Swallow Hall Murder

by Noreen Wainwright

  The telephone bell broke into his sentence, and for a few seconds, they looked at each other before he went to answer it.

  Yes. They must celebrate. Maybe ask Henry over too. A sudden, strong sense of unease gripped her, making her get up from her perch on the arm of the chair and move across to the window, which gave her a view down the length of Ellbeck High Street.

  Then Archie was back.

  “It’s for you. It’s Julia. She’s got Hester Turner with her, and she’s in a state, according to Julia. Her aunt found a body in the grounds of Swallow Hall. That’s what she came to tell you earlier. Then, some man who works up there came to fetch her back as the police wanted to ask her some more questions.”

  Edith glanced at her brother, and her thoughts flitted crazily from one impression to another; his silence when she announced her engagement; the hug and the warmth of his response when it had sunk in, the fact that she and Julia had just been discussing Hester, the other day.

  She picked up the receiver and tried to ignore the cold sensation in her stomach

  “I know the man,” Julia’s voice was urgent.

  “The man they found? In the grounds of Swallow Hall?”

  “I know who he is. Hester came back to Ellbeck after speaking to the police. She called on me, desperate to talk things over with someone outside of the family. When she described him to me, I knew who she was talking about, instantly. They’re doing a post-mortem in Harrogate, probably tomorrow. I’ve telephoned Inspector Greene. He’s coming out here. Hester needed to get out of the house away from her grandmother and the aunts and thought of me. She’d called to your house earlier.

  “I know. Archie told me, but he said a man had called straight away telling her she was needed back at the Hall.”

  “Yes. Hubert. I told you. He’s some sort of cousin. Wounded in the war, he works there as a handyman, or gardener; a bit of both. Can you come over now? Hester’s come back. The police only wanted to get the address where Serena was staying, in London. The aunts claimed she was the only one who had it.”

  Hester was doing a lot of running back and to. What was the matter? It was as though she couldn’t bear to be in the same house as her relatives. “Can you come over?” Julia asked.

  Chapter Six

  Edith heard Hester Turner protesting as soon as she went into Julia’s house, “I shouldn’t be here and I can’t stay, Julia. I need to get back.”

  “I had to get out for a while. It’s like a madhouse there at the best of times. They’ve all been interrogated, according to Aunt Elizabeth.”

  Julia shook her head. “An exaggeration, I’d say, Hester. Edith and I know Inspector Greene well: too well, even. He’s an old misery and doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but he won’t have interrogated them.”

  The parlour maid had brought a tray of tea things in and Julia poured out a cup for Edith.

  So much for her and Archie and Henry and the light-hearted celebration she’d been planning. Hopefully, it wasn’t an omen. The prickle of unease jabbed at Edith again. “You say you think you know the man, Jules?” Edith asked, wanting to escape her thoughts.

  “I’m pretty sure his name is Sean Bracken, and he lives in a cottage a couple of miles from Swallow Hall. You know the hamlet, Newsett Beck?”

  “Yes, I think Henry and I went there when we were walking. Blink and you’re past it, that sort of place?”

  “That’s right; a pub and about half a dozen houses, that’s it. Sean has lived there for several years. A recluse. Well, not quite that. He does put in an appearance at times. He is…or was a poet and writer.”

  Hester looked from one to the other of them. “A recluse; a poet, living in a Yorkshire hamlet? Sounds unlikely. But even more strange…what could he be doing on the grounds of Swallow Hall?”

  Edith didn’t say it, but she didn’t agree it was all that unusual, to have someone like that living in the dales. An unforeseen consequence of the war was an influx to the countryside of people who’d been damaged, often in their minds rather than their bodies and who wanted to escape busy, urban life.

  Julia shrugged. “No idea. There must be some connection. I thought so from your description, Hester. I’m not certain, but I bet I’m right. Sean Bracken had reddish hair, not ginger, not sandy, more auburn. Unusual, especially in a man. Are you sure you never met, him, Edith?”

  “I don’t think so. I’d have remembered.”

