Seven Steps to Murder

by Benjamin Ford

  As it was, Annie let her guard down and recanted her fury. She let old animosities vanish into the annals of history, and became close with Herbert.

  Very close.

  Too close.

  They began a clandestine relationship, even before her husband’s grave had settled. Annie’s mother vowed never again to speak to her daughter, and they didn’t reconcile before her death. When her mother died, Annie couldn’t forgive herself for her own stupidity. Blood ties were stronger than those of matrimony, and she’d been blinded by love.

  Her love for Albert had been strong and pure. She despised herself for falling beneath Herbert’s thrall. But his spell was too strong for her to break.

  Herbert Waterfield was every bit as charismatic as his late brother, and perhaps even better looking. Unfortunately, whilst Annie’s temper had mellowed during her marriage to Albert, Herbert’s temper frequently gained the upper hand.

  Annie couldn’t help but talk about Albert. They’d been together long enough for him to almost be a physical part of her. She spoke about him in glowing terms, as though he were actually still alive, and this incensed Herbert.

  He couldn’t bear to be compared unfavourably with his deceased brother, and so he hit Annie. It didn’t stop with one beating. His attacks on her were relentless. He put her in hospital once, which she explained away to friends as a stay of convalescence due to illness. She told the doctors in hospital that she’d fallen down the stairs, but when Herbert came to visit she told the doctors that she didn’t wish to see him. She didn’t want any visitors at all.

  The doctors were no fools. They knew a wife beater when they saw one, but since Annie would not press charges there was little they could do except to comply with her wishes for solitude.

  Annie’s friends were no fools either, and whilst the doctors’ hands might have been tied, theirs were not. Two of them made the long journey down to London, where they sought out Cuthbert Waterfield.

  Annie and Albert had spoken about Cuthbert to their friends a number of times over the years, and these friends realised that Annie needed saving – from herself as much as from her abusive lover. They located Cuthbert and made him aware of what had been going on.

  Cuthbert was suitably outraged, and raced up to Edinburgh where he beat his brother almost to a pulp. Herbert then had the temerity to report his brother to the police, and Cuthbert was arrested for assault. Having spent two nights in the cells, however, he was released without charge. He found Annie’s friends outside waiting for him, and they explained that they had spoken in his favour, and that the police had also visited Annie in hospital to get her take on things.

  Annie, it seemed, was proud of his chivalry, even though she wouldn’t go so far as to condone his actions. She later thanked Cuthbert for making her see sense, and ended her relationship with Herbert, informing both brothers that they were to never darken her door again.

  It was some weeks later that Cuthbert received an unexpected visitor at his home in London. Annie had travelled all the way down to London to see him on the pretext of thanking him for his actions.

  Cuthbert might have been the youngest of the three brothers, and he might not have seen action in the war, but he was the most worldly-wise of the three, and he recognised the look in Annie’s eyes.

  He’d seen it in her eyes when she’d been with Albert.

  He had not seen it in her eyes when she’d been with Herbert.

  Could it be that she’d fallen in love with her hero?

  Annie played up to her tempestuous nature when in Cuthbert’s company. He made it clear from the outset that he wasn’t interested. He would not act upon his feelings for her, out of respect for his dead brother. Annie told him she didn’t believe this, and she continued her pursuit.

  She wined him and dined him, and used all of her feminine wiles, and eventually he succumbed to her not inconsiderable charms. He told her quite succinctly that he would not bed her until they were married. He had a lot of old fashioned values instilled in him by his old governess that he still held true.

  Annie admired him for this, and their engagement became a swift betrothal at Gretna Green: Cuthbert might have Victorian values still, but he was as red-blooded as the next man.

  Their wedding night was one they wouldn’t forget in a hurry, but not for the usual reasons.

  Someone drove them off the road, almost killing them both. Annie suffered serious internal injuries, but was made of sterner stuff than most, and made a miraculous recovery.

  Except that she was unable to have children.

  Having found a new man to love and spend the rest of her life with, she couldn’t give him an heir. It was a sadness from which Annie never recovered, and she spent most of their married life in a state of depression – right up until her death five years ago.

  Cuthbert had long since harboured the belief that his brother had been the one who drove them off the road on their wedding night, but had no desire to dredge up the past again whilst Annie was still alive, and so did nothing to investigate the possibility.

  The two brothers Waterfield hadn’t spoken a word to one another since the day Cuthbert had been released from jail for attacking Herbert.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  As they finish relaying their individual takes on the story of their past, I can sense the hostility between Waterfield and his brother. It’s so palpable that the angry energy seems to crackle around them. It makes me shiver.

  I clear my throat. “So, Herbert, was it you who ran them off the road?”

  Herbert suddenly cannot face his brother, and I think it’s perfectly clear to us both that he is guilty. I expect Waterfield to be filled with rage, but he seems oddly calm. “I’m sorry, little brother,” Herbert says, his voice so quiet that I’m not sure Waterfield heard him.

  “I’m sure I’ll learn to live with the knowledge that you prevented Annie from having children.” Waterfield takes a deep breath. “Was it deliberate?”

  I know he doesn’t want to know the answer to his question, but after hearing the condensed version of their life story I am eager to hear all.

