Swallow Hall Murder

by Noreen Wainwright

  She turned to the two men who had stood up. “Insists on having her own sitting-room, does Mary. Feels it gives her the upper hand over the others because she has been here the longest. Some of the others have made their feeble attempts to leave the nest, but faithful Mary has stuck to me like glue.”

  “Mother, you really need to stop this. You’re not only washing our dirty linen in public. You’re trying to set us against each other as usual.” It was Kate again; she was the member of the family who seemed least cowed by Mrs. Turner.

  The inspector started with Mary as she was the sister assigned with the job of taking them to her sitting-room. Bill Brown was pleased that his boss intimated he should stay in Mary’s sitting-room with them. The possibility that he’d be given the job of sitting with the rest of them had occurred to him, and he hadn’t fancied it at all. It had been bad enough to be guarding the dead man outside for the forty minutes that elapsed before the pathologist and photographer turned up.

  If he attempted to read the inspector’s mind, not a gift he was normally blessed with, he’d have said Greene dismissed the possibility of any conspiracy out of hand. They’d heard about the strained atmosphere between them all, and you didn’t have to spend long with them to sense that they all rowed their own boats at Swallow Hall. They might have got on once, but being forced to co-habit, way beyond the normal age had put paid to that.

  Mary, as a witness, was useless. She dithered and stumbled over her words until even Brown’s teeth ached with frustration.

  “So, there were no visitors at all in the last couple of weeks?” Inspector Greene’s voice was strained, and Brown’s mind flashed back to the snatch of conversation he’d heard earlier, back in the station.

  “Apart from the usual … usual, ah, run of things, Inspector, no. The vicar called to see mother. The doctor calls sometimes. I’m not sure when he last visited. We’re out of the way, here, Inspector, tend to keep to ourselves…you see, with the way Mother is…” Her voice trailed off, and her pale hands moved to draw the edges of her cardigan together.

  Brown wasn’t surprised. If it had been Mrs. Turner who’d been hit over the head, he could have understood it. She seemed to positively glory in provoking and belittling her family.

  It was interesting to see the rest of the family, and Brown focused hard on their responses. He was getting better at this; he was better at reading people. His mind kept flashing back to the dead man’s head and to the pathologist’s speculation about what weapon had been used. Officers would be searching the grounds while they were in here, talking to this impossible family.

  Elizabeth had entered the room as if for a performance. He imagined how she would have waited in the drawing room, priming herself for her big moment, planning how she would put the two plodding policemen in their place.

  Good luck with that one.

  The inspector maintained his professionalism, playing it by the book, but there was an undercurrent of controlled anger in him, today. Would Brown have even noticed it if he hadn’t been privy, albeit unwittingly, to what had taken place in the office this morning? Was he maybe even imagining it? He didn’t think so.

  “Mmm, this all looks very theatrical, inspector? You looking across that table like you are my own judge and jury. Do I need legal representation?” She laughed and Inspector Green maintained silence, the oldest trick in the book, designed to create unease, if not a confession.

  “I see…pardon me my little joke, Inspector. I don’t quite know how to behave. It isn’t every day we have an unknown body in our grounds. I had never seen him before as I already told you…but there’s quite a houseful of us here, and no doubt, some of us have our little secrets.”

  “Are you going to divulge what you know about the other members of the household and their secrets or are you going to keep us in suspense?” Greene’s tone was clipped.

  Brown bent his head over his notebook, then risked a glance at the woman.

  She opened her mouth then closed it again, and a look of cunning crossed her face.

  Brown looked down at his notebook again. She was an unpleasant woman.

  “I could tell you many things about what goes on in this house, Inspector. But, I don’t think any of it would help you in your investigation into the body found in the grounds - how it got here, I mean.”

  “Maybe you should allow me to be the judge of that, Miss Turner.”

