Swallow Hall Murder

by Noreen Wainwright

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ivy tapped on Miss Mary’s bedroom door and turned the handle. This bedroom gave her the heebie-jeebies. The bedspread and the pillows had pink and yellow ruches and frills, and there were tie-backs and flounces on the curtains. But, the creepiest element was the plethora of dolls and teddy bears. She must have been an indulged child all those years ago or had she just purloined everyone else’s toys. “Thank you, Ivy. What’s the day like outside? Have you taken mother’s tea to her yet?”

  “Yes, she’s having a rest this morning, and the weather is terrible, Miss Mary, cold and wet.”

  She put the small tray on the bedside table and sidled back to the door. The trouble with Miss Mary was that she would try to keep you talking. She was a different woman when it was just you and her, here in her bedroom. Not so nervous, and giving the impression of being lonely.

  What an existence. It made Ivy, for once, feel privileged. She had her life before her, and she was escaping this place, despite Miss Elizabeth’s spite. Miss Mary would never get out alive. She grinned at the expression that had popped into her mind.

  “You’ve been going to the pictures too much, Ivy Moss,” she muttered to herself.

  There was no need to take tea into Miss Kate, or Mrs. Beech as she should rightly be called. She got up without tea or anyone knocking, in the morning. Soon after breakfast, she’d be pottering in the garden or riding her pony or organising meals with Sylvia. It was difficult to understand why or how a woman like that would settle for a life here in this house.

  She took a deep breath before tapping on Miss Elizabeth’s door. She must deal with this in the right way.

  “Miss Elizabeth.”

  She repeated it, a little more loudly. Miss Elizabeth was hard of hearing, but denied it, and wouldn’t entertain the idea of seeing a doctor about it, or so Sylvia had told her.

  “She’d see it as a weakness and as you know, the old besom doesn’t hold with any failings.”

  The room was still. The figure on the bed was motionless, and a cold chill must have entered with Ivy when she’d opened the door. She wrinkled her nose and swallowed. There was a smell of vomit.

  Miss Elizabeth lay, on her back, her head slightly on one side, a dribble of vomit coming from the side of her mouth, a pool of it on the pillow.

  Ivy stretched a hand out without thinking and touched the woman’s face. Cold. She drew her hand back again, sharply. What was she doing? Oh, God. What was she going to do?

  She left the bedroom and went as fast as she could go downstairs and called Miss Kate. She thought briefly of calling Serena, but only fleetingly. Kate was the most normal of them, but how the heck was she going to tell her this?

  Quickly was the answer, but not that she was dead, not yet. The shock might be too much.

  All the time she was thinking this, Ivy was composing herself. It was surprising how calm she was becoming. The direr the situation she was in, the steadier she was able to hold the tiller.

  Kate took in what she was saying, instantly. “Unwell, unconscious?” Her eyes rounded, she looked at Ivy.

  “I think you’re trying to tell me that she’s dead, Ivy. Just let me put this on. She reached for a plaid, woollen dressing gown, hanging on the back of the Lloyd Loom chair. Ivy envied its warmth because all of a sudden she was cold, shaking. The more she shook, the colder she became. That was funny; she’d heard somewhere that shaking was the body’s way of warming itself.

  “Put this on,” The other woman handed her a burgundy-coloured woollen garment, something between a jacket and a cardigan. She was embarrassed that Kate had noticed the shivering.

  Pull yourself together, Ivy. This wasn’t the moment to go to pieces. “She’s so cold,” Kate had touched her sister’s face with the back of her hand. Just as Ivy had done, probably the same part of her face.

  Ivy’s shaking stopped, and the calm she’d felt going to Kate’s room came back. Whatever had happened and however incredible that such a huge ego as Elizabeth was gone forever, she couldn’t be sad about it.

