Death at Dawn

by Noreen Wainwright

  “You all right, Bill?” His mother frowned as he came into the kitchen. His feet were dragging and to smile at her cost him an effort.

  ”Just tired, mam. I think I’ll listen to a concert on the wireless and go to bed early. I’m going down to London in the morning. With the inspector. It’ll be a long day or two days, even.”

  “Well, sit down with you now, and get this dinner inside you. I know you’re not allowed to talk like, but I suppose it is all about poor Mr. Etherington?”

  He sat down and the smell of his dinner in the oven, rich and savoury, comforted him. “Yes, I feel sorry for his poor wife, but you’re right. I can’t talk about it.”

  He enjoyed his meat and potato pie even more than he expected to. Just before he fell asleep, the Dashiell Hammett book put down and his clothes for tomorrow laid out on the chair by the window, he thought about Julia Etheringon’s face. She was like a beautiful picture he’d seen, who was the artist?

  Rubens? No, they were bonny women, big women really, all pink and curvy. He couldn’t remember. Botticelli, that was it. She had that colouring, those delicate features, like a painting.

  He’d heard in the pub that she’d been seen with a man. But Ellbeck and the dales were small and full of gossip, and when things were quiet, people’s minds and tongues often ran away with them. It was rumour, that was all, and until he knew more, he would say nowt. He turned over. He was glad he’d kept the pub talk to himself. Greene often didn’t thank him for his opinion.

  The club was in St James’ Street and was everything Greene had described and more. The butler, doorman or whatever he was called had that way of being really polite and insulting at the same time that Brown had seen before in people like him.

  Grander than those they served with very clear ideas of who stood where in the class system. He and Greene, but particularly he, Brown, stood two or three rungs from the bottom; somewhere he often thought that was the most despised place of the lot to be.

  “It’s unusual, inspector, but I suppose, if Mr. Lane agrees, there’s a quiet drawing room you can use. You won’t be disturbed. I’ll tell Mr. Lane that you wish to speak to him. If you would just wait here.” He indicated two maroon overstuffed armchairs in a small anteroom off the main foyer.

  Brown looked around him. You couldn’t help being impressed. There was the smell of wealth–of leather and polish and cigars and everywhere was muted and restful. He thought of what the boss had said about the farm labourers and the miners. Most probably, this place would give them the heebie-jeebies. They would feel big and clumsy and noisy–a bit like he was feeling, himself.

  I like him, Browne decided five minutes into the conversation with the unassuming man who sat before them. Coffee had been ordered and whether the atmosphere of the place had put the brakes on Greene, even he seemed different.

  “So you would consider yourself a good friend of Giles Etherington.”

  There was an almost imperceptible pause, just two beats really. Brown found his breath caught in his throat.

  There was something here and he felt for almost the first time ever, within himself, the stirring of a nameless emotion. He couldn’t put his finger on it and he would be laughed at if he ever even attempted to describe it, particularly to Inspector Greene.

  “I loved him like a brother, but he had his faults.”

  Brown just stopped himself from gaping at the man sitting opposite. He looked at his ease, legs stretched, a glimpse of Argyle socks and polished brogues. Men didn’t talk like that, using words like love.

  “He saved my life. Pure and simple as that. He came back for me and if he hadn’t, I would have bled to death as so many did on the battlefield. There’s no way anything could ever repay that, but I suppose finding out who did this to him might appease the gods a bit. Do you think?”

  He looked first at Greene and then at him. He addressed his remarks to both of them.

  In their line of work, you became almost used to the arrogance of people of Peter Lane’s class. It made you prejudiced in a way and defensive, cagey like. It took a while to adjust your mind.

  His mother always said that there were good and bad in all races and classes and she was right. That meant there were good Germans too, of course. Sometimes, you had to keep thoughts like that to yourself.

