to the attack. Henry wasn’t going to be made to feel guilty for asking where Fallon had been.

  “I did. We can walk, if you want. The way Fallon drew into himself as Henry’s suggestion reminded Henry of an officer’s response, he’d once seen when a private soldier had clutched at the sleeve of his greatcoat in a paroxysm of terror. Distaste and disgust.

  “I accompanied Bird to the hospital. I don’t know if you know?”

  They walked down the gravel drive at the front of the house.

  Fallon set the pace and it was a little faster than Henry felt was comfortable with. Deliberately so, no doubt. Was the man a misanthrope or so arrogant he saw no need at all to show every day civility? Whatever; he had the knack for making the other person feel inadequate and a nuisance.

  “I didn’t. I had left this place by the time Bird met with his…

  mishap.”

  What a mealy-mouthed word. The anger caught Henry by surprise and it wasn’t until afterwards he admitted to himself maybe part of it was that Fallon was in the wrong place at the wrong time and took the brunt of Henry’s pent-up frustration.

  “Stephen Bird didn’t meet with a mishap. You talk as though he fell over his shoelaces and scraped his knee. He was attacked by someone who was intent on inflicting serious damage on him. I was with him when he was examined at Stafford hospital.” Fallon raised his eyebrows; the subtlety of the gesture drawing attention to Henry’s raised voice and obvious anger.

  Henry needed to calm down and stop giving this man what he wanted. Judging by how he had been with Bird, he clearly got some satisfaction from provoking others.

  “So, this word you wanted…”

  “I was curious about where you disappeared to.”

  “Mmm, so was Inspector Jardine, our Scotsman. Quite curious.

  Would like to pin the thing on me, no doubt. No luck though.

  There was an urgent matter I needed to deal with back in London.

  A family matter.”

  Henry floundered, suddenly not sure what it was he had wanted to find out from Fallon; why he’d needed to speak to him. He had no authority, and ran the danger of coming across as an interfering gossip.

  Yorkshire

  “His bedroom? You’ve already looked.” Hannah Braithwaite shook her head, as though impatient with herself. Brown saw pleading in her eyes.

  “Of course. Anything. Anything you can do that might throw some light on this, on what could have happened to our John. I’ll take you up.”

  They followed her up the steep, narrow stairs and Brown felt as though he was going to a sick room, not a boy’s empty bedroom, probably because of the funeral procession they made. Hannah Braithwaite was tough; no breaking down but drawn in tight and taut and you had to wonder how long the human body and spirit could take that level of pressure.

  They left Edith and Cathy, Hannah’s daughter, downstairs, sitting by the oil-cloth covered kitchen table. Two days now and despite the people calling to the house and the many cups of tea made and poured, the place was spotless. Maybe it kept some people going,

  trying to keep things ticking over on the surface. The landing was small, the walls papered with a striped wallpaper. There was a little round table against the wall with a pot containing an African violet on it. Brown turned away from it quickly. It was the small details that got you.

  An even narrower stairs, led up to the boy’s attic bedroom, under the eaves. It was cosy and fairly tidy with clothes on a hook over the bed as well as in a small wardrobe which was against the same wall as the bed—the only wall fit for purpose as the room sloped with the cottage roof. A cosy room. Lucky boy. Brown hadn’t seen where Freddie Earnshaw slept but he didn’t think it would be like this. There was no chest of drawers but the wardrobe had a mirror on the door and there were shelves which held a large amount of books. Henty, Biggles, westerns, annuals, the Hotspur and A Boy’s Book of Adventure. Christmas presents, probably. His mother had done her best.

  Brown didn’t expect to find any clues to the boy’s disappearance and he had been through this room once but he’d had a small niggle ever since he’d been at that school and spoken to those boys.

  When Inspector Greene had told him to search the boy’s room he’d been keen, sure that this was going to be the case where he proved he was no longer the novice. He wasn’t even the youngest, newest officer and more, and even though Greene’s position as top man was indisputable, he had mellowed. But, with that feeling of possibility, Brown now recognised he’d become careless. He’d rushed the search of the room and no sooner has he recognised that nothing actually jumped out at him than he was impatient to be off and interviewing people, trying other avenues of finding John’s whereabouts.