  * * *

  It had been another night of snatched minutes of sleep in the armchair downstairs, ears straining for every sound, all his senses on high alert. Restless and strung out and no nearer an answer as to what to do. He should report Bet’s disappearance. It was time to go to the next level of command and talk about the whole thing, about her return and her disappearance. It was the responsible thing to do. Somehow, he hadn’t been able to face it. Never before in his life had he lost his nerve like this. It was like pulling the covers over your head, shutting your eyes tight against reality. If he set a missing person enquiry in motion, it would blow his embarrassing private life to pieces. It would be of interest to the papers and the public. It would be worse than taking all his clothes off and running through Harrogate. But, it was criminal, almost, irresponsible to say the least, to stay quiet.

  He’d telephoned Margaret last night, half dreading to hear that Bet had taken herself back there. But, he’d not reckoned for the drop of his stomach and the tightening of dread when she said she’d heard nothing of her sister since they’d dropped her back with him, last week.

  “No, she’s not here, Albert, and I have to go now, I tried to prepare you for her coming back, you didn’t want to hear me out. You did what you always do, buried your head in the sand.”

  “Margaret, her return was out of the blue. The last thing I expected and you know as well as me, the last thing I wanted. When she wasn’t there…I don’t know…I thought she’d taken herself off again. Gone back to you, I suppose.” He sounded pathetic. A man who had lost his grip on life, that’s what he sounded like.

  “I’ll deal with it, tomorrow.” He got off the phone. This was all getting out of hand, out of his control. The shock of hearing that she hadn’t gone back to Margaret and Stan, was profound.

  Now, the office was quiet. He put the kettle on and sat down to make a plan. A quiet word, to start with. That’s how he’d deal with it. He’d telephone Malcolm Stephenson, the superintendent based in Harrogate. Ask his advice. Tell him what he had to. He’d have brace himself, that’s for sure. If there was anything in the world he didn’t want, it was to look a fool, be the subject of scandal. The thing was, that might be the least of his troubles.

  The telephone rang; the urgency of the sound tore through him like a dentist’s drill, and he sat down to pick up the receiver.

  “It’s Mrs Beech; Kate …Swallow Hall.”

  Greene’s thought processes had slowed. It was like trying to walk through a fog. There were a few muzzy seconds where he couldn’t place who she was and couldn’t think where Swallow Hall was.

  He recovered quickly, and her next words were a bucket of cold water thrown at his head. He was back to himself, sharp. Arranging for the pathologist and photographer to go out there. He held his hand up when Brown came into the office to silence him, gestured at a chair to tell him to sit down and wait. He was back in charge, fired up, and a tiny bit of him was glad he could put off thinking about his wife for a little while longer.

  “Do you think she killed herself, sir?” Brown’s voice was low. Kate Beech had stepped out of Elizabeth’s bedroom, but you couldn’t be too careful. A pale, subdued Ivy Moss had let them in the house, and Kate had taken them up the stairs. She was calm and in control.

  “This really has got too close to home, this time, Inspector,” she said.

  “Close to home. Don’t you mean in the home?” Greene said.

  It was tinged with unreality, though, being back here again. Brown wasn’t bothered by the dead. His belief was that once life was extinguished or the spirit had departed or however you looked at it, there was nothing to fear.

  But, there was something different about this woman. What was it? She’d been unpleasant and seeking attention, in life. It wasn’t that he was particularly bothered by her death…

  It came to him as he looked at her on the bed. She had been a large and disturbing p
resence. They’d never got to the heart of the woman; that’s if she did have such an organ as a heart. She had acted and postured and maybe hidden the true woman in that way.

  What was disturbing him was two-fold, he decided, as the photographer took control of the room. It was hard to believe that a big personality like that was no longer, and there was the feeling too that she’d taken her own life and thus had the last laugh.

  This was probably stupid as whatever else you could say about her figure, undignified and powerless now, she didn’t look as though she’d been laughing.

  Inspector Greene showed no interest in leaving the Hall even after the body had been removed and they had spoken to everyone in the house including old Mrs. Turner.

  “She doesn’t appear to have much of a heart,” Brown hadn’t been able to help blurting it out after they’d left Mrs. Turner, once again, absorbed in that huge jigsaw on the table.

  He’d half-expected a sharp retort, but he didn’t get it.

