Death at Dawn

by Noreen Wainwright

  She was wearing her usual navy-blue print apron and Edith saw a yellow duster tucked into the waistband. “Doctor Horton, Edith, the police are here. I’ve put them in the kitchen.” She looked down and up again at Edith, her eyes troubled, her forehead clouding over.

  “Inspector Green and that young sergeant, Hilda Brown’s lad.”

  Chapter 24

  “Just yourself, doctor, if it’s all the same to you, no need to trouble your sister.

  Edith determined to stand her ground. She had a fair idea why they were here. Archie despised this man. If there was a chance that her presence might help calm the situation, she was going nowhere.

  This is the second time I’ve stuck my nose in when the inspector’s wanted a quiet chat. Well, tough, as they said in the pictures. “I’ll stay, if you don’t mind, Archie?”

  Archie shook his head. “No need go anywhere on my behalf.”

  Greene sighed. “It’s come to my attention that you and Mrs. Etherington have been conducting a relationship.”

  Edith saw a movement in Archie’s jaw.

  “Can I make you some tea, Inspector, Sergeant?” She glanced at Archie. He gave her a look and threw his eyes up at the heavens, obviously unable to understand why she would want to make tea for them all. That’s men for you, they’re a different species.

  Greene hesitated. “That would be very civil of you, Miss Horton.”

  “And sit down for goodness sake.”

  They were all standing, like some uncomfortable still life. There was a scraping of kitchen chairs, but Edith could sense the loosening of tension, brought about just by sitting down and the sound of the whistling kettle.

  It didn’t last for long, however.

  “Mrs. Etherington, for her own reasons kept this information to herself. Very foolish of her.”

  Archie was gripping the handle of his teacup very tightly. “Maybe she didn’t think it was relevant, Inspector. We all know you have a job to do. No doubt a difficult job, but surely it must allow a line to be drawn between investigating what’s likely to have some bearing on a case and being prurient.”

  Edith saw the white line around her brother’s tightly drawn lips that spelled danger and wished so much that he didn’t have to be so belligerent.

  “By prurient, I mean, delving into the private and the personal for some sort of…I don’t know, let’s say, satisfaction of your own.

  “I’m well aware of the meaning of the word, Doctor Horton, and I find your attitude offensive.” Greene’s voice was hard but his tone was low.

  Edith admired his calm. With the provocation Archie was dishing out she wouldn’t have blamed the man for losing his temper. Archie shrugged, a sort of grim satisfaction in his face. Her brother could be a bloody fool sometimes, not to mention, a snob.

  “Well, tough luck Inspector. I find you grubbing about in people’s private business also offensive, especially when it happens to be mine. Again.”

  Edith tried to catch his eye, to shake her head but she couldn’t manage to make him look at her. Probably he was deliberately avoiding eye-contact. But, she’d tell him her thoughts later, in no uncertain terms. Trouble was, it would be too late to salvage anything from this mess by then.

  “Look, Doctor Horton, though you seem to find it very difficult to be civil with me for some reason, I have no intention of trading insults with you. The thing is sir, with all due respect…”

  The heaviness of that phase, as he droned it out, had never struck her so forcefully, nor that it often meant the direct opposite.

  “I don’t have the ability to tell the difference between grubbing about in people’s private and personal business and listening to facts which might be highly important to a murder enquiry. I wish I had.”

  First round goes to Inspector Greene. At this point she decided she was going to remove herself from the scene; sitting it out like this wasn’t helping the situation and it struck her that it might be even be making it worse. It was a stupid thought, no doubt, to think that a grown, intelligent man might even be showing off before any female who might be at hand, but that’s what it was beginning to look like.

  She stood up. “If you’re all right for tea, I’ll take myself off now and let you continue your talk in private.” She ignored Archie’s eyes this time as she let herself out of the kitchen.

  She would wait until the inspector and sergeant left and ring Julia. If her interview with the inspector had been half as uncomfortable as the one with Archie, Julia would be looking for any support she could get.