  “He was Irish. Fought with the Iniskillens at Gallipoli—wrote some controversial poetry. One of the war poets. Fell out with members of his family back in Wicklow for taking the King’s shilling, had some sort of breakdown and settled here.”

  Questions buzzed in Edith’s mind. The main one was how did Julia know all this?

  “I met him several times at dinner parties, mainly at the Arbuthnot’s.”

  Edith frowned. This didn’t add up.

  “He’d known the sons, that sort of thing. I think the Arbuthnots would persuade him to put on a suit and come round to their house every now and then. He’d drink fairly steadily and look like he was having a painful time and someone would give him a lift home.”

  Edith got up, restless again and went to the window. “Have you spoken to the inspector?”

  “Yes, he was his usual unresponsive self…well, maybe not quite that. I’m being unfair, I suppose. He thanked me for the information, and that was about it.”

  “I suppose I can’t run off back to London now?”

  Edith looked at her.

  “Sorry, you should see the looks on your faces, girls. I’m joking, well, partly. I don’t get up here very often and now that I am here, I see why I prefer it down in London. I also see why my poor father got out as soon as he could.” She spoke quickly, and the bleak expression on her face belied the flippancy of the way she spoke.

  They both looked at her. It was difficult to know with Hester. They’d known her intimately. It was always intense when you worked in such extreme situations. You bonded with the people you worked with as much for your own survival as anything. The fact that she had the Ellbeck connection made them even closer. But, Edith couldn’t remember any conversations about her family. Years had passed, and Hester had moved into a different sphere. Could you resurrect intimacy without sounding like a nosy spinster, or in Julia’s case, a nosy widow?

  “My grandmother is the problem, always has been. I try not to get too involved. Honestly, you’d need the League of Nations to sort them out and for the seldom times I see them, I’ve always taken the line of non-involvement. I listen and nod and say as little as possible and do the same to the next one who tries to get me on their side.”

  Still, she needed to escape the place today, twice over.

  “Is it only money? I mean that they don’t go, leave Swallow Hall?” Even as she asked the question, Edith knew it was rarely that simple. Families were tangled skeins, almost impossible to untangle and separate yourself without breaking the thread and falling away yourself.

  Hester shrugged. She had a strong face with clear, green eyes and her hair in one of those short, fashionable crops. They’d never known her to have a boyfriend, and Edith wasn’t surprised she’d done so well. Hester had always had some character trait that marked her out as different. It wasn’t ruthlessness, more a determination to plough her own furrow. Edith’s mind wandered, wondering how it was that Hester had succeeded whereas she and Julia had retreated to country life and what was familiar.

  “I think each of them has become cornered, if you like. They’re all entrenched, and no one dare make a move now, in case they become cast out of the will at the last minute and all the indentured service of the last decades has been in vain.”

  What a position to find yourself in. Edith knew of plenty others in a similar situation, though, albeit not as extreme, but Hannah had only recently told her of a couple in their fifties who had been courting for the past thirty years, but neither wanted to leave their homes, in case they got cut out of the parents’ w
ills.

  “My Aunt Kate is the only one of them, apart from my father who did up sticks and go. She even defied my grandmother and married the man she loved and had Serena. Of all of them, I’m most surprised that she’s back here. Actually, I’m surprised that both Aunt Kate and Serena have ended up back at Swallow Hall. My father used to be so exasperated by the whole set-up, but his strategy was avoidance.”

  Julia smiled, “But, being the golden boy, what did he have to complain about?”

  “Seriously? He hated it. For his generation, he was open about it. All that family nonsense. He detested the way my grandmother favoured him over his sisters and made no bones about it. I mean, was she stupid? That was bound to set them against him. So, if he was the pet in the drawing room, he was the victim in the nursery. I think it gave him a problem with women that he never completely got over. He married my mother because she was kind and easy-going, and of course, my grandmother hated her on sight.”

  The three of them sat in silence. Edith would have put money on it that they were all thinking about their own families and their problems. Neither Julia nor she was likely to be quite as open about them, though.