  Herbert nods. “I didn’t want to kill either of you – not really. I wanted to hurt you for stealing Annie away from me, and I wanted to scare Annie, not hurt her. You might find this difficult to believe, but I actually did love her.”

  Waterfield snorts. “Really? You loved her so much that you took to beating her – regularly, from what she told me!”

  Herbert nods solemnly, presumably ashamed not only at his past actions, but also that he’s just admitted everything to his brother in front of a total stranger. “I can’t explain why I did the things I did. I have a temper – had a temper! My spell in jail put paid to that.”

  Waterfield frowns. “Really? I’d have thought being in jail would have made you more violent. A wife beater in prison must surely have come under the radar of the other prisoners? I’m sure they wouldn’t take kindly to such behavior.”

  “I was in for robbery, remember? They didn’t learn about the other side of my nature. I certainly didn’t bring it up, for obvious reasons. I learnt to keep my mouth shut and stay out of trouble whilst in prison. I saw what happened to those who let their tempers get the better of them – at the hands of the inmates and the screws!”

  “Is that why you burgled your brother’s house?” I ask. “To get even with him for stealing your girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was hardly your girl to begin with,” says Waterfield harshly. “And even if she was, I see it that I rescued her from you – so retribution was totally unfounded.”

  Herbert sighs. “I know. I made a right mess of things, didn’t I?”

  Waterfield nods. “I don’t know that things will ever be good between us, Herbie, but I’m willing to let the past lie.”

  Herbert smiles. “I like that – Herbie! It means I can still call you Bertie.”

  “Indeed. D’you remember what Annie used to call Albert?”
>
  “Albie!”

  I stifle a chuckle, which elicits looks of consternation from both Herbie and Bertie. “I’m sorry,” I say, covering my mouth to hide further laughter. “But Herbie, Albie and Bertie? Honestly!”

  “All right, all right,” says Waterfield irritably. “So we have funny names. What was your nickname when you were at school?”

  My laughter ceases instantly. School is something I’ve tried very hard to forget. Being educated by fearsome Catholic priests at a boarding school somewhere unpronounceable in the middle of Britain is not something you ever wish to recall, but it’s also something you can never forget, no matter how hard you try.

  And lord knows, I’ve tried my hardest.

  It was a school you could never misbehave in. The headmaster dished out canings on an hourly basis it seemed to me back then, and most of them seemed to involve the back of my hand and my rear.

  The time I’d tried to hide a magazine down my trousers to stifle the stinging blows comes back to haunt me to this day. It was on that day that my guardian came to the school for a pre-arranged visit to see the headmaster about my behaviour, and on that day the headmaster had made me take off my trousers and underpants completely and had me bent over the table in his office giving me a proper thrashing.

  My guardian had seen everything, and I’d thought she would reprimand the headmaster for his own behavior. Instead, my guardian – my own Grandmamma – had stood there and watched everything, her arms folded and a smile twitching at the corners of her lips.

  From that moment on, I’d known I had no friends in the world, either in the school or outside. I’d wanted to die of shame and embarrassment when my guardian had walked in to see me naked from the waist down and bent over the headmaster’s desk.

  Afterwards, I’d just hoped and prayed that she would die.

  Of course, when she did die, things just got a whole lot worse for me, and made me resent her even more.

  “Are you all right, Wilbur?”

  I look up at Waterfield in a daze, and realise I’ve probably missed a whole conversation. “Sorry, what were you saying?”

  “Well, I was just wondering what your nickname was at school, and then you just seemed to go into a daze. Bad times at school?”

  I nod and say just one word. “Priests!”

  Herbert and Waterfield exchange meaningful glances, and I know that they have experience with priests. “There were priests at our boarding school on the border of Wales,” Herbert says. “They were evil incarnate, I’m sad to say. I don’t think they had a kind bone in their bodies.”

  Waterfield pats my arm comfortingly. “At least you made it out alive. Whilst we were at our boarding school, there was a boy who got the cane so often that he had to go to hospital with infected wounds. He died from blood poisoning, and when we found out we all believed that would be the end of the punishment.”

  I take a deep breath. “I’m guessing it wasn’t?”

  Herbert shakes his head solemnly. “If anything, it made them worse. Thankfully that was during my last year there.”

  “Unfortunately, I still had a further three years of torment.”

  I glance at Waterfield. “You made it through those final years alive, though.”

  “I did, but before he left, Herbert here suffered at the hands of the priests.”

  Herbert lifts his shirt and shows me his back. I wince at the welts across his lower back and shoulder blades. Tugging the shirt down once more to cover his wounds, Waterfield then says: “If I’d had children, I would never have sent them away to boarding school. I wouldn’t want to inflict such torture on anyone else.”

  “Our parents were too preoccupied with themselves to bring us up,” says Waterfield, directing his statement at me. “Why were you sent to boarding school? Busy parents?”

  I shake my head. “No. My parents died when I was young. I was sent to live with an elderly relative who was too old to look after me, and so sent me away to boarding school.”

  “And were you treated badly at your school?”

