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

by Cora Harrison

  ‘As a rule, every night, I think,’ said Jenny. ‘She has always taken sleeping pills as long as I’ve known her. She wakes ... used to wake up very easily, though. She slept with her alarm clock under her pillow, usually. She looked quite wide-awake on that morning …’ Jenny swallowed and then continued bravely. ‘She had set her alarm to go off for six o’clock — she was going to go back to sleep after I left as she had the week off work to see about the new conservatory. It’s possible that she took a tablet then so as to give herself a really good sleep in. She had said the night before that she was very tired.’

  Mr Bradley nodded. ‘Yes, the sergeant mentioned the alarm clock. It has been found and tested for fingerprints. That’s one of the other things that Sergeant Dawkins had to tell us. It bore only two sets of fingerprints: Mrs Trevor’s and Rosie’s.’

  ‘Would Rosie have thought to turn off the alarm?’ queried Jenny.

  She might, if it suddenly went off, Flora thought, but said nothing. She sat very still, feeling another few ounces of hope drain from her.

  ‘Sergeant Dawkins also talked to me about the pearl necklace,’ said Ted. ‘One of his men has interviewed that young man whose name you mentioned, Mrs Morgan. His premises have been searched, but nothing was found. However, they will pursue their enquiries until the pearl necklace is found. He hinted that the young man acted in a highly suspicious way.’

  Poor Darren, thought Flora, yes, of course, he would behave in a suspicious way. He panicked easily — that’s why he was always caught.

  His own worst enemy, her mother would have said.

  And then she thought of how she had given his name to the police and to the solicitor and she almost expected to hear a cock crow to mark the third betrayal of that poor boy.

  ‘Why don’t you go back to your flat and have a rest, Jenny,’ she said aloud. She got to her feet. ‘And I must be going, also.’ She did not, however, stir from her seat.

  ‘Can I give you a lift, Jenny?’ she asked in perfunctory fashion, but Jenny shook her head.

  ‘No thanks, Mrs Morgan, it’s quicker to walk. I’ll go and have a sleep and then I might pop back and see Rosie again, bring her some clothes, that sort of thing.’

  Flora nodded. That was practical and kind of Jenny, but Jenny was always efficient. Alarmingly so, she thought and tried to keep the matter from her mind as she thought about Darren and it was of Darren that the solicitor spoke once Jenny left the room.

  ‘This boy, this boy, Darren Frost, do you think it’s likely that he stole the pearl necklace? What do you think, Flora?’

  Flora thought about it for a few moments before replying. It was inevitable that Darren and other boys from the Home would be suspected. Any crime that had been committed during her years in Willowgrove Village had always been laid at the door of one of them. It would do no harm. If not guilty, none of them would be convicted. They were all experienced in finding their way through police interrogations and magistrates’ courts. Not like Rosie, who would innocently convict herself by some odd statement.

  ‘Poor Otter! He had such a terrible history,’ she said. And then in explanation, she added, ‘The children called him Otter, as that was the part that he played in their play of The Wind in the Willows.’ This explanation would lead her neatly into widening the pool of suspects.

  ‘I remember Otter,’ he said with a smile filled with reminisces. ‘A rough diamond, Otter, wasn’t he?’

  ‘And so was Darren Frost, of course. He came from London,’ said Flora, her eye on the solicitor. ‘It was nice the way he had acquired the nickname of Otter and that it stuck to him for the last eight years because his own name was so notorious. His father,’ she thought for a moment and then decided not to mince matters, ‘his father was a deeply evil man whose abuse of his own two sons was hidden, in the way that such things are, until he started kidnapping other children.’

  ‘Nasty business.’ Ted nodded without surprise. Solicitors, she supposed, saw plenty of the seamy side of life. ‘Murdered the children then, I presume?’ he went on.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Flora. ‘After the bodies had been discovered; they had been hastily covered with lime and lumps of cement down in the cellar under the house, it hit the headlines in every TV and newspaper in the world. Well, you can just imagine how the press dealt with it. There was no anonymity for the children as was usual with underage victims. And then the abuse of his own children was leaked. That story came on the tail end of the other. And kept the gasps of horror going for another lucrative few days,’ she reflected cynically.

