False Accusations: Nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide... (Willowgrove Village Mystery Book 1)

by Cora Harrison

  ‘That’s what I would have done in the normal way, Mrs Morgan.’ There was a note of triumph in the man’s voice that Flora didn’t like. She would have to be very careful with him, she thought. She was here to look after Rosie, not to score points. She could feel the familiar coil of tension in her stomach, the ulcer that she had thought cured was resurrecting itself. The sensation from the stomach that there was some vinegar in there, eating away the tender flesh, had returned and she hoped that she would be able to cope with this. So far, the only affairs that she had dealt with in her capacity as a ‘an appropriate adult were cannabis usage and the removing of expensive brands of trainers from shops who should know better than to leave them on display near to the door or even on tables outside during these hot summers.

  Rosie was different. She had known the girl for too long, had taken responsibility for her from a very early age.

  Rosie, to her, was still a child, needing care and understanding.

  And, of course, murder was very different. A life imprisonment sentence for a young girl of nineteen — what would that do to this very sensitive young woman?

  ‘Excuse me.’ Sergeant Dawkins got to his feet and left the room, leaving Mr Bradley to leaf through documents and Flora to stare at the bare top of the desk, wondering whether the sergeant kept any Blu Tack in the drawer. She felt a need to have that comforting, soothing, malleable substance to knead, twist and tear. This was the first time since retirement that one of the village children had needed Flora’s help and she hoped that she could cope on Rosie’s behalf. She tried to blot out what the girl had done, finding no excuse for such a crime.

  Flora tried to stop thinking about this crime. She didn’t want to hear any more details of how horribly Mrs Trevor died, how the life was suffocated out of her, how the unfortunate woman gasped and struggled for life. It was hard enough, she once found, to choke the life out of a very sick hen. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it must be like to kill a tall, well-made woman in her early forties. Could Rosie really do it? How could she persist while her mother struggled and squirmed beneath her? She forced her mind back to Rosie, managing for the moment, to blot out the crime that the girl was supposed to have committed and turned an enquiring eye towards Mr Bradley.

  ‘I understand that Sergeant Dawkins did not take the statement himself,’ he said in a low cautious voice.

  ‘I see.’ Flora nodded. That explained the quick exit. Everything was going to be done by the book now. Sergeant Dawkins sensed this ‘responsible person’ to be an enemy, a troublemaker.

  They had only to wait for a few minutes before he was back ushering in another man — a very young Police Cadet who blushed uneasily at the sight of her.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Morgan.’ His voice was very deep. She didn’t know him. But without the late-adolescent acne and the gruff voice, she would probably recognise him.

  ‘I’m Jim Prior,’ he said as his sergeant turned a stern eye from one to the other. ‘I used to be at Willowgrove School.’

  ‘Volunteer Police Cadet Prior, training for the police service,’ supplemented Sergeant Dawkins.

  ‘Oh, I remember you!’ Recollection had just come and she smiled at him warmly. The family had moved away from Willowgrove Village shortly after the Year Six class moved on to secondary school. Flora hadn’t seen him since, but recalled him as a nice, reliable boy, kind, too.

  ‘Perhaps you could read your notes to Mr Bradley the solicitor and to Mrs Morgan, who is here to act as an appropriate adult to support the accused, I mean the young lady.’ Sergeant Dawkins voice was brisk and assured. Flora had winced slightly at the word ‘accused’ and he noted it with a sharp glance, but made no apologies for his mistake.

  ‘At twelve-fifteen this morning I received a phone call from a member of the local TV station.’ Jim read from his notebook, his face quite impassive under the stern eyes of his superior. ‘They had had a phone message from someone called Rosie Trevor of Willowgrove Village to say that she had just murdered her mother.’

  ‘From the TV station!’ Flora could not help the startled exclamation.

  ‘We’ll let P.C. Prior continue, shall we?’ There was a flash of triumph from Sergeant Dawkins’ sharp grey eyes.

  ‘I arrived at the scene at twelve-thirty-one, and the door was opened by the young lady,’ continued Jim, still reading from his notebook in a robotic tone. He had been a bright boy with a talent for writing catchy little songs when he had been at primary school, but she supposed they were all trained to read like this once they joined the police force.