  Inspector Greene cleared his throat. “Well, Mr. Lane. I suppose I will say what you would expect me to say. Whoever shot Giles Etherington needs to be found. Call it justice or call it protecting the lic, or both, I suppose. You seem to have spent a fair bit of time with the man, so you will know if anything were wrong. Anything worrying him, any hint that he was threatened in any way?”

  Peter Lane gave a laugh. “Sorry, it’s not a laughing matter and I’m not really laughing. But what you have just asked me is far from straightforward.”

  He paused and Brown looked at him. You could almost see the words trying to form themselves in the man’s mind.

  Lane took a drink of coffee and passed the back of his hand lightly over his mouth. It was a curious, out of place gesture. To Brown it gave a glimpse of another man who had had another life, far away from their over-civilised.

  “The thing is, there was another side to Giles’s personality. He couldn’t stand to be bored, you see. He could face anything, any danger. Maybe the truth is that he thrived on it.”

  “Can you be more specific, sir?” Inspector Greene paused, then added, “I have heard of this phenomenon before, Mr. Lane, the hero in war-time who is a disaster in peacetime.”

  Brown felt a flash of respect for the old boy. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen this. He played the plain man who had no time for fancy psychology and theories, but it was a bit of a cover. He obviously thought a bit more deeply than he let on.

  “Be more specific…difficult, Inspector. Giles is dead so I suppose being loyal doesn’t really apply any more. But, it’s not that simple.” He stood up suddenly, walked across to the door and back again.

  “Look, I’m going to have something a bit stronger, go to the bar myself for it, have a minute, d’you understand? Can I get either of you anything?”

  “No, we’d better stick with the coffee,” Greene said.

  “Rum business,” Greene looked across at Browne and that was all he said until Peter Lane came back into the room, his balloon glass of brandy in his hand, no club servant and no silver tray.

  As he sat down, Brown noticed an awkwardness in the way he held himself. A lack of fluidity in his movement and there was something in his face. Brown wondered if the man was in chronic pain and what that must be like day in and day out. But, he’d only had a glimpse and couldn’t be sure he’d seen anything.

  Peter Lane held the glass and tilted it away from him. The sun caught the amber and Bill Brown could almost taste the brandy. He wasn’t really a spirits man, but it was as though he could feel the warmth of it slip down his own throat and steady his own nerves. He had heard they gave rum rations to the men before sending them over the top. God. The thought of that really made you go cold.

  The man in front of them was speaking.

  “He had an affair last year. His wife found out. It was nearly the end of them. Julia is a great girl–waited for him, all that–deserved better, and I told him so. I met the woman once…Daphne, awful creature, and there was something more than strange in the set-up between her and her husband. She turned up here, one day.”

  He gave a glance towards the door. “You can imagine…pretty awful.”

  “By all accounts the relationship was over,” Greene said, at the same time, shooting a warning glance at Brown. Actually, he hadn’t been going to say anything. He must have looked like he was going to interject.

  “By all accounts, it was. I think Giles realised not only what he stood to lose but also what he had got tangled up in. But, there’s more than that.”

  Greene and Brown paused while the man sipped from the glass and removed a cigarette case from his inside pocket.


  Both shook their heads when he proffered it.

  “Giles had become interested in politics,” Lane said eventually. “That’s if you could call it politics. It was more a fad, I think, and given enough time…” He paused and swallowed hard. “Given enough time, I think he would have tired of it.”

  The words…like he tired of everything else…were not spoken, but they hovered in the air.

  “What sort of politics. I take it you don’t mean boring old Tory, Liberal, Labour parties.”

  Again, something in the way the old man was talking caused Brown’s views to shift slightly. It was as if he was sharper.

  “You’re right, Inspector. Nothing so mundane. He wanted something altogether different. I warned him of simple thinking and simple solutions, nothing more dangerous in my view.

  “He didn’t listen. He didn’t want to see complexity. The world in the army is pretty black and white, that’s why it suited Giles. Maybe suited him too well at times and maybe brought out a side of him that wasn’t…wasn’t. I’m not sure how to put it…maybe if I say a bit extreme.”

