Swallow Hall Murder

by Noreen Wainwright

  “So, he wrote poetry, expressed himself that way?”

  Serena smiled now, that fleeting smile, and a glimpse of a different woman was there. Someone whose life hadn’t been blighted maybe by meeting the wrong man or the right man at the wrong time.

  Where had that come from? How did Edith know that the depth and sincerity of Serena’s grief didn’t signify that her union with Sean Bracken had been a happy one? Maybe it was obvious, though. They hadn’t been together. Both were free so any obstacles to them getting married must have been put there by one or other of them. Somehow, Edith didn’t think it had been Serena’s doing.

  “Sean wasn’t the first returned fighter to use the pen to try and get the sword out of his head. I mean he was following probably in the footsteps of the other poets. It was an acceptable way to express anger. I think his articles for the newspapers were too much, too strong. Maybe later on but 1919 and 1920 were too soon.”

  “Why did he settle in Yorkshire?”

  “That was the biggest irony of all. He wanted to get out of the city. It was driving him mad, particularly with the rejection of his work. I knew Yorkshire of course. I talked about it a lot. Eventually, I persuaded him to motor up with me. We stayed at Grandmother’s at Swallow Hall. I just told them he was a good friend of Stevie’s. My grandmother and the aunts have told the police they don’t know him. It’s a lie.”

  Edith put her cup back in the saucer. “But, why would they lie?” it seemed such a pointless thing to do. A trio of women in late middle-age and a woman in her nineties were hardly going to be serious suspects in the murder of a fit man.

  “My grandmother…I don’t know. It’s difficult to get to the bottom of her motives. She’s an old lady and her biggest pleasure in life is mischief-making.”

  Edith thought of the things she’d heard about the old lady. It was such a myth thinking all elderly people were somehow sweet and wise. If you were a tyrant or a harridan in an earlier life, it was probably the case that your nature didn’t change. The loss of power must be frustrating too.

  “My grandmother couldn’t have hurt a man like Sean. Her mobility isn’t good. But, my aunt Elizabeth could have done.”

  Edith looked into Serena’s slightly bloodshot eyes. Was she serious?

  “She’s always had a cruel streak. My grandmother plays one off against the other, especially about her will.”

  It was only human to be interested in this, but a part of Edith felt uncomfortable especially as she knew Hester. “Are you sure…”

  Serena shrugged. Misunderstanding Edith’s hesitation, she said, “I don’t know you well. But, I trust you. Your brother is the local doctor, and you help him out. You will have heard plenty of secrets in your time.”

  That was true. Edith could separate what went on in the practice from ordinary life in the village. She could be discreet, and she was. But, once you knew something you knew it and that was the reason for her unease now.

  “If either Hester or I get married…” A flicker, of pain…or shock crossed her face. “If either Hester or I had married, grandmother talked of changing her will in our favour. It’s one of her big obsessions, bypassing the next generation. I suppose it’s the ultimate hold she has. My mother deals with this threat by shrugging her shoulders and keeping her thoughts to herself. Aunt Mary becomes tearful. But Aunt Elizabeth flies into a rage and becomes more and more peculiar. Paranoid… accusing everyone in the house of stealing her things…not that half of them belong to her in the first place. She’s driven two maids away in the last year.”

  What a way to live. How people tormented each other. Her own life with Archie and hopefully in future, with Henry seemed straightforward. Calm. The thought of living in an atmosphere like Swallow Hall…and it all came down to money. Wasn’t that what they said? Money and love…motives.

  Edith thought about the woman, Elizabeth Turner. She only knew her by sight, and she was an arresting figure, slim but wiry and dressed like someone who was a stranger to femininity.

  Could she have killed a man, though? “Hester says it was a head injury.”

