It could put me in such a dangerous position. It’s ages ago. I’ve moved on in all senses of the word. This could really ruin my life. I have a son and I’m looking for a new position. I can’t be dragged into this.”
There was an edge to her voice and he couldn’t decide if it was anger, like she used to portray, or desperation. One way or another she was putting him under pressure to keep quiet about what she’d said, about the relationship she had had with Fallon.
“The inspector will find out about your time in London and the fact that you knew Fallon. Whether you or I speak about it or not. I can only suggest that it would look bad for you if you keep such a thing from him.”
“I didn’t kill David. What earthly reason would I have to do that now? The man was nothing other than a nuisance to me, turning up like this. If something had happened to him at the time when he got engaged to someone else and made a fool out of me, then, I might be a legitimate suspect. But not now.”
It wasn’t the point though and she knew it.
“I understand what you’re saying and accept your point but that doesn’t change what I’m saying. It looks bad if you don’t tell the inspector of the connection and when he finds it out, as he will, it won’t be good for you.”
“It will be all right for me though if he finds the murderer quickly. Then there will be no need to drag my name through the mud and make life difficult for my son.”
She was manipulating him. Henry wasn’t stupid and whatever pity he had for her was disappearing. “If I’m asked straight, Mrs Elliott, I’m not going to lie. I feel strongly that you should tell Inspector Jardine about the connection before anyone else does.”
She glared at him. “I’ve spent a lot of time in the company of clergymen. I’ve decided that maybe it’s time to work in a different environment, preferably with people who aren’t sanctimonious and who don’t think there’s a right and a wrong answer to every question.”
“That isn’t…” Before he could attempt to justify himself or express the little knot of anger her words brought, there was a knock on the door and it was quickly opened.
Ivy Miller looked uncomfortable. She frowned as she introduced—or attempted to introduce the woman just at her shoulder.
In a flash Henry knew who she must be.
“So, you’re the housekeeper my husband had a little dalliance with, before he came to his senses.
The woman was tall and spare and had one of those voices. The sort of Englishwoman bred to order others to do her bidding. One of those empire-building women who repelled and fascinated in equal measure.
David Fallon might have been arrogant but goodness, he’d had his match in this one.
“Mrs Fallon. You must be very upset but I don’t think this is going to make you feel any better.”
Ivy Miller indicated the armchair as she spoke, still looking out of her sphere of comfort.
“I’ll stay as I am, if it’s all the same to you. Although, some tea would be welcome, if you don’t mind.”
Ivy left the room with an anxious glance, first at Henry then at Fiona Elliott, who sat rigid looking straight ahead. She bit her lip. Barely holding herself together, then.
Henry needed to remove himself but like a man possessed by some awful fascination, he couldn’t leave the room. Would staying and watching what went on between these two woman lead him to discover why David Fallon was killed. A vain man and stupid too because it took someone either very young or unintelligent to treat people with such carelessness. That wasn’t quite true. Some people just didn’t care. Fallon gave a good impression of someone who didn’t care but maybe too much so. Didn’t the truly dangerous manipulative person usually try to charm.
It caused a start when Jane Fallon spoke because she couldn’t read his mind.
“My husband was quite a charmer and we all know that he was good-looking so it was nothing unusual for woman to make fools of themselves in his presence. Made me ashamed of my own sex, at times. Bringing him cakes and hand-knitted pullovers. It provided what we called hours of innocent amusement.”
“You seem to be dealing well with the shock, Mrs Fallon,”
The other woman smiled, her lips quite thin and very red.
“Breeding, dear. You won’t find me prostrating myself or moaning and wailing. I know how to conduct myself and when you are in the milieu I’m used to, that’s essential.
She dropped the French word in with what was such a sneer that Henry felt a strong urge to get away. Just as strong as the urge that made him want to leave a few minutes ago.
Ivy Miller went to the door with a rush looking like relief when there was a tap announcing the tea.
There was a silence as soon as they all sat with their tea. A silence filled with hostility and suspicion.
“I hear there was another attack on another clergyman at the retreat?”
“Yes,” Henry answered. “Stephen Bird. He was attacked and left injured. Luckily not too seriously.” That wasn’t the most sensitive thing to say…then…your husband left St Chad’s, Mrs Fallon. He left for a night, a day, nearly two days. When he returned he said that he had been at home.”
“Nonsense. I think I would have known about it, don’t you, if he’d been at home. You must have got it wrong.” He hadn’t got it wrong and probably everyone in the room knew so but no-one said anything. She was lying for reasons of her own or David Fallon had been elsewhere.
Josh Braithwaite’s sister, Sadie, showed little grief at the loss of her brother. She was slight, with good features and hair pulled back into a bun. She was neatly dressed and looked at them with suspicion. “I can’t tell you where Josh was going, wherever you say. Cumbria? He was restless and I couldn’t keep track of his comings and goings.”
They sat in her neat cottage. She was a widow without children and worked as a nurse in her local hospital.
She had told them all this in the first five minutes. At pains, perhaps to let them know how different she was from her brother.
