by Bill WENHAM
Joe was utterly speechless as he turned and practically ran out of the hall.
When he was outside, with the laughter of the women ringing in his ears, he muttered, “Bloody women!” Surely she couldn’t be serious, could she? But for once in his life Joe Turner had to hold his tongue. There was no way he was going to repeat any of what she had whispered to him to anyone in case she denied it, as he was sure she would.
There were twelve women at that first meeting, with probably more to follow, but a dozen was more than enough to get the show on the road.
“A regular witches coven, aren’t we, girls? In the old days they would have dunked us all in the duck pond for what we’re planning,” one of them said, laughing.
Their plan of action against Randy Andy was remarkably simple and the truth of the matter was that as far as flowers went, probably not one of them could actually tell an orchid from a dandelion.
Periodically, one or more of them would now come forward with a ‘sighting’, just as their chairperson had done anonymously earlier. Their reports would be vague but nonetheless suggestive and they would never actually accuse Andy. But they would say it was someone that looked just like him.
One would say that she had seen a figure that appeared to be a male of average build, and about five foot nine tall, at the duck pond on the night of the first murder. Another would say that she had seen a man of similar height and build near Doc Brewer’s house on the night that he was killed. She would add that she thought that the man was perhaps about forty, certainly no less, and she thought that he wore a thin moustache, but she’d only got a quick glance. She couldn’t be too sure because in the very next instant he was gone. Their chairperson had already said that she thought she had seen someone that looked a bit like Andy Rudge riding a bike along the lane in front of the village hall on the night it was broken into.
And then, for the icing on the cake, one of them would also report that she had passed someone that she was almost sure was Andy Rudge on the street on the same night that Doc Brewer was murdered as well . He hadn’t spoken to her, which was unusual, and he had turned his head away as they passed. Of course, it was dark, and naturally she couldn’t really be sure, though, could she, but it had certainly looked like Andy Rudge.
One by one the reports came in and all were equally and deliberately vague but all of them were leading in one direction. The group’s plan was to have Randy Andy hounded by the police without any of them actually accusing him of anything. After all they were only trying to help the police with their inquiries, weren’t they?
Perhaps the police, based on their reports, would arrest him on suspicion of murder. Then they’d let him stew for a while, quite a while, in fact, but before his pot actually boiled over they would retract their statements, one by one, until he was off the hook. But a little jail time would do the little bastard good and it would be a very satisfying result for the club members, all of whom had been hurt by Andy Rudge in one way or another.
They may all be charged with committing public mischief as a result of their statements, but as their redheaded chairperson had pointed out to them at their very first meeting, it was a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, wasn’t it? Everyone knew that!
Anyway, if what they did brought Randy Andy down and taught him a lesson their actions would be well worth the risk.
While all this was going on, the person who had phoned the Manor House using a German voice was busily planning the next move. And as a result, Sir Alfred Allenby, the eventual target, would be toyed with by more phone calls for a while, just as the cat plays with its mouse until it finally decides to tear the poor doomed and helpless creature to pieces. The same would happen to Sir Alfred.
Over the past year there had been a total, disregarding tourists, of seven permanent additions to the communities of Great and Little Carrington. But during that time, six deaths had also almost evened the numbers again.
Four of them had been from natural causes. One was a baby, from crib death, one was a ninety year old man who had died in his sleep, one was a teenaged boy who had overdosed on drugs, even here in Carrington, and the last was a sixty year old woman who had fallen off a ladder, breaking her neck. She had been trying to get a stray cat down off her roof. During all the commotion that followed, the cat got down off the roof all on its own and had disappeared. Those were the natural deaths. And then there were the two murders.
On the plus side, of the seven arrivals, three of them were men and four, including Ella Thomas, were women. They had all come to take up permanent residence in the pretty little community and had come from as far away as London, Liverpool, Exeter, Cardiff and Doncaster.
Only two of them claimed to be married or otherwise attached. Their ages ranged from twenty five, for Ella Thomas, to Ernie Bolton, from Exeter, who was in his eighties. Ernie had come to live with his daughter, Doreen Merriman and her family. He, too, had been a roof thatcher in his working years.
One of the female newcomers was a nun who had arrived to bolster the hospital staff at the convent. Apart from her and Ernie Bolton, the others had all bought either cottages or small businesses in the area.
Another fairly recent arrival, but not during the past year, was also from London and was the watcher in the window!
When the first reports of sightings had started to come in, Detective Inspector Middleton was puzzled. Why the hell had they all waited so long to come forward and why were all the witnesses women? Didn’t the men ever see anything around here, he wondered?
No men at all had come forward with any information, unless Sgt. Barnett’s muffled phone call had been a man. When he met them, Middleton noted that all the women’s ages ranged from twenty five to forty six. None younger and none older. And why do you suppose that would be, he pondered. The witnesses came from all over the community, from both villages, a fact that also surprised him.
Middleton asked each one of them separately why they hadn’t come forward with their information earlier. He got a variety of replies.