  ‘I seem to remember something about it. My own children were still at home then.’

  Flora began to like him for the look of distress that passed across his bespectacled face. There were some crimes that could never become normal, could never be accepted, even by the police or the judiciary. Darren’s parents’ had passed that boundary. She herself had been sickened when she had heard the details.

  ‘They were taken into care, I suppose, the two brothers. Did both go to your school?’

  Flora shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘When the two boys were taken into care it was considered to be the right thing to split up them up as the older, a boy of fourteen, had already begun to abuse the younger. I never met the older boy.’

  ‘But the younger one came to your school.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Flora. ‘Darren Frost came to Willowgrove School.’ Flora thought for a moment, and cast her mind back, remembering him on his first day in the school. ‘He was eight years old,’ she said. ‘And he could not read or write. He was an almost painfully good child at the time; and when anyone spoke to him he shook and stammered. No doubt due to all the publicity I was able to get extra help for him. He was sharp and clever, and anxious to prove that he was not a dummy and in the beginning the progress was spectacular.’

  A feeling of a deep regret came over her. Could she have done more? Had she relaxed too soon?

  ‘And then he began to relax,’ said Ted, almost as though he had picked the word from her mind.

  ‘And then he began to relax.’ She echoed the words. ‘He gave up bothering about his lessons, that rudimentary amount of reading he had acquired seemed to be enough to content him. It was almost impossible to get him to write anything beyond a few words.’ She thought about the boy for a moment, rather sadly. ‘Unlike Rosie, he understood numbers,’ she said. ‘He seemed to get lots of satisfaction from doing endless pages of repetitive arithmetic.’

  ‘Interesting,’ commented Jim. She had a feeling that he was feeding words to keep her going, but by now she was in full flow.

  ‘And then the bad behaviour began. He bullied; more than bullied, he persecuted younger children. He was continually in trouble, continually being reported to me and he became the bane of temporary teachers’ lives.’ Flora thought about it for a moment. ‘To be honest,’ she said, ‘he became a thorough-going nuisance. As soon as I saw a parent walking purposefully towards my office first thing in the morning, I guessed that they were coming to complain about Otter. He would have hit someone, tripped up someone, thrown dog poo at a new anorak — one of his favourite tricks — no doubt the psychologists could have made something of that.’

  ‘Became unpopular with the other children, too, I suppose,’ said Ted. ‘How did he get on with the two Trevor girls? Did you have Mrs Trevor up complaining about him?’

  ‘I must say that despite his hatred of Mrs Trevor, after her rough handling of him on the day of the Jumble Sale when he swiped a handful of small change from her plate at the White Elephant Stall, he never tried to victimise Rosie. Perhaps he knew that the class would not stand for it. And, you know, he was not, in fact, unpopular with his own class, not unpopular with the leaders of it, anyway. He was quite a good footballer and that helped. He was especially friendly with Jenny and Anthony, one of the Osmotherley twins. They were both fanatical about football and so was he. I can just see them now out in the playground in the earl
y morning at a time when few children, other than my own son, Simon, had arrived, incessantly kicking, passing the ball, dribbling, heading, scoring goals. It was no wonder that all four were such thin, wiry children.’

  It’s funny, thought Flora, how sharp my memories are of those early mornings where there was a bubble of coolness in the air and the chestnut tree at the fence cast a motherly, rounded shadow over the goal post area. Even these days, years later, often on a sunny morning her memory projected the picture, the figures in shorts and T-shirts, twisting and turning like ballet dancers, and the endless slap of the plastic football punctuating the shrill, excited voices.

  And then everything was spoiled for poor Otter after the disappearance of the money. Of course, there was no chance of David Wright, the village policeman keeping all that to himself. It was an outrage against law and order, and even worse against the parents of the school who were so keen to raise money for a computer. As the story of that fifty-pound note had gone all over the village, there was no forgiveness for Darren Frost. Other boys or girls from the Children’s Home must have been involved; the little robber had been robbed. They could not be allowed to get away with this crime. They had to be searched, interrogated, the police had to investigate their companions, look for drugs that might have been bought with this money.

