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

by Cora Harrison

  Had the frustrations, the boredom got too much for Rosie? Had they boiled up into a hatred for her mother who had provided so much, but who could no longer provide a satisfying life for her?

  ‘You’re looking concerned,’ said Paula. ‘What’s the matter? It’s not just Rosie, is it? I saw you in the village last week and I thought that you looked worried. Is there anything wrong?’

  It was an invitation, but Flora knew she didn’t want to talk about Simon. Paula was trustworthy, but nevertheless it would feel like a betrayal to her son. ‘I’m worried about that wretched dog which I acquired,’ she said as lightly as she could. Paula had an extremely well-trained poodle, now lying quietly beneath the shade of the tree, and so might have some tips. ‘It wasn’t too bad when he was a puppy,’ she continued, ‘but he is nearly a year old now and he is enormous. He weighs almost as much as myself. The vet couldn’t believe it when we put him on the scales. All bone and muscle, he kept saying. I really got him for Simon,’ Flora said, half-laughing, half-ashamed. ‘I thought it would give him an occupation, be healthy for him. He could take the dog out in the woods, take him for walks, train him, you know. The dog would be a companion and an interest for him. I should have known better,’ she concluded despairingly. ‘I’ve just saddled myself with another problem. Simon is happy to have the dog on the sofa watching TV with him and feed him with popcorn, let him sleep in his bedroom, but apart from that it seems as if he thinks it’s up to me to look after him. And he is an enormous dog, Paula! He is getting bigger by the month and he does nothing that he is told and when I try to take him for a walk, he almost pulls my arm out of its socket.’

  ‘Why don’t you bring him to my training class in the village hall? Dogs don’t train themselves. They need to be trained. Just bring him along this evening. Now promise me, Flora,’ said Paula earnestly as Flora got to her feet reluctantly. ‘You’ll enjoy it. We have a very nice crowd there. It’s quite a social occasion and it will take your mind off things. And don’t you worry too much about poor little Rosie. The chances are that it was one of those lads from the Home. He’ll have broken in to steal and unfortunately for everyone Mrs Trevor heard him. She was just the sort of woman who would tackle a burglar.’

  Chapter 7

  Flora resolved to keep her word to Paula that evening. It was, she thought, just the stimulus she needed to get up the courage to deal with her problem. When Piper had been a small puppy she had met Paula, with her perfectly trained poodle, in the village streets, and had complained to her about this appalling-behaved German Shepherd whom she had acquired, and Paula had always suggested training classes and each time Flora had thought, I must do that one of these days. And then, as Piper grew from being a delightful puppy into an awkward adolescent, she had begun to be deeply ashamed of the dog’s lack of basic training and had started to avoid any of Paula’s questions.

  Tonight would be the ideal time. It would take her mind off poor Rosie, her mind off Simon — it had given her a shock this afternoon to hear Rosie call him Weasel.

  Jenny had been the one who had named everyone. Kind, responsible Jim Prior had been Badger, that kind, responsible animal; clever Anthony had been Ratty, the talented dreamer who wrote poetry; show-off, spoiled Benjamin Price had been Toad, the show-off who drove fast cars; rough, tough Darren Frost from London had been Otter, the rough, tough animal; but why had Simon been Weasel? Had there been something about him, even then, that had caused Jenny to give him that nickname?

  The dog training classes began at nine o’clock. Flora released Piper from his kennel as soon as she came home, and full of compunction for him, though he had been sleeping peacefully on his bed of straw in the old stable when she drove into the back yard, she took him straight into the house and made a great fuss of him. There was no sign of Simon, and Piper, who was always excited by Simon, was in quite a docile mood so she made herself a cup of coffee and a sandwich, gave him a plateful of his kibbles and sat down to contemplate the ruined kitchen floor. What had made Simon react with such fury to the plateful of fried eggs, bacon and sausages which she had placed before him? Was there, and now she tried to face up to the terrible possibility, was there any chance that her son was taking some sort of drugs. Darren Frost, she remembered hearing, had been in court for possession of cannabis. It had been averred that he had stolen money to buy it, but that particular charge had not been proven. Probably was true, though, she thought, as she buttered her cream crackers and sliced some cheddar cheese to go in between them. Darren, or Otter, as he was named in the play, had embarked upon a life of crime long before. And Simon had said, recently, quite carelessly, that Darren was really a good fellow.