Some said that, because of the murders, they were understandably frightened but didn’t explain why they no longer were and Middleton didn’t press them. Others said that they had realized that it was their public duty, regardless of the risks, and he was keeping their names confidential, surely. Middleton assured them that he was. One had even said that Andy Rudge was a shifty little bastard, that she had never liked him and that he was probably the bloody murderer anyway. Middleton thanked her for her time and promptly threw her statement into the waste bin as soon as she was out of the door.
The ORARA members had anticipated that and agreed that not all of their statements should be usable by the police. Commonsense dictated that at least one or two of them had to appear to be vindictive. One of them said it was just awful the way that beastly man treated his wife and daughter and she thought he was perfectly capable of doing something like this. Her statement joined the other one in the waste bin.
Middleton listened to each one of them patiently. He kept the statements of the ones that might have a bearing on the case and dismissed those that didn’t appear to have any value. He was also unaware of the existence of ORARA as such and that old Joe Turner was the only one who knew about it outside the group themselves.
Joe was still simmering over what he thought had been a deliberate attempt to embarrass him. Anyway who cares what a bunch of silly women talked about or did with their bloody orchids, he had muttered to no one in particular?
Also, since he was not privy to the police reports either, he had no reason to make the connection. There were still a great number of things that old Joe Turner knew about the residents of Carrington. The real purpose of ORARA just wasn’t one of them.
Rather than helping Middleton with his murder investigations, the reported sightings by the various women actually hindered it and the main reason, although he didn’t know it at the time, was that none of them were true!
Nevertheless, he fe
lt obliged to bring Andy Rudge in for questioning soon. Despite whatever else was going on in the community, Andy obviously hadn’t felt it necessary to allow his amorous activities to be either hindered in any way or curtailed.
As it happened, and as she had confessed reluctantly to the Club, their red headed chairperson had been the one dallying with Randy Andy on the nights of each of the murders, plus the village hall break-in.
The women then knew for sure at that point that Andy would not have an alibi for the time of any of those occurrences and his long suffering wife, Roberta, couldn’t and wouldn’t provide him with one. Neither would his daughter, Alice, who he had, on a couple of occasions, attempted to take off to his Wonderland, as the spiteful school kid had put it.
Randy Andy Rudge was neatly caught up in his own little net of intrigue and, for the time being at least, none of his current or former lady friends was willing to bail him out of the trouble he was about to be in.
Middleton was even more puzzled.
Now he had a suspect. A suspect who had ample opportunity since his own wife had sworn that she never knew where he was half the time and didn’t care too much about where he was the other half either. Middleton had the sighting reports as well but he had neither a motive, fingerprints nor any DNA to back them up.
Apart from a collection of decidedly peculiar reports from a dozen of the local women, there was really nothing at all to tie Andy Rudge to any of the crime scenes.
Twelve women reporting in, Middleton thought. And why just women, he asked himself again? Sgt. Barnett had already told him that Rudge was known as Randy Andy in the community. There had to be a basis for that nickname, surely? Was it merely coincidence that nearly all of the women, without actually saying so, had insinuated that he was involved in the murders?
The phrase about the fury of women being scorned suddenly popped into his head and he smiled. He now knew what the problem was.
He was suddenly getting a lot too much information for no apparent reason and none of it was concrete enough to base an arrest on - especially when there had previously been no information at all.
In addition to looking into Andy Rudge’s alleged activities, he thought perhaps he should take a good look at the twelve women’s as well. Maybe there was more to their sudden display of public spiritedness than met the eye.
He called Sally Bristow into the tiny police station office that he’d temporarily ousted Sgt. Barnett from.
“Bristow, I’d like you to pick up Rachel Donnelly, our redhead, and ask her to come in for an informal chat please. Not an arrest, you understand, just a chat. Okay?” Middleton said.
Det. Sgt. Bristow nodded and went out. She returned twenty minutes later with Rachel Donnelly. This time the woman’s face bore no trace of her previous confidence when she had made her report.
Middleton was seated behind Barnett’s desk and graciously invited her to be seated in front of it. He looked at her with his innocent blue eyes.
“Ms. Donnelly, we need to talk. I am not a complete idiot, you know and I don’t think you are either, so I truly believe you have quite a tale to tell me.”
Rachel Donnelly’s lip quivered as she nodded. Suddenly, and with none of her group here with her to back her up, what ORARA had been up to recently didn’t seem like a very good idea at all!
Bristow had remained standing at the office door. Middleton looked over at her and gestured at the only other chair in the tiny office.
“You had better sit as well while you take your notes, Detective Sergeant Bristow, because I think this might just take us a while.”
Bristow seated herself and took out a notebook and pen from her bag.
“Ready when you are, sir,” she said. Middleton nodded and smiled as she placed the opened notebook on her lap. He glanced back at the attractive red haired woman sitting across the desk from him.
He hated doing anything to destroy any woman’s poise and self confidence, whether she was beautiful or not, and especially this one. He always remembered what a bachelor uncle had told him once, when he was much younger, that all women were beautiful. It was just that some women were a little more beautiful than others.
