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

by Cora Harrison

  ‘It’s an odd time for a break-in — eight o’clock on a lovely summer’s morning when the household would normally be up.’ He said the words musingly and then added hastily as Flora looked at him sharply, ‘I’m just playing devil’s advocate, here.’

  ‘Have we actually got an exact time for the murder?’ she asked. ‘Or is this just Sergeant Dawkins being omniscient?’

  ‘No later than eight, was what he said to me. I think the pathologist’s report is somewhere here; he faxed it over to me.’ He hunted on his desk and dug up a blotched-looking piece of paper and handed it over to her, saying, ‘You may find it slightly distressing.’

  Flora ignored this stupid remark and read it carefully. Digestion, contents of the stomach, hampered by the fact that no one yet knew what time Mrs Trevor had her last meal — Rosie, typically, had proved quite vague, only saying ‘usual time’ when questioned about supper. There was one interesting fact, though; apparently Mrs Trevor’s blood still held quite an amount of barbiturates in it. Flora was surprised at that. She would never have guessed Mrs Trevor to be the sort of person that needed sleeping pills. Anyway, this seemed to show that she was actually fast asleep when smothered. The bruising was confined to the mouth area and it didn’t look as if the victim struggled much. There were no signs that she had clawed at her attacker. Her fingernails bore traces of soap and nothing else.

  ‘Was there any mention of an alarm clock?’ And then when he looked uncomprehending, Flora said impatiently, ‘Anyone who takes sleeping tablets will need an alarm clock.’

  ‘Good point. I’ll make a note of it.’ He did so on a scrappy piece of paper and she hoped that he wouldn’t lose it. There was a slight smile at the corners of his mouth. It broadened as he added: ‘You’re quite a Miss Marple, aren’t you? Any unsolved crimes in your village? Any suspects come to mind?’

  Flora pondered on this for a minute as he finished writing. At the moment the police were considering the case to be crystal clear. She needed to muddy the waters. Poor Darren, I’m going to throw him to the wolves for the third time.

  ‘There is a boy,’ she said. ‘He was in the same year at Willowgrove Primary as Rosie. He lived in a children’s home at the time and now he is in a flat with two other boys from the home. The Social Services pay the rent for the flat. It was considered a good idea to keep all three out of Brocklehurst. He would have known about the pearls. Darren Frost is his name.’

  ‘Got a record?’ He was busily writing.

  ‘About as long as it could be for someone who is only nineteen years old, poor fellow.’ Mostly it was petty shoplifting — in view of his sad history, community service had been handed out for these, but then there had been the recent raid on the Post Office; he was still awaiting trial on this one. No one in the village could understand why he was not locked up. There was lots of muttering about it whenever she went into the biggest village shop to buy her cheddar cheese and freshly baked bread.

  ‘He would have been at secondary school with the two Trevor girls, also, wouldn’t he?’

  Flora shook her head. ‘No, not for long. Mrs Trevor campaigned to get him taken off the school bus and I think that she was instrumental in stirring up trouble against him. She had overheard one of the boys in the village saying that Darren, or Otter, they called him, was selling white powder in the toilets. She went straight to the head of year in the secondary school. Apparently he was watched. An undercover police woman pretended to be a student teacher and she kept an eye open, burst in and confiscated the powder.’

  Flora had heard the whole story at the Council of Heads. Poor Darren! It was a measure of his innocence that he was, apparently, more alarmed at the apparition of a female in the boys’ toilets than he was in having the powder taken from him. She told the little story to the solicitor and was pleased to see a measure of pity in his smile.

  ‘And it tested positive,’ she went on. ‘Heroin. He refused to say where he had got it — probably from one of the former boys in the children’s home, but he was identified by an undercover policeman from the drug squad who was working in the Brocklehurst area and he was sent to a special school. Bert Madden got the job of ferrying him to and from the school at weekends, when he was allowed to come home — if you could call it a home,’ she added.

  ‘But he might have been at Mrs Trevor’s house at some time when he was at primary school. Might have gone there with one of the girls, would know where her bedroom was, and perhaps even where to find the pearls.’ Rosie’s solicitor was getting enthusiastic.

