Rosie

by Lesley Pearse

  Una knew by his gasp a couple of seconds later that he’d found something wrong, and despite what he’d said she darted in.

  She wished she hadn’t.

  It didn’t look like Violet at all. It was more like seeing a sack of bloody offal lying on the floor. There were flies all over her and a horrible, sickly sweet smell. The room was strewn with papers. It was the most terrible thing she’d ever seen and her legs just gave way under her.

  It was the early evening of the same day, and Rosie, Donald, Thomas and Frank Cook were all sitting out on the terrace just outside the kitchen, drinking tea. Norah was inside, joining in the conversation through the open windows and doors as she prepared the evening meal. They were all laughing as Donald told them about getting Thomas home today. Thomas, it seemed, had got carried away in his enthusiasm to help out with the gardening, and by the end of the afternoon his leg was hurting badly. Donald had forced him into the wheelbarrow and trundled him home in it. Apparently they had been seen by quite a few neighbours and Thomas had made it even funnier by giving regal waves as he passed them.

  When they heard the six o’clock pips on the wireless, Frank called out to Norah to turn it up so they could listen to the news. Donald immediately got up and went off down the garden. Rosie stood up tentatively. Her knees were stiff and sore, but she thought a little walk might help them.

  ‘A middle-aged woman was found brutally murdered today in her cottage in the village of Chilton Trinity in Somerset.’

  Rosie stopped short at hearing the name of a village she knew.

  ‘The victim has been identified as Miss Violet Pemberton, a social worker. It is believed she was killed when she interrupted a burglary in her home. The Somerset police are conducting a house-to-house search as the killer is thought to be a local man.’

  ‘Violet!’ Thomas gasped, rising out of his seat. ‘Did I hear right? They did say Violet Pemberton?’

  Frank nodded and Rosie sat down again with a bump, too astonished and horrified to speak.

  Norah stuck her head through the window. ‘Did you hear that?’ she asked. ‘Poor woman!’ On seeing Thomas and Rosie’s stricken faces, she quickly withdrew from the window and came out on to the terrace, drying her hands on a tea towel. ‘You don’t know her, do you?’

  Thomas nodded. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He wanted to reach out for Rosie to comfort her, but he was unable to move a muscle.

  Norah just stood looking at them both for a moment, and suddenly she remembered who they both knew who lived in Somerset. ‘It’s not your friend, is it? The lady we met at Carrington Hall?’

  Thomas managed to pull himself together enough to confirm it was.

  Frank was slower to catch on about who and what they were referring to. ‘What a ghastly thing! And to hear it just like that on the wireless!’ he said in a voice which seemed to boom right round the garden. ‘I thought they didn’t announce a victim’s name until all relatives had been informed?’ he added in some indignation.

  ‘She didn’t have any relatives,’ Thomas said in a small croaky voice.

  Frank and Norah were both speaking at once, but Rosie felt as if all her blood was draining away. She couldn’t move, speak or even hear what was being said. All she could feel was an intense anger welling up inside her that someone, some louse of a thief, had taken the life of a woman who was so precious to her. She gripped the arms of her chair and the anger she felt rose up and spewed out in a bellow of outrage.

  ‘Rosie!’ Norah gasped, shocked still more by this primitive outburst than she was by the news. ‘Rosie, what is it?’

  Thomas was out of his chair and over to Rosie in a flash. He caught hold of her firmly and shook her gently to stop the screaming. ‘She’s in shock. Violet meant a great deal to her,’ he said, enfolding the girl in his arms. ‘Could you get her some brandy?’

  Later that evening when Rosie had calmed down enough to reason again, she wondered how she would have coped without Thomas. He had taken her into the sitting-room, away from the others, and held her in his arms. He let her cry and shared her grief because he fully understood the significance Violet had held in her life. The woman not only knew the full horror of all that had happened at May Cottage, but had helped Rosie put aside her shame and rebuild her life. Thomas knew Violet had never seen Rosie as just one of her ‘cases’, but had been aunt, friend and adviser. Had she lived, Thomas had no doubt this often brusque but caring woman would have been at Rosie’s wedding, godmother to her children. It was a terrible, wicked loss.

