She put her book down. All she had been doing anyway was reading the same paragraph over and over. It was best to do something constructive.
When she first heard the noise outside, it barely registered. Her mother and John were both due back. In fact, she’d better shift herself and put on the potatoes she had already washed and peeled as soon as she had got in from work. After a minute or two when no one came through the door and into the kitchen, she frowned. There had definitely been a noise and Jem had barked a few times as he usually did when greeting anyone to the cottage. Her chest lurched her heart raced and her mouth become dry. But, the feeling went as quickly as it had come. She was being stupid and must be losing her marbles. She was loathe to acknowledge—the spasm of fear she’d felt when she thought her father must have returned.
She wasn’t just going to stand here like a statue, pan of potatoes weighing heavily in her hands. She was just going to act normally, put the taters on for her mother and John and herself, and then have a look around to see what could have set Jem off and caused the noise she wasn’t even sure she’d heard.
There it was again. But, not just a vague sound this time. It was a proper knocking now. Well, that would be all right then. It wouldn’t be dad. Her mother hadn’t asked for his key back, even if she’d felt like it, there hadn’t been time, the way he’d taken off. It must be the police, again.
She plonked the pan on the stove and was comforted for a second by the familiar hissing sound as the wet bottom of the saucepan touched the heat. She hesitated just for a second at the door and then lifted the latch and opened it.
A woman stood there, a woman who was smiling and showing quite prominent teeth. She was dressed to the nines, but you could still see that beneath the fitted belted dark coat, she was very slim. She had a small red hat perched on her head and carried a matching handbag.
“You must be Cathy?” The woman had quite a distinctive voice with a posh accent, no trace of the local intonations. She smiled at Cathy.
“I wanted to have a word with your mother or better still, your father, if he happened to be about?”
Cathy shook her head, still holding the door, beginning to feel stupid. The woman was going to think she was a half-wit or something if she didn’t say something reasonably intelligent soon. “My father is away and my mother is at work. She works as a housekeeper for the doctor. But, I’m expecting her back at any moment.”
“So, would you mind if I waited for your mother, erm…”
“Cathy. Yes, come inside. She should be back any minute.”
Cathy hesitated. This looked like the sort of guest her mother would have taken into the parlour. But, that seemed an odd thing to do, especially as her mother was due back any time. Also, though it was daft to think like this, she didn’t know the woman from Adam, and if she was in the kitchen, then Cathy could keep an eye on her.
“Would you like a cup of tea?”
“That would be very nice.”
Cathy made them both a cup. She felt uneasy about getting the rest of the meal ready with this woman sitting here. They would probably be behind anyway if she was going to hold her mother up.
Cathy looked more closely at the woman as she handed her the cup and saucer. She did look familiar, but where on earth had she seen her?
“You said that your mother would be back soon, but that your father is away. To be honest, it’s him I’ve come to see. Are you expecting him back soon?”
This was very awkward. She didn’t know what her mother would want her to say in the circumstances. She didn’t want to be rude and unhelpful, but this woman could turn out to be some sort of official person. Some women even worked as reporters for the newspapers, or so she’d heard. “Well, not really. He’s away at the moment. Look, it’s best if you talk to my mother—like I say, she’ll be back any moment.”
“When you say he’s away, what do you mean—away where?” The woman’s tone was sharp. She got up abruptly and walked across to the window where she could see the garden path.
Cathy swallowed. She wasn’t just going to get away with fobbing the woman off. But, why should she be bothered? This woman, whoever she was couldn’t browbeat her like this. She didn’t want to be rude, but why should she tell her that her dad had taken off, that they had no idea where he had gone? She couldn’t just keep saying that her mother was coming back in a minute either. That made her sound like a child.
“Are you sure you are being straight with me, young lady. He’s not hiding outside, in the shed, or something?” The woman laughed.
Cathy looked at her. Was she joking? She was still smiling, but Cathy had the feeling she was almost too anxious to see her father. Her heart beat fast. Surely, her father hadn’t got another woman, or something. Look at all the time he had spent down south, before. “No, he’s not in the shed. I’m not sure where he is, actually.”
She took a deep breath. Looking yet again at this woman, taking in her clothes and her age, it was ridiculous what she’d been thinking. She just couldn’t imagine her father with this woman. She must stop thinking of her as this woman. “I’m not sure who you are. I probably should know. I do recognise your face, but I can’t place you, I’m sorry.”
“Really.” The woman looked quite animated. She smiled again, her teeth coming just a little over her bottom lip.
“Well now, that is surprising. I would have thought that, as you work for the Misses Sowerby, you’d have a better memory for faces. Then again, I suppose you have a lot of customers coming into the shop. Are they well? Old Miss Marjorie and Miss Prudence, what a pair of old antiques, sweet though, look as if they came all in a piece with the shop don’t they?”
Cathy was angry. She didn’t like this woman, who hadn’t said her name. For all her clothes and posh accent, she didn’t have much in the way of manners. “I should know your name,” she said.
“Well, Cathy. I should also like to know where your father is. I have very urgent business with him.”