It was a very smooth line and it had obviously worked extremely well for his uncle. Middleton remembered being very envious of the constant stream of beautiful women that were always in his uncle’s company.
But Middleton was a police detective and had some murders to solve, but, as was his way, he would continue to treat everyone as gently and courteously as possible if he could.
He was actually a very unusual man, a very, very good policeman and detective but also a very considerate human being. The impression he usually gave at first meeting could be very deceptive since his expression was often like that of a small child seeing a fireworks display for the very first time. The look in his mild blue eyes being a mixture of surprise and wonder combined with gentle good humour.
On the other hand, many people, particularly criminals, were astounded at the speed with which he could react when called upon to do so. In a sense he was the perfect policeman, who would get faster and better results through doggedness, politeness and good humour than his gun toting counterparts on the television and in the movies. Unlike them, Middleton thought first and acted second, not the other way around.
Rachel Donnelly sat, wide-eyed in front of him, watching him intently and not knowing what to expect now from this mild looking man who obviously hadn’t been fooled for a moment by her ORARA group members and herself. She knew that they were all in trouble but had no idea how much. She pressed her knees tightly together to prevent them from trembling.
Finally Middleton leaned forward and broke the silence.
“Well, now, Ms. Donnelly, welcome back. So, how shall we start this time? Should I waste a lot more of my time asking you questions until I finally uncover the truth or would you prefer to start by telling me truthfully what you ladies have been up to and why? Then I can just prompt you when I need to. How would that be?” he said, as he leaned back in Sgt. Barnett’s chair and smiled at her.
Rachel dabbed delicately at her eyes with a tissue from her handbag and ran the tip of her tongue nervously over her lips. Before she could say anything, Middleton said, looking over at Bristow, “Before we start, Detective Sergeant Bristow, I wonder if you would be kind enough to rustle up a cup of tea for each of us, if you wouldn’t mind?”
Middleton was well aware, just as Bristow was, that tea making was Mary Marsden’s job among other things, but she just smiled and stood up.
“Of course, sir,” she said pleasantly. “Be back in just a jiffy.”
She left the tiny office and went back into the station’s even tinier kitchenette. Sgt. Barnett looked up from his now even smaller desk in the main office and Mary started to stand up from hers. Bristow motioned her back down with her hand and shook her head.
“Milk and two sugars for me, then, please, Sally, while you’re at it.” Barnett said.
Bristow smiled at him, nodded and put the kettle on to boil. Tea, the great British problem solver and cure-all, she thought, as she put out the mugs and the tea makings.
Back in the office, Middleton addressed Rachel Donnelly in a low voice.
“Ms. Donnelly, I just wanted the opportunity to say this off the record to you before you make your statement and to try to put you at ease. I want you to know that as far as I am concerned, you and your friends have done nothing that I, as a policeman, consider to be the least bit criminal. You’ve all just made bloody nuisances of yourselves that’s all and have wasted a lot of time that we can ill afford.”
Rachel looked down at her lap and mumbled, “I’m so very sorry. I really am. It was just an attempt to get our own back on a very nasty man who hurt us all both mentally and physically.”
She looked back up at Middleton with tear filled eyes, “Sorry,” she said again.
“As police officers, Rachel, what we are trying to do here is a very serious b
usiness. We need to apprehend whoever it is that is committing these murders before they hurt anyone else. Do you understand?”
“I do, and thank you for not making trouble for us. In retrospect we were being very stupid and I’m really sorry for starting it all.” she said.
“Good,” Middleton said. “Now just relax and gather your thoughts for a moment until Detective Sergeant Bristow gets back with the tea. You do like tea, don’t you, Rachel?”
“Oh, yes, I do. Of course I do. I suppose everyone does, don’t they?” she said, with her nervousness evaporating rapidly.
Middleton smiled. Rachel Donnelly was obviously relaxing now and he really had no wish to intimidate her. All he wanted to do now was to have her explain to him what they were up to and why. He had a hunch that when the truth was told, it would have no connection to any of the murders at all.
He had always stressed to his subordinates, including Bristow, that successful police work always resulted from looking very carefully at all the details, not at what was immediately obvious. Most criminals tripped themselves up by either overlooking or completely ignoring the details in his opinion.
A moment later Bristow came back into the office carrying a tray with three mugs, milk, sugar and teaspoons. She set it down on the edge of the desk where all three of them could reach it and then sat back down herself. She had dropped off Sgt. Barnett’s mug of tea off on the way back.
Over a pleasant mug of tea, Rachel Donnelly told them her ORARA story and apologized again for the mischief she and the others had caused,
Middleton smiled.
“Its okay, Rachel, because, much as you all thought you had, none of you had us fooled for a moment, did they, Bristow? So, thank you for coming back and my sergeant will drive you home now. You can disband your militant little group just as soon as you like and nothing more will be said about it, okay?”
Middleton stood up, as did the two women and Middleton shook Rachel’s hand.