  Thomas cried along with Rosie. He too had a great deal of affection for Violet. Along with organizing his nephew’s happy new life, supporting and advising him throughout the subsequent adoption, she had also become a friend.

  Rosie knew the Cooks couldn’t be expected to comprehend her enormous sense of loss. All they really knew about Miss Pemberton was her active role in getting Matron thrown out of Carrington Hall. Even though they were aware Rosie had continued to correspond with her over the last two years, the Cooks had never had any reason to suppose that these were anything more than duty letters, occasional progress reports because the woman was interested in her.

  She wished she could tell them the whole story now, if only so they could understand.

  ‘Should I tell them everything?’ she asked Thomas.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully, his brown eyes soft with concern for her. ‘I did think when you first came here that it would be better for you to make a clean breast of it all and be done with it, but so much time has elapsed now and they care so deeply for you. But to be suddenly faced with such news might put a strain on your relationship with them. And what good would it do telling them now, Rosie? It might help them to understand your grief about Violet, but that’s all.’

  She shamefacedly admitted then that she’d never told Gareth either.

  Thomas sighed deeply and hugged her tightly. ‘Oh Rosie! How could you possibly plan to marry a man without telling him something so important? I always assumed you’d told him right at the start.’

  ‘There never was a right moment,’ she said in a small voice, her eyes downcast.

  When Rosie went into Donald’s room later to say goodnight to him, he was sitting up in bed as always reading a comic, but instead of giving her his usual welcoming smile he looked at her reproachfully.

  ‘Why have you been crying and talking to Thomas all evening?’

  Rosie wasn’t sure how to answer. He was adult in many respects, but there were large areas in which he was still a child and as such they all avoided discussing distressing things in his hearing. ‘Because the lady who we heard about on the news was an old friend of mine, and of Thomas’s. I couldn’t talk to you in the same way about her because you didn’t know her,’ she said eventually.

  ‘But you shut me out,’ he said, and his lip quivered.

  ‘I didn’t want you to see me upset,’ she said, sitting down beside him and taking his hand in hers. ‘That’s the only reason.’

  ‘But I looked after you when you hurt your knees,’ he said. ‘I can look after you whatever happens to you.’

  Rosie’s eyes prickled at his staunch retort. He might see the world and problems from a child’s simplified viewpoint, but his loyalty and affection were truly adult.

  She doubted somehow that Gareth would take such a liberal stance.

  Three days later on Monday morning Donald and Rosie were in the greenhouse thinning out some wallflower seedlings. Thomas had gone back to London on the train the night before, and as Rosie’s knees were healing well she felt it was time to get back to a little work.

  The newspapers had been full of Miss Pemberton’s murder over the weekend. The police hadn’t arrested anyone yet, but it was thought that the murderer was someone she knew. As her social work brought her into contact with so many people from all walks of life, sifting through them would take some time.

  Rosie had been very sad to see Thomas leave. He’d comforted
her, helped her through the shock, and pitched in to help Donald with the gardening while she was unable to get around. But she was feeling a little less fraught today. She hoped that by the time she saw Gareth at the weekend she would be more like her old self.

  He had been very sympathetic about Miss Pemberton when she spoke to him on the phone, but quite callous about her bad fall. He’d said climbing ladders was men’s work and it served her right.

  Rosie was sitting on a tall stool, and as her mind turned to the now-cancelled trip to Eastbourne on Saturday, she glanced down at her bandaged knees and sighed. They didn’t hurt that much now, it was a dull ache mostly, but she couldn’t walk far and they looked hideous under the bandages. Gareth would undoubtedly use them as more ammunition as to why she should give up gardening.

  ‘That sounds like Dad’s car,’ Donald said, interrupting her thoughts.

  Rosie listened. It did sound like the Jaguar coming into the drive, but the greenhouse was in the far corner of the back garden and their view of the drive at the side of the house was obscured by bushes.

