False Accusations_Nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide...

by Cora Harrison

  She didn’t want to talk about Piper, though. Any news of him would bring back painful memories as Paula’s poodle had been given away, by Dave, to an animal charity. Hopefully the docile animal had been adopted into a good home which would appreciate such a well-trained dog. Flora looked anxiously at the depressed and pale-faced woman in front of her.

  ‘Another eight years to go,’ sighed Paula, after expressing pleasure in Simon’s change of heart.

  In fact, thought Flora, Paula’s sentence had been a fairly mild one; her lawyer had been clever and had made a lot of his client’s immediate, frank and open confession, of her menopausal state, the near-insanity of her mind on that fatal morning when faced with evidence of the infidelity of the husband whom she had adored. Nevertheless, Flora had to suppress a strong feeling of guilt. But nothing would be gained by a confession.

  While she was in prison and when she came out, Paula would need a friend. Flora could be that friend, but only if she had the self-discipline to keep her guilt locked up within herself. Surely, as an experienced headteacher she should be accustomed to keeping her feelings under wraps, Flora told herself severely.

  ‘Dave hasn’t been to see me even once,’ Paula said after a minute. ‘He has applied for a divorce.’

  ‘Good news,’ Flora said robustly. ‘What do you want with a man like that, anyway? You would be deceived again and again and you would spend your life worrying about him, wondering if he were telling you the truth and where he was spending his evenings.’

  Paula smiled a little at her tone. She seemed relieved and encouraged that they were back in their old confidential relationship — teasing, but at the same time supporting. Flora thought contritely of all the times that Paula had listened to her complaints, told her that she was doing the right thing, encouraged her and sustained her. Silently she swore that she would do the same thing for Paula now.

  ‘And how are the two girls, Jenny and Rosie?’ Paula asked.

  ‘They’re doing well,’ said Flora thankfully. ‘The grandmother has died; she died last month. Apparently the money was left to the two girls, equally — Jenny told me that. But, you’ll never guess,’ she said, rushing on, ‘Rosie has been quite in demand as a photographic model. She is doing really well. After those pictures in the newspapers and on the TV, she got lots of offers. Jenny does all the organising. She calls herself Rosie’s agent; she’s even had a set of little cards with her own name and telephone number printed. They have a miniature picture of Rosie in the flowery meadow on it. Apparently she makes sure that Rosie has no more than three photoshoots every week. Jenny has a new job now, running a fashion shop for teenagers — apparently she’s doing night classes in dress design. She was always good at drawing, if you remember. She’s planning that when the grandmother’s money comes through she will set up as a dress designer and use Rosie as her model. They will be partners in a firm called Rosie & Jenny, apparently.’

  Paula was silent for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t have allowed Rosie to be convicted for this, Flora,’ she said eventually. ‘I knew that I would have to own up, sooner or later. I couldn’t send her to prison for something that I had done. It was almost a relief when those police found my fingerprints on the French window. They went around the whole village checking fingerprints, did you know that?’

  They had found Dave’s DNA as well, apparently. Flora had felt quite angry when she heard that; if DNA had been mentioned to me before, I wouldn’t have been so anxious on Rosie’s behalf, she had fumed to Ted when he came to see her in hospital. She had a feeling that the police had cynically retained the fact that they had this piece of evidence. Rosie, in custody, might have lulled the murderer into a false sense of security, or even into a confession.

  ‘I never thought of Rosie being blamed,’ continued Paula. ‘It was just an impulse. I went to the house. I think I thought of talking to her, perhaps appealing to her and there she was fast asleep, lying on her back, wearing a most expensive silk nightdress. I guessed that Dave had given her that nightdress; I’d found the bill for it in the pocket of his suit when I was checking before taking it for dry cleaning. He had bought the nightdress at Harvey’s, that expensive shop here in Brocklehurst. He hadn’t given me a silk nightdress so it must have been a gift for that woman.’

