Seven Steps to Murder

by Benjamin Ford

  It’s all been rather simple, I must admit. Oh, there were times when difficulties arose, times when capture seemed certain, but there has been time to prepare for the crime; time to plan for revenge.

  Love and jealousy are good enough motives for murder.

  Retribution is perhaps the best.

  A killer might plead insanity due to diminished mental capacity if retribution is the motive for murder, especially when it’s to avenge a dreadful miscarriage of justice or a wrongful death.

  A killer might plead such a case should he be not quite clever enough to cover all his tracks.

  The killer in our midst, I know for certain, has made no such error.

  I climb the stairs slowly, unsure precisely of Waterfield’s whereabouts. He must be up here somewhere. He came to bring food to Major Simmons, and I have yet to hear him come back down.

  “Are you up here, Mr Waterfield?” I call out calmly, heading in the direction of the Major’s room. I draw level with the door and find it closed. I reach out, tentatively turning the handle. The door falls open to my touch.

  “Mr Waterfield? Major Simmons?”

  My voice echoes around the stillness of the upper hallway. There is no response from within the room, so I cautiously enter. I can see the Major lying prostrate on top of the bed, his eyes wide, his face a grimace of fear and agony. I cross to the bed and stare dispassionately down at the man.

  I feel little pity for him. He is just one more in the long line of avenging deaths.

  I sigh a little and turn. “Such a waste. He could have been a good man, if only he hadn’t kept such terrible secrets.”

  I don’t waste a second glance on the man as I leave the room in search of Waterfield. I pause at the top of the stairs, peering down to the main hallway, fancying that I hear voices from down there.

  Impossible, of course.

  My attention returns to the darkened hallway ahead of me. “Mr Waterfield? Are you up here? You cannot hide forever. I know the truth, you see. I know everything, so you can come out of hiding. It’s over.”

  The door to Waterfield’s room slowly opens, and he appears in silhouette, the light from the room behind him enshrouding his features with shadows. He comes forward with slow faltering steps, and I can see he has a gun in his hand. He points it shakily in my direction, almost as though he’s unsure of his own actions.

  Somehow I remain calm. I know he won’t shoot me – not yet, anyway.

  “Where is Mrs Draper?” he says in a half-whisper.

  I can hear pain in his voice, and I smile. “Mrs Draper? Oh, she’s downstairs – dead to the world.”

  Waterfield staggers towards me, leaning heavily against the wall. He’s gasping for breath. “So – it was you!”

  I smile serenely and nod calmly. “Yes, it was me. I’ve had this whole weekend planned, right down to the last detail.”

  Waterfield coughs a little. “Why?” I can hear the blood bubbling up from his ruined throat. He’ll live long enough for me to tell him why I have killed everyone here at West Cliff House. I owe him that at least.

  Oh, he might take me with him. All the better, really. I don’t know that I can live with myself after all these terrible deaths.

  But retribution has been done; judgment has been passed and sentence carried out.

  And all in the name of Annie Cunningham.

  Ignoring the gun, I sidle up to him, lending him my arm to lean on, as I guide him back into his bed chamber.

  “Why?” I say softly, without a trace of anger, without a shred of remorse. “Why, you ask? Well, I ask – why not?”

  I lead him over to his bed and sit him down upon its edge. I turn from him, perhaps foolishly. He has a gun in his hand, and he has the strength still to pull the trigger, but I know he will not shoot until I have answered his unfathomable question.

  I pick up the framed photograph of him and his lovely bride.

  Annie.

  I turn to him. “You still have no idea who I am, do you? Well then I shall tell you. My name is Wilbur, but I was born Wilberforce. I have always used my mother’s maiden name – Cunningham.”

  I hold the photo to the side of my head. “Some people say I have my mother’s eyes. Do you think so? I can’t believe you didn’t see the likeness between me and my mother. My mother, who was born Annie Cunningham.”

