Treated as Murder

by Noreen Wainwright

  “Poor woman,”

  Edith looked at him, startled.

  “Come on, Edith. Would you prefer to be in that poor woman’s shoes than your own—being cheated on, unable to let him out of your sight?”

  “Then being harassed by a maniac woman who thinks the whole thing is a conspiracy against her. I lost touch with reality, didn’t I Henry? Completely.”

  “It wasn’t the worst that could have happened. The only person you ended up hurting was yourself, Edith. Given that type of deception, others have committed grievous bodily harm, murder even.”

  “I wrote letters, though, to him, his wife, his parents, Oh, God help me even to his workplace, I think. I’m not sure.”

  “Edith, don’t be too hard on yourself. You’d invested too much in him, that’s all.”

  “Letters, though, Henry. I remember writing letters, furiously, manically. Needing other people to see things as only I could see them—clearly.”

  “What if I wrote other letters as well, letters to people around Ellbeck? Those anonymous letters that were going around the village? I don’t remember doing so, but when I do think about it, there is a doubt somewhere—something on the edge of my memory that I can’t put my finger on—but something distressing—that makes me wake up in a cold sweat.”

  She put her hands in front of her face.

  “Edith, please. You’re facing things, thinking about things. I think that’s all good, but don’t take it too far. Don’t make yourself ill again. You need to keep your eye on the goal, getting better, getting released from here, and looking forward.

  She nodded, but her eyes still looked backwards rather than forwards.

  * * *

  All the women stood still for a few seconds. All eyes focused on the figure on the floor, on the blood and the groaning. At least the awful Phyllis was alive—She held the iron, still. Then she started to shake. There was a loud clamour.

  “For God’s sake, what have you done?” it was Frances, shaken out of her normal calm.

  A whistle sounded, a group of women descended and before stretcher or doctor or any of the things she heard mentioned, they escorted her away. There were even a couple of male nurses amongst the group who had come to subdue her. That was almost funny. She wasn’t going to offer any resistance or fight. She’d had to stop that evil mouth saying all those things. She had had to stop it.

  Chapter 13

  Inspector Greene looked at the woman sitting across his big oak desk. He sighed. This was as painful as drawing teeth.

  Miss Marjorie Sowerby had come into his office, with the Braithwaite woman, and she was determined she would remain with her, even when Hannah Braithwaite had said, “Maybe, you should speak to the inspector in private, Miss Marjorie. I could sit here and wait.” She indicated the painted cream chair in the passageway that passed for a waiting room.

  “No, please come in with me…Inspector, I want Mrs. Braithwaite with me, if that’s all right?”

  He nodded, impatient to get on with it. This was supposedly his day off, but truth to tell, there was always work to do and he didn’t hold with time off. He’d find himself wandering round the house and garden, seeing jobs to do and lacking the motivation to get on with them. “You use your work as an escape from life and home,” Margaret had said to him, once, bitterly. The words had cut him, but he’d bitten back an angry denial because her words had been perceptive.

  “Go over it again. Miss Sowerby. You say your sister is missing. But we need to distinguish here between a grown woman taking herself off, in a bit of a huff like, or someone who might be in danger. Do you see?”

  She nodded, but didn’t look a bit convinced.

  “Has your sister ever done anything like this before?”

  “No, of course not…” She hesitated. “Yes, once. Many years ago, but it was completely different, inspector. It was a broken romance. She went off to a cousin in London, for a week, saying nothing about it to our parents or me. But, that was completely different,” she repeated. “Prudence went off, in high dudgeon. Our parents disapproved of the man, that was all. It probably would have fizzled out anyway. The romance, I mean, but Prudence blamed them. But, that was many years ago. She came home, she got over it…”

  “Yes, but it does tell me something, Miss Sowerby. It tells me that your sister is the type who will remove herself for a while from the source of conflict. That’s interesting, and that’s what makes me think that there’s been a problem at home, with yourself? Am I right?”

  Marjorie fiddled with the top button of her coat, opening it eventually.

  “Take your coat off if you like, Miss Sowerby, it’s maybe a bit stuffy in here.”

  He kept his eye on her while she removed her coat. Hannah Braithwaite stood and took it from her. “So, Miss Sowerby, we were saying about arguments, trouble at home?”

  Greene sighed. This was proving painfully slow.

  “Maybe you’d like a drop of water?”

  She nodded and Hannah Braithwaite got up again.

  “Door straight ahead of you, at the end of the passage,” he said. “You’ll find glasses in the cupboard over the sink.

  Eventually, Marjorie calmed herself enough to look at him and say, “We got one of those letters, inspector. One of the letters with no signature. Dirty, disgusting things that are going around. Prudence has been upset ever since. She’s taken against me, too because of it.”

  * * *

  Dorothea Arbuthnot had steeled herself to speak to Arthur after the episode of the police inspector bringing him home. Things were getting worse, and she couldn’t go on burying her head about it all. Drunk in the village pub. It wasn’t so much shame she felt as an aching hurt. Things had gone too far, for him to listen to her. It would have been easier if she could have been angry—and in the distant past, he had given her reason to feel anger towards him. But, how could she turn against such a broken man?