  “Yes, he was hit on the head with a heavy object. Inspector Greene has implied that it was a stone, rock or something like that.” It took quite a leap of imagination. It was almost like an unsavoury cartoon image, but if he were bending down…

  “They think he was bending down, looking for something, tying a shoelace, something prosaic like that. I’ve seen my aunt break the neck of a hen, despatch an injured puppy…”

  Edith shuddered, and something deep and primeval in her sent out signals and chemicals of repulsion. She wanted to be out of the teashop and home to normality. It wasn’t logical. People, the nicest of people killed animals. Unless you were a vegetarian, it was hypocritical to be disgusted about that. But, there was something in the image of that slim woman with a weapon in her hands and cold eyes…Her imagination was running away with her. She wasn’t closely acquainted with either Elizabeth Turner’s hands or eyes.

  She glanced across and saw that Serena was watching her closely.

  “Hester tells me that you and Julia Etherington know Inspector Greene quite well?”

  “We have had dealings with him. Julia’s husband died in tragic circumstances a year or two ago. Inspector Greene was involved in that, of course, …and…”

  She pulled up short. What had possessed her? Why was she confiding in this woman? A woman she was becoming increasingly uncertain of…her motives for meeting her here, for instance. There was no denying that she’d been distressed this morning, and there was absolutely no denying that she loved Sean Bracken. Had loved him, to distraction.

  But, wasn’t that another strong motive for murder. Suppose he was leaving her? After all this time, devoting her life to him. What if he’d been about to leave?

  * * *

  “I thought you might feel like a bit of a chat, Albert? No recriminations, this time, just a talk.”

  Greene nodded at Margaret and led her into his office. Passing Robinson, he said, “See that you bring a tray of tea through, lad and then we’re not to be disturbed. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” The boy was chirpy and a million times more confident than young Brown. The confidence irritated Greene. There’d been times when he could have shaken Brown. But you got used to a person and his ways.

  “How is it going, Albert, with Bet?”

  Margaret was different in her manner, today. A lot of the self-righteous anger had faded. Probably having her sister out from under her feet was at least partly responsible for that.

  He sighed. He’d been trying to summon up the energy to call on Margaret and Stan. Then the other night had happened and that changed everything. He’d called himself a hundred types of fool and had expected repercussions. They hadn’t come and in a way that was even worse; it was like waiting for the sword to fall.

  “She’s being very strange, Margaret.”

  “Oh, Albert. Bet is always strange. She was strange before you married her, and you knew it.”

  His ire rose, and he bit it back. Maybe this was why he hadn’t made it over to see them in the past few days.

  The expected litany of his wrongdoings didn’t materialise. He looked at her and saw that she was biting her bottom lip. Literally biting back the words, perhaps.

  “I’m sorry, Albert. I think I’ve said too much already. Especially when I spoke to you last week. That was out of turn. Any of it hasn’t been easy for you.”

  He turned his head sharply away, blinked. This was out of the blue. Attacking him had been her approach for so long now. And on the surface of things he had probably deserved it. He had deserted his wife, disowned her. Hardly the actions of an honourable man. Though, she had been the one to leave the house, at the end…

  “It’s none of my business, Albert and I know you’ve had it tough. But how did you come to change so much? I shouldn’t have put it like I did, but it’s a fact. You knew what you were taking on.”

  He
couldn’t go into it, and he didn’t fully understand it himself. He shrugged and heard her sigh. “I changed, I suppose. Like everyone else who went out there, the war changed me and joining the police and seeing what people had to deal with and what they inflicted on each other…then I’d go home to Bet and her carrying on. She’d be nice and even funny and then, vicious, you know - about people.”

  He stopped, shocked. What had got into him? He never spoke like this, especially to his sister-in-law. It was because she hadn’t jumped in this time to judge him. It had disarmed him. It was uncomfortable. He breathed more easily when young Robinson brought in the tea.

  “Leave it there, on the desk, that’s right, and remember what I said about being disturbed.”

  She reached across for the stained brown teapot. It was a sloppy thing as was the tray and he felt ashamed at their shabbiness and a spark of anger at the shiftlessness of the cleaner.