  I look at Herbert. Considering what I’ve just learnt about his nature, I want him to think he was treated badly as a pre-emptive punishment for future crimes, so I lie to make him feel worse. “No, the experience wasn’t that bad really. The priests were horrible. They were strict and firm, but fair. I never felt the cane, but they didn’t make life easy, though.”

  “Well you don’t seem to have suffered like poor Herbert did,” says Waterfield.

  “I don’t think I’d have survived being treated like that,” I say, unwilling to reveal the true horror of my time at the boarding school. It’s not something I like to dwell upon as it gives me nightmares to this day. I’ve tried my damndest to rid myself of those memories, but at times they return to taunt me.

  “You still haven’t told us what your nickname was at school.”

  I glance in Herbert’s direction as he speaks. I guess it’s only fair since they’re revealed so much about themselves, but it’s with great reluctance that I reveal it. “I was known as Titchy Willy,” I say, and hastily add, “but not for the reasons you might suspect.”

  “Willy was the name you went by I guess, being named Wilbur?”

  I nod. “Yes, and I was always very short for my age, and skinny as anything, so the other boys called me Titch to begin with, and then Titchy Willy.”

  Although he can’t refrain from smirking, I get the impression that Waterfield feels a modicum of sympathy for my childhood plight. “Well, we won’t tell any of the others here.”

  I’m relieved to hear this – not that it would have mattered much, as I won’t be seeing any of these people again after this weekend. I suddenly feel as though I’ve started revealing too much about myself to these people, and lapse into a quiet contemplation.

  Waterfield waves his hand at the backgammon board. “Come on lad, it’s your move.”

  I look at the pieces and I’m suddenly disinclined to continue with the game. But then I remember what Grandmamma used to say repeatedly as a carping criticism. “You never finish anything you start. You’ll never amount to much in this life. You’re a waste of space, just like your father was.”

  It was an unfair comment as I never knew my father and so have nothing to compare with her criticism. I’d made a decision some time ago to prove her wrong; that I could amount to something, and that I could see something out to the bitter end.

  And to further prove the old witch wrong, I finish the backgammon game – but of course don’t win!

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  By the time we finish playing backgammon, the others who were engaged in bridge have completed their game and are chatting over by the window. Although I cannot hear what is being said, they are becoming quite animated over something, and by my reckoning it will most likely be over something inconsequential. Altercations between strangers usually occur over something trivial.

  I think Waterfield believes that the heated exchange might spill over into actual violence, because he goes over to them to see what is going on. I hear his guffaw from across the room, and he returns with Rashid in tow.

  Rashid has a look of shame about him, which piques my interest. “What was that all about?”

  Waterfield pats Rashid on the back. “Our friend here outright accused the Major of cheating!”

  “And was he cheating?”

  Rashid shrugs. “I do not know, but I have no respect for the man after our time together in the army. He said something that upset me, so when the opportunity presented itself, I accused him of cheating.”

  I nod in understanding. Although I have only recently become acquainted with the Major, already I have grown to dislike the man immensely. His heavy drinking is a source of annoyance. It’s my personal opinion that if you cannot endure a short period of time without a glass of alcohol in your hand, then you are sure to say something upsetting to someone, or do something unsettling.

  So far I have yet to see Major Simmons wi
thout a glass of Scotch, and all his drinking has made the man rambunctious to the extreme. He is loud and arrogant in the things I’ve heard him say – especially to Mrs Draper. The man is an obnoxious misogynist it seems – and so far we have yet to see him fully under the influence.

  I’m fairly certain it can’t be long before his mind is so soaked with alcohol that the things he says will become truly hurtful and vile.

  I cannot help but wonder what precipitated such a drinking problem. Was it something that happened during his time in the army? Was it the war itself? Or did something altogether more sinister happen to him that started him on the rocky road to alcoholism?

  I cast a surreptitious glance over to where he’s gesticulating wildly in Dr Runcible’s face. The Major’s face is red from the alcohol, whilst the doctor’s is red with fury. I turn back to Rashid. “What’s he saying over there? He seems to have upset Mrs Draper and annoyed Dr Runcible.”

  “I believe he is telling them what he thinks of them,” says Rashid. “He was telling them about our time together in occupied France. Even under the circumstances, what we went through during the war was traumatic, and he makes everything that happened seem trivial.”

  Herbert sniffs. “Is he telling everyone how much of a hero he is again?”

  Rashid nods. “He says how he singlehandedly saved the whole platoon from the Germans when we were under fire outside a French village. He knows full well that is not what happened. He seems to believe he should have received a medal of honour for what he did.”

  “Only we both know it wasn’t the Major that saved the platoon, don’t we?”

  Rashid agrees with Herbert’s declaration, which arouses my interest. “So who did save the platoon?”

  “It was Albie,” says Herbert quietly.

  I can see the pain on his face. Whatever happened at that time in the war must be very hard to face. I cannot imagine what it must have been like, fighting behind enemy lines. There must have been a lot of sacrifice and a lot of difficult decisions made under appalling conditions. Bravery and cowardice tend to go hand in hand, and I must assume that the Major displayed a degree of cowardice, particularly if he’s intent on persuading the others of the exact opposite.