Death at Dawn

by Noreen Wainwright

  “My husband is a very difficult man, Miss Horton…more than that, capable of anything. I’m terrified of him, actually. Giles offered me a way out.”

  Edith started. She hadn’t expected this. When exactly had the way out been offered?

  “So, where did you tell your husband you were going yesterday? You stayed away overnight.”

  “John thinks I’m with a school friend, Alice Walsh, a reunion. Alice is a good egg. She knows what John’s like, and she’ll cover up for me. I had to come here. I had to find out exactly what happened.

  Do you know how I found out? My husband read it out to me from the paper. He was watching me like a hawk looking at its prey, all the time, scrutinising my reactions. I thought I was going to be sick, faint. I couldn’t wait for him to leave the room so I could check the paper for myself. But, he sat there and he sat there until I thought I was going to go out of my mind and scream and to hell with the consequences.” As she spoke, one of her hands gripped the arm of the wicker chair.

  “That must have been terrible,” Edith found herself actually meaning it.

  “It was.”

  Tears brimmed in the pale-blue eyes. Edith had noticed the strange colour of the eyes. They made her uncomfortable. They were compelling eyes, but also discomfiting, pale blue, a startling pale blue, like some precious stone the name of which she couldn’t bring to mind.

  But Edith had to feel sorry for her as she described the scene. Anybody would. It had been cruel—that’s if he had known about the affair and it had it been deliberate.

  “That must have been very distressing.” As she spoke the words, Edith warned herself to be careful.

  Maybe Daphne could see the wariness in her face. “I know this is very awkward for you. You’re great friends of Giles’s wife, and it took a lot for me to phone you. But, I thought there was something about you, yesterday, at the house. I could feel something, I don’t know, like you didn’t completely dismiss me. She wasn’t prepared to listen, was she?” Daphne looked at Edith, steadily.

  “You can’t blame Julia for that.”

  As soon as the words were out, Edith felt she shouldn’t have said them; she was being pushed into some sort of position, here. This whole meeting was more than strange and she was feeling uncomfortably hot, too.

  She took her light jacket off quickly before she began worrying about that. Last year’s illness had done odd things to her body. Not only her mind, but her skin, and her temperature regulation system seemed to have altered.

  “No, I know. But, that doesn’t mean she can pretend that I never existed. I understand that she wants me to disappear, or better still never to have known her husband. But I do exist, and I was a big part of Giles’s life. I can’t rest without knowing what happened to him. It’s a lot to ask, but I thought you might help me. Maybe you would, I thought, out of the goodness of your heart.”

  Edith stirred her coffee, even though she hadn’t taken sugar in her coffee since the war years, when giving it up seemed the least she could do.

  What on earth was it with this woman? She has me almost feeling sorry for her. That was mad, really mad. This woman was completely selfish and had caused Julia untold pain. Not to mention her own husband…though if she really was frightened of him, maybe that was why she looked elsewhere, looking for a way out, maybe. That’s if she was actually frightened of him and not spinning a tale to win Edith’s sympathy.

  She was desperate for a few minutes thinking time.

  “If you’ll excuse me, Daphne, I need to go to the ladies.

  The few moments away from the woman had her seeing sense again. Edith had come across people like this before; people who when you were with them had you believing in them, and as soon as you were out of their sights, that sympathy, affinity, whatever sort of fellow-feeling it was, faded. Daphne was probably far more calculating than she appeared. She was playing a game–wasn’t she?

  “I’m still not sure what you want me to tell you, exactly.” Edith drew her jacket around her shoulders again and picked up her gloves. “Maybe you’d be better going back home, Daphne. I honestly do understand the impulse to know more…”

  She hovered for a couple of seconds on the brink of telling the other woman something about Alistair, about the restless compulsion to find out more and more. She remembered also wanting to know every single detail of Alistair’s death and of his last days.

  It was futile, it solved nothing, and it brought no peace. Other things and other people could help, in time, and time itself could help, but not information, not beyond a certain level. Beyond that and you were just trying to fill a bottomless hole.

  Don’t be ridiculous. Why would you confide in this woman?

  “I only want to know why the police are asking questions.”

  She hesitated and bowed her head. The sight of the top of her head, of the fair hair made Edith’s stomach flip over. She looked so vulnerable.

  Then Daphne looked up again. “I want to know all this, but the thing is I need to know too. I need to know whether the police are likely to come to my door. I must be prepared, as best I can.”

  Edith’s mouth was dry. Her stomach lurched again. What was the woman saying? Was she in danger? Was that it? Was she terrified of the police coming and her husband finding out about the affair?

  Edith decided she couldn’t go, yet. She couldn’t just leave it at this. Suppose something did happen to Daphne when she went back to London?

  “I don’t know exactly where the police are in their enquiries,” she said. “Of course, Giles’ death was suspicious, more than that, it wasn’t an accident. The gun used to kill him was a service revolver, not the shotgun he had with him to shoot grouse.

  “The police have spent time at Julia’s and they have asked questions of anybody in the village with any connection with the house or the family.”

  There, that wasn’t wrong, surely. It might not help much, but she’d only told Daphne what was common knowledge anyway.