“I’m not sure where he is. He left a few days ago. I think he may have gone back down south—maybe looking for work. He used to live down there…”
“Looking for work?” The woman frowned. “That’s a very unlikely story, Cathy. He’s an odd-job man isn’t he, working for the Arbuthnots and round about the place? Your mother works, you tell me. You work, so why would your father need to go away looking for work? Away from this snug little cottage and his happy family.”
There was a sneer in her voice, and something was very wrong. Wrong with this whole thing. Who was the woman and what did she want with her father and why on earth did she think Cathy was lying?
“I’ll just have a look-see, shall I, in case you might just be mistaken? Telling me little fibs, even? Would that be it, Cathy? Has he told you to lie for him, cover for him if anybody called round to hold him to account for his misdeeds?”
Sickness jolted through Cathy and for a few seconds she thought she was going to have to bolt from the room. “I need some water,” she said.
“Get some then, while I have a quick look around…”
Cathy readied herself to run, to run as fast away as possible from this woman and waylay her mother, and John…God, John…he couldn’t walk in on this. He would be terrified. Just go. She’d play it really calm and let the woman gain the upper hand. Then, when she went upstairs, Cathy would be through the door.
“On second thought, that would be silly of me, wouldn’t it? I’ll take you with me.”
Cathy looked at the woman, weighing up her size and strength. She was thin and lazy looking. She couldn’t make her do anything.
“No, I’m not going with you. This is all completely mad. I don’t know who you are. I keep telling you my father has left and my mother will be back soon…”
Her mother should have been home by now. Sweat broke out on her lip and down the back of her spine and she went cold. Had this woman done something to her—to her and John? No, that was crazy, but then again, this wh
ole episode was crazy—she was being ordered around in her own house by a woman she didn’t even know.
“I think you’re coming with me, Cathy.” The woman delved into her shiny big green handbag and drew out a knife. Cathy saw dark blotches in front of her eyes, something that had only happened her once before in her life when she had fainted in school on a hot day.
She couldn’t faint. She would just stay calm and cooperate with the woman. Someone would come, something would happen and she would be saved. This couldn’t be happening in an ordinary afternoon in Ellbeck.
But it was.
“Come on, Cathy,” the woman spoke in a perfectly calm voice as if the two of them were going on a country walk. “You walk ahead of me, there’s a good girl. We’ll find your father and bring his blackmailing antics to an end, eh? Don’t worry. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to speak to him and I think he’s still in this house. I hope you’re not lying.”
She put a thin bony hand on Cathy’s shoulder and turned her round. She was a lot stronger than she looked.
At the bottom of the stairs, Cathy spun round to look at the woman’s face. She surprised herself by doing it and as soon as she turned, she regretted her action. It was as though, while one part of her mind was telling her to play along, to try to stay safe, another part, a deep down inside her part was telling her different. Telling her she needed to fight, to get away, and above all to stop her mother and John walking into a trap. That’s if they were still…no, she couldn’t think like that.
She didn’t have a proper plan, not even in the seconds she took to turn, or if she did, it didn’t go beyond knocking the woman off balance. She didn’t knock her off balance, but she did put her off her stride. The woman let out a small shriek and then a stream of bad words and curses.
It was not sharp. More like the woman had punched her, somewhere in the top part of her stomach. She pressed her hand against her cardigan. She looked down at her fingers. They were red, really red—scarlet. She wasn’t pressing any more, either. Her fingers were barely touching her cardigan now.
The woman had gone, or at least she thought she had, because she couldn’t hear her. But there was a different sound and came from her own body. It was like the sea, a whooshing sound.
The woman had stabbed her; she knew that now, though it hadn’t been sharp. But, the blood…she must have been cut. Then she heard another sound, dripping, like a tap dripping, an annoying, drip, drip noise. She looked down and saw that big drops of blood were falling onto the wooden floor in front of the stairs. She was sort of lying, or slumped on the floor.
She shivered. It was cold and she was lonely. There was no fear, no pain, but she wanted someone there with her. She wanted her mother. She remembered being worried about her mother. Now, she wanted her here.
“Mam,” she said, but she couldn’t hear her own voice. Something came down over her eyes like the muslin cloth her mother used in jam making. Then, it grew dark.
Chapter 28
“No, leave it, it doesn’t matter.”
Edith looked with agitation as Mrs. Braithwaite insisted on reaching across to the top of the tall cupboard in the corner of the room. It was what her mother would have referred to as an accident waiting to happen. Hannah had set to, today, with a vengeance, seemingly filled with the energy of ten women.
Edith hadn’t meant her to go to this trouble. It was stupid. All she’d said was, “Goodness. Mrs. Braithwaite that suitcase on the wardrobe, I haven’t looked in it for years. It was my mother’s, she was such a hoarder. I bet it’s full of treasures.”
Before she could say another word, Hannah had dragged the steps across, but because of an old bedstead in the way, she couldn’t get quite near enough to the cupboard and leaned across. A second before she fell, Edith could predict exactly what was going to happen, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
She heard a sickening crash as Hannah unbalanced and fell to the floor, jarring her shoulder against the corner of the iron bedstead. “Oh, Mrs. Braithwaite, are you all right? I’m sorry, that’s a stupid question.” She rushed across to the other woman and knelt.