  ‘Unlikely, Mrs Trevor loathed him.’ Flora felt that she was talking herself out of her theory, so qualified this. ‘Of course, he would have walked past hundreds of times. These two-bedroomed bungalows are not very hard to fathom: sitting room and main bedroom at the front, facing south, kitchen and second bedroom at the back, facing north. Anyone would have known that.’

  ‘Well, the name should certainly be mentioned to Sergeant Dawkins. I must say that now the girl denies utterly that she has done the crime, I think this should become a murder investigation. The trouble is the original admission, but we might be able to get over that with a psychologist’s report. What do you think?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Flora murmured. ‘As long as we get the right one and as long as Rosie is in the right mood on that day. I seem to remember one psychologist being very impressed by Rosie, was certain that she had a high intelligence, just hampered by some psychological problems. You see,’ she said, doing her best to explain Rosie to him, ‘many children with problems like Rosie can have a special talent, can be a savant, even. You know, a gift for music, for languages, for figures even. Now Rosie has this wonderful talent of reading people’s facial clues and coming up with the right answer. I remember one of the teachers at the secondary school, a woman I knew from the Teachers’ Centre, muttering savagely in my ear all through some briefing about local management. She kept going on about the psychologist’s report. “We’ll have her back in main-stream, if that psychologist gets his way. He’s been completely taken in by her.” Rosie, apparently, had managed marvellously with a multiple choice test where the psychologist read out all of the answers.’ Flora smiled at the memory of how the woman had hissed the words in her ear in the Friday night queue for Sainsbury’s checkout and then became serious again as she thought of the consequences to Rosie if the girl played any of those tricks on a police psychologist.

  ‘So that might be a bit of lottery with her,’ he mused.

  Flora nodded vigorously. ‘It would, indeed. She reads faces in a most expert way. If the psychologist thinks Rosie is guilty, knowing her, she will convince them of it before they leave. She can appear quite different to different psychologists, and goodness knows she has been examined by enough of them. One even tried to convince me that her problems were merely down to dyslexia, and another had a theory that she showed some features of being bipolar. Tourette Syndrome, attention-deficit, autistic features, they’ve all been mentioned. And then there was one psychologist, a Canadian, who was very strongly of the opinion that she suffered from, I think, Williams Syndrome, but lacked the classic elfin appearance.’

  ‘Well, we’ll leave that for the moment.’ To Flora’s relief he didn’t ask for the meaning of Williams Syndrome — just as well as she had totally forgotten. None of these psychologists, she reflected, had proved to be of the slightest help in actually teaching Rosie.

  ‘Any more local suspects?’ he queried. ‘Any other dead bodies found lying around in the past?’

  Flora thought about this. ‘Funnily enough,’ she said slowly, ‘there was a dead body found lying around a few months ago. It was an elderly man in a black coat, walking his dog, a black Labrador, along a small lane above the village. The man and the dog had been knocked down and killed. The driver was never identified. It probably was nothing to do with the village. That lane was used by a lot of cars at the time; there were road works on the main road and those in the know took a quick detour that way i
n order to get to the motorway.’

  ‘When did that happen?’

  ‘Oh, it was before Easter.’ Flora was thinking hard. Thinking of the meeting in the Rice household on the evening before.

  ‘Nothing to do with us, then.’

  ‘Probably not,’ she said. She would leave it at that. She rather despised herself for being willing to give poor Darren’s name while hesitating over divulging the name of another boy of the same age. Benjamin Rice, if arrested on suspicion, would have the best legal advice and support that his father’s money could buy him. For the moment, though, she would leave it. She would wait to see what Jenny had to say.

