Treated as Murder

by Noreen Wainwright

  Don’t ask about Cathy. Get the woman to go. Then she could go on to the cottage and face whatever was there. But, maybe delay could mean life or death. Or was Cathy already dead? I can’t let myself think that, Edith grappled with her mind, trying to keep her eyes on Caroline Butler and keep John as close to her as she could. It probably was too late for Cathy. Something told her that, something about the flat tone that had replaced the excited voice, when Caroline had referred to her.

  She needed to keep John safe. “Do you want to come back to the cottage with us, maybe have a cup of tea?” This was crazy, but maybe by suggesting that, Caroline would do the opposite. Sure enough, she was shaking her head decisively.

  “No, I must go…my brother will be waiting for me.” She frowned and then looked down at the knife and flung it a few feet away from her, as if to disown it and disassociate herself from whatever it was that she had done.

  “You go up to the house,” said Caroline, “I’ll look after the boy, until his mother gets back. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, John?”

  Oh, God. So far, John hadn’t spoken a word, but she could feel his rigidity against her arm. “I can’t leave him, Caroline. His mother would be upset with me. I don’t dare let him out of my sight.”

  “Think I’m stupid?” Caroline spat the words out.

  Things had taken a big turn for the worst.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Caroline said, still with that new viciousness in her tone. “We’ll all go back to the cottage, wait for one or other of the parents to show up. As she spoke, Caroline edged toward the knife, all the time keeping her eyes on the other pair.

  This is my one and only chance. She shouted at John, “Run!” Then she launched herself at the woman. If she could just hold her, somehow…help must come at some point.

  The conversation she’d had with Julia on their walk flashed through her brain. She was older and far less fit than the other woman was and this was instantly apparent.

  Within seconds, it seemed, she lay on the ground with Caroline straddling her, teeth drawn back and spittle in the corner of her mouth. Edith saw big teeth fasten over her bottom lip and Caroline raised her hand, the hand again holding the knife.

  Edith managed to free one arm and drew it up to shield her face.

  * * *

  John ran, not towards home, but towards other people. Tears streamed down his face. He should have gone to find his sister. He felt as though he would choke, because of the tears and because he was running as fast as he could.

  A man’s hand stopped him, a big man’s hand on his shoulder. “John, what’s the matter? Where are they?”

  “Outside home…this woman with a knife…a horrible woman …She’s hurt my sister.”

  “John, listen to me. Go into the shop, into the Misses Sowerby’s shop. Tell them I said to telephone the police. Tell the police to go to your house. Do exactly as I say, John, now. Do you understand?”

  The boy nodded once, and ran on, the sound of his sobs still reaching Archie Horton’s ears.

  Archie had just about dealt with Hannah Braithwaite, when his aunt Alicia had telephoned.

  Mrs. Braithwaite was lying on the sofa in the sitting room, highly embarrassed, but following orders. The tartan rug was now over her legs and she sat up drinking a cup of tea.

  “Listen, Aunt Alicia, this isn’t the best time. I’m sorry. I’ve got a patient…”

  “No, Archie, you listen to me. I had a strange visit today, a very strange visit from Caroline Butler. Not right, if you ask me, not right at all. Distinctly odd. I want you to warn Mrs. Braithwaite. She was on her way round there, to find Mrs. Braithwaite’s husband…I tried to tell her he wasn’t there, but…”

  Archie didn’t even attempt to make an excuse to Hannah Braithwaite. “I need to pop out for a short time,” he said. “Please don’t move from that sofa, for any reason. It’s imperative you keep that ankle entirely still for the next half-hour or so.

  Hannah nodded. She looked puzzled, but didn’t argue.

  Chapter 30

  There was a sharp pain in the back of her arm and then a shout. Caroline moved backwards and upwards and Edith got the impression of another person had arrived. Thankfulness made her shut her eyes and utter a few words of prayer. She opened her eyes and saw golden sunlit leaves and a darkening blue sky. She felt a chill in her body and saw red on her arm. The world simplified and stilled down into this one moment.

