Chapter 22

 

Brown didn’t like Inspector Greene’s mood this morning. Something was up with him, ever since their return from London yesterday. Brown thought it had even started with the comments on the train about what he’d overheard in the pub and kept to himself. Surely that couldn’t still be bothering the boss, now?”

“Back to Etheringtons’ house, this morning. I can’t abide being made a monkey of lad. The grieving widow, ‘appen has a few questions to answer, don’t you think?”

Greene had very black and white views. This was all the more so, when it came to women. This was never openly expressed, but Brown knew him well enough now, to have seen signs of it many times. Seemed to like women to be whiter than white, did the inspector. Mrs. Etherington had apparently fallen several levels in the eyes of the inspector.

 

She looked like she knew what was coming. The housekeeper, Mrs. Sugden, her lips tightening and her tone cool, led them into one of the sitting rooms. They’d been to this house three times now and Brown still wasn’t sure of the layout. It was lovely though.

He’d stored up details to tell his mother; the huge vases almost glass buckets which held so many summer flowers, they drew the eye straightaway. The coolness and pale gold and yellow and blues and the sheen on the furniture. Here and there were what looked like old portraits of the Etherington family. They looked for the most part handsome and remote from this place and this house and with what was going on in it, today.

Julia Etherington looked resigned, but she smiled at him gently and his heart filled with what felt like love and tears. He dreaded what the Inspector was going to say to her. He wasted no time.

“Rumour has it, Mrs. Etherington, that you had or were having a relationship with Dr. Horton, at or around the time of your husband’s death.”

She shook her head and Brown saw a flash of anger cross her face. “No, no, inspector.”

Greene raised the bushy caterpillar eyebrows.

“No, so that’s all it was then, a rumour. In that case, I’m very sorry…teach me to listen to rumours,” he said.

There was a silence and Brown had to stiffen the muscles in his thighs and shoulders to stop himself from squirming.

The colour had left her face. Her voice was controlled, but she didn’t seem in control. “I did have a brief relationship with Archie Horton at the end of last year, It was well over by the time of Giles’ death.”

Brown felt an ache in his neck that was threatening to turn into the mother and father of all headaches. He dropped his shoulders and wished Green would just get on with it. This was like watching his mother’s cat, Mitzi, torment some creature or other she’d caught.

“So, not rumour then.” Inspector Greene’s voice was all grim satisfaction and Brown, at that moment, loathed him.

Julia shrugged her shoulders. She opened her mouth to speak and instead, she swallowed hard making the white throat move convulsively.

Bill Brown willed her to say something; she was making things look so bad for herself and Horton too; but Brown wasn’t too bothered about him.

She cleared her throat. “I should have said, I know that now. I should have known that in a place like this, anything wasn’t going to remain a secret.”

“So, what did stop you from telling us, Mrs. Etheridge.?”

Brown thought that his boss’s tone had softened.

“It seems stupid now…I thought maybe that admitting it was, I don’t know, Inspector, making it real, giving it more significance. She held her hand up as if warding something off. “It happened; it was a mistake, me trying to get my own back, maybe, or believe it or not, seeking out a bit of consolation.”

She gave a deep, shuddering sigh, as though this conversation was actually bringing her some relief.

Greene nodded, but Brown couldn’t make out whether in satisfaction at her admission of the affair or in some sort of sympathy at what she’d said.

He got up and Brown followed suit.

“I hardly need to tell you, Mrs. Etherington that it is the height of foolishness to keep something like this from us. It puts a different complexion on everything and may mean that we’ve wasted a lot of time and energy going down blind alleys.”

Julia Etherington got to her feet too; the whole of her body, her stance, a protest. “What do you mean, Inspector? It’s like you’re implying that Archie Horton or I had something to do with Giles’s death. You can’t think that, you just can’t!” Her voice had risen, almost a note of hysteria in it.

Brown felt a dull ache in his chest. When he’d had his certainty about the roots of the murder being here in Yorkshire, he hadn’t meant anything like this.

Greene didn’t respond. His whole face set in a tight, obstinate expression.

Julia seemed to gather herself together, deliberately relaxing her posture. She wasn’t going to do any more pleading and Brown was glad. He couldn’t work out whether Greene was over-playing the significance of her relationship with Horton.