  But they never got the money back and the mood of the village had been ugly. Otter became an outcast in the school. Flora looked across at Ted and decided to finish the story.

  ‘I asked him one day, “Why did you do it?” I had kept him behind after the others went home, ostensibly to help the caretaker with covering the swimming pool — he had a quick extra swim, first, by way of thanks — but really,’ said Flora, looking back at that summer’s day of eight years ago, ‘I had delayed him in a last attempt to get through the sullen silence, which he displayed to everyone. Soon he would have to appear in a juvenile court and I was not sure what would happen next.’ She thought for a moment, visualizing that hot day in 1983. He had flicked the wet drops from his hair and his mood had been good. ‘He was an athletic boy,’ she said aloud, ‘and he did love to swim.’

  Flora paused there with her story. Should she go on? Muddy the waters, she told herself impatiently. Produce multiple suspects. Give the police plenty to think about.

  ‘Poor fellow,’ she said compassionately. ‘This was what he told me.’ She paused for a moment, feeling very sorry and hearing in her mind the cockney voice explaining the situation to her. ‘I remember the words well, “Well, Ratty was going on about all the money that was there and then Mole said someone could easily pinch it, and you’d never notice, as long as the person didn’t take too much, especially not the fifty-pound note.” “So you went back and took some of the money?” I asked. “That’s right,” he replied, “when you was talking to some of the dads and mums.” Flora stopped. ‘That’s what I asked him “but not the fifty-pound note?”’

  ‘What did he say to that?’ asked Ted. He sounded slightly amused, slightly intrigued.

  ‘Well, you know,’ said Flora slowly, ‘he looked at me with some surprise. You see, he had said again and again that he had not taken the fifty-pound note. He had not expected to be believed, though,’ she explained. ‘Poor little fellow. He had that pathetic hopelessness of a badly abused child. He did not expect anyone to believe him. He had been let down all of his life.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said,’ Flora hesitated, but then went on resolutely, ‘he said, “I didn’t even see it; the drawer was open so I just grabbed all the money that was there and ran.” I think I knew the truth then,’ she added.

  ‘One of your bright sparks: young Jenny or her friend Anthony Osmotherley.’ He nodded towards the door through which Jenny had disappeared five minutes earlier.

  Flora was silent for a moment. ‘I thought that it was probably Jenny,’ she said after a few moments. ‘She had a bank account. Her grandmother, a rich woman, had opened bank accounts for the two girls and from time to time she used to give them money which was to be put into them. Mrs Trevor kept Rosie’s bank book, but as soon as Jenny was eleven, she insisted on having her own and checking the balance and paying in her pocket money. Mrs Trevor was quite proud of her.’

  ‘But you never thought of mentioning this to the police at the time.’ Flora was conscious that the solicitor deliberately doodled spirals onto his telephone pad in order to give himself a reason for not looking at her.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ she said and was pleased to hear that her voice was firm as she spoke. ‘The police would have been reluctant to take on Mrs Trevor and Jenny would have been clever enough to hide the fifty-pound note for a few months until the fuss died down. Her grandmother often gave her money to buy clothes. She might well have broken the fifty-pound note while buying her new uniform for secondary school, for instance, and then banked the remainder of it in small amounts. Both her mother and her grandmother tended to treat her as though she were ten years older than Rosie, rather than a year younger. I decided to do nothing. After all, Darren had stolen some of the money, stolen it and hidden it in his pillow case. That was a fact, although the missing fifty-pound note could not be pinned on him.’

  Flora paused. Ted had remained silent, but she could almost hear his disapproval. An abused and neglected child had been sacrificed for a clever and well-cared-for little girl.

  ‘I couldn’t do it,’ she said after a long minute during which he still said nothing. ‘I couldn’t do it, Ted. Jenny had too much to weigh her down already. I couldn’t bring the police into it, put her under suspicion, spoil my relationship with Mrs Trevor and make her remove the two girls from my school. Jenny might have been all right, but poor Rosie would have suffered very badly in one of the large schools in Brocklehurst or in Ashford. And probably all for nothing. The police would have believed Jenny. They wouldn’t have believed Darren. And even if they did, they wouldn’t have found the fifty-pound note. You see, I guessed that Jenny would have a safe hiding place, perhaps somewhere on that little island on the river. The village children used to paddle across there almost every day in that hot summer and play among the willow trees. There could have been a hundred and one hiding places among these old pollarded willows.’

