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

by Cora Harrison

  She could see him getting ready to say no so she rushed on. ‘You see, I know Rosie. I know that she always plays to the gallery. If I talk to her alone, then I think I would have a much better chance of getting things out of her. You’ve probably got an observation panel from the next room…’ There was a suspicious-looking mirror at eye-level in the interview room.

  He wouldn’t comment on her surmise; Flora knew that, but after a minute, Sergeant Dawkins nodded.

  ‘On condition that you call the very minute that you feel you might need help or that you are uneasy in any way. I’ll have a uniformed police officer standing outside the door.’

  Not the unfortunate P.C. Markham, Flora thought. But she had gained her point, so she gave him a friendly smile.

  ‘Badger has mended the window,’ said Rosie brightly when Flora came back.

  ‘Why are you calling him badger?’ Dr Rowling was as indulgent as if Rosie were a young child.

  ‘They did a musical play of the The Wind in the Willows when they were at primary school,’ Flora said. ‘Police Cadet Prior acted the part of Badger.’

  ‘And I was the Gaoler’s Daughter and Badger wrote a lovely song just for me, didn’t you, Badger?’

  ‘Perhaps a cup of tea? You’d like that, Rosie, wouldn’t you?’ suggested Dr Rowling to Sergeant Dawkins, taking mercy on P.C. Prior’s red face and distracting Rosie’s attention long enough for the young man to gather up his hammer and nails.

  ‘Send P.C. Collins with a cup of tea, and what about you, Mrs Morgan?’ said Sergeant Dawkins in a peremptory tone. He glared at the unfortunate Jim as the young man edged his way out of the room.

  ‘No, thank you, I’ve just had a coffee with Mr Bradley, Rosie’s solicitor. We were discussing the case.’ She saw Sergeant Dawkins shoot a sharp glance at her and wondered whether he had a list of designated appropriate adults and if so, whether, at the end of this case, the name of Flora Morgan would now be firmly crossed out.

  However, it was P.C. Prior, himself, who came back with a nice full mug of tea and quarter of a packet of chocolate biscuits.

  ‘Here you are, Rosie,’ he said warmly and protectively. ‘I remember you used to like chocolate biscuits.’ He handed over the mug, which she took with a pretty smile, and put the biscuits on the table and then vanished after an apologetic look at his superior.

  ‘What a nice young man,’ said Dr Rowling chattily. He was sealing up some blood-stained lint into a plastic bag. Then he popped it into another bag, threw it and some empty packages into the bin and crossed the room to wash his hands at the basin.

  ‘Yes, hee used to be my boyfriend,’ said Rosie, taking a long drink from her mug of tea and then starting to nibble a chocolate biscuit. ‘But that was when we were in primary school. Now my mother wants me to marry Toad. His dad is ever so rich. My mum was going to make him get Toad to marry me. He has ever such a nice car. A BMW.’ She enunciated the letters with great care.

  ‘I’ll see you to the door, Doctor,’ announced Sergeant Dawkins. They collided in the archway with a massively-built policewoman, who introduced herself as P.C. Collins.

  Sergeant Dawkins had a few words of murmured conversation with P.C. Collins, no doubt instructing her not to move from her position, before firmly shutting the door and leaving Flora alone with Rosie for the first time since she had come to the police station.

  ‘Have a chocolate biscuit, Mrs Morgan.’

  Flora took the proffered biscuit — she hated chocolate biscuits, but it made a companionable atmosphere to have the two of them munching in unison. She decided not to refer to the suicide, or ‘call for help’ attempt. That would bring Rosie back into whatever mythical TV drama she was starring in at the moment. She would take Rosie step-by-step through the events of that fateful Monday morning.

  ‘Do you wear pyjamas or a nightdress in bed, Rosie?’ Flora enquired.

  Anyone else would have been startled by that question, but Rosie was used to being asked incomprehensible questions and was only too relieved when she actually knew the answer to this one.

  ‘Pyjamas,’ she said without hesitation. She pouted a little. ‘I don’t like them; they’re babyish.’