  She tried to put images out of her mind, but they still intruded. She kept photographs out of the way, hated looking at them. But the images that flashed in front of the mind’s eye were much more difficult to deal with…a dance, a witty, handsome lean man, with warm brown eyes. He’d been passionate, about her, about the estate, but about so much else too…motor cars, for instance, the possibilities opening for travel.

  Their honeymoon had eventually been a cruise. The early days here—the boys, Helena. Now, the only passion he had was for the dead and what he could find to blot out the pain. How on earth could she make him face any of it? Were they not better to soldier on as they were? People in the village were generally good-hearted. They would accept Arthur’s weakness, probably a lot easier than she, could. What would be gained by stirring it all up? Words from her were not going to make him stop drinking, but were only going to give him another excuse to continue.

  * * *

  Cathy fielded the customers’ questions as best she could. It was as if they knew something was amiss and she couldn’t actually tell them the two sisters had gone anywhere as Miss Marjorie and her mam could walk in at any moment. She passed off curious remarks by saying the sisters were busy and refused to say another word.

  Eventually her mother and Miss Marjorie came back—neither of them said anything, but went straight round to the back. To her relief, about a half hour later her mother went, saying she needed to do a short time at the doctor’s this afternoon. Miss Marjorie soon followed her into the shop, unusually for her, wearing a voluminous white apron and carrying a yellow duster. As Cathy took more or less all the responsibility for the dusting and tidying of the shop and post office, this was a surprise.

  “Go and have your bite of lunch, Cathy, you must be hungry. I’ll do a bit of tidying, not that you don’t do a good job. But it will take my mind off things and I want everything to be just right for when Prudence comes back…”

  Her hair was tied back in a scarf, turban style and she looked so unlike her usual self it added to Cathy’s sense of displacement. S
he took her flask and her packet of ham and tomato sandwiches and cycled to a spot by the bank of the river. It was a bit cold, but she breathed in the fresh air in gulps.

  Everything had felt claustrophobic and horrible today. Miss Prudence’s disappearance, Miss Marjorie’s distress, and though she had been so glad of her mother’s help, her presence in the shop had reminded Cathy about the strange things about home. What was the business about the money in the envelope in the shed—and she was sure it was money…and her mother. Her mother seemed to be planning something, or at least keeping secrets. Could it have anything to do with the doctor’s sister, Miss Horton? Or…she couldn’t be planning to leave them, could she?

  Cathy felt sick with panic, suddenly and threw what was left of her sandwich to some passing ducks. Surely, her mother would never leave her and John to their father? She couldn’t do that, could she? Mind you, ever since her father’s return her mother had been tense and nervy. She put on a good show in front of her children, but how could she be happy? The way he treated her would be enough to make anyone leave. But, then why should it be her mother?

  If anyone should leave, it should be him. As soon as this crisis in the shop was over, Cathy was going to face her mother, talk to her. She was going to tell her about the envelope, whatever her father’s threats.

  * * *

  “What does this involve,” Edith asked. She’d hardly thought of anything else since her last talk with Dr. Uxbridge. Maybe this would help, enable her to come to terms with the past. Maybe there was stuff she wasn’t even aware of behind this illness. But, for all the hope, she was also terrified.

  “I think we should concentrate today on talking about the immediate future,” Dr. Uxbridge said.

  Edith was disappointed. Every time she saw the glimmer of an explanation, a bit of hope she was pulled back to the here and now, her incarceration, not that it was really that, in this place and the problem of going home. She couldn’t keep returning to Aunt Alicia’s and the way she felt neither could she imagine living again with her brother, at least not in the long term.

  “For instance, you tell me you are going out to stay at your aunt’s again this weekend? Is this your choice?”

  Edith closed her eyes. She heard a shuddering sigh come from her and then opened her eyes again and looked at the doctor. Why was all this so very exhausting? The explanations…delving? “Yes, like I said, my brother felt that the village, especially as we live above the shop, would be too much for me to face. My aunt lives a few miles out in the country, quietly. She was more than happy to have me…genuinely so, she gets a bit lonely”

  “And would you consider that, on a permanent basis? When you leave here?”

  Edith felt a tightening in her throat. Panic. The thought of living out there, her and Aunt Alicia, growing steadily more cut-off, odder, as the years passed was insupportable.

  “No. Not on a permanent basis, no. It seems an easier option for now. Archie feels that I should actually come back to the village…back home the next time I’m released.”

  There was a pause and it didn’t feel like a comfortable one, to Edith.

  “You have said a bit about how your brother feels, where he thinks is the best place for you to be. But, you haven’t said where it is that you want to go”

  “I don’t know. I never meant to be living with Archie, in Ellbeck at this stage of my life. It sort of come about. I’ve drifted into it. I needed somewhere to come away to and lick my wounds. There was plenty to do and time passed. But, it is perhaps something that is no longer working, for either of us.”

  “But, you will go back there when you are discharged from here?”