  Dangerous company for her only child.

  ‘Now you had better behave yourself this evening or you are going to disgrace me for ever in this village,’ she addressed Piper and he flattened his ears, wagged his tail and looked so like a repentant dog that her heart melted. She stroked his head, tickled his chest and gave him a kiss on the forehead between his splendidly upright ears. And then, feeling as she had felt when she took her first Assembly at that large Brocklehurst School, full of problems, she drank the rest of her coffee, munched the cream cracker sandwich and then got to her feet.

  ‘Come on, then,’ she said, ‘let’s take you for a good long run first and then you’ll be in a good mood to get trained.’

  There were a couple of empty fields and an old copse of woodland beside the back gate of her garden and she took a chance on not putting him on the lead. Off the lead, he trotted quite companionably for most of the time, chased a ball or walked beside her, while on the lead he was a total misery, pulling, lunging, whirling around, jumping up, and in every way rebelling against this unnatural constraint.

  ‘He’ll soon get used to it,’ said Paula when her erstwhile headmistress had confessed to this trait. ‘Dogs need to know who is master. You need to show him that you are in charge. You bring him to training classes and I’ll show you how to give him a few sharp jerks and then you’ll have no more trouble from him.’ Paula had not commented on nineteen-year-old Simon’s role in this training and Flora was grateful for her former secretary’s restraint. Her problems with Simon were probably well known in the village.

  But when she got home with an exhausted Piper, too exhausted for any mischief, she hoped, Simon was there. He had, she noticed, made an ineffectual effort to wipe from the kitchen the memory of the morning’s row. There was a smell of floor cleaner in the air and he had placed a mat over the hole that Piper had dug in his efforts to get the last traces of fried egg from off the surface of the floor. She was grateful for that and on edge not to offend him.

  ‘I’m taking Piper to training classes this evening in the village hall,’ she said. She would not mention Rosie again. After all, Simon was her son and her responsibility. Nor would she reproach him.

  ‘And all those big nasty dogs are going to bully my poor little Piper,’ he murmured, stroking the sleek fur while Piper gazed at him adoringly.

  ‘No bullying ever in Willowgrove,’ she said bracingly. She had hoped that he might offer to come with her, but obviously he didn’t intend to. ‘Not when I was headteacher, anyway,’ she said, trying to make a joke out of it and, she had to admit, hoping that he might say something nice about her and her relationship with the children.

  ‘You must be joking,’ he said scornfully. ‘There’s bullying everywhere. And there was at Willowgrove when I was there. You just didn’t see it. Usually Jenny,’ he added.

  ‘Jenny! Jenny Trevor!’ Flora was quite taken aback. ‘I never remember Jenny bullying anyone.’

  ‘Teachers don’t see that sort of thing,’ he said cynically. ‘Or else they don’t want to see. Do you remember all the fuss about Ben Rice? That was Jenny from start to finish.’

  Benjamin Rice had always been quite a nice child, thought Flora, a bit spoiled, but fairly sweet-tempered and sociable, with a great sense of fun. His schoolwork had been mediocre, but spoiled
children are always hard to motivate. They don’t have much desire to please, she often reflected — everything comes to them rather too easily. Toad, as they all still called him, would make his way through his social gifts rather than intellectual ones. She remembered him at the end of his first day in school running up to her and shouting: ‘Thank you, Mrs Morgan. I’ve had a lovely time!’. A sweet-natured boy.

  ‘Bullied?’ she queried, trying to keep the conversation going before Simon slid off to his bedroom. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Yes, I remember how surprised I was when his mother came up to see me to say that Benjamin was being bullied.’

  ‘I suppose you said that you’d look into it and question the children.’ Simon made the remark with a knowing grin and Flora was taken aback. Had she been as easily read as that?

  ‘Jenny used to pretend that she was you and she’d say things like that.’ The smile went from his face then and she could feel a certain tension from him.

