Chapter 21
Edith had completely forgotten that young Cathy Braithwaite was coming for tea until Hannah mentioned it. Between trying to decide how to behave around Archie and worrying about Julia, her mind was distracted.
“It’s very good of you to have Cathy call, Edith, I was delighted when she said she was calling on you.”
Edith thought she covered up her forgetfulness pretty well. “I’m looking forward to seeing her. Thank God, she’s made such a recovery.”
“Thanks to Doctor Archie and yourself, Miss Horton… I mean Edith.”
Edith didn’t answer, her mind going back to the sight in the cottage kitchen, the feeling when she’d thought the girl had died.
Hannah was speaking again, more hesitantly. “Yes, I suppose she’s made a good recovery and we have every reason to feel grateful. But it’s changed her. Or, I would imagine it’s that that’s done it. She’s not very happy, I think, unsettled like. Anyway, I’ve set a tray out.”
Hannah left soon afterwards and Edith looked out the kitchen window at her departing figure in the sensible, green summer coat. There was new life about her now, though; the downtrodden look had gradually left her. She’d even had a permanent wave put in her hair.
Edith smiled. The departure of Josh Braithwaite had been maybe the only positive thing that had come out of the terrible happenings when Mrs. Butler had died.
Cathy had the bloom of youth and the exuberance, but every so often her eyes looked troubled and there was a downward turn of her mouth. This girl was miles away from Edith in age, class and life experience, but there was some affinity between them.
They sat with their tea in awkward silence. Edith searched in her mind for an opening comment. She’d once been good at talking to people for goodness sake. She took a plunge. “What would you really like to do, Cathy, for a job, if there were no obstacles?”
Cathy’s glance slipped to the side. Now, faced with a direct question she wasn’t confident about talking, it seemed. “I don’t know, Miss…Miss Horton.”
“Well, there must be something? Something you’d like to do, feel that you might be good at?” Edith’s own confidence slipped again. What did she really know about talking to young people and someone of Cathy’s age didn’t necessarily know what they were good at, anyway. She hadn’t.
Uncannily, Cathy next comment reflected her own thoughts at that moment. “What was it like in the war, Miss Horton. You were a nurse, weren’t you? That must have been exciting, like?”
Edith smiled, substituting that for the sigh she felt like giving. Honesty, well partial honesty was what was called for here. She passed the plate of lemon biscuits in Cathy’s direction and saw the girl’s smile of recognition at her mother’s baking.
“I don’t think exciting does the experience justice, you know, Cathy. We certainly thought it would be, though. I went with Mrs. Etherington.
Cathy nodded, her eyes wide at the mention of the woman, who must be one of the main topics of conversation in Ellbeck at the moment.
“Well, to be precise, she went first. I had a bit more persuading to do with my father. We weren’t proper nurses, for one thing. She hesitated, wondering how much interest this could be to a young girl, almost a generation on, but the dark eyes were fixed on hers so she continued.
“There was even some resentment from the properly trained nurses, and I can understand that. While they were fighting for recognition as a profession, a lot of upper class women and girls swanned in and tried to take over, calling themselves sister…a romanticised view of soothing grateful soldiers, mopping their brows, reading letters from their sweethearts.”
She stopped, not wanting to go into too much gory detail yet wanting to be honest. “They got a rude awakening, as Julia and I did. We started out in a rest station in France and later worked in a London military hospital. I think we managed to convince them at interview that we hadn’t such a rosy view as some. The fact that my father was a doctor stood me in good stead. Julia…now, Julia was a born nurse and had done all the courses she could enrol in. Red Cross and so on. In fact, maybe she should have done the proper nurse training.” But, she petered out. Life had taken a different path for Julia.
A thought struck her, an obvious thought, really. “Cathy, you’re not thinking of going in for nursing, are you?”
The look of distaste on the girl’s face was answer enough.” “Oh, I couldn’t Miss Horton, not for all the tea in China.” She blushed with the sudden spread of a colour wash. “I’m sorry, but I honestly don’t think I could, even though they were so good to me, the nurses at Harrogate hospital, when that woman…” She dropped her head. She hadn’t mentally recovered from the attack, not at all.
“But…”
The words came in a rush then. “I think I would like to teach. I’m good with children. Miss Buckley said so when I was at school, but…my father. Not that he tried to stop me, but he thought it were a daft idea and, well, it put me off, I suppose.”
Edith felt a surge of pleasure, excitement even.
“I suppose it’s too late, now though?”
Edith smiled at the idea that it could be too late to do anything at Cathy’s age.
“Of course it isn’t. Tell you what, Cathy. I’ll have a word with Dr. Horton. He knows Miss Buckley at the school very well through various committees.”
The girl smiled, her face transformed from troubled to carefree in a second.
Edith wondered briefly how easy it would be to broach this or any subject for that matter with things as they were between her and Archie. Yes, well…they couldn’t continue skirting around each other forever. Normal life would have to resume sometime.
She brought her attention back to Cathy who was still lit up, a new world opening up to her. “I used to think that what I wanted to do was move away from Yorkshire, Miss Horton, you know, go somewhere bigger with more life about it,”
Edith smiled. She knew all too well what the girl meant. Then she listened more closely.