  She lifted her head and heard panting, like a trapped animal. Her brother had steel arms wrapped round the struggling body.

  “Take your cardigan off. Wrap it around your arm, tightly. Lift your arm, keep it raised.”

  Edith struggled to do as he had said. She started to shake, closed her eyes tightly for a second. The elation was gone, replaced by panic. She gave way to the shaking.

  Don’t be stupid, she told herself. He’s a man. He is strong. He won’t let her go. Help will have to come soon. “Cathy,” she said.

  “I know,” Archie replied. “The police will be here, soon.”

  The sound of the woman, Caroline, shrieking laughter rent the countryside like an obscenity.

  “Be quiet,” Archie told her.

  There was no sound, just a strange waiting period and time that stretched and went by achingly slowly. Then it flew when they heard the sounds of help coming. Caroline Butler was put in handcuffs. She slumped dramatically against the sergeant.

  Hysterical, thought Edith. Rage and contempt were an explosion trying to force themselves from her mouth, no matter how stupid it was to feel either of those emotions. If the woman was mad, what was the point? “I’m coming too,” she said.

  Archie opened his mouth to argue.

  “No, don’t tell me what to do. I’m coming.” She knew that the only advantage she had at this second was that they didn’t have time to argue. Inspector Greene clearly wanted Archie with him, and where they were going, Edith was also going.

  Chapter 31

  “Oh God.” Edith, still clasping her arm, bent double.

  It wasn’t the sight, even all the blood. It was the dreadful waste of a young life. Mad, or not, if she had Caroline Butler, in front of her this minute, she’d…

  Oh, what was the point? She wouldn’t do anything. Caroline Butler was in the right place—somewhere she couldn’t hurt anyone else, or ruin anyone else’s life. Edith had a quick flashback to a young man, a boy, really, his blue eyes clouding over, holding on to her hand, his grip gradually loosening.

  Archie and the inspector had gone straight to the girl. Thank God, Hannah and young John were safely out of the way. But someone would need to tell them. The inspector looked grim, grim and beaten, all the stuffing knocked out of him, no bluster left at this moment.

  “I can’t believe it,” Archie raised his voice. “There’s a pulse. Edith, come here, quickly. Look, feel here. He showed her the exact spot on the girl’s neck.

  Edith put her two fingers there and shut her eyes to focus.

  “Yes,” she said in a low voice, afraid to hope.

  Greene jumped up, all dourness vanished, radioing for an ambulance.

  “Get blankets, Edith, quickly. We must keep her warm. God knows how long she’s been here, there’s a lot of blood lost. She may not pull through.”

  Edith refused to entertain the idea. That would be too much. She pushed away thoughts of the damage severe blood loss could do to the human body. Cathy was alive. While there’s life, there hope, she told herself as she ran up the stairs to fetch blankets.

  “I’m going with her in the ambulance. Get yourself home, Edith. Then go round to Maybury. That arm probably needs a few stitches. You should have a tetanus injection, too. I’ll get any news to you as soon as I possibly can.” Archie had taken command, even the inspector seemed to be taking in his words.

  The thoughts of the doctor fiddling about with her arm, while Hannah would be going out of her mind with worry, and poor John, though safe with the Sowerby sisters, would be
wondering what had happened was insupportable. Edith kept that thought to herself. She would take her chances with her arm, get someone to help her tie a bandage tightly round it and hope for the best. If Archie returned fairly soon from the hospital there would probably be still time to put in a few stitches.

  Wondering how soon Archie would be back and what news there would be from the hospital, made her agitated. She looked at the departing ambulance and then around at the mess in the cottage.