  Chapter 11

  Poor Jenny had not had time to get a tan. Her face was very white. Flora knew that because the discreetly applied, expensive make-up that she had admired the last time that she had met Jenny was no longer a perfect match for her delicate translucent skin: now it stood out mask-like and clogged-looking. Her mascara had run a little and had been hastily wiped so that there were faint smears of black under her eyes. Flora held out a hand to her, but Jenny moved so close that she put her arms around the girl. One never quite knew with Jenny, Flora reflected. Rosie’s younger sister had always adopted such a competent, adult pose that even at ten she seemed to be quite a woman. Probably it was a reaction to having a sister like Rosie. Jenny could not compete by being child-like and endearing, so she ended up more like a sister to her own mother and a mother to her older sister. Flora thought back to what Paula said about Mrs Trevor wanting to unload Rosie on her younger sister and was glad that Jenny had refused. Jenny needed to have fun, giggle with friends, throw wild parties; even have a boyfriend in to stay as they all did these days. What a selfish woman Mrs Trevor was! Why did she want to get rid of Rosie? Unless, thought Flora, Paula’s story about a possible affair with Benjamin Rice’s father was true. Rosie, of course, would be unable to keep a secret and was very liable to blurt out the most private details to even a perfect stranger. The thoughts ran through Flora’s mind as she gave Jenny a warm hug.

  ‘I’m so sorry, my dear,’ she said, feeling glad that the girl had been away when her sister had been arrested. Looking at her competence, the police might not have bothered to get a designated appropriate adult, so Jenny would have had to bear the burden, though she was barely eighteen years old.

  ‘You look so grown-up these days,’ she said in a chatty, ancient-teacher manner as they both sat down. ‘Are you eighteen yet?’ This was meant for Sergeant Dawkins in case he thought it might be easier to deal with Jenny than with the retired headmistress. Though he had probably wormed everything out of the girl when he met her at the airport.

  ‘Just this month.’ Jenny smiled sadly. She took a tissue from her expensive handbag and dabbed quickly at the corners of her eyes. As she sat beside her, Flora could feel, rather than hear, her take in a long and deep breath. ‘Mrs Morgan, you don’t believe that Rosie did this, do you? Rosie wouldn’t hurt a fly. She was in floods of tears one day when she saw a squashed frog on the road.’

  ‘I explained to Miss Trevor that her sister confessed to the murder.’ Sergeant Dawkins’ voice bore its usual mechanical tone.

  Flora thought it was time that she asserted what little authority that she had. ‘I understand that Police Cadet Prior took the initial confession.’ She had been wondering where Jim was and this gave her an opportunity to put the question obliquely.

  Sergeant Dawkins gave her a sharp glance. ‘Might I have a quick word, Mrs Morgan? We will only be one minute, Miss Trevor.’

  ‘P.C. Prior has asked to be released from this case and has been given other duties,’ he said robotically once they were outside the door. ‘He will, of course, give evidence at the trial.’

  ‘Oh?’ Flora raised an eyebrow at him. She wasn’t surprised, though. Jim would not have wanted to face Jenny after having arrested her sister.

  ‘P.C. Prior feels that the fact that he has had a relationship with the sister of the accused and has known the accused at primary school precludes an unbiased attitude to this case.’ The words flowed out of him very smoothly. Flora wondered cynically when he would be promoted to the rank of inspector. And that made her think of something else.

  ‘But you will still be handling this case?’

  ‘For the moment.’ He said the words laconically. She guessed that it would be handed over to an inspector if another suspect came forward and it became a full-blown murder investigation.

  ‘I was going to ask you about what comes next. I presume that since Rosie Trevor has now come to her senses and denies vehemently that she committed the crime that this will become a murder investigation.’

  ‘I will let you know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps now you will return to Miss Jenny Trevor and I will see that her sister is brought in to the interview room.’

  ‘Mrs Morgan, what on earth made her say that.’ Jenny had dried her eyes, reapplied her mascara and was sitting up very straight, stroking her lips with a gold-cased lipstick when I came in.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Flora. Though in a way, she did know. Too much television. An idle and lonely life. A wish for recognition. Poor Rosie, she thought.

  Jenny looked at her sharply and replaced the cover on the lipstick tube with a business-like click.