  “This party or group or whatever they were. Do you know where they meet?”

  “They meet in a pub in the East End, if you can believe it. I’m sure that’s only one of their meeting places. I’m certain there are others and according to Giles, they’ll need the city hall soon, they’ll be that popular.

  “He tried to talk me into going with him, one night. I gave him short shrift. It worried me, to tell you the truth. I think it should probably worry all of us and not only in this country. The world hasn’t settled at all, you see.” He shook his head.

  “All that singing and dancing on Armistice Day…” Again, he shook his head.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, as if coming back from where he had gone for a moment. He gave them an address that Brown wrote down, but only a tiny proportion of his mind was on it.

  He’d read the newspapers. Some of the political stuff going on made you uneasy. Nothing had been the same since the war, well, since before the war, as Peter Lane said. That was what his mother said too, and she said it so often he hardly heard it anymore but maybe she was right.

  “Right, lad. We find this place. Unlikely there’ll be any of this mob around in the middle of the day. But, we’ll talk to the landlord and get some names. Seems Etherington had a lot more going on than running the country estate.

  “Can’t settle, can they, some of these fellows?”

  Browne shook his head. It was fascinating, delving, uncovering, finding out and making connections. He hadn’t felt quite like this before, not before today. It was a warm feeling in the chest and a rush in the blood–the feeling of being in the right place and doing the right job.

  Chapter 12

  Edith lay and stared at the ceiling. She’d slept well. Julia had insisted she was all right to be left last night, saying she wasn’t exactly alone in the house, was she?

  “I have to get used to it.” Her voice was flat–saying the right words but as though she wasn’t believing them.

  The whole scene with Daphne had been such a sorry episode. Julia seemed embarrassed, not openly angry but only just holding it back.

  “Bloody woman. What the hell was Giles thinking of, Edith? I always thought he despised the brittle neurotic type like that–the spoilt type. I know. I know it’s immaterial. But, if she’d been some spirited, different type of woman, maybe…I don’t know–perhaps that would have made it worse,”

  “What did she want from you, Julia?”

  “I really have no idea, you know. She felt compelled to come to see where Giles lived, that sort of nonsense. No self-discipline, no morals clearly, absolutely self-absorbed. Giles, oh Giles, whatever were you thinking?”

  He wasn’t, Edith thought but didn’t say anything. Giles’ death was bad enough. This woman turning up here in the midst of it, bringing memories of a really painful episode with her, was almost too much.

  Julia looked defeated; like Edith had never seen her before. Maybe she had though, just once, in the VAD days, in that dreadful time in the hospital when three young lads had died in quick succession and Julia had come to Edith’s room in the middle of the night and said in a tight, angry whisper, “I’m going home. I can’t do this any longer. No-one should have to do this. If we all went home and the men all went home, it would have to stop. We are all part of this obscenity, this…this horror.”

  Edith had talked and talked with her through that night. It had been hard, as in her heart Edith believed her friend was possibly right in everything she said. But, they were caught up in it. They couldn’t go home. They had to see it through. Now she worried about her friend again, about having had enough–and there was no going home this time, either.

  “She’ll go away, you know, Julia. She’s had her moment–her melodrama. I don’t think she has anything to gain by staying around here. I don’t think she’s stupid…a lot of things, but not stupid. She will realise that it’s pointless and go home to her husband.”

  “I hope you’re right, Edith, though I wish I had your certainty. There’s the funeral, remember. I can’t see her missing that, can you?”

  All the way home, Edith prayed that her intuition was right–that Daphne had had her big confrontation, that at heart she was canny enough to avoid any real trouble. God only knew what the state of her marriage was, but surely, anything else she did to draw attention to her affair with Giles would make things worse for her.

  Now, there was a tap on her door. Archie’s voice sounded as though he’d already put in a morning’s work. Edith glanced at her watch. Eight thirty, not really late but she was usually up earlier than this. Lying in bed had become impossible since her illness; to be up and busy was the antidote to dark thoughts.