  She nodded her head. “Yes, there is no reason to make a drastic decision straight away, I suppose. Just now, I’m likely to make a rash one. Things aren’t all bad at home. I am useful, part of the village. Archie and I rub along well enough. But things do have to change. I’m not sure of the direction of that change, but I hope something will take shape in my mind.”

  That’s good, Edith?”

  “How do you mean, Dr. Uxbridge?”

  “I mean that it is good you can be calm about it—feel in control. I have a feeling being in control is very important to you.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, no. I mean, if you look at the evidence, it hasn’t been something you would say about me, is it? Me being in control?”

  “You left home, you became a VAD. You went to France. Sounds fairly independent to me.”

  She was so tired. This was hard work, challenging her thoughts and beliefs like this. If she was going to get better, though, it is something she was going to have to keep doing. She’d made some progress today. She had arrived at a decision on where she was going to live, well, no, not on where she was going to live—but on the fact she was going to live somewhere else.

  Julia. She needed to talk to Julia, but not here. She suddenly didn’t want to see people here anymore. It was too unreal.

  It was too late to stop Julia visiting though. But she would arrange with her about meeting again over the weekend. Their lives could not be any more different now. Julia was settled, had children. She was the one of the pair of them whose man had come back. What’s more, he had come back undamaged, at least to the naked eye.

  Edith struggled to push away these thoughts. Thinking life should be fair was one of the biggest mistakes any adult could make. So many people were much worse off, too. Mind you, Edith had never understood how on earth that was supposed to make you feel better.

  As it happened, Julia didn’t seem in the best of form. She looked much the same as usual, having the natural, outdoorsy looks that stood up well to life’s travails, but Edith knew her so well that every twist of her mood was obvious.

  “I’m out again, for the weekend, another pass—feels like a reward for good behaviour.”

  “Good, great, Edith.” Julia hesitated. “Does this means you are going back home, or to your auntie’s again?”

  “Well, it’s already been arranged with Aunt Alicia that I would go there this weekend. But, after that…well, home, I suppose. But, I wanted to talk to you about it.”

  “Why, do you mean?”

  Edith shook her head. “Not here, Julia, I can’t think straight in this place. Could you meet up sometime over the weekend? Would you be able to get out, I mean away from the family?”

  Julia laughed, shortly, but didn’t meet Edith’s eye. “There’s only Bea, really, isn’t there? The boys are at school and Giles is out and about all the time, I don’t see that much of him.”

  That didn’t sound right to Edith’s ears. There was a new bleakness in Julia’s voice. It brought her up short. She’d become far too absorbed in her own problems. It looked like Julia too might need to talk to someone to talk to someone.

  * * *

  They took everything out of the room apart from a mattress on the floor and a few thin blankets. They made her put on a gown that fastened around the back and threw in a thick, ugly brown dressing gown. They handled her roughly and she didn’t care, just stored it up in her mind.

  They spoke to each other in a way that was meant for her. You couldn’t trust any of “them” they said. They were no better than animals. They spoke about Phyllis needing the hospital, about how lucky she was not to have lost an eye. They were especially rough when they put her in the room, twisting her arm behind her back, dragging her, though she was not putting up any resistance. But it was the words they spoke that hurt her. She had believed she was doing so well, too.

  * * *

  Greene was in a foul mood. Sergeant Brown kept his head down and wished there was a proper excuse for him to be out of the place, but right now, Greene wanted to go on and on about stupid bloody women, and stupid bloody spinsters, in particular.

  “So, you need to track the foolish woman down and hope she’s not going to be dragged from a river somewhere, because of a barney with that sister of hers.”

  “And she wouldn’t give yo
u any clue about what could have been in the letter that caused the trouble between them?” He should have had a helmet to protect himself, particularly his ears, from the fall-out.

  “I told you, didn’t I? Not a word out of her about the contents of the letter—private business between herself and her sister. All high dudgeon and flaming ‘ysterics. Can’t understand the public, lad—honestly I can’t. They want our help when it all goes wrong, but at the same time they want to keep their secrets and their privacy.

  “Anyway, what are you doing still standing there like flaming Nelson’s column? Get onto the local forces. Check the admissions to the hospitals. Get a description of the bloody woman and a photograph too—it’s all going to be tied up, isn’t it? The doctor, the wealthy widow woman seen off…and these letters. We find the writer of those letters, Brown, as soon as you’ve put the word out about the missing woman, and we do it fast.

  Chapter 14

  Dorothea Arbuthnot looked at her daughter whose arrival last night had been unexpected. She’d screeched up the drive in her MG, scattering all before her.

  She looked tired behind the powdered cheeks and lipstick-painted mouth. Tired and somehow jaded.

  She was thirty-four now, and Dorothea had a sudden poignant image of the village Church, and a veiled bride, with pink cheeks, and smiling eyes—the might-have-beens. She chided herself for her maudlin thoughts. That wasn’t for everyone, and especially not for many of these modern girls, which was strange in a way, when you considered it.

  Those women a decade or so older often had no choice, particularly not in their own class. There hadn’t been, to put it bluntly, enough suitable young men left to go round. But it was different for her own daughter, whose contemporaries had been too young to go to war.