  Chapter 25

  “Hello, 66837.”

  Edith gave her number out quickly, irritated that just as she was about to telephone Julia, the telephone rang.

  There was a silence and then she could hear ragged breathing. A strong flash of memory pierced her. It had been a night shift at the hospital and she’d answered the telephone and it had been some sick individual; an obscene telephone call they were called. Though there hadn’t been any real threat to her, she’d been a nervous wreck for the rest of the night and had looked over her shoulder several times as she’d returned to the nurses’ home in the morning.

  “Who is this?”

  She thought of the irony of having two police officers in the house at the moment, wondering whether she should just go and fetch the Inspector, quickly before the pervert hung up.

  “It’s me, I’m in terrible trouble. Can you help me please?”

  Edith had no idea who it was except that it was a woman.

  “I’m sorry, who…”

  “It’s Daphne, Daphne Sheridan. I had no one else to talk to. I’ve had to leave home, my husband. He would have killed me, you have no idea and there’s something else, someone who knew about me and Giles…”

  What on earth am I supposed to do here? “I think maybe you need to speak to someone who will know what to do to help if you’re frightened. Inspector Greene is here in the house at the moment, talking to my brother.

  The woman almost shouted. “No, no, please, Edith, Miss Horton. I beg you. Please don’t tell him that I telephoned. It will make things worse, please. I’ll explain. I’m going to get a train later today, come up to Yorkshire. I want to be near…near…” her voice broke.

  Then Edith heard a deep shuddering breath and in spite of herself, once again, she felt sorry for the woman. “What time are you going to get here?”

  She couldn’t believe she was even asking. Hadn’t she learned anything from the way Julia had reacted? But, it seemed like this woman had no one to talk to.

  “I’ll ring you when I get there. Is that all right? Edith?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  Edith determined on one thing. Whatever Daphne Sheridan said, she was not going to keep this entirely to herself. She had to tell someone.

  She heard a noise as Archie preceded by the inspector and sergeant approached down the corridor. He was seeing them out then and for a heartfelt few seconds, Edith was thankful that he was opening the door to let them out rather than accompanying them to the station. She told herself not to be so stupid. He closed the door firmly behind the two men and turned to her, fuming. His movements were fast and there was tension in every line of his body and face.

  “That man, that bloody jumped up bombastic…” Words failed him.

  Edith sighed.

  She didn’t have time to deal with this now or to say what she really felt like saying to her brother. The trouble, as well, was she found it difficult to think of anything she could say that wouldn’t further inflame him. “Look, Archie, he’s gone. He was bound to come here and ask you about it wasn’t he? Wouldn’t you have done the same, in his shoes?”

  “Oh, don’t be so bloody reasonable with me, Edith. Don’t defend him.”

  She just wasn’t going to get drawn into this. She reached for her summer jacket and her cloche hat; the hat that always made her feel confident and moved to the door.

  Archie was staring at her. “You didn’t sa
y you were going out. I thought you were preparing our lunch; isn’t it Hannah’s day off?”

  Edith smiled at him. “I have to go out, I’m sorry. I’m sure you’ll cobble something together from what’s in the pantry. Like you say, we each have to have our own lives and our own privacy.”

  Shame at her meanness and a small spark of triumph clashed in her mind as she opened the door and glanced at her brother. He looked like he’d looked at ten when their mother had made him stay and practise the piano instead of going out to play.

  “Henry, I’m so happy you’re in.”

  He let her into the hall and once again she felt the drop in spirits she always did when she came in here. The heaviness of the wallpaper, the slightly jaded look of the paintwork. She chided herself. What did any of that matter?

  Henry put the kettle on and they sat at the large oak table that was covered with a chenille-green tablecloth, in turn covered with a white cloth. It all looked fussy and old-fashioned.

  “It’s about Archie, isn’t it?”

  Edith looked at him. “No, actually, it isn’t. What makes you think it is?”

  “Because I happened to be returning from a sick visit about an hour ago and saw Inspector Greene and his sergeant going into your house.”