  ‘I see,’ said Flora mechanically. Her mind went to Rosie, innocently advising her to get a boyfriend and that he would buy her a nice silk nightdress. Rosie had been right all along. She had even pointed to the boyfriend as causing the murder of her mother.

  ‘And you put the pearl necklace and the money where Rosie would probably find them, sooner or later?’ Flora was anxious not to hear the details of how Paula smothered Mrs Trevor. It had been obvious to her long ago that Dave was having some sort of an affair. The continual excuses for late homecomings, the number of times that Paula had cooked a meal for him and he did not turn up — all of that spelled out only one solution.

  And, of course, the action of smothering someone with a pillow was the deed of furiously angry person. If Jenny had killed her mother cold-bloodedly, just in order to inherit Mrs Herskins’ money, then it would have made much more sense to poison her with an overdose of sleeping pills or something like that. Somehow, she never could picture Jenny being carried away by fury. It was something that had not made sense to her. And if the Price family, either father or son, or Jason Osmotherley, had decided to get rid of a blackmailer, a road accident might well have been their solution. It was well known in the village that Mrs Trevor walked alone every night along the dark lanes between her house and the river. Even Jason was unlikely to go into the woman’s house. It would have been so much easier to attack a woman out on her own at night.

  ‘Dave always struck me as being fairly self-centred,’ she said in neutral tones.

  ‘It was the fear of losing him forever that made me do it, Flora.’ There was a forlorn note in Paula’s excuse. Dave had been so important to her that perhaps she felt justified in murdering Mrs Trevor for stealing him away from her. Flora said nothing and Paula’s voice became apologetic.

  ‘I would never have dreamed of keeping the necklace and the money. If they weren’t found after a few weeks,’ she said hurriedly, ‘I knew that I could put it into Rosie’s head to have a look there. In the meantime they were safe.’ Paula almost seemed to need to justify the removal of the pearl necklace — and of course she was the one who had drawn Flora’s attention to that, originally — than she did to justify the murder.

  ‘Was it going on for a long time — the affair between Dave and Mrs Trevor?’ Flora asked.

  ‘Amanda,’ said Paula bitterly. ‘Her name was Amanda.’

  It made Mrs Trevor seem different, thought Flora. Amanda seemed such a sexily alluring sort of name. And, of course, it was Paula herself who had painted the picture of Mrs Trevor with her hair loose and her glasses removed. No doubt, she had tortured herself with that vision.

  ‘Yes,’ continued Paula. ‘They had probably been seeing each other for ages before I found out about it. Do you remember that time in the early summer when you came over to our house and we looked out of the window at the youngsters having that rave? Well, that night, when it was all finished, I wanted to tell Dave about it, so I rang the wife of a colleague of his to ask which hotel the conference was at and of course she didn’t know anything about it. Well, then, I was determined to know where he was and I rang all the hotels in Brighton. I found him at the fifth one that I rang — he hadn’t bothered giving a false name or anything, though I suppose with credit cards these days that’s not so easy. Anyway, they put me through to the room and she answered. She picked it up straight away when the receptionist put the call through and she said, “Jenny, is that you? Is Rosie all right?” I knew who it was straightaway, then.’

  Flora was silent for a moment. It seemed rather poignant, she thought. Even on her romantic weekend, Mrs Trevor worried about Rosie and had given Jenny her phone number. If she hadn’t done that, then perhaps
she would still be alive today and might eventually have met a better man than Dave. And if Jenny hadn’t told me that her mother had made sure to give the telephone number of the hotel when going away for a ‘romantic weekend’, I might probably never have guessed that Paula was the guilty one, she said to herself, remembering Rosie’s childishly gleeful statement that ‘Mum was at the seaside’ on that night of the rave.

  ‘I tackled him then,’ Paula continued. ‘He was very apologetic, said that it was a spur of the moment thing, pretended that he had met her in Brighton. I went along with it — it seemed to be the easiest thing, but then…’

  ‘What made you finally crack?’ Flora asked. She had to know.