“Elsie, my friend…she used to talk a lot about London and now she’s gone and got a job, there,”
Edith had a moment’s wonder at the thought of setting off for London, full of excitement, nervousness. The girl was unlikely to experience anything remotely resembling what had happened her and Julia–Thank God, but it was a vicarious thrill, just for a fleeting moment to imagine the newness of it.
“But, I don’t think I want to leave the countryside, not really. Maybe for a while. I’d miss the space, you know, and the green. I think of traffic and smoke and crowds and crowds of people and it makes me feel a bit terrified, to be honest.”
She seemed to have remarkable self-knowledge for her age.
“But, Elsie. She were always a bit of a restless one, Miss Horton. Then she met this lady in Harrogate, through her cousin who worked in a hotel. A rich woman of course, living in London, Chiswick, I think. And this Mrs. Sheridan wanted someone quickly because something had happened to her last lady’s maid. She got ill, I think.”
Edith’s hearing faded. She could no longer make out Cathy’s words. A feeling was thrumming in her throat and her mouth went really dry. Very slowly, she reached down for her cup and sipped the tea, which tasted good and brought her back to the room.
Cathy didn’t seem to have noticed anything.
“A Mrs. Sheridan?” Edith cleared her throat. Her heart was still racing though her thoughts had slowed. There would be time to think about this later; properly think about it. There must be some connection; for now, she needed to make sure of her facts.
“Yes, definitely–glamorous according to Elsie. Mind you, she’s always been impressed by anything different from Yorkshire, has Else.”
Get on with it, thought Edith but she watched her reactions. She couldn’t betray anything. Actually, she didn’t even know what it was that she must hide at the moment, just that there was a strange connection between Ellbeck and Giles Etherington’s, whatever she actually was—fo
rmer girlfriend…”
Cathy was chatting, happily now, full of her tale of the friend who was living this adventurous life. “Husband’s a barrister, no children, which Elsie was pleased about as she’d enough of that at home, with nieces and nephews and that. Anyway, she got talking to one of the chambermaids in the Royal and guess what, this Betty was Elsie’s cousin, so Elsie got the chance, first hand, like, no need to be writing off or applying through agencies or any of that.”
She paused and gave Edith a concerned look. “Are you all right, Miss Horton?”
Edith nodded. “Yes, I’m fine, Cathy. I just remembered something I should have done. Head like a sieve, these days. So, Elsie started with this Mrs. Sheridan, then? When was that?”
Edith thought how very odd she must be sounding, showing such an interest in a girl she didn’t know, but Cathy showed no signs of thinking anything amiss.
Chapter 22
Brown didn’t like Inspector Greene’s mood this morning. Something was up with him, ever since their return from London yesterday. Brown thought it had even started with the comments on the train about what he’d overheard in the pub and kept to himself. Surely that couldn’t still be bothering the boss, now?”
“Back to Etheringtons’ house, this morning. I can’t abide being made a monkey of lad. The grieving widow, ‘appen has a few questions to answer, don’t you think?”
Greene had very black and white views. This was all the more so, when it came to women. This was never openly expressed, but Brown knew him well enough now, to have seen signs of it many times. Seemed to like women to be whiter than white, did the inspector. Mrs. Etherington had apparently fallen several levels in the eyes of the inspector.
She looked like she knew what was coming. The housekeeper, Mrs. Sugden, her lips tightening and her tone cool, led them into one of the sitting rooms. They’d been to this house three times now and Brown still wasn’t sure of the layout. It was lovely though.
He’d stored up details to tell his mother; the huge vases almost glass buckets which held so many summer flowers, they drew the eye straightaway. The coolness and pale gold and yellow and blues and the sheen on the furniture. Here and there were what looked like old portraits of the Etherington family. They looked for the most part handsome and remote from this place and this house and with what was going on in it, today.
Julia Etherington looked resigned, but she smiled at him gently and his heart filled with what felt like love and tears. He dreaded what the Inspector was going to say to her. He wasted no time.
“Rumour has it, Mrs. Etherington, that you had or were having a relationship with Dr. Horton, at or around the time of your husband’s death.”
She shook her head and Brown saw a flash of anger cross her face. “No, no, inspector.”
Greene raised the bushy caterpillar eyebrows.
“No, so that’s all it was then, a rumour. In that case, I’m very sorry…teach me to listen to rumours,” he said.
There was a silence and Brown had to stiffen the muscles in his thighs and shoulders to stop himself from squirming.
The colour had left her face. Her voice was controlled, but she didn’t seem in control. “I did have a brief relationship with Archie Horton at the end of last year, It was well over by the time of Giles’ death.”
Brown felt an ache in his neck that was threatening to turn into the mother and father of all headaches. He dropped his shoulders and wished Green would just get on with it. This was like watching his mother’s cat, Mitzi, torment some creature or other she’d caught.
“So, not rumour then.” Inspector Greene’s voice was all grim satisfaction and Brown, at that moment, loathed him.
Julia shrugged her shoulders. She opened her mouth to speak and instead, she swallowed hard making the white throat move convulsively.