  She explained about the visit, glossing over Archie’s attitude as much as she could. “It isn’t that though; the reason I’m here, the reason I needed to talk to you.

  That woman, Daphne Sheridan telephoned, while the police were talking to Archie, actually. She sounded in a terrible state and wants to meet me. She’s coming up to Harrogate. Goodness knows why and as for why she seems to have formed some sort of attachment to me, I really have no idea, Henry.”

  “She certainly has done that. I suppose she must have found you easy to talk to, You are, you know, Edith, the nursing background maybe…”

  She laughed, in spite of her worry. “That’s a very kind interpretation, Henry. Or maybe a very trusting one. For my part I’m more suspicious than that. I don’t understand the woman, but I have a suspicion that she’s somehow using me.”

  “Because of Julia?” Henry passed her a cup and saucer.

  Edith nodded. “Yes, because of Julia. She said she’d let me know when she gets to Yorkshire. I can’t see how I can do anything other than meet her, if that’s what she wants.”

  He nodded. “I’ll come with you. I’m interested to meet the woman. I also think it’s not a bad idea for you to have someone with you…”

  She knew what he meant. “In case Julia gets angry with me again…I should tell her, shouldn’t I, about this? The meeting with Daphne, I mean.”

  But, Henry was shaking his head. “To be honest, Edith, I think it’s better to keep it to ourselves for now. Is Mrs. Sheridan really frightened of her husband, do you think? I mean do you believe he’s violent, that she is in actual danger?”

  Edith put her cup down, held her hand out, palms up. “I honestly don’t know, Henry. It’s the strangest thing, difficult to explain. She’s quite convincing, her distress, how much she loved Giles and how frightened she is of her husband.”

  She shook her head. “Then, you step away from her and the whole thing seems fantastical, it doesn’t tie up together. There’s an answer for everything. Why didn’t you leave your husband? Because I had nowhere to go? What about your family? They’re as bad as him. Either I’m being extremely suspicious and unsympathetic or I don’t know, Henry.

  “What if it’s all true? One thing I feel pretty certain of though, I don’t believe that she and Giles were back together and he was just waiting for his chance to leave Julia. That doesn’t add up. If that was going to happen, it would have happened before now.”

  “So we wait for her to contact you?”

  “Yes, I expect she’ll telephone later today, tonight, maybe.” She really liked his use of “we” for all sorts of reasons, perhaps, but mainly because it felt right to have someone else involved with whatever was going on with Daphne Sheridan.

  “There’s something else as well…” She told him about young Cathy and what she’d said about Elsie going to work for Mrs. Sheridan.

  “That’s odd, very odd,” Henry said.

  “Well, it seems a striking coincidence, to say the least,” Edith answered.

  Henry drew his hand across his jaw with a rasping sound. “There was something about Elsie’s family; something that was talked about here in Ellbeck, but I can’t remember. Maybe I never even heard the whole story, but something is nagging away at the back of my mind. It was an older brother or an uncle and it was something about the war, some scandal.”

  The hairs on the back of Edith’s neck stood up and she shuddered. The unpleasant feeling passed and she had no idea what had caused it.

  “I feel like we are touching on the edges of something, Henry, something about Giles’ death. There’s a connection between here, this place and Daphne Sheridan; that in itself is odd.”

  Henry looked down at his tea, picked his spoon up and heedlessly stirred the half empty cup.

  “Do you think you should tell Inspector Green about Daphne Sheridan telephoning you?”

  She winced.

  “The irony of it is that he was actually in the house when the telephone call came. In answer to your question though…no. Not yet, at any rate. We don’t know what’s going on with the husband, whether she is really in danger. After all, what could I say at this point? I don’t know why, but I don’t want to betray the flaming woman.”

  Henry frowned.

  “Let me know when she gets in touch with you. I have to say, Edith. I’m intrigued; she seems to say the least a very strange woman.”