  “You might think we’re all in all to each other, here at Swallow Hall—just our own little family. But, my, some of us have visitors, coming here at night, sneaking in the back door. I don’t say anything because I don’t want a backlash.

  “And while you’re at it, maybe you should have a closer look at my sisters. They make out that they’re here, looking after mother. Rubbish. They’re looking after their inheritance.” She darted a glance from one to the other and pursed her lips in the age-old expression of the gossip.

  It was all hints and innuendo. He cast a glance at Inspector Greene. Grim was the word for his expression.

  “Then, I have no doubt at all that they’re stealing my possessions and selling them so that probably accounts for some of the unsavoury characters I’ve seen in the area.”

  What rubbish. She wanted a reaction. The trouble was in trying to tease out the reality from her delusions or mischief-making, whichever it was.

  Inspector Greene hurried her from the room after that, and Brown saw a flash of anger on her face. It wasn’t the reaction she’d been after.

  “I’m sorry about my sister, Inspector. I can imagine the rubbish she’s been telling you. No doubt, she’ll have told you that we’re taking her stuff and selling it. That’s her latest fixation.”

  The main impression you got from Kate Beech was that she was worn down. Small surprise; Brown liked her instinctively and sympathised -a strong reaction and it might be that in comparison with Mary and Elizabeth and—especially—Elizabeth, she was normal.

  “I don’t know what kind of impression you must have of us…buried away up here. Yet, at times, I can’t quite believe I came back here.”

  “How long have you been back?”

  She pushed her hair back from her face. When Brown would describe her later to his mother, careful not to reveal anything he shouldn’t, he’d say she had fine bones, because she had and that’s the kind of thing he noticed.

  “I’ve been back about ten years, hard to believe it. I never intended it to be a permanent thing. My husband died, and I got…I suppose I got reeled back in.”

  It was an odd word to use as if she’d not had any will of her own. But, she must have, to have defied her mother and get married, in the first place.

  “How about your daughter? How did she come to be living here?”

  She shifted in the high-backed mahogany chair; a small movement. “You’ll have to talk to her. I don’t feel I can speak for her. She’s lived here longer than me. Her husband was killed at the end of the war. Serena tried a few small business ventures; a clothes shop with a friend; a café. They didn’t work out…”

  She had changed. The sensible sister; the one Brown felt was normal looked a lot shakier now—nervous, uncomfortable. Was she as off-centre as the other two? No, you only noticed it when the conversation moved to Serena.

  “When will your daughter return?”

  “Not for another couple of days, Inspector, well, unless…when I tell her, she decides...I’m not expecting her for a couple of days, is what I meant. She went down to town to see her girlfriends; she keeps up with them you know. They were a tight bunch, worked in the civil service during the war. Maybe if she could have stayed on…but then…it wasn’t what she wanted at the time. Made careers for themselves, some of those girls, in a man’s world. You’ll see when you talk to my niece, Hester.”

  There she was, fine again, a normal, pleasant woman as soon as they moved even slightly away from the subject of Serena.

  Chapter Five

  “When?”

  Ed
ith pulled a face.

  “Oh, crikey. You’re pinning me down, Henry. I don’t know. I suppose there’s no need for one of those long engagements. I mean neither of us being in the first flush of youth.”

  “Thanks, Edith, it was your way with words that I fell for, obviously.”

  “Yes, that’s it, Henry. My honey-toned charms and me being the owner of this mutt, of course.” She knelt down in front of Henry’s fire and stroked Max, her black Labrador. He pushed his head into her hand, always ready for more attention.

  “You do realise he’s part of the package, Henry? If you take me on, you get the dog too.”

  “Eh, Max, fancy throwing in your lot with me, too?” He stooped and stroked the dog’s head and tickled behind his ears, and Max emitted a low sound of pleasure.

  “He must be in dog heaven—what attention. What Archie will have to say, I don’t know. He lets on he hardly notices Max’s presence, but I’ve heard him when he thinks he’s on his own with him. Soppy, Henry, even worse than me.”