Bill Brown willed her to say something; she was making things look so bad for herself and Horton too; but Brown wasn’t too bothered about him.
She cleared her throat. “I should have said, I know that now. I should have known that in a place like this, anything wasn’t going to remain a secret.”
“So, what did stop you from telling us, Mrs. Etheridge.?”
Brown thought that his boss’s tone had softened.
“It seems stupid now…I thought maybe that admitting it was, I don’t know, Inspector, making it real, giving it more significance. She held her hand up as if warding something off. “It happened; it was a mistake, me trying to get my own back, maybe, or believe it or not, seeking out a bit of consolation.”
She gave a deep, shuddering sigh, as though this conversation was actually bringing her some relief.
Greene nodded, but Brown couldn’t make out whether in satisfaction at her admission of the affair or in some sort of sympathy at what she’d said.
He got up and Brown followed suit.
“I hardly need to tell you, Mrs. Etherington that it is the height of foolishness to keep something like this from us. It puts a different complexion on everything and may mean that we’ve wasted a lot of time and energy going down blind alleys.”
Julia Etherington got to her feet too; the whole of her body, her stance, a protest. “What do you mean, Inspector? It’s like you’re implying that Archie Horton or I had something to do with Giles’s death. You can’t think that, you just can’t!” Her voice had risen, almost a note of hysteria in it.
Brown felt a dull ache in his chest. When he’d had his certainty about the roots of the murder being here in Yorkshire, he hadn’t meant anything like this.
Greene didn’t respond. His whole face set in a tight, obstinate expression.
Julia seemed to gather herself together, deliberately relaxing her posture. She wasn’t going to do any more pleading and Brown was glad. He couldn’t work out whether Greene was over-playing the significance of her relationship with Horton.
Chapter 23
“You’re being stupid, Archie. Stupid and unfair.”
The anger which filled Edith’s body and mind felt right. She wasn’t going to keep the lid on it any more. She’d done too much of that in her life.
After a couple of days of being avoided and barely spoken to the rest of the time, she’d woken up with the certainty that she wasn’t going to live like this, not even for one more day.
She’d waited, hung around the house, hovered around his surgery until he stopped seeing morning patients, almost always sometime between twelve and half-past.
Outside the white-painted, panelled door, she’d taken a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. She knocked sharply and after a two second pause, opened it and went straight in.
Archie was straightening a sheet on the examining couch and looked at her, frowning. “What is it, Edith? Can’t you wait?”
She shook her head and stood between him and the door. The room was square with a high ceiling and minimal furniture, a wall chart used to measure patients’ vision, and a battered brown, leather-seated chair. The room was dominated, of course by the desk, their father’s beautiful, shining oak desk with its green leather inlay.
One look at it, even now could conjure up her father and his pipe and his certainties about the world and his place in it and hers, of course.
Now, she shook her head again. “No, Archie, I’m not going to slink away like I’ve done something wrong. I haven’t.”
He sighed like a man under intolerable strain and perched on the edge of the couch. “You might as well sit down then, if you insist on baring our souls. Don’t know what St. Bride’s and all that mental therapy has done to you, I’m sure. All this talking does more harm than good half the time, but then again, these trick cyclists would be out of a job if they admitted that, wouldn’t they?”
The rage took Edith by surprise. Archie was just being Archie, know-it- all, world-weary and bloody condescending. But, it was the reference to her treatment at St. Bride’s that pressed the wrong buttons. She kept her voice low and controlled though. “I had a breakdow
n and an admission to St. Bride’s. Does that mean I’m never to be taken seriously again? That I’m not entitled to an opinion?”
She glanced at him and saw a look pass over his face, a look that took her back to him as a young man, when he’d been brought back to Yorkshire after he’d made his bid for freedom. She felt a twinge of pity, but fought it. If he felt a bit ashamed of himself–good. She wasn’t going to have this thrown at her at every opportunity.
“Don’t throw it at me, Archie.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s despicable of me.”
She jerked her head up. That didn’t sound like her brother talking. She stayed silent. Anything she said now would be the wrong thing.
“Look, Edith. Julia…it was wrong, I suppose, at so many levels. I don’t mess about with married women. She was in a low state. It could be argued that I took advantage, only it didn’t feel like that.” He put both hands to his forehead and rubbed hard as though trying to erase the worry lines etched there.
“I suppose it takes two,” she said. When he looked at her, his eyes widening, hands going back to his desk, she hastened. “Look, what you said about it being none of my business; you were right. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t anything to do with me. But…”
The words were coming to her now, what felt like the right words. “It was nothing to do with the morality. It was the feeling of a trapdoor opening under my feet. It was the unexpectedness of it, the feeling that I’d been kept in the dark, made to feel a fool. I don’t think that means I’m paranoid or nosy or frustrated or any of those things, Archie. I think it’s just as this involved my brother with whom I share a home and my very best friend who I was quite worried about at the time, well…”
“You’re right…”
They both looked to the door, jolted out of this intense conversation when someone knocked. It was pushed open and Hannah stood there.
Death at Dawn Page 13