  I see recognition pass across Waterfield’s tortured face. “But then you’re–”

  I nod emphatically. “Yes, Uncle. My father was Albert.”

  Waterfield splutters, holding a handkerchief to his mouth as he coughs up blood. “Impossible! But even if it’s true – why all this killing?”

  “That, Uncle Cuthbert, is a very stupid question!”

  “No it’s not. I can understand killing Herbert, but why the others? Why me? What did I do to you?”

  Waterfield’s words enrage me. For the first time, my veneer of calm slips.

  “You made my mother forget that I existed!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  -1-

  Annie Cunningham, my mother, was so young and pretty when she first met the Waterfield boys. Too young, really, to know that they would each, in their own way, be her undoing. I will forever be grateful for the fact that she kept a journal during those early years. It’s just a sad, terrible shame that those journals didn’t come into my possession until after her death.

  -2-

  She was by far the prettiest girl in Edinburgh when Albert Waterfield arrived on holiday. Her glorious red hair and her perfect mouth, along with her fabulous green eyes captivated him from the start.

  Even though he was only on holiday, Albert wooed Annie relentlessly. She spurned his advances to begin with, and although in her journals she wrote that she adored his cheeky charm, she couldn’t permit herself to fall in love: her strict Catholic parents had warned her of where that led. Should she become a fallen woman at seventeen then there would be no salvation for her, and she would be ostracized by both friends and family, not to mention the Church.

  At seventeen, Annie’s heart and mind were filled with conflicting emotions. It took just a single glance from Albert at the adjoining table in the dining hall of the hotel in which they were both staying, and her heart melted. However, her strict parents never let her out of their sight.

  Oh, they had seen the way the young blond-haired youth looked at their daughter, and they knew the evil that lay dormant in his soul. They warned Annie to stay away from him, but she could not.

  It happened when Annie and her parents were out walking on the fells. The weather changed so suddenly that where there had been blue skies and sunshine there was suddenly black clouds and angry thunder, and a torrential downpour that soaked the Cunningham clan through to their skin. The ground beneath their feet turned to a quagmire with equal rapidity, and both Annie and her mother lost their footing and tumbled screaming over the edge of the fell leaving poor Mr Cunningham calling their names uselessly, tears mixing with the rain that drenched his ashen face.

  Hail the hero of the hour – Albert Waterfield. He’d been walking some way lower down the fell when he heard the screams, and the flash of clothing he caught sight of from the corner of his eye up above him sent him slipping and sliding towards the two tumbling women.

  By some miracle he caught hold of Mrs Cunningham’s arm, wrenching her to an abrupt halt, and she managed to grab onto Annie’s dress as she tumbled past. The trio slid on downwards for several yards, dragged down by the momentum, and then finally were halted by a mound of earth and rock and grass.

  Albert cracked his head upon the rock and lost consciousness. When he came to, Mrs Cunningham, her own arm in a sling, proclaimed him her hero, and from that moment on, in her eyes he could do no wrong.

  It was some days before Albert and Annie were able to be together un-chaperoned, but in that instant they declared their love for one another and kissed for the first time.

  From that moment on, Annie Cunningham and Albert Waterfie
ld were inseparable. They spent every day together, planning their future as a couple. Annie’s parents found them a lovely crofter’s cottage on the outskirts of Edinburgh which was to become their matrimonial home.

  Albert told Annie that he was obliged to take some control of his deceased parents’ companies, but that he had no desire to do so. He would relinquish all to be with her. Annie, for her part, tried to persuade him that they should return south. She would be happy anywhere, so long as she was with him, and Albert would have agreed to this, had it not been for the attempts by his brothers to blackmail him into coming home.

  If there was one thing that inflamed Albert’s ire, it was being told what to do – even if it was what he was already intending. He was so pig headed and stubborn that, in those situations he frequently did the exact opposite.