  “How does he feel about it then, you and me getting married—you leaving him.”

  She frowned. “I wasn’t thinking of leaving completely. I mean I’ll still do his paperwork with the help of Phoebe…and Hannah…I’ll miss Hannah.”

  There were things about this forthcoming marriage that she hadn’t thought through, practicalities. She and Henry had had an argument and parted company, some months ago. She had complicated it with all sorts of arguments in her mind at the time, but it had been a dose of cold feet, she realised now. The parting had served a purpose, though. Before that, they had been drifting along in some sort of halfway house.

  She smiled at him now. “You know as a way of making your mind up about something or someone, being apart from them can be a very dramatic way of doing it.”

  He touched her face. “A risky strategy, though. I’m glad it worked.”

  “Me too,” Edith said. It hadn’t been a strategy. She’d been angry at what Henry said at the time about them needing to make a decision, though he was right. Vicars weren’t free to have relationships—it had to be marriage or nothing.

  It was a peculiarly female feeling, that panic, she thought now but kept that to herself. Women had more to lose from marriage than men. That had terrified her, and that’s why she had made an argument out of a difference of opinion. It had been an excuse to run for the hills, but she had underestimated what a bleak place they could be. Henry wasn’t just any man.

  She had been drifting along with him; heat rose in her face at the thought. Had she been one of those women trapped in some sort of prolonged adolescence where the only relationship they wanted with a man was a safe, sexless one? Clergymen attracted those sorts of woman and doctors - like Archie did too.

  There was that prickle of unease again. She wouldn’t have to completely turn her back on Archie or Hannah or any of them. They were all reasonable adults and could compromise.

  * * *

  Bill Brown relaxed for the first time since coming to Swallow Hall.

  Ivy Moss had no axe to grind here. He was as sure as he could be about that. They had spoken to the three sisters and finally to old Mrs. Turner, who had looked at him like he was a worm that had slithered into her house.

  “I know your mother,” she narrowed her eyes and looked at him. “Nice girl, if she did have ideas above her station. Fancied herself as quite well-read, if my memory serves me right. She used to come up here, during the war, to the knitting group I ran for the soldiers’ parcels; forever dropping stitches, she was. What became of your father? Did he go the same way as the inspector’s wife?”

  The cackle she gave made Brown’s skin crawl, but he kept his tone calm. He gave a quick glance in the direction of the inspector. “My father died, ma’am. He had Spanish flu.”

  His boss’s mouth pursed, and he looked down at his clasped hands. It was a curiously contemplative stance for a man who was being so sorely tried. Please, don’t let him be riled by this mischief-making woman.

  “You seem determined to take our focus away from this house and its inhabitants, Mrs. Turner.” Inspector Greene said, “I’m finding that a bit strange.”

  Brown’s shoulders relaxed. He should have known his man better. As if he was going to be thrown off his stride by this one.

  “I can’t help you, Inspector. You must know that. My daughters have looked at the unfortunate young man. If they don’t know him, then you can be sure I don’t either. I’m sure you can’t begin to imagine how curtailed my life is up here. I’m very lucky if any of them take the trouble to drive me into town. Though this has got a little better since Hester has come to stay.”

  The Inspector broke in. “We are hoping to speak to her next.”

  “Yes, she’s gone down to the kitchen to calm the servants. It’s a good thing to have Hester back in the house. She spent time here as a girl—happy times, when my son, Leonard, the best of all my children, Inspector, was still alive. He married a fool, but, there you go. Men frequently do, in my experience.”

  Just as you might be about to feel a smidgeon of sympathy for her, she comes out with something like this. Brown looked at his boss. Mrs. Turner could be having a further dig, or maybe she wasn’t.