She had made tea and cut slices of Victoria sponge. She had a slightly fussy air in the way she set out plates evenly in front of them and used some lovely china and said, “oh dear,” and “what a thing,” regularly. She was either an obsessive type of woman or nervous. Inspector Greene gave him a look of impatience as though it were his fault they were faffing about with teaspoons and pink linen napkins instead of finding John Braithwaite. You could see his point though it wasn’t Brown’s fault.
“Me and John were chalk-and-cheese as they say. He were ruined.
Only son and my mother thought the sun shone…as they say, not to be crude. I were here for fetching and carrying and cleaning up after him. That was me you see, as a girl.”
They needed to get to the point. But there was something about this woman that gave the impression that she wasn’t going to be hurried.
“My mother did him no favours. He turned out a wastrel. I reckon you know that better than me. Trouble ever since he got old enough to tie his own shoelaces.”
“So, since he left Ellbeck you kept track of him. He rang you, I mean?”
“Funny enough he did. Religiously every week. Friday evening between seven and half-seven. Talked about nowt much of the time.
But it were like …I don’t know…as if I were a link with the past.
Childhood.”
“Did he talk about what he was doing and did he mention John?”
“He’d talk about John and Cathy, mainly John, occasionally.
Bitter though. He had a set on Hannah, that got to me sometimes, listening to him blame her for everything, for her namby-pamby approach to Josh, tying him to her apron strings, about how she had no time for Josh when he got back from the war. And the cottage that was another thing. Did you know that Hannah’s uncle left her the cottage?”
“Yes, while your brother was away. He didn’t come straight back when they were demobbed in 1918, did he?
“No, the rest of the army was desperate to g
et away from the awfulness of it all and get back to normality of life at home, if my late husband was anyone to go by. Not my brother though. That was the start of it, I often think, the real restless nature of him. He went back for a while and there was all that business with that poor woman who lost her mind.”
Brown shifted in his chair, took another drop of tea, which touched the spot. He averted his eyes from the cake. No need for greed as his mother would say.
It was difficult to stay with her story. It was a rambling account and they knew most of it before. They were talking on the telephone to the Cumbrian police. The accident had taken place a few miles north of Penrith. Josh Braithwaite had been heading north.
He was interested in finding out about people—one of the best parts of the job. But, this seemed to be time-wasting exercise.
Priorities. They needed to find the lad but maybe they just had to let her get round to it in her own way—and her own time.
“He was my brother and I’m sad this has happened. I honestly am sad and I haven’t even properly taken it in yet. There were only the two of us and though I resented the way my mother always favoured him, I was fond of him. That didn’t make me like the way he carried on though. I couldn’t stand it when he started slating Hannah or going on as if all his misfortune was always the fault of someone else. That’s what being spoilt did for him.” She looked straight at Brown.
“You’re a young man and you’ll probably have children and I’ll give you one piece of advice. Don’t rear them to think that the world owes them. If you do, they’ll never be satisfied and will make the lives of those around them miserable.”
From nowhere she began to cry, slow tears that she rubbed hard at. It was as though she was annoyed at her own tears. Maybe he
had read her wrong. She had no illusions about her brother. Maybe that even made it worse; the feeling that things need not have ended like this.
“Would you like a drink of water? Maybe something a bit stronger?”
Inspector Greene showing his compassionate side. Brown had seen this enough times by now not to be all that surprised.
“No, take no notice of me…giving way like this. I don’t know what came over me; a nurse too.” She smiled with effort and tucked a lace edged handkerchief up the sleeve of her neat lavender coloured cardigan.
“Obviously our biggest concern is your nephew. I’m not sure exactly what you know but he disappeared from home. From what we can work out he was going to be with his father, Josh. We first believed that his father had picked him up after school and taken him. Then, Josh turned up and it was clearly not the case.”
“I know that John had gone missing because Hannah telephoned me looking for an address for Josh. I gave it to her and that’s the last I heard. I‘m shocked that he isn’t back. Poor Hannah must be distraught.”
“She’s very worried. Your brother made it obvious that he knew something about the lad but was adamant that he hadn’t taken him and I think we have to accept that. Unfortunately, he took himself off before we had time to question him again. A man who had something to do. Hannah, Mrs Braithwaite, had no doubt in her mind that he knew where their son was and that he was somehow involved in John’s disappearance. Unfortunately…well, you know what happened next. We’re very concerned about the lad.”
Inspector Greene’s account was succinct. Still Brown was bothered by something he couldn’t identify. Something in the story of John’s disappearance and something that lad, Freddie had said.
Freddie Earnshaw. He had made a dog’s dinner of talking to that boy.
“Sergeant.” His boss was looking at him and he felt his cheeks warm. He looked down at his notebook and paid attention to what the woman was saying.
“My brother wouldn’t harm the lad and wouldn’t intentionally put him in the way of danger. “She hesitated.
“Money, though was at the heart of everything for Josh. The bible quote about the love of the money being the root of evil. I often said it to him. He laughed at me.