  “Did your husband know about your relationship with Giles?”

  “No,” the answer was instant and Edith didn’t quite believe it. It didn’t tie in with what she’d said about the way her husband had read out about Giles’s death, for a start.

  “I think he has his suspicions, but he mustn’t find out anything else. I really must stop him finding out anything definite. It’s more than my life is worth for him to know the truth.”

  The words were spoken in that matter-of-fact tone Edith had noticed her using before. Grave but also matter of fact, laden but also curiously emotionless. The tone and the words spoken didn’t match.

  “I have to tell Julia that I met you here today, Daphne. She’s been my friend, my closest friend for a very long time. Do you understand that?”

  Daphne nodded. “I was pretty sure you’d tell his wife that we’d spoken, yes. That’s fair enough. She couldn’t see past her jealousy and anger to give me the time of day. I suppose I can’t blame her, but whether she likes it or not, I was a part of Giles’s life and… well, I’ve said it before, I couldn’t leave this place without knowing at least something of what happened to him. Whether it was an accident, or…suicide. So I’ll go home now and wait for the doorbell to ring.” She looked again at Edith, with those pale, unusual eyes.

  Fear gripped Edith. It passed but in those few seconds, Edith felt that she needed to do something, to help this woman who had wreaked havoc.

  What could she do?

  She wasn’t in a position to advise Daphne and she didn’t trust her anyway. If she wasn’t careful, she’d be offering her opinion and advice about what Daphne should do next and that would be plain mad.

  All she could do was to listen, and she did so for another half-hour while Daphne spoke, veering between how devastated she was and how much she loved Giles. When Edith began gathering her bag and gloves, Daphne put a hand, a thin, white hand, on her arm.

  “Thank you so much, Miss Horton for letting me talk, giving me this
chance…to….” She took a lace handkerchief from her bag and pressed it to her face.

  Edith glanced back and raised her hand in a tentative gesture as she left the room. Daphne sat, rigid and looked lonely as she raised her hand in farewell.

  It was only in the car on her short journey back home that Edith began to seriously think about how this was going to sound to Julia. She tried to put herself in her friend’s shoes. Julia wasn’t going to have one ounce of understanding of why Edith had gone to meet Daphne. She’d have even less of an understanding that Edith felt a moment’s concern for the woman.

  Edith didn’t even understand that concern herself. Well, that one was easily resolved. She wouldn’t mention it. A strictly factual account; Daphne had stayed overnight to speak to someone, to ask about the police investigation into Giles’s death. That was the bare truth.

  She would go straight to see Julia now. It couldn’t be allowed to happen that someone might mention anything to her about the women meeting. It might be farfetched, but Edith had lived long enough in the Dales to know that it could easily happen.

  But Giles’s sisters and their husbands were coming round this morning to “discuss things.” Presumably that meant funeral arrangements and…Edith’s mind started jumping ahead. What would Julia do? Manage the estate? The boys were too young. Would she even want to do that?

  She would be capable, no question of that. But, Edith’s own restlessness had been mirrored in her friend; last year, that time when it was so bad for both of them as things had turned out. Julia had stayed, fought, to save her marriage. But, now? Everything was turned on its head.

  Stop thinking. Too much thinking and trying to pre-empt things had caused her problems before.

  Edith parked right by St Ethelbert’s church, got out and stood looking at it. She sometimes tried to do this as though through the eyes of a stranger. She was no architectural expert, but knew that the church was sixteenth century, small and virtually untouched by Victorian embellishment. It was as solid and real as the surrounding dales.

  The wooden gate stuck as it always did. She pushed the heavy oak door after turning the black-painted iron handle. For a few seconds she stood, letting her eyes get used to the semi-darkness. The coolness in the air and the smell of the church settled into her senses. A noise made her freeze. Then, she saw that it was Henry. She was relieved and then annoyed with herself. Her nerves were far too near the surface again.

  He saw her and hesitated, clearly only seeing an outlined figure and began walking to her.

  Edith had the strangest sensation just for a few seconds. It was a sense of familiarity. Of course, Henry was familiar to her. But this was different, just a glimpse of another existence as though he was familiar to her in some other sense. It was a frozen moment, a still life, then it was gone and she dismissed it, as their everyday talk replaced ghostly nebulous feelings.

  “I’m glad to see you, I could do with sharing what I did in the last hour or so, and I have a feeling Archie would just tell me how foolish I’ve been.”

  “Come back to the vicarage for a cup of tea. Apart from a school visit at two o’ clock, I’m free for most of today. Paperwork, of course, but you know something, it can wait.”

  Edith laughed. “Are you rebelling, Henry?”

  “Well, maybe I wouldn’t go quite that far, but even I can have the impulse to kick over the traces every now and then. He smiled at her and she felt the familiarity thing again, just for a second. What was happening here?

  She’d been at the vicarage before, many times and thought now of the evening she had stayed over for supper and poor Marjorie Sowerby had come knocking on the door in such distress. She followed Henry into the kitchen and sat by the table while he filled the kettle at the Belfast sink. The kitchen was big, a great barn of a place. It was clean and functional and there was something about it that made Edith feel bleak, which she knew was a pretty stupid reaction to a room.