  She put the plain white teacup in front of him. Shabby. That’s what he felt.

  “Maybe if…if you’d had a family.” She spoke the last words in a rush and looked quickly at him, maybe expecting him to be angry. He wasn’t. Anger and cross-purposes, all of that, there had been too much of it and where had it gotten them?

  Instead, he answered her as honestly as he could. “Sometimes, Margaret, I think that would have been the answer. At others, I think it would have been a nightmare.”

  “Ah well. That’s water under the bridge now.”

  Where had he heard that phrase? The Irish girl; that was it. Bracken’s sister. He shook his head a little.

  “You were saying that Bet is behaving strangely. Sensibly, do you mean?”

  He glanced at her and saw that she was attempting a small joke. “She’s gone very quiet, and sort of brooding. The first few days, it was all that you’d expect from Bet. She was full of excitement, new beginnings. Too much… putting food in front of me, being affectionate…”

  There was a flutter in his stomach. He was being selective in the story he was painting here, but he couldn’t be anything else.

  “That’s what she was like before she went back, Albert. It was all new beginnings and roses around the door. I tried to warn her. Both Stan and I tried to warn her not to expect too much, that she was getting carried away with what she wanted.”

  “Or thought she wanted.”

  Margaret opened her mouth as though to speak, then shook her head. “You’re right. You’re right to say that she gets so caught up in the moment that all sense goes out the door. It’s like a child who wants all the ice cream and all the rides at the fair, and then cries and feels sick.”

  She had her sister off to a tee.

  “I’m sorry. I’m being very disloyal. But, you say that she’s gone quiet?”

  “Quiet and brooding. I can hardly get a word out of her.”

  “That worries me, Albert. That really does worry me. I’ll call over to the house tomorrow if I can.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Are you sleeping?” Edith had pushed the door open, gently.

  “I was going to say I was but no, I’m just lying here wallowing in idleness.”

  “Make the best of it.”

  Edith hesitated. The world and his wife were saying, or at least implying, that Archie’s health problems stemmed from his head as much as his heart. She should try to talk to him about this. But, he was a tricky customer; more self-reliant than she was and keen on his privacy. Better to leave it for now.

  “How did your tea with Serena Grant go?”

  She’d told him about the encounter in the café near the hospital, and he’d shaken his head.

  “It’s no wonder you and Greene don’t see eye to eye. You probably get people to talk a lot more readily than he can.”

  He made her sound like an interrogator or at the very least, a nosy-parker. “All right,” she said now.

  “She’d calmed down got herself under control. Told me that she was in love with Sean Bracken. Not that she had a choice. She’d already said enough this morning. She did speak more about the family, though.”

  “About old Muriel Turner and the aunts?”

  “Yes. She more or less said that she was in the area, back at Swallow Hall to be near Sean Bracken. They’d known each other a long time, since before the war.”

  “She was wasting her time then?”

  Edith looked at him. Wasn’t that jumping to conclusions? He was assuming that it was the man who was reluctant to get married. No. he wasn’t jumping to anything. It was as clear as day that any reluctance in that area was coming from Sean. It had to be.

  “She said that Mrs. Turner might change the will if either she or Hester were to marry.”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “I think she was barking up the wrong tree if she thought that Sean might eventually marry her.”

  Her mind raced, putting two and two together and making five as her father used to say. Serena had been grief-stricken; absolutely no doubt about that, but if you had a part in killing the man you loved—had devoted the best years of your life to—wouldn’t it be like that? Wouldn’t mourning and guilt be mixed up?

  “Did he say something to you, when you met him in the pub…to that effect, I mean.”

  “No. Not directly, though. But he was lit up, Edie. Excited—his mind set on the future, he didn’t sound like a man who had one eye on the past.”

  “The other thing she said was about her Aunt Elizabeth, it made my blood run cold if I’m honest…like she’s capable of anything.”

  “She is. Totally bonkers, but in a nasty way. Spiteful. The kind of woman who would have been put in her place—or locked up years ago, had she been out in the normal world.”