  Annie and Albert were married in Scotland with only Annie’s family in attendance. It broke Annie’s heart that her beloved’s family was not there, but she never once questioned her new husband’s decision.

  Cuthbert came to Scotland to try to make peace. Since by that point Annie was four months pregnant, Albert didn’t want her to have any stress, and so he made certain he met with his brother away from the house. He told Cuthbert that Annie was distraught at the animosity that had formed between them and wanted nothing to do with her husband’s family. Cuthbert was sent packing with a flea in his ear

  The child, a boy, was born and named Wilberforce after Annie’s father who had died the previous month. No-one in Albert’s family even knew Annie had been expecting, and that was the way Albert wished to keep things for the foreseeable future.

  Albert received a letter from Cuthbert stating his hope that one day a reconciliation between them could take place, and that Albert’s position within the family’s companies would never be rescinded. When the time was right, Albert would be able to take his place on the board of directors, and in the meantime Cuthbert and Herbert would do their utmost to ensure the prosperity of the companies.

  Albert and Annie were both secretly pleased with this, since neither one of them wished a family feud to erupt and engulf them and their newborn son. One day soon – they would both know when – then, and only then, would the family travel down to London.

  World events took the choice from them, however. With the outbreak of the Second World War both Albert and Herbert were sent off to France, whilst Cuthbert, weakened by childhood illnesses, remained down on the south coast doing his own part on the Home Front.

  Annie and young Wilberforce remained safely in Scotland, where Annie played her part in the war effort helping out in a convalescent hospital. Every morning she prayed that none of the new intake of wounded would be her beloved Albert, and every evening she thanked God for listening to her.

  Until the day the telegram came, brought to the hospital in Edinburgh personally by Herbert Waterfield.

  Annie had met Albert’s brothers only once, and even though she told Herbert she was grateful that it had been he who brought her the news, she wrote in her journal that there was something about Herbert’s demeanour that unnerved her. There was something untrustworthy about him, and she began to blame him for Albert’s death.

  She went into a downward spiral after Albert’s death and spent some time in a psychiatric hospital. During this time, her mother took over caring for Wilberforce, protecting him from the outside world as she shielded him from the truth of his mother’s whereabouts. His mother was convalescing after a long illness, she told him, and would return for him when she was well enough.

  Annie had one daily visitor whilst convalescing: Herbert. He didn’t say much, only that he was very sorry for what had happened between her and Cuthbert, and that he was sorry she had lost her husband, and that if there was anything he could do personally to help, then she had only to ask.

  In spite of her initial misgivings, Annie allowed her feelings to envelop her, and in the fullness of time she fell for Albert’s charismatic younger brother, even though at the same time she felt filled with guilt at her betrayal of Albert’s memory.

  She wasn’t yet ready to take back her son, however, and her own mother agreed readily that Wilberforce should remain in her charge, and so made no attempt to stop Annie when she set up home with Herbert.

  Annie wrote in her journal that her son was much better off without her as she’d lost all the love she’d once had for him. Albert was fading from her heart – why did she need reminding of him every day?

  Of course, such a statement was madness when she was now living with her dead husband’s brother.

  A brother who began to beat her almost the moment she moved in with him because she kept comparing him to Albert.

  The beatings went on, and in her own way Annie felt she deserved them: they were her punishment for abandoning her son and for betraying the memory of her beloved Albert.

  And then one day when Annie was taken to hospital having been beaten so badly by Herbert that she lost his unborn child, Cuthbert arrived to rescue her. Herbert made it difficult for him. Cuthbert had beaten his brother so badly that Herbert had called in the police and Cuthbert spent a couple of nights in the cells at the local Police Station, only to be released without charge thanks to the efforts of Annie’s and Albert’s close friends.