Yorkshire
Edith had spent much of the day with Hannah and Cathy. They had talked more. The picture had shifted, though there was no less tension. If anything, the worry about John was heightened. In the early afternoon, a college friend of Cathy’s had called to the cottage driving her father’s Ford Anglia and had persuaded her to go out with her for a drive.
Cathy had looked from her mother to Edith, and back to her friend, Alice, and was small and determined. You could just see her, in a few years’ time, having total control over a class of small children.
“Go, Cathy. I mean it, child. You need to get out and away from all of this for an hour or two. The Inspector and the young sergeant have gone to talk to your Auntie Sadie. They won’t be back until much later. Unless…”
They all knew what she meant. They would be back unless they got some definite news about John.
“What if he’s found. What if some other police force finds him?”
Inspector Greene had assured them that the search for John had extended around the country, concentrating in the part of the country where Josh was heading.
“Just go, Cathy. Go out for a while. You need to get a bit of fresh air. I’m right, Edith, Alice?”
They both nodded.
“If it makes you feel better, Cathy, decide where it is you want to go for an outing and I have my car here. If there’s anything so urgent that it won’t wait a couple of hours, I’ll come and find you.”
“We’ll go into Harrogate. Is that all right, Alice?”
“Of course. The bookshop and the café in Church Street and we’ll be back before five. Come on, Cathy.”
Carrying a white cardigan and giving an anxious look back at her mother, Cathy did leave the cottage. At least she and her mother were no longer at odds.
“She’s a lot more cut up about her father, than she’s letting on.”
Hannah tested the weight of water in the kettle and topped it up some more from the kitchen tap.
“If it wasn’t for the fact that we are both at our wits’ end over John, I think she’d give into it more.”
“You’re both going to be in shock. It’s still a loss, Hannah.”
Hannah put the cups and saucers on the table and went to get the biscuit tin.
“I don’t know how to answer that. I’m so worried about John and, God forgive me for saying it, when he’s barely cold but I’m just so furious with him. Maybe, one day I’ll be able to see past that but not yet.”
“What do you think happened, Hannah. Really?”
“I’ve thought of nowt else since Josh showed up. He was rattled and that frightens me more than anything. He knows where John is; of that I’m sure. He knew where he was, that’s what I should say.
Someone was getting revenge on Josh because he will have double-crossed someone because that’s what he does. And then he moves on when things get too dangerous.”
A thought came to Edith. Curiosity. Something that had crossed her mind before but she’d never asked because for one thing, Josh was no longer around.
“What drew you to him, Hannah?”
Hannah smiled and for a few seconds it all dropped away from her, the years and the worry. “He was good-looking and when you’re young, well that’s the be-all and end-all.” She went to get the teapot, maybe to turn her face away for a minute. “It wasn’t only that, though. I’d spent my life surrounded by people who wouldn’t use five words when one would do. Is it dour—the word I’m looking for? Well, not full of talk, at any rate. Josh, of course, could charm the birds out of the branches and I think I was hungry for that somehow. My uncle and aunt didn’t like him. They didn’t say a lot—well, as I said, they were quiet people but you could sense the disapproval. It’s the reason I was left this place, outright, just me. I think my uncle knew that the day would come when I’d need it.”
The cat stretched itself in front of the stove, lit even in high summer, the only way of cooking in the cottage.<
br />
Hannah’s voice came low and sad. “lt’s my fault.” Edith opened her mouth to contradict her, then saw Hannah’s slow shake of her head.
“I know you’re only trying to be nice to me, Edith but don’t say it. I failed my son badly, by not being aware that this was going on, that he was in touch with his father, making plans to go and live with him for goodness sake. I didn’t know that he wasn’t happy...” Edith did risk an interruption this time.
“I think it’s a jump, a step too far to say he was unhappy, Hannah. Honestly. You’re putting the feelings of an adult into the mind of a lad; a lad as daft and impressionable as any other.
It will have been all about adventure. Some of it, fascination
with his father of course. But, more than that, the adventure.
Ask any lad coming home from school if he’d like to go off and start a new life somewhere else. At least half of them wouldn’t look back. Look at the recruitment offices in the first years of the war. All those youngsters.”
“Thank you. I’d like to think it’s true. Cathy had a point though. I tried to keep him a little lad and turned my back away from the fact that he’s growing up.”
Growing up. Edith had an unwelcome thought. Henry was becoming obsessed with the thought of another war and it seemed like Julia’s Peter was thinking along the same lines. She blocked it out, maybe because they were exaggerating the risk or maybe because she was refusing to believe that it could possibly happen again.
As far as gaining more knowledge about the character of Josh Braithwaite, the trip to Holm Firth had mainly confirmed what they already knew. Where Braithwaite’s son might be, they were none the wiser. Braithwaite had mentioned Cumbria and the lake district to his sister.
“But, he never told me about what he got up to. I could tell, always when there was summat going on because he’d be different on the telephone. Talking fast like he were going to run out of steam, like. Talking big too, as if he was on the verge of making a lot of money and always that he were going to show them. I hated that, when he’d be talking sort of angry like that.” Brown had said little, letting the conversation between the woman and his boss flow over him, making the odd note.
[Edith Horton 05] - Murder in Retreat Page 17