  “I suppose if she thought things were going to change…that the will was going to change… well, she’d be enraged.”

  “Not to the point of killing the prospective husband, surely? It would be very ironic, wouldn’t it? Sean is planning his escape and gets himself murdered for something he has no intention of doing?”

  Again, Edith’s mind was working overtime. Maybe, if Serena had an inkling that Sean’s mind was elsewhere, she’d be more reckless than usual. People could be when they felt threatened. Maybe the more she was frightened of him going, the more she might hint at a pending marriage in front of her aunt.

  “Do you ever worry at how this place has been left, Edie, by mother and father, I mean?”

  Her shoulders jerked. That had come as a shock. Their own situation was the last thing on her mind.

  “How do you mean? I said I don’t want my share. I meant it. I have no intention of putting you in financial difficulties.”

  He laughed; a bark of a laugh. “What if I wanted to sell up, how do you feel about that?”

  Her heart raced now. Where was Archie going with this? “Are you? Is this something got to do with your health, Archie?”

  He shrugged. “Yes and no. You’re having a big change in your life. I think it will be a happy one for you and Henry. I’m not sure about me, though. What’s here for me in Yorkshire?”

  His voice held a trace of bitterness, and Edith’s world tilted like a kaleidoscope, —the one she’d loved as a child, all the pattern disrupted. It was different now, though. It had been shaken, but no new shape had yet formed. Whatever about the irony of Sean Bracken’s situation, this was ironic too. She had been the unsettled one. She’d been the person who was stuck here, in Yorkshire, while her brother’s life and livelihood were here. She opened her mouth to protest. He had so much in Ellbeck—his life for goodness sake, not to mention his practice and patients and there was herself, Henry, Aunt Alicia.

  She closed her mouth again. She was looking at her brother’s life through her own eyes. Who really knew the workings of another person’s mind? Archie had returned to Yorkshire because it had been expected of him. Filling their father’s footsteps. If Brigid hadn’t been killed…

  What did he have here? No family of his own, no wife, and
if you came right down to it, not too many friends. Like so many of his generation of men, he had his old comrades, in his case, from the medical corps mainly. He met them reasonably often, but it was usually at his club in London.

  She had a thought, a daft little thought. “Max.” He smiled. “This one will be well looked after.” He bent down and stroked the dark head of the dog which lay, devotedly at his feet.

  There were papers on the occasional table in front of him. Now, Edith noticed them, and her heart beat at her throat.

  He gave the papers a little shove in her direction and said, “Have a look at these and tell me what you think.”

  * * *

  Ivy Moss looked at the bedroom door; her heart skipped, fluttering in her chest. She wanted to be on the other side of it, and she edged just a few tiny steps backwards towards it.

  Elizabeth Turner lay, propped up in the bed, but that didn’t put her at a disadvantage. She had on a purple bed-jacket on and glasses perched on her nose.

  She looks ridiculous. If I keep thinking that, then she can’t make me nervous or terrorise me.

  It wasn’t so easy to convince herself, though. If there had been any way round delivering Miss Elizabeth’s tea and toast, she would have found it. Since the business with her notice, she had kept out of Elizabeth’s way or at least made sure that someone else was with her when in her company. It would have been better if Miss Serena, or Mrs Grant as she was rightly, had kept it to herself. But, no doubt she wanted advice or help in finding Ivy’s replacement. Good luck to her whoever she’d turn out to be.

  “So, round to the Arbuthnot’s looking for a job, Ivy, I hear. Big ideas. Rats leaving the sinking ship?”

  Ivy swallowed a surge of nausea. It was ridiculous to be like this, terrified to the point where you felt sick. She couldn’t help it. If there was one thing she couldn’t deal with, it was bullies. They turned her into a miserable coward, and she had an idea that made them worse, like a cat tormenting a mouse. She couldn’t help it and knew it was because of the way her father had been.