  “I suppose when you get to that age, you’ve seen it all. Nothing shocks you. Besides that, she never showed anything other than irritation about any of her children, did she? Apart from Leonard?”

  Mary had been the most interesting; not something you’d ever imagine thinking about her. “Elizabeth could be very wicked, Sergeant,” she’d spoken to him rather than Inspector Greene of whom she seemed terrified. But, that was another thing. Her acute nervous twittering had calmed down. That was odd. Maybe she was still in shock.

  “She bullied me, dreadfully as a child, Sergeant, pulling my hair when no one was looking, pinching and twisting my arm. But, it was the things she said to me that were worse. She said I was ugly, stupid, weak-minded. Told me I’d never have any friends, that no-one would want to be seen with an imbecile. That was what she called me, an imbecile. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew it wasn’t anything nice. I looked it up in the dictionary…it isn’t nice.”

  The floodgates were opened. She showed no sorrow either at the death of her older sister.

  It was sad, all they had in this house, materially and no love or even the slightest bit of affection. The only proper feeling human beings in the place were down in the kitchen, and they were the ones who had the least of worldly goods or opportunities in life.

  * * *

  “What do you think, happened, Ivy?”

  Sylvia’s normal colour had faded away, and now all you could see were broken veins in her cheeks. Her colour was poor, and Ivy’s stomach lurched. What did high blood pressure actually mean? Sylvia’s knuckles were more swollen than usual, too. Could that be? Or was she just looking at her friend more closely? Out of the blue came the thought that the excitement of going to work at the Arbuthnot’s had faded, a bit like the colour from Sylvia’s face. Her tormentor was dead, and the thought of leaving Sylvia was horrible.

  “What happened, Ivy?” Sylvia’s voice was little more than a whisper now, and she sat heavily on the kitchen chair.

  “Oh dear, I’m all a flutter.”

  “Are you all right?” Ivy coughed, made her voice go back down to normal. She’d heard the note of panic in it herself; that wasn’t going to help.

  “I’ll make tea.” She thought about the bottle of brandy kept for medicinal purposes, and put the thought straight out of her mind again. The family never normally come down here to see them, but nothing was normal today. The police would definitely be down to talk to them too. There must be no smell of alcohol, or they’d think the place was falling apart down here, too.

  Twice, Sylvia had asked her what could have happened. Now, she put the cup and saucer down in front of the cook.

  “I don’t know, Sylvia. The explanation that comes to mind is that her conscience was troubling her, that she killed that man.”

  “Don’t be daft, Ivy. He was a fit, strong man by all accounts…”

  “She was a strong woman. Unnaturally strong, almost. I’ve seen her hefting about heavy branches in the garden, chopping logs with an axe. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

  “Even so…why would she do it?”

  They had both lowered their voices, but Ivy still started and clattered her cup back into its saucer when the door opened, and Miss Kate led the two policemen into the kitchen. Both of them looked at each other, and Sylvia’s eyes held something. Ivy wasn’t sure what it was, but it looked like fear.

  The questions were all about what Miss Elizabeth had eaten and drunk the night before, and Ivy heard her own hesitant stumbling. She was making a fool of herself. It was as though she was falling down a long way. Her voice sounded as though it was coming through a tunnel.

  “Are you all right?” Sylvia put a hand on her shoulder. There was urgency in her tone and Sylvia’s eyes still held fear.

  “She had supper with the rest of them, didn’t she, Ivy?” Sylvia had stepped in, was helping her.

  “And that was?”

  “Fish, a piece of haddock, new potatoes, peas…what is this, Inspector Greene? I hope you don’t think it’s anything to do with my food, with my cooking…anyway that can’t be so, can it? The rest of us are fine. We had it too, me and Ivy.”

  This was ridiculous. One good thing was that it brought her back to her full senses after whatever kind of funny turn she’d had.

  “Inspector Greene. Why are you asking this? All about the food, it’s as if you’re saying she was poisoned.” Ivy sat up straight, faced the inspector.