  “She is, though I’m also wary of becoming drawn in to her life. Apart from it really upsetting Julia, we don’t know how involved she is, do we? I mean in Giles’s death. It may seem far-fetched, but someone killed him. Inspector Greene didn’t get the best reception from Archie as you can imagine. There’s history between them from Mrs. Butler’s murder, of course but I wish Archie would be a bit more diplomatic. He doesn’t believe in winning friends, that’s one thing sure.”

  When she got back home and ascertained that there hadn’t been any telephone calls for her, Edith was tempted to say nothing about the Inspector’s visit. But, it couldn’t be avoided as Archie himself seemed intent on ranting and stirring himself up further.

  She tried staying quiet and leaving him to his temper, but he dragged her into his tirade. “Well, Edith, what do you think? I have a half a mind to report him. Not really my style, but I can’t think of anything else to do to stop him harassing me. I mean what are my patients going to think of him calling here, not to mention the general population of the place. I had enough of that last year, when you were…well, you know. He must be loving it, having another chance to stick his knife in me. Well, Edith, what do you say?” Eh?”

  He looked at her, finally focusing his attention outwards.

  “What, you don’t agree with me?”

  Edith sighed and felt suddenly, inexplicably tired.

  “It isn’t that I don’t agree with you and I’m not defending him. He could be more…well, more measured, diplomatic. But, Archie, he does have a job to do.”

  “And isn’t he just relishing it,” Archie’s tone was harsh. Edith didn’t want this. She was listening out all the time for the ringing of the telephone and she had a pretty good idea that whatever she said here was just going to give Archie more reason to feel under attack.

  “There are ways and means, Edith; ways and means. We’re both supposed to be professional men. This is a small community.”

  “No, the man is flaunting his power–for want of a better word…his ability to be able to do this, barge his way into someone else’s life and nip away at his ankles like an irritating terrier.”

  Edith hid a smile as an odd picture flashed through her mind.

  She wasn’t going to go in for a debate, she was adamant. Archie was probably enjoying his right
eous anger. She’d leave him to it, except…

  “Have you been in touch with Julia at all?”

  He gave her a sharp look.

  “No, why?”

  Now, Edith did allow herself to exhale loudly in irritation.

  “Oh. Archie, just think. If you’re feeling intimidated by a bit of mild police questioning, how much worse do you think it is for her?”

  She let the question hang for a few seconds.

  “Not to mention, her husband’s funeral in a couple of days’ time and she has the children to deal with and what on earth she is going to tell them, or how much?

  Archie raked his fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp furiously–as though he was furious with it.

  “All right, all right. You’ve made your point - not that it’s that simple; you saw where going round there to see her got me. I’ll ring her. Now, I’d better get on. Are you around this afternoon? Mother’s clinic…I could do with a bit of help–doling out the tonics, keeping kids quiet, paperwork, so forth…”

  Oh what a fulfilling life I lead, Edith thought, but didn’t say it. Actually, it wasn’t all bad helping out in the clinic. Some of the women were naturally funny and it could be entertaining, especially when they got going about the foibles of their neighbours or, better still, their husbands.

  Then she remembered.

  “I’m sorry, Archie. I think I might have to go out.”

  His mouth took on the downturn that signified not getting his way.

  “How do you mean that you might have to?”

  She hesitated–this was a right dilemma. Should she say anything about Daphne Sheridan?

  Probably best not to.

  The day passed slowly and she did end up giving Archie a hand, reckoning she would hear if the telephone bell rang. There was nothing.

  At times during the day, especially as the evening set in and Archie took himself back to his surgery to do paperwork, she couldn’t settle to anything. She had that slightly panicky, slightly nauseous feeling that brought unpleasant echoes. The sight of the sandwich she put together for her supper evoked nothing, not the tiniest shred of appetite. Though Edith told herself that she had no reason for this anxious feeling; that it said more about her rather than the situation with Daphne Sheridan, she failed to convince herself. The truth was that she was uneasy, she had a bad feeling and she pulled her mind away from possible scenarios involving angry husbands and awful consequences.