  “Edith, there’s someone on the telephone for you.”

  “Who is it?” and “I’m coming,” she said, before he could answer.

  He was halfway down the stairs by the time she’d gone through the door.

  “No idea, some woman,” he said.

  It just couldn’t be, don’t be stupid.

  But it was.

  “Miss Horton, it’s Daphne Sheridan.”

  Edith’s mind jolted ahead of her, and she gripped the receiver tightly.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Keep your actions and your voice steady when your anxiety takes hold, Dr. Uxbridge had told her. Concentrate on the physical, on things around you. She would work out why a simple phone call could have such an extreme effect on her a bit later. First, deal with this woman.

  “It’s a bit of a cheek, but could you meet me?”

  “No,” Edith’s reaction was instant. Her calming-down mechanism had switched off. She took a deep breath.

  “Please, I won’t take up a lot of your time, I promise. I stayed the night in the Unicorn hotel in Ripon. It’s only a few miles away from Ellbeck, isn’t it? I will go then, I promise, back to London. Otherwise, I came here for nothing…”

  Then, out of nowhere, the woman was crying, really crying. Oh Lord, what should I do? The easiest thing was to just go and meet her. She would talk to Julia about it as soon as she got back.

  Something calmer had taken hold in her mind, and Edith found herself taking control of the conversation. “I will come and have a coffee with you at 10 o’clock.”

  She decided to say nothing to anyone until she had had the meeting with the woman. Archie was in surgery and Hannah wasn’t in at all today.

  As she sat with her toast and marmalade, Edith thought about her reaction to the phone call. Why had her body veered out of her control? Stop it; the important thing is that you pulled it back. You told Daphne when you’d see her. Though what it was going to achieve was a mystery. It was natural that she’d be prejudiced against the woman on her friend’s behalf, but beyond that, she was suspicious. Daphne Sheridan had found out her telephone number and had obviously chosen her as an easy target…though for what purpose?

&nbs
p; The lounge at the front of The Unicorn looked like a throwback to the Victorian age. From the wooden fireplace to the antimacassars, from the shining brass companion set to the white-apron clad waitress with the iron-rigid permanent wave, the place fitted the somnolent prosperity of the small market town. The Unicorn had a special license to open at seven a.m. on market day, so that tweedy farmers could prepare for the market and the wheeling and dealing with a glass of whiskey and a fried breakfast.

  Daphne Sheridan looked out of place. Her candyfloss hair was freshly washed and tendrils caught the sunlight like slivers of gold.

  She was dressed in a jersey-soft blue frock that made her seem virginal and girlish. Edith couldn’t make her age out, late thirties, perhaps.

  Daphne Sheridan ordered coffee, and Edith suggested a table by the bay window. It might be useful to have the distraction of the market square outside.

  They said nothing until the waitress came with the tall silver coffee pot and a tray of china.

  “I’m not sure what the point of this meeting is, Mrs. Sheridan?” In a split second Edith knew exactly what the other woman was going to say.

  “Daphne, please, call me Daphne.”

  Edith clenched her teeth and resolved to call the woman nothing at all if that was humanly possible.

  “I wanted to talk about Giles and find out exactly what happened. I couldn’t believe it. I can’t believe it. He was the most alive person I ever met–he made me feel alive, too. He can’t be dead.”

  She had a strange way of speaking. Edith couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Her intonation was dramatic, but it was more than that. It was that each word was invested with a gravity, and you couldn’t imagine her having a conversation about something every-day like the scarcity of good fruit, or the price of stockings. Edith almost smiled.

  She wanted to ask Daphne when she’d last seen Giles, but she couldn’t. She had to take Julia’s word that it was over. Julia was clinging on to the belief the affair had been finished last year. It was hugely important to her friend to hold on to that. It would make everything a hundred times worse if this woman proved anything different. She couldn’t even bring herself to ask her.