  The source of the niggle did jump out at him this time. A large book, with a maroon coloured cover. He knew what it was, had something similar at home. Bet his mother still had it stored somewhere in the house. A stamp album. There had been a long period of time, probably between the ages of eight and fourteen where he’d been obsessed with stamps. It had been a craze at school but kept up by Brown and two other lads, long after the other boys moved on. As he reached for it, he had a faint echo of the excitement he’d felt when someone gave him a new stamp for his collection. An innocent preoccupation that had helped him through even the loss of his father.

  “John
and his stamps. His father being away—even though he was too young to know much about it, at the time, that’s what started it, I think. France, Belgium, then farther afield. You can imagine the excitement.” Mrs Braithwaite sat on the edge of the bed alongside him.

  There was a smell of homeliness from her, something that combined baking with polish. Together with the stamp album, gave Brown a

  yearning that was uncomfortable. He was too young to be feeling a longing for the past, surely?

  There was an instant feeling that he knew he was going to find something, even before he felt the bulk inside the back cover.

  “What have you got there?” Her tone was on edge and she continued before he had time to answer her. He had a second’s panic too.

  What if she was going to just demand the letters from him?

  She drew in a sharp breath and the homeliness vanished. Now, she was all angles as though her very shape had changed.

  “They’re from his father. That writing. I couldn’t mistake that writing.”

  It was a beautiful hand, dark ink, a fountain pen, probably, fine letters, proper loops, a slight slant. Where had an unsavoury man from a country village learned a hand like that?

  She didn’t try to take the half-dozen or so letters from him, though judging by the way she suddenly got to her feet and moved away from him to the door, she was tempted.

  He looked at her, knowing that he should probably just take the letters and go back to the station. He couldn’t. The first was dated almost twelve months ago. August last year.

  Dear Son,

  Hope this letter finds you well. I am busy and planning to move to Australia sometime in the next couple of years. That’s the place, lad. The old country is all washed up. Losing its place in the world. Washed up as I say. You see, I saw a different world when I was away. Saw that everything doesn’t have to be so confounded tied up, like it is in Blighty. You won’t understand it yet son, because you have nothing to compare it with. You’d be amazed that there are places in the world where no one cares who you are. If you show spirit and grit, you can do anything. Not, like England where is all about tuppence looking down its nose at a penny ha’penny.

  It's a shame that you’re still nowt but a lad and attached to yer mam’s apron strings! Maybe when you are a bit older I can take you on a bit more. Maybe. But then, I can see that you need to be with yer mam and yer sister and maybe it isn’t fair of me. I know your mam wouldn’t like it and think I’m putting ideas into your head. She believes in sticking to your station in life and maybe that’s why we didn’t get on in the end.

  I’ll close for now and wish you all the best, Your affectionate father,

  Dad.

  Hannah’s eyes met his and he handed her the letter. He barely breathed as she read it, just looked out the small window that had been let into the roof. A skylight. There were other letters but he felt he knew what the gist was. An undermining of the boy’s mother and his life in the Yorkshire village. Subtle enough not to make the boy leap to the defence of his mother but unsettle him at the least.

  There was a sound and he looked back into the room which had the gloom of a church after the brightness of the sky.

  “That’s where he’ll be then. Thank God.”

  She stood up. Resolute. Maybe taking it too much for granted that the boy was all right, though.

  “It might be that he’s gone with his father, though we can’t be sure.”

  “I need to look through the rest of these.”

  “No, you don’t need to, Sergeant. Well, you may have to do so.

  But, I don’t need to see any more of that rubbish to know what Josh has been up to. Getting into your head, under your skin.

  Past master at doing that, my husband, I had years of it. Just look at the last one and see if there’s anything definite there.”

  Brown was uneasy but could not have said why.

  “He looked at the last one. There was a date but it was last December, seven months ago. He went through the six letters. They were three, four weeks apart. Regular, then, stopping.”

  “I don’t think they stopped there.” He handed the last letter to Hannah. Talk about nothing, about a job he was doing in a big house. There was no clue where.”

  “He may have hidden them somewhere else…taken them with him…”

  That was the likeliest explanation.

  Going back to Ellbeck, back to the station, Brown’s thoughts were troubling him, a traitorous flutter of a thought. Was Josh Braithwaite all bad, all in the wrong? There was a strong bond, wasn’t there between father and son. Could there be fault in the other side, in Hannah? Maybe she wasn’t the saint, people thought. The boy couldn’t confide in her, that was clear, needed to hide letters away. Poor lad must have been pulled in two directions.

  Chapter Seven

  “I’m sorry,” Henry backed away pushing the handle of the chapel door.