  Identification was a priority. It would be a strange coincidence if this man found was on the grounds yet had nothing to do with the extended family there. If it had been in the spring or summer, it might have been a hiker who had got lost, but not at this time of year. Nor had he been kitted out like a hiker. He was wearing a waistcoat and a top coat of good stuff. His corduroy trousers, green, knitted slipover, and scarf hinted at the bohemian. He might have something to do with Jazz House, this corner of North Yorkshire’s claim to an artistic community. They had cause to visit it last year in the course of their investigation into Jeremiah Arkwright’s murder. The place had unsettled Brown, somehow making him feel a clod-hopping yokel—a thought he’d kept to himself.

  * * *

  Hester Turner was a pleasure to interview after the rest of them. Straightforward. But, maybe that wasn’t surprising; she had an important job in London. A job where she’d need her wits about her, to be observant and efficient.

  “I’d never seen the dead man before.” She pre-empted the inspector’s questions, sitting, with her hands in her lap. She must have been upstairs and run a comb through her short, well-shaped hair and removed the wet outer things and was now wearing a cerise-pink cardigan with a white blouse and tweed skirt.

  “My aunt Elizabeth is…very peculiar. I’m used to it because she’s been like this as long as I’ve known her. But, you forget. When I come back, it hits me and then when you try to see her through the eyes of someone different…it’s oh, it’s bloody awful if you must know.” She pushed a strand of the short hair behind her ear.

  “Sorry. But, God knows what sort of impression you must have of her.”

  “You’d be surprised, Miss Turner at some of the oddness we get to see.”

  “I suppose, so. Thank you, inspector. Thank you for being understanding. When she started rambling on about a body, for a minute, I didn’t believe her. Then...I suppose I thought that was a bit much, even for her, so I checked. I’d never seen the poor man before today.” Brown saw her swallow, noticeably swallow and just for a moment, he wondered.

  * * *

  “Someone telephoned for you.” Edith had returned from Henry’s and was trying to remember what Hannah had said about supper - something about cold potatoes. Archie shot out the remark at her as he went into his surgery, and Edith bit back her irritation. He was always doing this—bits of messages half-passed on as if he had far more important things to be thinking about, which in fairness, he probably did.

  This time, he must have had an attack of conscience because, after a few minutes, he returned, clutching an oblong sphygmomanometer. “It was that girl. You know, the one you bumped into at the shop, knew you from your VAD days; Hester…don’t know the surname... used to be Turn
er. Did she ever marry?”

  “No, Hester Turner she is still. Funny. I was talking about her to Julia earlier on, saying that we must all get together. She must want to do it sooner than I realised.

  “Well, she called and then a man rang the doorbell looking for her. Goodness knows how he knew she was going to be here. It was urgent she return to Swallow Hall. I thought old Muriel Turner was ill or something, but no—there was something about the police needing to speak to her again.”

  Edith frowned. That was very odd. Maybe it was something to do with her work in London. She brought her focus back to Archie, still standing there holding the blood pressure machine, half the doctor, half the brother.

  “Are you busy, Archie? I could do with a word.”

  He shrugged, “Not particularly—surgery was quiet, and I have a bit of time before I need to go out and visit old Mrs. Duncan. What’s up?”

  “I’m not going to tell you standing here in the hallway. Come into the kitchen.” Oh, what was she playing at, turning it into a big performance? And then, she blurted it out just as they went into the kitchen. “Well…it’s this. Henry and I are going to get married.” She met his eyes

  He stood for a moment, looking wrong-footed and she noticed again, he wasn’t a good colour, she hadn’t liked Archie’s colour for a while now.

  “That’s come from nowhere.”

  A hot lump rose up in her throat. Then it was immediately better.

  “I’m sorry, sis. That was a stupid thing to say. Many congratulations.”

  He came across and put his arm around her and kissed her cheek. This sort of gesture was completely out of character for him. “As soon as we’ve had dinner, I’m going to dig a bottle of something special out of Dad’s wine store, and we’ll celebrate properly. Have you set…?”