  Paula didn’t seem to mind the question. Her face was quite serene. She had lost a lot of weight, though. Flora thought with a pang of Paula’s meringues, of her homemade cakes and her richly buttered scones. Prison diet would not come up to that standard.

  ‘Well, he didn’t come home at the expected time that night. He had been playing golf and then he phoned up at about eleven o’clock to tell me not to wait up for him as he had met an old friend and they were going to have a few drinks together and he might stay the night. I guessed that was a lie; I knew the sort of excited, salesman tone he puts on when he’s lying to me, so I took the dog and just strolled down Dewhurst Lane, and there was his car, pulled in to the gateway and angled so that a passing car wouldn’t see the number plate. I touched it; the engine was still hot so I walked on until I came to the Trevors’ bungalow. I heard the door close when I was just a little way down the road. It wasn’t like a hall door closing; it was a lighter sound than that, more of a click.’

  ‘The French window.’ Flora’s mind went to Alf. High up there on his enormous machine, peering over the hedges. She wondered how many secrets he knew about the people of Willowgrove Village.

  ‘That’s right. The French window. She had that put in early last summer, do you remember? Of course, she could just lock her bedroom door on the house side and tell Rosie that she didn’t want to be disturbed. With all those large leafy shrubs in the garden it was easy for someone to hide until the right moment. Dave would have enjoyed that sort of thing. He liked a spice of danger, a little bit of excitement in his life.’

  ‘So what did you do then?’

  ‘I went back home. And wished I hadn’t found out that it was still going on. It would have been better if I had just gone on pretending to believe him that it was all over. He came home about midnight. It hadn’t lasted long, his visit — perhaps because Jenny was there. I didn’t say anything to him — what was the point? I would just hear more lies. But I didn’t sleep much that night. I got up very early in the morning. The moon was full and I could see the blonde hairs on the jacket of his suit. Once he had left for work, I went around there. It was just after seven o’clock. I hadn’t planned anything, but I saw the French window open and suddenly thought that I would just walk into the bedroom and have it out with her, not disturb Rosie or anything by ringing the front door bell.’

  ‘And you found her asleep?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Paula bitterly. ‘By a piece of bad luck she had gone back to bed. Which wasn’t like her, as you said yourself. She probably skipped her sleeping tablet the night before so as to be sure to be up to say goodbye to Jenny and then once Jenny had gone she swallowed it. She was fast asleep, so I think that she must have been drugged. She was just lying there, on top of the sheet, wearing that beautiful nightdress, that nightdress that he had bought for her, and all that lovely blonde hair spread over her pillow. There was another pillow on the floor; it was the pillow from his side of the bed, I suppose. So I just picked it up, put it over her mouth and smothered her. I leaned on it with all of my weight. I think I was a bit mad at that time. I just felt that I had to get rid of her, just like you would feel if there were a rat in your house. And now, here I am!’

  There was a hopeless note in Paula’s voice and Flora responded as vigorously as she could.

  ‘Paula,’ she said bracingly, ‘do you remember when you were my secretary you were always saying that you wished that you had a degree, that you were upset when your mother made you leave school once you had your O Levels, and forced you go to a secretarial college, well, why don’t you do a degree now? This is a great place for studying, no distractions. You could work away here. Why don’t you ask what is available to you? I’ll pop into Maidstone or up to London and get books for you.’

  Paula smiled. She was always a bit dubious of Flora’s enthusiasms. ‘I’ll do that, Flora,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ said Flora. She looked anxiously across at Paula. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back on Thursday. Make sure that you have a list for me by then. Why don’t you do a degree in English and then you could really get your teeth into Shakespeare; you’re a great actress, you know.’ The part Paula had played during the summer had been her finest piece of acting, as one by one, she had tried to direct Flora’s attention to different people in the village: that thought popped into Flora’s head, but she banished it quickly and rose to her feet, feeling this was a positive moment to leave.