  “Don’t go on my account.” Ivy Miller got up, moving lightly, like a younger person.

  “I’d like a word, please.” She hesitated, then. He saw her mind working. The whole purpose of the retreat, the silent reflection had changed and they were all here now because they were stuck.

  Someone had attacked Stephen Bird and what the police were doing to get to the bottom of the identity of the attacker—and the motive, was far from clear. For Henry’s own part, he wanted to leave the house, with its atmosphere of mutual suspicion, and get back to Yorkshire.

  A letter had come from Edith, explaining why she was out when he telephoned. Telling him that John Braithwaite had gone missing.

  They must be frantic with worry in Ellbeck though Edith was as sure as she could be that the lad was with his father. Joshua Braithwaite— – now there was an unwelcome figure from the past.

  Ivy Miller led the way out into the garden, with an inevitability. That was the place people went if they wanted to talk in privacy.

  It seemed that she wasn’t going to get to the point and she was bad at making small talk. “Is this the first time you’ve attended a retreat here at St Chad’s, Reverend Wilkes?”

  “Yes, not my first retreat, of course, and not my first time in Staffordshire…but, yes, my first time at St Chad’s.”

  She didn’t respond. No wonder, he sounded like an imbecile to his own ears.

  “What are your thoughts about the attack on Reverend Bird?” She’d clearly given up on the pleasantries.

  “I’m not at all sure. I am beginning to wonder if it really was a passing vagrant, a disturbed person. After all, Inspector Jardine hasn’t been out here, again, not in the last couple of days.”

  “It might be…I suppose.”

  She’d stopped at a white painted garden seat.

  Henry appreciated that she’d chosen well. Sitting in that position you would have clear sight and sound of anyone approaching.

  “A religious house like this would traditionally be a place where a person down in his luck would be given a meal, maybe even a bed. That tradition persists, Reverend Wilkes and it is not unknown for indigent people to call for alms.”

  She had a formal way of speaking. Henry had a strong and completely irrational image of her life. She would be unmarried,

  he decided. She would live with her elderly mother and there would be a lot of clutter in the too-big house…”

  “Sorry,” he brought his attention back to Ivy Miller.

  “I’m saying that we have had incidents before when people the worse for wear, in drink or with lunatic tendencies have hammered on the door; sometimes, late at night too—though I’m not here myself at those times. The inspector will be aware of it, though.”

  “Mrs Elliott does live in, though? Her son lives in London, I believe?”

  Ivy Miller turned sharply from him and looked back at the path to the side entrance.” She cleared her throat. “Jerome, yes. He visits when he gets leave from his job.”

  “It must be lonely for her, at times.” Life as a live-in hou
sekeeper—essential to the running of a house but not really your own house. He had another strong urge to talk to Edith. She would understand.

  “She is a marvellous woman, Reverend Wilkes. She runs St Chad’s with admirable efficiency, so much so that I often feel she is taken for granted. The house is so beautifully organised, nothing is forgotten. She pays attention to the tiniest detail. I’ll tell you honestly, I’m in awe of the amount of work she does. Quiet efficiency and devotion to duty. Concepts which are disappearing from our world.”

  Her eyes were bright and when he looked, Henry could see plain as day, the look of complete devotion on the woman’s face. He made the effort to keep his own face expressionless because this paragon the older woman spoke of, bore no relationship to his own encounters with Fiona Elliott. She might be efficient but he had seen none of the charm that she must surely possess, to engender such devotion.

  A sudden wave of pity washed through the puzzlement. Fiona was attractive, had been married, widowed and had a son. Who knew the hints she threw out of an exotic and rich life—picked up eagerly, by this older, plainer and probably much less experienced poor woman.

  “You do the secretarial work, Miss Miller. I’m sure you make an equally important contribution to St Chad’s. There must be a lot of paperwork.”

  “You’re very kind, Reverend Wilkes but my work is nothing in comparison with the work of running the house. I’m a secretary, pure and simple and I do no more than the many men and nowadays, the many women who work in offices throughout the country. The job here suits me very well. I can work part-time, you see. We

  have a good neighbour who is happy to sit with mother for a time when I’m at work and you couldn’t ask for a kinder employer than Brother Malcolm. Strictly speaking, he isn’t my employer. That would be Lichfield. But he’s the person I deal with and if I ever have to get home early…I had to accompany mother to see the specialist, with her arthritis. Well, I only have to mention it…”

  So, he’d been right about the mother.