  The inspector caught her eye.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Miss Horton. We can’t let Hannah come back to this and someone needs to break it to her, about the young lass. We’ll go together now. Let me take you home. I’ll see to the house, secure it and so on, later. There will be a trial, I suppose, and we still need evidence, even though we have our woman. It would be best if Mrs. Braithwaite and the boy had somewhere else to stay for a day or two.”

  Edith nodded. “That won’t be a problem, Inspector.”

  “Oh, Miss Horton, I have to go to her…if I hadn’t been so stupid and fallen from that set of steps. I should have been at home, been there. It should have been me not her facing that mad woman. I can’t believe it…there must be a way of getting me into town. Isn’t there that hackney car that Douglas man, Douglas Higgins runs?”

  If she would only stop talking for a minute. Edith needed to get her to the hospital, but it would be criminally stupid and probably impossible for her to drive. The police inspector had stayed with them, been amazingly good with the shocked woman, but their limited manpower would be hard stretched as it was, dealing with probably the most traumatic event Ellbeck had witnessed in living memory.

  She got up to go to the telephone. She would ring the exchange and find out the number of that man with the hackney cabs. But how stupid. Julia. Within half-a-hour of the telephone call, Julia had been brought up to date with events and had packed Mrs. Braithwaite, complete with a walking stick that had belonged to Edith’s father, into her car.

  “I’ll be thinking of you,” Edith put her good arm around the woman’s tense shoulders and gave her a quick hug.

  There was no way to convey the heartfelt empathy lodged inside Edith since she had seen the girl and thought she was dead. Then there had been that soaring of hope. She went inside and put the kettle on, fetching a couple of aspirin from the cupboard. Her arm was throbbing badly now.

  The conversation she’d had with Henry Wilkes about good and evil and about getting the bad side of life out of proportion returned to her. Henry had said that was a symptom of mental distress. What had happened today had been truly bad. She was still here, though she was lucky not to have been killed or, like young Cathy, seriously hurt. She was still here, and despite her throbbing arm and her worry about Cathy and Mrs. Braithwaite, she felt strong, not weak.

  Chapter 32

  “I feel tired as hell,” Edith said, “but at the same time I feel as though I’ll never sleep again. My mind is racing far too much.”

  “You’ll sleep as soon as your head hits the pillow, especially if you have another glass of this.”

  He held up the wine bottle and Edith nodded. They were alone in the house now. Mrs. Braithwaite was staying in a visitors’ room in the hospital and John was tucked up in the Sowerby’s spare bedroom. The presence of a child in the house and the feeling of doing something useful seemed to energise the pair and pull them out of whatever trough they had sunk into.

  “He may as well stay,” said Marjorie, when Edith had walked across.

  “If you’re sure,” Edith said, taking in Marjorie’s eager nod. “I’ll just have a quick word with him, if that’s all right. Then I’ll leave you to it—I see that he’s in safe hands.”

  Marjorie led her into the kitchen where John was sat at the table in front of a jigsaw, a plate of biscuits by his side and Prudence asking him if he wanted another cup of cocoa.

  His expression changed when he saw her. His appearance of enjoying the two women playing mother hen was only superficial. His thoughts were with his mother and sister.

  “Cathy is in the hospital. Hopefully, in the end, she got help in time. But, she’s very poorly, John. So, your mam is staying overnight. I told her I would make sure you are all right, and I can see that you are.”

  John nodded. “They are being very kind to me. I’ll be fine here, but Cathy—I want her to get better. Please tell me that she’ll get better.”

  Edith had seen the look exchanged between the sisters when John said how well he was being looked after. He was in the best possible hands, here. She wished she could take the frightened look away from him and was tempted to make the possible recovery sound like a definite. But, she couldn’t—not quite.

  “The bleeding has stopped and she is holding her own, John. The hospital people know what they’re doing. They are replacing the fluids she has lost and she is young and fit. We must pray and hope for the next twenty-four hours.”

  John nodded vigorously, his face screwing up as if his concentration alone would make his sister better.