  ‘I suppose I did say something like that,’ she said, hoping to get back that moment of friendliness. ‘I probably said that “sometimes this happens with eleven-year-olds at this time of the year, just before they move on to secondary school — they’re growing up quickly at this stage, friendship groups change and their feelings are very easily hurt.” I’d have said that and I remember asking her who was bullying him.’

  ‘Who did she say?’ He was interested in that.

  ‘She gave me a list immediately,’ Flora went on with the story. ‘Ian Madden, the two Osmotherley boys, Jim Prior, I was surprised about him. He was always such a kind, steady boy, a boy whose word that I trusted. Your name didn’t come up, Simon,’ she added, remembering how she had promised to have a chat with them all.

  ‘It wouldn’t, would it? I wasn’t one of the gang. Jenny shut me out. They used to say that I told you tales.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Flora had no sooner said the words than she knew that he would snort with amusement. The secret world of childhood. Now she remembered the day clearly. An idyllic scene of summertime in a primary school before teachers started to get harassed and edgy about Standard Attainment Tasks and Assessments and Appraisals. She had dismissed the anxious mother with a few reassuring remarks and decided, on the spur of the moment, to forget about ringing the bell and to give the children another ten minutes of playtime. They had clammed up, of course, when asked about Benjamin. That’s what normally happened. And perhaps it was more awkward because her own son was in their group. Afterwards, on the advice of their teacher, she had questioned Jim Prior by himself.

  ‘It’s just that he keeps on showing off and we’re all getting sick of him,’ he had said, frowning heavily at the far-distant bookshelf and avoiding her eyes. ‘Jenny suggested that we would just be polite to him, but not mates, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ She too had fixed her eyes on the bookshelf and avoided looking at him. Polite, but not mates, meant that no adult could find fault. ‘Why does Benjamin get on everyone’s nerves?’ she had asked.

  ‘He wants to be the boss all the time. You know that you gave that little shed for us to use as a clubroom and he started making rules and we were all to bring things and to put money in the kitty and stuff like that. We just wanted to have a laugh. Anthony said that he was spoiling everything and Jenny said that we would just take no notice, just ignore him, not do anything that would make us get into trouble, just not be pals… you know… and that was…’ He finished with a quick gesture of his hands and she changed the subject. He was a nice boy; there was no point in distressing him.

  ‘I understand the whole thing now,’ Flora said to Simon. ‘Benjamin could get his parents to give him anything he wanted. Anthony, who was one of a large family, would not have been able to keep up with this and Jenny, who was Anthony’s best friend, and had more brains than any of them, had devised a way of freezing Benjamin out. That was until Benjamin had that big party and then everyone became friendly with him.’

  ‘I was the one who advised Benny to have a party,’ said Simon, sounding, suddenly, very grown up, ‘I told him to just give out the invitations one by one. He gave one to me because we were pals and then he gave one to Ian. And he kept Jenny waiting until the end. I knew that would get her. Her mother would be pestering her. Everyone in the village was talking about this party. They were getting a clown down from London and they were going to have real good stuff for going-home presents. Jenny knew that I put him up to it, though, and then she was even worse about ganging up on me.’

  Flora was taken aback. ‘So you don’t like Jenny,’ she said.

  His olive skin warmed to a glow and his eyes slid away from her. ‘Where did you get that idea? I’m talking about when we were kids.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m off, now, Mum. Have a good time at the dog training classes. Can I take a couple of pounds from your bag? Thanks, Mum. Don’t wait up. I’ll be late! Bye Piper. Be good! Don’t let any of those big rough dogs bully you.’

  And then he was gone. Confidence time was over.

  Chapter 8

  The village hall carpark was empty when Flora arrived. She parked and sat looking out of the window and wondered what was best to do. Should she go in early and wait for the other dogs to arrive, as she had planned, or would it better to stay where she was. Piper whined a little from the back seat. His whines began to turn to barks as Alf Barfoot came across to greet her and she got out of the car hastily. She didn’t want him to think that Piper was barking at him so she moved quickly away from the car and towards him.