  Cuthbert left Scotland almost immediately, and within a week a still bruised Annie tracked him down to London to thank him personally. He was her knight in shining armour. She was so pleased that chivalry wasn’t dead that she saw Cuthbert in a completely new light, and the fraternal divide between Albert and his brothers suddenly shifted. Now it was Herbert who was ostracized from Cuthbert, and Annie couldn’t have been happier. From that moment on the brothers never again spoke to one another.

  Annie wooed Cuthbert and they were married at Gretna Green. Whilst there, Cuthbert felt they should invite her family, but Annie resolutely said that her family were all dead and that there was no-one left in Scotland for her.

  She wrote in her journal that she hoped her son would see that she wasn’t abandoning him, rather that she was freeing him from the shackles of her past, and hoped he would one day find it within himself to forgive her.

  -3-

  My mother’s journals after this point contained only sporadic entries. She wrote mostly of her happiness, living with her new husband, and of her sadness that she was unable to give him a child because of the violence perpetrated against her by Herbert.

  She wrote once or twice that Cuthbert was not altogether unhappy at the thought of not having children. He’d apparently told her on a number of occasions that he’d never felt a paternal stirring in his heart.

  Mother wrote that she felt it imprudent to reveal to him that she had a child already, and that although she thought of her lovely Wilberforce often, she still believed he was better off without her in his life.

  She wrote infrequently about the kind and compassionate housekeeper, Mrs Draper, who’d stumbled upon her journals whilst tidying away some clothes one day. The book had fallen open, allegedly, with Mrs Draper unable to contain her curiosity. Mother had found her reading them and whilst Mrs Draper had thought she was about to be dismissed, Mother broke down in tears with relief that someone else knew the truth at last.

  Mrs Draper apparently promised to keep the secret, and told Mother that if she ever wanted to talk then she only had to knock on her door. Mrs Draper also promised that if Annie were to die then the journals would not find their way into Cuthbert’s possession.

  I suppose that’s why, after my mother died, Mrs Draper collected those journals together and forwarded them up to the cottage, addressed to Grandmamma.

  -4-

  I can remember the day that package arrived like it was only yesterday – in the middle of winter, when the Scottish air is at its crispest. It had been snowing steadily for three hours when the postman struggled up the lane to the cottage.

  That old cottage in the Highlands, where I’d spent all of my life that I can recall
. Grandmamma had showered upon me all the love that she could after Granddaddy died. She never said an ill-word against my father, but she told me from an early age that my mother had never loved me and had abandoned me into her own mother’s care.

  I think the seeds for my plans of revenge were sown in that moment, but wouldn’t come to fruition for a great many years. Grandmamma, the woman who brought me up single handed until the day she died on my seventeenth birthday, had told me that my mother hadn’t loved me – and so it must true. Grandmamma hadn’t told me one single lie in my entire life. She’d told me how brave my father was, fighting and dying in the war so that the free world could remain free, and that my mother had then run off with one of his brothers and abandoned me.

  A boy never forgets such knowledge. I might not have known what I was to do with that knowledge back then, yet it remained stored in the back of my mind for future use.

  After Grandmamma died I was all alone. Such loneliness felt like a weight, pressing down upon my shoulders until I knew it had to be alleviated. Going through her belongings in those long days following her funeral, I discovered bits and pieces about my mother’s mysterious past.

  It was, I thought, somewhat odd that Grandmamma kept so many things from my mother’s own childhood considering the apparent hatred she felt towards her. In reading the childhood letters between my mother and several of her old school friends I gained something of an insight into what sort of girl she had been, and more than ever I found it difficult to reconcile the much loved girl with the woman who’d abandoned me.

  I began to doubt some of the things Grandmamma had told me, and so in desperation for the truth I set about locating one school friend of my mother’s in particular.

  Julia Symonds.

  It wasn’t terribly difficult. She was local, and although she had married, following her divorce she had returned to her maiden name.

  She was perturbed to find me on her doorstep, asking to speak with her about Annie Cunningham. She admitted later that she’d recognized me the moment she opened the door to me, even though she hadn’t seen me for a number of years.