  ‘As soon as the young lady opened the door I asked to speak to her sister.’

  That had been kind and quick-witted. Jim Prior would not have forgotten Rosie. He had only been a few years at Willowgrove Primary School, but he had been there long enough to become imbued with the school’s protective feeling towards this girl. Most people, if they wanted to know anything about Rosie asked her sister Jenny, and Jenny was invariably competent, matter-of-fact and well informed.

  ‘The young lady said: “My sister’s gone off on her holiday and I’m here alone in the house and my mother is dead.” She did not appear to be distressed so I wondered whether it was true. I asked to see her mother. The young lady opened the door to a room on the left hand side of the front door. It was a bedroom. I observed that a glass door leading from the bedroom into the garden was ajar and a pillow was on the floor. Then I saw the body of Mrs Trevor lying on the bed. I went up to her, touched her and confirmed that she was dead. I immediately cautioned the young lady, but she said: “I killed her” and then she went back to the front door and looked out and said: “When are the telly people coming?”’

  Mr Bradley, the solicitor, leaned back in his chair with a sigh. The legal aid board probably paid him the same fee no matter what the result, but at the same time any lawyer would like to have a fighting chance. This case looked as if it would be over before it started. In the space of less than thirty minutes the young lady had admitted to the crime twice.

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t know what she was saying,’ he offered, and even to Flora this sounded rather feeble.

  ‘I understand that she attended mainstream schools until she was eighteen, is that correct, Mrs Morgan?’

  ‘That’s correct.’ Flora confirmed this. She had personally put in extra time to help Rosie. During hours when she, as headteacher, should have been attending to demands for statistics sent out by the local education office, Rosie and she had climbed mountains of Ladybird books, waded through floods of the never-ending Janet and John scheme, tackled the slippery slopes of Reading Rescue, Ronald Ridout; even something rather oddly entitled ‘The Gay Way’ had been fished out of cupboards and by the end of it all Rosie could read quite adequately — well enough to be purchasing magazines, plastered with pictures of Princess Diana, every time she met the girl in the village shop. Numbers and clock faces remained insoluble; they made no sense to her, but the reading, some rudimentary spelling, small, neat handwriting, and, of course, a formidable mother had all been enough to gain her entrance to the same comprehensive school as the rest of the class.

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Sergeant Dawkins, rising to his feet and addressing himself to us both, ‘you might wish to see the young lady now. Though possibly you may like to have a quick word with Mrs Morgan first, Mr Bradley. We’ll wait in the corridor.’

  ‘I never realised that she had done that — phoned up the TV people,’ Flora blurted out to the solicitor as soon as the door closed. ‘I thought that she said she had been the one who killed her mother because they cross-questioned her. She was always quite an innocent child: always very anxious to be loved by everyone. Always wanted to oblige by saying what she thought was expected of her. And she never changed. It would have been quite in character for her to own up to something she hadn’t done.’ She looked at him, appealing to him to understand, anxious that he would be on Rosie’s side.

  ‘Keen to please.’ Mr Bradley nodded his head
. ‘I know the type, but this doesn’t seem to be the position here, does it? No one accused her of the deed, but she claimed it.’

  Flora shook her head helplessly. ‘I don’t understand it. Just a minute, something has occurred to me.’ She stuck her head out the door. The two policemen were standing looking out of a window on the corridor, but she addressed the question to Jim Prior. ‘Jim, did she explain about phoning the news desk of the TV station? How did she get the number? I can’t imagine her being able to find out something like that.’

  ‘I understand that her sister had gone out with one of the reporters for a couple of months. On dates, I mean,’ said P.C. Prior hesitantly. ‘I’d say that Rosie had an old copy of her sister’s phone book.’

  His face became a little red. He was probably another who had fallen for Jenny, and, doubtless, Rosie had got his number as well. She seemed to spend her life in the village phone box. It had seemed unlikely she had enough friends to talk to; she never seemed to be with any other young people. But of course if she had managed to have a list of Jenny’s friends, well, that would explain the continual presence of the blonde head bent over the phone in the new all-glass box in the centre of Willowgrove.