  ‘Dog Training classes?’ she inquired. With Alf it was always best to keep sentences short.

  He looked past her at the dog in the car and grinned. It always gave her a pang when he did that, when he displayed his deformity. How much would it have cost to operate on that cleft palate when he was a baby? No national health service when he was young. Bad and all as it was now, at least with the NHS no child would be allowed to go through life without that fairly simple procedure and without dental care and speech therapy.

  ‘Big dog, ’ow,’ he said, holding his hands far apart. She tended to use a lot of sign language with him and he had begun to use it with her, perhaps seeing it as a way in which they communicated. And, of course, he had known Piper well as a puppy. He was smiling admiringly at the badly-behaved dog and Piper stopped barking and wagged his tail.

  In her first years in Willowgrove, Flora had often seen Alf Barfoot working on the roads during the late summer months, manipulating his enormous Hi-Mac excavator, removing portions of a cliff face in order to widen the road. And then he appeared again in the winter when the river flooded and drains needed cleaning. But it was Paula who put forward his name when Flora was debating the possibility of turning a soggy corner of the school field into a pond for wildlife. An appeal to the Education Authority was turned down. Far, far, too expensive! Even the offer of funds from a recent Bring and Buy Sale was scorned. They had big and expensive ideas at the county education headquarters.

  ‘If you really want a pond, you could buy one of those plastic liners and get some of your dads to dig a hole for it one weekend,’ said a brisk lady from the office.

  ‘I don’t want just a plastic liner and a little garden pool,’ said Flora, putting down the telephone in an exasperated manner. As usual, she immediately embarked on using Paula as an outlet for her frustration and as, often happened, Paula came up with the solution.

  ‘Why don’t you get Alf Barfoot along? He’d do it in a weekend. It’s not always easy to make him understand what you want, but you could draw it out for him, perhaps. He’s a bit simple and he can’t talk very well.’

  ‘Or better still, I’ll get the children of year six to draw it out.’ Flora had been immediately enthusiastic. ‘They can get together and agree what they want to make it look like. It will be a very good exercise for them.’

  ‘I’ll ask him to come and see you one day. He finishes early on a Friday. He only charges ten pounds an ho
ur. He’s quite cheap,’ said Paula.

  Flora had begun to repent of the matter when Friday came along. She had found Alf rather difficult to communicate with and was reduced to sign language very quickly. He looked rather dubiously at the end result of the year six deliberations. Led by one strong-minded girl, with a rather limited imagination, the pond had ended up being very conventional — very like something to adorn a suburban garden. It had begun by being perfectly round in shape and then when Flora had asked them to make it more interesting, it had ended up neatly scalloped, like a flower from a children’s colouring book. Flora showed it hesitantly to the man with the machine and he had looked at without much interest and said something which eventually she had made out to be the word ‘land’.

  ‘Oh, the land, yes.’ She brought him out to the soggy and unusable corner of the school field.

  ‘Fish?’ he enquired.

  ‘No, not fish,’ she said, once she had realised what he said. ‘Tadpoles, frogs, toads, water insects.’ The whole idea had begun to seem a little silly.

  She was committed, though. He gave a brief nod. His words were much mangled, but she thought she heard Saturday. That made sense. And then he held up two fingers. ‘Saturday ... two weeks,’ she said and he nodded vigorously in reply. She hoped that it didn’t mean that there was two weeks’ work in the project. She would never have enough money to cover it, but she was too embarrassed to bargain, averting her eyes from the ugly mouth and cleft palate. ‘Saturday, the tenth of March,’ she said and nodded firmly. He nodded, also, took a brief glance around, politely handed back the prim sketch and went off.

  But he was there punctually at nine o’clock on Saturday morning in two weeks’ time and this time she was ready for him and had thought the matter through. She had raided the county education committee supplies stores, recklessly investing in pond dipping equipment: nets of various sizes and shapes, books of pond creatures. But, best of all, she had acquired a large poster of children fishing at an educational aquatic centre. When she showed it to him he looked at it with interest, nodded casually, said ‘o’ri’ a few times and then climbed into his machine and set to work.