  ‘Sounds idyllic.’ Ted’s voice was light. The subject was finished. Flora felt grateful to him. She had taken a risk in bringing up that old affair, but she thought now that she could safely leave matters to him. If things got really serious for Rosie, he could bring up that old affair in the primary school, could point out that someone had stolen the fifty-pound note. She got to her feet.

  ‘You must come to Willowgrove Village one day,’ she said. ‘Come to lunch and I’ll show you around.’

  ‘I’d enjoy that.’ He opened his office door, accompanied her to the street door and then said, ‘And I’ll certainly mention to our friends across the road that other lines of enquiry should be pursued. I would be within my rights if I asked them to investigate who benefits from Mrs Trevor’s death. I have an appointment with Sergeant Dawkins tomorrow morning as he proposes to question Rosie again, then. Will you come with me?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Flora vigorously. ‘How long can they hold her without charging her?’

  ‘It’s usually twenty-four hours, but in the case of murder it is thirty-six hours and they can, in consultation with their superiors, extend that to ninety-six. I have a suspicion that is what Sergeant Dawkins is aiming to do.’

  ‘He wants to have the credit of solving the case, that’s obvious,’ said Flora impatiently.

  ‘Perhaps if there are another few names that occur to you we could add them as well as that poor boy Darren Frost, and of course young Jenny Trevor. Keep the men in blue busy, what do you think?’ Ted gave a nod in the direction of the police station, shook hands and went back inside.

  Flora walked slowly towards the carpark, thinking through the matter. It may, she thought, have been a mistake to have mentioned Willow Island. B
ut surely the police were aware of the party held there on the night before Mrs Trevor was killed. Would they make a list of those who had been present? She had seen the water marks on Simon’s trainers and on the bottoms of his jeans. Too macho, now, at nineteen, to remove shoes and to roll up his trouser legs as they had all done when they were eleven-year-olds. The whole village had known about that party, she guessed. She lived on the other side of the village, herself, but the music would have been loud in Dewhurst Lane and on the main street and would probably have penetrated to Willow Way. It had, she remembered, been about six o’clock in the morning before Simon had come home. Up to now there had been no real investigation by the police. But if she and the solicitor managed to lift the suspicion from Rosie then all of those young people, staggering home in the early hours of that fatal morning, would come under suspicion. She faced that thought and dealt with it. She had, she told herself firmly, absolutely no suspicion that Simon could be involved. She would have to deal with the problem that he posed, though. He needed to get back to school, or to a technical college, pick up his A Level studies and make a success out of his life. The last thing that should be in his mind now was any involvement with Jenny Trevor. Now that I am in Brocklehurst, she thought, I should go the extra six miles and pick up some brochures from crammers and sixth form colleges in Ashford, and perhaps even go into Maidstone, as well. There must be somewhere that could get a clever boy like Simon through his A Levels.

  Let Simon make a new start and get away from this crowd who drank and smoked pot among the willow trees.

  And when she got home, she would have a word with Paula and see whether there were any more names which could be added to the list that she and Ted Bradley would present to Sergeant Dawkins tomorrow morning.

  Chapter 13

  ‘I’m beginning to feel like, who was it, Mrs Bartley, in the Agatha Christie book, The Body in the Library?’ said Paula with huge enjoyment as she dished up her famous raspberry meringue cake and cut two generous slices, adding them to the tray with two mugs, a coffee pot and a small jug of cream. ‘You take that out to the garden, Flora, and I’ll get out the chairs. The pair of old dears next door have gone off to the seaside for the day; young Ian Madden picked them up at nine o’clock this morning. He’s such a nice boy, Ian. First one of them would jump out of the taxi and rush into the house for something forgotten and then when she was settled, the other one would remember something. Ian just kept saying, “No hurry, no hurry, haven’t you the whole day ahead of you.” Not a word about other things that he might have to do; he just stood there patiently until they were satisfied.’