  ‘So the reporter was one of her sister’s boyfriends. He possibly didn’t take it too seriously, but thought he’d better pass it on to the police,’ she said to Mr Bradley as soon as she had gone back into the room and closed the door. ‘If it had been anyone else they would undoubtedly have arrived with a camera. Everyone protects Rosie. It’s just a habit in the neighbourhood and I suppose the habit is even passed on to Jenny’s boyfriends.’

  ‘What’s the sister like?’ enquired Mr Bradley.

  ‘Very bright, very attractive, though not as beautiful as Rosie, quite a leader; shame that she didn’t go on to university; she certainly had the brains for it.’ Flora Morgan gave a slight sigh. Odd, how, once a child had been in your school, you went on feeling a certain sense of responsibility for them even after they had reached adulthood. ‘Still she’s settled in a good job now with a travel firm. I think she is enjoying the salary and the independence. Money is important at that age. Any time I’ve seen her visiting her mother these days, she seems to have a different set of fashionable clothes on. And a car! Nice to have a car, even a second-hand one, when you are eighteen years old.’

  The solicitor nodded, digesting this. ‘It’s a pity that the sister is away on holiday. Still it’s great that you know Rosie very well and that she will have confidence in you. I think it would be best if I just listen and you ask her to tell you what happened. She may clam up with a stranger like myself.’

  Flora doubted it; Rosie would love him, she thought, as she loved anyone new. But she nodded dutifully. They would have to do their best for the girl.

  ‘We’ll go in with you, initially,’ said the sergeant when they emerged into the corridor. ‘We’ll just introduce Mr Bradley as her solicitor and then we will leave you alone with her. We’ll wait for you to give the word before we question her properly.’

  It was all to be done according to the book. Sergeant Dawkins wasn’t going to give the defence lawyer any grounds for complaints. Flora went into the room first, and received a beaming smile from Rosie, then Mr Bradley came — and yes, her eyes did light up as she saw his gentle, fatherly face, and then came Sergeant Dawkins and last of all P.C. Prior.

  As soon as Rosie saw Jim, she jumped up and ran across the room, her arms outstretched to give one of her lavish hugs. If she had still been a young child, the gesture would have been sweet, but of course, she was almost twenty.

  ‘Oh, Badger,’ she said. ‘Where are the telly people? I want to have my picture on the telly.’

  ‘Badger?’ queried Mr Bradley in a whisper, while P.C. Prior, blushing deeply, did his best to extricate himself.

  ‘Wind in the Willows. They did a play of it when they were in primary school.’ Flora hoped her low-voiced explanation of this would make sense. She looked across at the young policeman affectionately. He had been a very nice boy, she thought, and he had turned into a nice young man. Despite the sardonic gaze of his superior, he was behaving very sweetly to Rosie.

  ‘The telly people are having their lunch now, Rosie.’ He whispered the words in her ear, as much to please her by creating an illusion that he was on her side, as, perhaps, to hope that his superior could pretend ignorance of his words. ‘Mrs Morgan will look after her you until they come.’

  Flora came to his rescue, prising Rosie’s hands from his arm and sitting down beside her. ‘You stay with me, Rosie,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Be back in a while, Rosie,’ Jim whispered to her. And then went scarlet again as the sergeant cast his eyes upon the ceiling.

  ‘Goodbye, Police Cadet Prior, and goodbye, Sergeant Dawkins,’ said Flora, resurrecting her headmistress style and Rosie obediently echoed: ‘Goodbye, Police Cadet Prior, and goodbye, Sergeant Dawkins,’ as Jim and the sergeant left the room.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Come in here, Tom! Come quick!’

  Mr Osmotherley disliked being hissed at by his wife and beckoned into the back room of the butcher’s shop. It always meant, in his experience, that she had uncovered something which necessitated action from him. He was, he knew, an excellent farmer who reared very good beef, an excellent butcher who produced tasty steaks and economical mince, but he had always disliked the way that she insisted on confronting his slow wits with her quick brain. Nevertheless, he went in, holding the door to the shop open a crack behind him.