  “I can understand why you went to meet her but you must tell Julia straightaway, otherwise it can change from something helpful you did, to something inexplicable,”

  “Yes, I know exactly what you mean, and I will.”

  “So, she rang you out of the blue and wanted to see you. It’s odd, I think. The woman doesn’t know you from Adam, so why should she think you’d want to talk to her or see her?”

  Edith sipped the tea…way too hot. “I’m torn between thinking she’s a manipulative and dangerous woman with her own devious reasons to actually feeling sorry for her. She gave me the impression she was frightened of her husband.”

  “Manipulative and dangerous…that’s a powerful impression, Edith.”

  She moved restlessly in her chair. “It was only a feeling. To be honest, I wasn’t going to be predisposed to like her, was I? Anyway, I don’t think she’s achieved much by her talk with me. Apart from the bare facts of the shooting there was nothing else I could tell her. She told me nothing–apart from saying she was frightened of her husband. She didn’t say anything about the affair, relationship, whatever it was between her and Giles. And she didn’t tell me when she last saw him.”

  “I’ll go to see Julia this evening when the relatives have gone home and hope she won’t be too angry with me.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  Edith looked at him in surprise. “No, I’m sure it will be all right. I’m sure she’ll understand.” Actually, she wasn’t at all sure. “But, thanks for offering,” she added.

  Chapter 13

  “Bloody pillar to post. What do they take us for? A couple of messenger boys?”

  Brown didn’t bother answering; an answer wasn’t called for. He just relished the chance to take the weight off in the café opposite the King’s Arms in Broadway market, Hackney, East London. A sit-down in the pub itself would have been better still, but you couldn’t have everything.

  He’d never seen Inspector Greene drink on duty, and maybe they were better off with tea, anyway. He was almost getting used to coming to London now. It was his fourth time, but it would be foolish not to remember that you had to keep your wits about you down here.

  They were like a different species, not so much the toffs who were the same the world over probably, but the Cockneys. “Wot’s this lot abaht then?” the landlord of the first pub they’d visited had asked. The Coach and Horses, the place had been called.

  “I can’t say, sir,” Inspector Greene said, deadpan. “I just need to ask about these political meetings. What is it, black shirts or brown shirts? I just want to know what pub, if it isn’t this one, they’ve been meeting in?”

  “Got your information wrong, squire. I don’t ‘old wiv them lot, Jew-baiting, commie-bashing. I told Sid, you wants to look out, Sid, I said. “There’s some gangsters as you can put up wiv, and there’s some as you wants to give a wide berth.”

  He looked uneasy, suddenly taking in the uniforms. “Anyway, it’s up to him in the long run, ain’t it, guv. There’s trouble and enough around these parts besides looking for more. That’s my philosophy.”

  Bill Brown realised how hard he’d been straining his ears to make out what the Londoner was saying. He’d noticed this before in his trips to the big smoke. Londoners talked fast and then there was that rhyming slang they used that seemed designed to confuse the outsider. They made him feel slow-witted and like a big, blundering bear. It made no sense. He knew, despite the impression his boss sometimes gave, that he wasn’t stupid. Just in comparison to these boys, his mind took its time was all.

  Greene was looking at him, and he paused, an iced bun almost in his mouth.

  “Hurry up, lad. Forget your stomach for once. Our man is back and if I’m not wrong, the drayman too. So, look sharp as they say down here. I don’t want to have to hang around for another half-hour while he’s down the flaming cellar.”

  Brown had noticed this before, too. There was a change in his boss while they were in London. It was as if he became more hurried and even used d
ifferent words sometimes and expressions. How could that be? Surely, he must be imagining it?

  “I lets out the upstairs room, what of it?”

  The man had an unsavoury look, though, as it often was, hard to put your finger on what it was, exactly. A combination of flabby and weasely. Sid Potts’s braces strained over a greying-white, open-necked shirt. His black hair was slicked back with Brilliantine.

  “So, this brown shirt group, or whatever they call themselves, meet here on the first Thursday of every month, is that right?”

  “For now,” the landlord said. He had picked up a wine glass and was holding it up to the light for inspection. Brown thought it was a typical distraction tactic.

  “For now?” The boss’s tone was sour and Brown knew he was not happy at being kept standing in the saloon bar like a commercial rep.

  Sure enough.

  “And is there anywhere a bit more private we can talk?” Greene asked.

  The landlord shook his head in an aggravated way and put the glass back.

  “Come out back, then,” he said. He led them into a grubby, greasy kitchen and Brown wondered whether he served food to his customers. The lino on the floor was tacky under their feet and a sour smell emanated from a dried, scrunched up dishcloth someone had chucked on the draining board.

  “Sit down.” He pulled out two wooden kitchen chairs.

  Brown eased his away from Greene’s. There was close and there was uncomfortably close.

  “What can I get you?” The words sounded as though he might be unbending a fraction but Sid Potts still looked miserable.

  “I’ll have a half of mild and…”

  He looked at Brown and for a panicked second, Brown had a flashback to being taken to the pub with his father and uncle and sitting in the back room with a lemonade and a bag of crisps.