Hannah Braithwaite’s face was blanched of colour and small beads of sweat had formed above her top lip. However, it wasn’t her shoulder that seemed to be causing her the most pain, but her ankle, which Edith could see was twisted at an awkward angle.
Carefully, Edith bundled up one of her mother’s coats to support Mrs. Braithwaite’s body. She wouldn’t move her, but would just try and make her at least a little more comfortable. “I think the doctor, Archie is still downstairs. He was talking about doing his prescriptions before setting off on a few early evening calls. Will you be all right for a moment while I get him?”
Mrs. Braithwaite was becoming agitated, trying and failing to get up. “I was to meet John from the bus, I told him…he’ll be wondering where I am. I think he’s been having a bit of trouble from some lads since his father went…I have to go to him. I’ll be all right.”
“You can’t, Hannah.” It was the first time Edith ever called the other woman by her Christian name. “Look, you can try, if you want to but I honestly don’t believe you can stand on that ankle. It’s swelling up in front of our eyes. I will get something to put on it and fetch Archie. Just hold on for a minute, Mrs. Braithwaite. I bet you’re in a lot of pain too. Look, as soon as the doctor is with you, I’ll go straight to the village bus stop and take John home. Cathy will be there, at home, won’t she?”
Hannah nodded and Edith left the room quickly. The woman was shocked; she shook. It was time to think fast. She could either stay and comfort and reassure Hannah or she could get practical help. She took care going down the stairs though; this was exactly the time when she didn’t need to also take a tumble.
“Thank God, you’re here. Really, thank God. Mrs. Braithwaite has had a fall, off the steps. I blame myself. I should never have let her near them. Her ankle is swelling. It looks like a bad sprain at least. She also gave her shoulder quite a knock against that old iron bedstead. I think she is in shock too, pale shaking and that. Maybe, take up a blanket, or something, until we can bring her down to the sitting room. The thing is, Archie, she was going to meet young John from the bus and take him home with her. The bus is due in about ten minutes. I have to go. It isn’t worth taking the motor. I’ll get my coat and just go. I’ll take him straight home, his sister’s there.”
As she was speaking, they were both moving, Archie picking up his bag and a tartan rug from the examining couch, Edith out into the hall to collect her coat from the stand.
“Where’s my mam?” John seemed anxious, looking around as if he couldn’t believe his mother wasn’t somewhere near.
“Now, John, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. But your mother’s had a small fall, while she was overreaching. She isn’t badly hurt or anything like that, but she twisted her ankle and the doctor is seeing to her. She was most worried about you. So, I said I’d come and meet you and take you home.”
“Are you sure? Are you honestly telling me the truth? Are you sure there’s nothing worse wrong with her? Can’t I go and see her?”
Edith stood in the middle of the pavement, hesitating. The lad was terrified; small wonder, too. His father had disappeared, the police had been at his home, more than once and now, the one lynch-point; his main provider of security was hurt. It wasn’t surprising that he was in a state.
She scrabbled about in her head for something to say to the lad on the short walk to his home. To her embarrassment, she found herself relying on asking him how school was going and what he wanted to be when he grew, up. There, she hit, by complete chance, the jackpot and spent the following half mile listening to more information than she could ever absorb, on De Havilland and Zeppelins. John was an avid follower of air travel and wanted to be a pilot when he grew up. Edith hoped, silently, that if he succeeded it would be in the commercial rather than the military section. There had been enough war.
&
nbsp; “Miss Horton, look.”
The boy’s voice was one of hushed amazement, not terror, which was what Edith felt, when she saw the woman come towards them. It took her a few seconds to recognise the dishevelled svelte figure. As she came a little nearer down the lane, Edith recognised Caroline Butler; her hand, her sleeve, and her face were splashed with blood.
Chapter 29
“Is that the boy, young Johnnie?”
The voice was more definitely familiar than the figure, though now, the tone sounded high and excited, rather than laconic. The most worrying thing was what she carried, down by her side. A knife. A blood-stained knife.
“Where’s his mother, or more to the point, his father?”
She seems to have forgotten she was holding the knife. Edith didn’t know whether that made the situation worse or better. “Mrs. Braithwaite won’t be home yet, she’s had a small accident. Doctor Horton is seeing to her. That’s why I met John from the school bus, to bring him home to his sister.” Edith said it deliberately, trying to keep it normal and not betray how sick with worry about Cathy, she was.
“I wouldn’t go to the house, if I were you…especially the child.”
She laughed then and with sick recognition, Edith saw and heard madness. Forget her own sojourn in St. Bride’s. Maybe even Esther Kirk’s years of institutionalisation were a result of life circumstances. But, this woman was truly and dangerously mad.
She put her arm around John’s shoulder, as casually as she could manage. She had to see what the woman had done to Cathy, but she could not put John at any more risk. Edith fought her down her own demons. She fought the hardest battle she had faced, to keep calm and to think straight.
Treated as Murder Page 22