  ‘You don’t believe her, though, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think it is like Rosie at all. In any case, I don’t think that she had been long out of bed before she phoned the TV company and that was about ten o’clock in the morning. I’d say that she found the body. It didn’t look real to her, perhaps. And then it became muddled in her mind with some TV show that she had been watching.’ Odd, though, thought Flora, that a girl who wept over a squashed frog should have been so indifferent to the sight of a dead mother. But then, she tried to tell herself, Rosie was odd.

  ‘She never got up until she was hungry, whenever I’ve been there recently.’ Jenny blotted her lips carefully on a tissue and then applied some lip-gloss on top of the lipstick. Flora bit back school-mistress words about leaving her beautiful skin alone; this girl was an adult and she had a problem now that few adults would have to deal with: the murder of her mother and the possible involvement of her sister.

  ‘Has she got a solicitor?’ Jenny asked the question with her usual alertness. ‘I’m sure that the fellow I used to work for would act, if I asked him. He was Granny’s solicitor. That’s why he gave me a job when I left school. He was a nice man.’

  Flora explained about Mr Bradley and again Jenny nodded. Her eyes were clear and intelligent. In an odd sort of way, there was something about the very intelligence of her face that stopped her being as pretty as Rosie, thought Flora. Suddenly Flora felt very sorry for the girl. In a way, her whole childhood had been shadowed by Rosie’s problems and her mother’s worries about Rosie. Now she had lost her mother and the worries had descended to her.

  ‘Jenny, I’m here to be responsible for Rosie. Don’t worry too much about her.’ Flora said the words with conviction and was glad to see Jenny’s blue eyes lift from the handbag and look shrewdly at her. ‘You and I know what Rosie is like,’ she continued. ‘We know how she can live in some sort of dream world. I don’t think that there is much doubt that Mr Bradley and I can convince the police to drop the case against her.’ Even as Flora spoke, she was doubtful.

  ‘And if there are no other suspects?’ Jenny was not easily fooled.

  Flora nodded. ‘That is the problem at the moment. I’ve been thinking about that, discussing it with the solicitor, but now that you’re here, you can help. Jenny, you know your mother’s pearls — were they really valuable? Or was this one of Rosie’s stories? She used to say that they were worth a million pounds.’

  Jenny smiled a little at that. ‘I think they were fairly valuable,’ she said hesitantly. ‘I’m not sure, but I think they might have been insured for about a thousand pounds.’

  Valuable to a sneak thief, Flora thought, but not enough to commit murder for.
If they were insured for a thousand that probably meant that their value on the open market was only about £800 and stolen, possibly not more than £400. However, perhaps the theft was the planned crime, not the murder. Observing signs of activity earlier on when Jenny left for the airport, the burglar might have got a shock to find Mrs Trevor still there, fast asleep on the bed and with a sudden panicky instinct, have smothered her. I could see young Darren doing that, Flora thought. He had the rather hopeless air, always, of expecting his crimes to go wrong. After all, they had always gone wrong. He was just plain incompetent in his life of crime. Why try to recruit a client for his drugs from schoolboys that had no money? And why do it in the school toilet? Why hide stolen money in his pillow? Why endeavour to snatch the handbag from an off-duty, massively built policewoman? Why rob the post office in broad daylight without even putting a balaclava over his familiar face?

  Could Darren be sacrificed to the needs of Rosie?

  ‘Jenny,’ Flora said carefully, ‘do you remember seeing anyone hanging around the house recently? Did you see anyone that morning?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I was busy checking through my bag to see if I had everything for the airport — my passport, travel money, my ticket, all that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, don’t trouble yourself. The taxi driver, it was Ian Madden, wasn’t it. Well, he has made a statement to the police. He might have noticed.’

  ‘You might like to see your sister now, Miss Trevor.’ Sergeant Dawkins put his head around the door.

  ‘Are you coming too, Mrs Morgan?’ There was a note of appeal in Jenny’s brisk, confident voice. Suddenly she seemed a little younger.

  ‘Of course.’ Flora was on her feet instantly. ‘She’s in a bit of a state now, Jenny,’ she warned in an undertone as they walked side by side down the corridor.