  ‘He wasn’t supposed to be coming home for lunch today,’ Rosie remarked. ‘Besides, it’s only twelve o’clock.’

  Donald downed tools and rushed out to see. Rosie smiled as she watched him run across the garden. In the past she had likened him to an excitable puppy; now he was growing into a nosy dog who always had to know exactly where everyone was and what they were doing.

  He disappeared round the side of the house. Rosie heard him call out to his father, but she continued with the pricking out. It was some minutes later that Donald appeared again, through the kitchen door. He was eating a freshly baked cake and had a shopping bag over his arm.

  ‘Mum wants me to go to the baker’s,’ he bawled out from the lawn. ‘She wants you to come in for a moment.’

  ‘Okay,’ Rosie called back. She wiped her hands on a piece of rag and hobbled up the garden to the house. Although the kitchen smelled deliciously of cake, and the metal cooling tray was piled high with rock buns, the moment Rosie stepped into the room she knew something serious had happened. Norah was sitting at the table, her husband standing beside her with his hand on her shoulder, and they both looked anxious. Rosie surmised they must have something to say to her that they didn’t want Donald to hear and that’s why they’d sent him on an errand.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Rosie asked, before she even went to the sink to wash her hands. ‘Is it something to do with Donald?’

  Frank’s face was usually ruddy, but now it was quite pale. He sat down heavily next to his wife and they looked at one another as if trying to decide which of them should tell her.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with Donald. There’s been another murder,’ Frank blurted out.

  Rosie forgot her dirty hands. ‘What? In the same village?’

  Frank made an odd sort of growl in his throat. ‘No, in London.’ He stopped and wiped his hand across his forehead. She’d never seen him look so fraught before. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he added. ‘This is going to knock you for six too.’

  ‘It’s Freda Barnes, Rosie,’ Norah said in a weak voice. ‘Frank read it in the paper at work. That’s why he came home.’

  ‘Matron!’ Rosie’s mouth dropped open in shock. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Explain, Frank,’ Norah pleaded, and began to cry. ‘I can’t tell her.’

  Rosie listened as Frank hurriedly recounted how he’d opened the daily paper and read a report that a second middle-aged woman had been found murdered, this time in a basement flat in Camden Town. Her body had been lying there for several days before it was discovered. When he read her name and realized it was the ex-matron of Carrington Hall, he was so alarmed he had to come home.

  He took the folded newspaper from his pocket and put it on the table. ‘You can read it for yourself, Rosie. They have pointed out similarities in the two brutal murders, both middle-aged spinsters living alone, killed within eight or nine hours of one another, both ex-nurses, and in both cases there was no sign of forcible entry to their homes. What really worries me about these reports, though, is that the police appear unaware that the women were known to one another too. Unless we tell them about the real connection between them, they might go off on the wrong track.’

  ‘Connection?’ Rosie repeated.

  ‘Carrington Hall,’ he said. ‘It could well be that dreadful chap Saunders.’

  ‘Surely not!’ Rosie gasped.

  ‘It could be,’ Frank said with a knowing nod. ‘We already know he’s a brute, and he may well have held a grudge against both Barnes and Miss Pemberton after he lost his job.’

  Rosie felt queasy as she quickly read the newspaper report. Barnes’s landlord called several times between Friday and Sunday for his rent, but she wasn’t there, which was very unusual. Finally, thinking she may have left without telling him, he used a spare key and went in. He found her body in the kitchen. She had been struck on the back of the neck with a heavy object.

  Although Rosie had no reason to mourn Barnes, it was still shocking to hear she had died in such a way, and it brought back a renewed sense of grief at Miss Pemberton’s death. She began to cry.

  Frank came round the table and put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Brace-Coombes will almost certainly speak to the police the moment he hears the news. But you knew both women very well, Rosie, and quite a lot about Saunders, so you might be able to help them far more than he could. I think we should ring the police station now and ask someone to come over.’

  Rosie’s heart began to flutter and her stomach turned over.