  ‘What’s up now?’ he asked and then noticing how white-faced she was, he melted. ‘What’s amiss?’ he asked more gently. She was, after all, a very good wife to him, had reared their large family and had never objected to serving in the butcher shop. Popular with the customers, too.

  ‘I’ve sent Jason back to Brocklehurst,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ he said heartily. He had got his youngest son an apprenticeship with a butcher in the nearest large town and it really annoyed him to see the idle young brat hanging around Willowgrove and pretending that he was ill. Spoilt, he often thought, spoilt by his mother. She would have given him money for his fare, but it was worth it to get rid of him.

  ‘He was out all night at that party on Willow Island,’ he grumbled. ‘Daft idea! Tom Brennan was in earlier and he was in a fine old state about it. Said that if he hadn’t seen my youngster there, he was going to call the police. Lighting fires, too, and those trees as dry as tinder; the river only an inch high. It’s hardly a river these days, what with all those dry summers we’ve been having since 1976...’

  ‘Something terrible has happened.’ She interrupted him and there was still that hissing note in her voice. He cast a look towards the shop, but there was a bell on the door and he knew that no one had come in.

  ‘What’s amiss?’ he repeated. And this time she replied to his question.

  ‘Mrs Trevor, Mrs Trevor from Dewhurst Lane,’ she said. ‘She’s been killed. The ambulance from Brocklehurst took her body away.’

  That took his attention away from his party-going son.

  ‘Who told you?’ he asked. He often wondered how she got all the information that she poured into his ears. Little happened at Willowgrove which was not noted by her.

  ‘The police were up Dewhurst Lane,’ she said. ‘Mrs Fagg was in a while ago. Wanted a pound of our sausages. She saw it all. First the police car and then the ambulance. Took the body away. Dead, she was. Mrs Fagg could see that she was all covered up, face and all. They wouldn’t do that unless she was dead.’

  ‘Had a heart attack I bet,’ pronounced Mr Osmotherley. ‘She was just the type. Overdid things. Always fussing about something or other, getting up petitions. Never pays, that’s what I say. Take life easy and you’ll live to a hundred.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have the police if that was all. Not for a heart attack. Three police cars, one after the other. One of them still there, according to Mrs Fagg. Searching the place. Garden and all.’ S
he gave an emphatic nod of her head.

  ‘That woman would make a drama out of anything,’ he said. And then something aroused his curiosity. ‘What’s all this to do with Jason?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, you know what it’s like,’ she said obscurely. ‘Best not to get them involved.’

  ‘Them’, he knew, referred to his two youngest, the twins, Jason and Anthony.

  ‘What’s the trouble, Lily?’ he asked and this time it was more authoritative. They had ten children, he and his wife, but somehow there had been no problems with any one of them until the twins arrived. And to be fair, he thought, most of the worries seemed to come from Jason. ‘What time did Jason come home last night, or this morning, I mean?’

  ‘Must have been after six,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘Where’s Anthony, then?’ he asked. Both boys had been present at supper on the evening before. There had been some talk of a holiday. Anthony was messing about at a university, supposed to be very clever. Doing law. He kept a civil tongue in his head and the government paid for all that fancy education. Anthony, so far as his father was concerned, looked after himself. Not like Jason.

  ‘Gone on a holiday,’ said his wife laconically. But her anxious expression didn’t change.

  ‘Where?’ he asked. Usually he left the boys to her, but now there was something alarming going on and he reasserted his position as head of the family.

  ‘Gone to Majorca,’ she said, and then added reluctantly, ‘Gone with Jenny Trevor. The pair of them went together.’

  ‘Jenny Trevor!’ He didn’t care about Anthony’s morals. But he didn’t want any talk in the village. ‘Majorca? Where did he get the money for that?’

  ‘I suppose that he saved up; he’s got a summer job,’ murmured his wife and then, in her usual fashion, distracted him from the question that occupied his mind. ‘It’s not Anthony that I’m worried about, it’s Jason,’ she said, her hands automatically tidying the tray of lamb chops and placing sprigs of plastic parsley in between the individual pieces.