  “What about Hubert, your cousin…and Serena for that matter? Surely they’re not staying at Swallow Hall for the money…I mean, if the atmosphere is as unhappy as you say…well, I wouldn’t stay there.”

  Edith looked across at Julia, sitting in her high-backed, favourite armchair, feet in slippers, neatly crossed at the ankles, tweed skirt to mid-calf, fair isle jumper. She was glowing, and there had been something too about her words, about the certainty of them. She sounded as though she’d come out the other side of something.

  Hester bit her bottom lip, took a big breath, before speaking. “Something happened with Aunt Elizabeth when she was young, something that became a big taboo, a scandal of some sort, I think. Even my father wouldn’t talk about it, which as I said, was unlike him. I wish I knew, but I don’t want to push it. She was away for a while, but I don’t know where.”

  Edith’s brain teemed with bizarre ideas. What could she have done? Run off with a married man? Had an illegitimate baby? Actually, there weren’t all that many transgressions a girl from a family like that in a place like Ellbeck could really commit. Maybe she’d stolen money? Attacked someone? That was stupid; she would have been put away had that been the case.

  “Inspector Greene will delve into their backgrounds, Hester, whether they like it or not.”

  Julia was right, she knew firsthand. All the family’s secrets would be unearthed and examined. It was more than unlikely that a man could be murdered on the grounds of Swallow Hall and have nothing to do with any of the family.

  “Why exactly did they ask you to come back?” Edith couldn’t help herself. She didn’t want to come across as a busybody, but when you thought about it, the Turner family had been tootling along in their strange world for years. Then, something happens, things deteriorate in the house, and they ask for help. Almost as soon as Hester comes along, someone is murdered in the garden. Coincidences happened but wasn’t this too much?

  “Serena wrote to me and asked me to come up. Apart from her mother—I think—Serena is the most stable member of the household. I should say the family. The cook and the housemaid are sensible women. In fact, it was really their threat to leave that brought things to a head. Elizabeth’s behaviour has become more erratic and unpredictable. She accuses them all of taking things from her room and selling them. There was a poor young girl from the village who got a job there, God help her, and Aunt Elizabeth ended up throwing something at her. It sounds almost comical, but I can assure you, it wasn’t. She threw some sort of china figurine, and it could have cracked the girl’s head open.”

  Edith shifted in her chair. Out of nowhere, her small, black monkey was back. That’s how she thought of her anxiety. Dr. Uxbridge, whom she still saw once a month, had told her to treat her troublesome thoughts in this way, to see them as a shape or colour or object outside of herself so she could distance herself and not get caught up in them. She’d found it helpful. It was the thought of madness, of course. The behaviour of the eldest Turner daughter sounded on the border of insanity. But, again, a bit like the Arkwright family, the place they lived would also play a part. If you had money and you were cut off from other people, it seemed there could be a high tolerance for eccentricity. The same behaviour in a different context, say in a Harrogate back street, would quickly lead to a spell in St. Bride’s.

  “What about Serena?” Julia’s voice broke into Edith’s thoughts, bringing her back to the moment.

  “Yes, well…I’m not sure. She came up here to spend time with her mother, and then she got a job in hospital, assistant to the pharmacist there, and I suppose she just fell into living here, in Yorkshire, I mean.”

  And I’m a monkey’s uncle. There had been an absolute lack of conviction in Hester’s voice, and at the very least, she’d been holding back. There was more to say about her cousin’s continual presence at Swallow Hall, and for whatever reason, Hester was keeping her own counsel.

  She managed to put away her own anxiety and glanced again at the woman. Taking in her neatness and self-possession. A curious mix of jealousy and admiration swiped at her like a sudden squall of rain on a summer day. Not for Hester the reluctant step back to pre-war life. She had kept marching forward, and neither family obligations, nor romantic attachment swayed her off her course.

  Chapter Seven

  “They want lamb cutlets for luncheon and would you keep some aside to cook for Serena when she gets back. Hubert is going to the station at four o’ clock.” Ivy waited for the calm atmosphere of the kitchen to soothe her fraught mood as it normally did.