  Police weren’t like ordinary people. You couldn’t tell them you knew two murder victims and leave it at that. They would want to know how and why she came to know Miss Pemberton. Before long she would be forced to reveal her real identity.

  ‘Well, what do you think, Rosie?’ Frank asked. He thought she looked a bit vacant. That wasn’t like her at all.

  Rosie was thinking hard.

  Mr Cook might be right about Saunders bearing a grudge against both women, especially if he’d ended up in prison for what he’d done at Carrington Hall. Yet Freda Barnes didn’t get him into trouble, and neither did Miss Pemberton. It was her who’d spilled the beans about him. Mr Cook’s word ‘connection’ came back into her mind. Suppose she was the connection between the two women?

  The room seemed to swirl around her. What if Saunders went to both women’s houses trying to find her? Then for some reason he’d killed them.

  ‘Rosie, are you all right?’ Norah asked. ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet! You poor thing, let me make you a cup of tea.’

  ‘I’m all right, thank you.’ Rosie heard her automatic polite response, yet she felt remote, as if she wasn’t even in the same room as the Cooks. Another idea was pushing its way into her head, a wild, sickening one she didn’t even want to consider. There was someone else out there who might want to find her.

  Seth.

  A vivid picture came into her mind. It was of the last time she’d seen her brother, that afternoon when he’d attacked her in May Cottage. He’d been crazy with hate for her that day, and for all she knew that hatred might have been raging inside him ever since.

  All at once Rosie knew she must tell the Cooks everything. She could be wrong about Seth. She fervently hoped she was. But she couldn’t keep such a dark, terrible suspicion to herself just in case she was right.

  She looked at Norah, then back at Frank. They both had such deeply concerned expressions on their faces. Their affection for her was so strong she could almost touch it, and she felt an acute pang of shame that she had selfishly allowed them to draw her into their family, taken all they had given her, yet cheated them by withholding the truth about herself.

  ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you, before you call the police,’ she said haltingly, her mouth drying up with fear. ‘Because it will all come out when they speak to me. I should have told you a long time ago, but I was afraid. My real nam
e is Parker, not Smith. My father was Cole Parker. He was hanged in 1952 for murdering two women.’

  Norah gasped and stiffened.

  ‘Go on,’ Frank said in a stern voice, and moved closer to his wife.

  Rosie couldn’t meet their shocked eyes as she told the full story. It was like stripping a scab off a painful old wound and reliving the agony of injury all over again. She was swamped with a feeling of total worthlessness.

  ‘I shouldn’t have allowed you to bring me into your house,’ she finally said in a voice that was only just above a whisper. ‘I’m so ashamed and so sorry.’

  There was utter silence in the kitchen. Rosie waited, her eyes downcast in readiness for a storm to break over her head.

  ‘Rosie, look at me!’ Frank said at length.

  She slowly lifted her head to see that Frank had his arm comfortingly around Norah. She was crying against his shoulder.

  ‘What do you expect us to do now?’ he asked. He had a tear trickling down his cheek, and she had never seen such a bleak look in anyone’s eyes before.

  ‘Tell me to leave,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll speak to the police, then pack my bags and go. I know you won’t want me near Donald.’

  ‘Won’t want you near Donald?’ he snorted, letting go of his wife and standing up.

  Rosie cringed. She thought he was going to strike her. She put her arms up around her head to ward off the expected blow.

  ‘Don’t cringe from me, girl,’ he roared at her. ‘I’ve never hit a woman in my life, and I certainly wouldn’t hit you.’

  Rosie lowered her arms. Frank caught hold of them, shook her a little and brought his face close to hers. ‘Have you so little faith in us that you think we’d turn you out because of your father?’

  She couldn’t speak. Tears ran down her face.

  ‘Don’t you know what you’ve done for us?’ Frank asked with a break in his voice. ‘You’ve given our son a life. Everything Donald can do now is because of you. It’s true we might have been able to accomplish some of it ourselves given enough time and patience. But somehow I think our patience would have run out pretty quickly. Now do you really think we would turn our backs on you after that?’