  She was very tired by the time she got out of Brocklehurst Prison, but she had two more visits to pay, so she forced herself to walk down the road.

  The police station first: Sergeant Dawkins even managed a smile at the sight of her.

  ‘Mrs Morgan, how good to see you. I understand you’ve had a very bad time. Mr Bradley, the solicitor, has been keeping us posted. We heard that you were very ill.’

  ‘I’m very well, now.’ That was a lie, but in comparison to the last few months she supposed that it wasn’t too far-fetched. The pain in her side was still there — now just due to extensive scar tissue and broken ribs, she was assured — but at least it was bearable. ‘Mr Bradley said that you had some news for me about that business with my car tyre,’ she said, sitting down and hoping that she wouldn’t have to have any of the police station tea.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ He was brisk and well-organised as usual. A file was produced from his desk drawer and he scanned it quickly before putting it face down on the well-polished surface.

  ‘It appears that some lads from your village had been running a drug business.’ He gave a few names and she nodded. It was Darren and his friends. ‘Apparently,’ he continued, ‘they were using the old disused quarry in that scrap of woodland that runs behind your garden in order to package up the drugs and of course, to smoke them for their own use. It appears that as your car was seen very often at the police station here at Brocklehurst, they jumped to the conclusion that you were informing on them, especially when one of them was pulled in for the murder of Mrs Trevor and questioned. We traced the wheel and the garage that supplied it and we have the name of the lad who obtained it. Apparently he saw a film where someone did this! Would you believe it! These film makers should have some sense of responsibility. Anyway, the others will go free, of course, until we find some solid evidence. We will require you to come to court; I’ll let you know when the date is fixed.’

  ‘Who was it?’ she asked and breathed a sigh of relief when he gave the name. Tim Smith. At least she was not going to be instrumental in putting poor Darren in prison; that boy — she recognised the name — was a bad lot. She had never actually taught him, but his headteacher had told her that there was a strain of violence in him that made everyone apprehensive about his future. Perhaps, she thought, and hoped that she was not deceiving herself; prison might do him good.

  And it wasn’t Benjamin Price. Somehow that would have been unbearable. She had been very fond of that curly-headed little fellow. She could still see him after his first day at school, rushing up, with his sunny smile, shouting, ‘Thanks for having me, Mrs Morgan. I had a great time.’ Somehow, she had pinned her hopes to the thought that a BMW showroom might well not be the best place to get hold of a cheap car wheel.

  She would have a word with him some time, she thought. That drunk driving i
ncident should be marked in some way — at least by a resolution never to drink and drive again. She would be tactful and very non-specific. She was sure that Benjamin would take her words in a sweet-tempered way.

  But what about Darren? What was the future for him? Flora was overwhelmed with a great feeling of compassion for these poor lads who had so little in their lives and for whom drugs was the solution. We have all failed them, she thought and resolved, when she felt better, to endeavour to do something to help. She rose to her feet.

  ‘I’d better be going now,’ she said. ‘Give my best wishes to P.C. Prior and P.C. Markham and thank them for all their kindness to Rosie when she was here.’ Flora noted with admiration how courteous and grateful her tones sounded. Her spectacular illness had wiped out all ill feeling. Sergeant Dawkins and she would work amicably together in the future: she was sure of that.

  ‘You’re on your way home now?’ He had actually risen to his feet and was preparing to escort her to the door. That was a first for him.

  ‘I’m just going to pop in to see Mr Bradley across the road, first,’ she explained as she shook him by the hand at the end of the corridor.

  ‘You’re looking pale, Flora.’ Ted met her at the door of his office with a warm hug and a kiss which took her somewhat aback.

  ‘I’ve just been to see Paula,’ she said.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Very hurt about Dave not coming to see her; apparently he’s started divorce proceedings.’