  “Damn near exsanguination,” Archie said as he’d taken his coat off. “I’ll tell you something, Edie. That was one of the nearest things I’ve ever seen and I include the field of battle in that. I couldn’t find a pulse straight away and her breathing must have been so shallow—the whole system shutting down, you see. That’s the worry now. The next hours are crucial…to see that the major organs function all right…”

  “But, you’re hopeful?” Edith wanted to put words in his mouth.”

  He nodded. “I hope I’m not wrong, but they seemed on top of their game there and she has youth and I hope, good health, on her side. But, your arm. Come down to the surgery with me, and I’ll see whether it would benefit from a few stitches.”

  At the end of a day like this, having four stitches in her arm was neither here nor there, though it was not something she’d experienced before. After the first wince, she steeled herself and told herself it would be soon over. “The poor girl must have been so terrified,” she said to Archie, thinking of Cathy as he put a crepe bandage over the dressing.

  “Let’s hope she lives and gets well enough to tell the tale,” Archie said, soberly.

  Archie put another shovel of coal on the fire and stoked it up into another spurt of life and heat. Edith looked deep into the orange, violet, and purple flame, allowing it to mesmerise her, calm her. Eventually she lifted her eyes and looked at Archie.

  He’d gone to see Inspector Greene after stitching her arm. Greene had said Caroline Butler was calm, was talking a lot, apparently rationally, there were no signs of madness, no signs of hysteria. Her brother had been informed and was genuinely shocked.

  “I understand why Esther Kirk wrote the letters, why she tipped back into some form of disturbed behaviour. I can well imagine the unwholesome duo she formed with Joshua Braithwaite. Like you say, there is even a sort of symmetry about the way she died. I see too that Braithwaite is an immoral chancer who is motivated by money, but Caroline Butler? Why on earth? Why kill her stepmother? Surely, it wasn’t all just about money?”

  “Greene said there was a discrepancy about her visits to her stepmother. She came on another visit, apparently, on her own, without her brother. Saw her opportunity. Her luck ran out when Braithwaite wheedled this out of Esther Kirk. Money, pure and simple. Her passport into the world of moving pictures.

  Archie leaned forward in his chair and held his wine glass to the light.

  “At least half the ill doing in the world is for money or ownership of land—it all amounts to the same thing. I have no doubt the psychiatrists would say she had some form of megalomania. Whatever label you might put on it, she wanted money. Whether it was the truth or not, apparently she saw that as the only way she was going to achieve her dream.

  In the firelight, Edith could see him grin.

  “Maybe, she was just a bit more of an egomaniac than some of the others pursuing that particular dream.”

&nbs
p; “Oh, Archie, don’t exaggerate. She’s paid, or will pay a heavy price for it. You don’t think she’ll hang do you?”

  “No, she may be coming across as sane for now. But, I think she’ll only be able to keep that up for so long. Broadmoor for life would be my guess. Who knows? Maybe she will actually be all right there. Plenty of scope for her dramatic talents.”

  That didn’t sound so likely to Edith, but she was too tired to argue. “Maybe we should just have a toast?” she said.

  Archie raised his glass and looked at her.

  “To Brigid,” she said,

  “And Alastair,” Archie said. One more,” said Edith, “just one more. To the future.”

  ABOUT NOREEN WAINWRIGHT

  Noreen is Irish and now lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, a dairy farmer. She works part-time as a mentor at Staffordshire University and the rest of her time is spent writing. Many of her articles and short stories have been published and she has co-written a non-fiction book.

  She loves crime fiction, particularly that of the “golden age” and that is what she wants to recreate with Edith Horton’s world.

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  Get in touch with Noreen

  Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/noreen.wainwright

  Blog - http://www.ahomespunyear.blogspot.com

  Tirgearr Publishing - http://www.tirgearrpublishing.com/authors/Wainwright_Noreen

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  Thank you for reading Treated as Murder.

  If you liked this story, watch for other releases from Noreen at Tirgearr Publishing.