  Sylvia continued to rhythmically beat the butter and sugar in the big, brown bowl and then added a little of the beaten egg from the small, white pudding bowl.

  “So, she’s coming back earlier. That was what the telephone call was about, then. You were right.”

  Ivy shrugged. “I thought it probably was. But, whoever it was, Sylvia…they must have been very upset. Miss Kate was having her work cut out trying to calm her down…if it was Serena.”

  She hadn’t been eavesdropping because she wasn’t one of those domestic servants who lived their whole lives through their employers. Those servants might be discreet—indeed indiscretion and gossip would have landed them out of work—but nevertheless they knew every tittle-tattle that went on in the house and in their employers’ lives.

  However, since the Irishman’s body had been found in the grounds, Ivy had changed. It was like something had been removed from her, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was. A tough hide—maybe that was it. After all, to be here this long, and to put up with old Mrs. Turner’s ways and much worse, Miss Elizabeth, well, you had to be tough.

  Now, she was over aware of everything. She’d been on the landing on her knees polishing the bottom of the stair rods. It wasn’t her job. Two women came in from the village to do the rough work, but she’d seen the grubby marks and just got the wooden housekeeping box and set to.

  That was another thing that had happened to her since the body had been found. Ivy couldn’t sit still. Not that she had a lot of time for leisure in the normal run of things, but there were times in the day when she and Sylvia would take the weight off their feet and sit in the kitchen with a cup of tea and maybe a fairy cake or other treat if Sylvia had been baking. It made the job here in Swallow Hall more tolerable.

  That was about the only thing you could say in their favour, Miss Elizabeth and the other Turner women. They stayed upstairs and weren’t forever down here interfering. Maybe because of all the tension about, her ears had gone out in stalks when Miss Kate picked up the telephone and beyond the odd “umm” and “oh, dear”, from her, it was clear that all the talk was coming at the other end of the receiver.

  “My dear, I don’t know any more than that. I keep telling you. Calm down. Please calm down. You�
��ll make yourself ill.” So it went on, Kate’s usually beautifully-toned voice became edgy and in the end, exhausted as she said, “Look, we’ll talk again when you get here. It’s better not over the telephone…you never know… these local exchanges…”

  At those words, Ivy clutched the duster and rushed away up the landing, keeping the tread of her feet as light as humanly possible. She was the one who was eavesdropping, but it honestly wasn’t intended.

  Her thoughts were racing, though, and until she got things clearer in her mind, she didn’t want to share them with anybody, not even Sylvia. Miss Serena was an odd one, pleasant but always seemed preoccupied and secretive. Ivy had wondered from time to time what was keeping her up here in this godforsaken spot. Because she was both beautiful and you got a feeling of…what was the word…liveliness, no, vibrancy, that was a better way to put it. You got a feeling that she was in the midst of a drama and that it didn’t matter all that much to her where she was living. Her reaction to the death of Sean Bracken gave a great big clue as to what that drama might be.

  * * *

  “I have heard from the Garda Siochana across the water. Wicklow, to be precise…not that they had a great lot of useful information about the deceased, but you never know, there may be something amiss in the family. A line of enquiry, anyway.”

  Brown nodded and tried to look as though a trip to Ireland was the last thing on his mind. He’d wanted to go there ever since his mother had talked about the time she’d gone, as a girl, to Killarney and the ring of Kerry. He was probably getting completely carried away, but it was a possibility.

  Hopefully, the Irishman’s death wasn’t going to turn out to be political. Then, they would be removed from the case or at least sidelined, and he’d be back form-filling and putting up with his boss’s moods.

  If he was to be fair, he’d known Greene to be a lot more difficult in the past. Now, he was terse and on edge, and it was very hard to share a space with him. The moodiness wasn’t directly aimed at Brown. Again, to be fair to his superior, Inspector Greene could be as curmudgeonly as they came but he didn’t carry things on. He got whatever it was out of his system and moved on from it. The conversation with that woman was at the root of it. The fact that he was an unwilling eavesdropper was an embarrassment—to him, rather than the inspector, he suspected.