  “It’s unexpected death, Miss. The second one in a few days. You’d expect us to look at every possibility, wouldn’t you? At this point, the likelihood is that it was something that Miss Turner ingested; whether by accident or design, we don’t know. We don’t know whether it was in the food or drink. So, we have to ask.”

  “It wouldn’t be by design,” said Sylvia.

  “Before you came in, we were talking about this. Hardly surprising. Ivy mentioned something about Miss Elizabeth’s conscience. That something might be troubling her conscience. I was on the point of telling her that I didn’t believe that for a minute. If she had anything to do with Mr Bracken’s death, one sure thing is that she wouldn’t be having any attacks of conscience about it. You can put that out of your head.”

  “Thank you for your honest opinion, Mrs. Casey,” the inspector said. “You sound very sure of your ground.”

  “I’ve known the woman for years. She’s the last woman who’d take her life if that’s what’s in your mind. If she’d done murder and I wouldn’t say she wasn’t capable of it, she’d laugh into your face about it. Boast. Or else she’d lie through her back teeth.” Sylvia subsided, and the kitchen fell silent.

  Ivy looked across at her friend. It was true, Elizabeth Turner didn’t have the fine feelings needed to be tormented by doing something wrong. She relished wrong-doing.

  Ivy wasn’t sorry she was dead. That was bad, and she reckoned she must be a bad person, but she’d never before felt such fury as when she’d heard about the telephone call to the Arbuthnot’s.

  “I took her in her cocoa and two of her biscuits, at half-past ten. My last job of the day.” And how she dreaded it, too. She and Sylvia might have had a nice relaxing time by the fire with the wireless and their library books or knitting. Then, she’d have to go up to that old dragon, and three chances to one, she’d end up irritated or annoyed because of being held up while Miss Elizabeth kept her, looking for her glasses or bringing water or changing the next day’s clothes laid out for the morning.

  “Who makes the cocoa?”

  “I make it,” Ivy answered. “I make a cup of cocoa each for Miss Elizabeth and Miss Mary and a cup of Horlicks® for Mrs. Turner.”

  “None of the others bother with that sort of thing,” Sylvia added.

  “They probably have a drink or nightcap or whatever, if they fancy it. They don’t bother us with it.”

  Then Greene did a curious thing. “Take me through it, Ivy, if you please. Exactly what you did last night.”

  She shifted, and Brown
saw a shade of red flush her face. It was annoyance or embarrassment. He couldn’t decide which.

  “Well, I get going around ten and begin by putting the milk on to heat…”

  “No, show me. Take me through what you do, just as if it were last night and you were doing it.”

  Ivy looked at each of the three of them, in turn. “I feel a fool,” she said.

  “Nevertheless,” said the inspector.

  She got up and crossed to the cupboard at the side of the sink, just above eye level and took out tins of Horlicks and cocoa and looked angrily at the inspector. “Do you want me to actually make the drinks?”

  “No, just pretend. Show me what you do next.”

  “What a waste of time,” she muttered. Brown was inclined to agree with her. You couldn’t help but notice how jerky her movements were and the sheen of sweat on her top lip. Wouldn’t anyone feel the pressure having to go through a daft charade like this?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “I’ve just had a telephone call from Julia. Hester Turner is coming back again. I can hardly believe this, but someone else has died at Swallow Hall.”

  Hannah paused and looked at her with the teapot still in her hand.

  “Good grief, Edith. What on earth is happening at that place? Who is it? One of the family, do you mean?”

  “Yes, one of the aunts. Elizabeth. The oldest one, I think. You know, the telephone did ring earlier. I was still asleep. Until this minute, I’d forgotten about it. It seemed part of whatever I was dreaming. Archie must have been called out.”

  She hadn’t resolved her quarrel with him. He’d put her in her place about the finances of the practice, and she’d withdrawn, hurt and angry and probably over-reacting. It was because of his talk of Canada; it made the smallest squabble huge. He’d always played his cards close to his chest; especially since the death of his wife. Archie was just being Archie; she was making too much of it. It faded anyway in the light of this news.