  ‘And what does Jenny wear?’

  ‘She wears a T-shirt — a big, long T-shirt, right down to her knees.’ Rosie took another bite of her chocolate biscuit and swallowed a long draught of the tea. Her colour had come back.

  ‘And your mum?’

  ‘She wears the silk nightdress that her boyfriend gave her.’

  Flora sighed inwardly. Oddly enough, Rosie, who sometimes found words so difficult, could read expressions easily and now she looked offended.

  ‘She has a boyfriend. She does. I swear she does. I told Jenny all about it. I told Jenny that was why she wanted me to live in some place in Brocklehurst.’

  ‘I’d love a silk nightdress.’ Flora felt a bit of a ham-actress as she heaved an envious sigh, but it worked well with Rosie.

  ‘You get yourself a boyfriend, Mrs Morgan,’ she advised. ‘He’ll buy you a silk nightdress.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Flora said, wondering what P.C. Collins, standing outside the door, scribbling in her notebook, was making of all this.

  ‘Was your mum wearing that lovely silk nightdress last Monday when you found her?’ she asked, holding her breath. This might be rushing things, but she couldn’t afford to get too diverted down the lane of boyfriends.

  ‘Yes, she was.’ Rosie seemed undisturbed.

  Flora held her breath for a moment and then took a chance. She forced herself to have another bite of biscuit and then asked: ‘Was the pillow over her face, or on the ground when you came into her room?’

  ‘Over her face,’ said Rosie, munching at her biscuit.

  ‘And you took it off?’

  Rosie nodded. A slightly troubled look was coming over her face. Flora knew that look. She would have to finish soon.

  ‘Who put the pillow over her face?’

  Rosie shrugged. ‘I don’t know, do I? Perhaps it was her boyfriend.’

  Chapter 21

  When Flora came home after the meeting in the police station, P.C. Prior was waiting to see her. He and Simon were in the garden playing with Piper, throwing a ball for him to pursue up the bank and over into the orchard. Earlier in the year, when Piper had been an enchanting bundle of fur, about the size of a large and very fluffy teddy bear, Alf Barfoot had come to do some landscape gardening with the smaller of his two excavating machines and he had dug out a flat, south-facing space for tables and chairs so that the lovely summers could be enjoyed. The spare earth had gone to make a bank and that was Piper’s favourite place to play. Alf had laid turfs of grass over the bare earth and Flora had planned to plant shrubs amongst the grass of the small hillside in the following autumn. Piper had been docile and biddable in those days and had stayed quietly in a puppy pen and watched with interest as the machine moved earth in a neat fashion. During short breaks in the work, Alf had played with the puppy, given him an enormous, gnarled finger to suck and had made great friends with him. He was the one who had shown Simon how to teach Piper to retrieve a ball.

  Since then, however, Piper had grown extremely large and extremely active and needed continual amusement if he were not to dig up every shrub in the garden, or, a newly acquired bad habit, to chase his tail while screaming at a high pitch. At the moment it was his greatest idea of fun to run up and down the slope in pursuit of a ball thrown amongst the apple trees and so an ugly and totally bare dusty earth path now ran in a straight lane up her pretty hillside.

  ‘Hi, Mum! Jim has a form for you. I suppose that he passed you on the motorway. He’s been here for the last ten minutes. I know how you drive. I told him that he’d have a bit of a wait.’ Simon was looking, for once, wide awake, but he appeared very pale beside P.C. Prior’s sunburned face and arms as he handed the form to her and efficiently produced a biro for the signature.

  ‘Jim has to get back. He’s on patrol
duty,’ explained Simon, always more vocal than the rather shy Jim Prior, who with a quick punch at his friend went straight back to the police car as soon as she had signed yet another of Sergeant Dawkins’ forms. This one, she noted, was to prove she was responsible enough to hold bail.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, hang onto Piper, will you, Simon. I don’t want him jumping up on this good suit.’ The words were out before she realised that she was taking her frustrations out on her son and his dog. She could see by his face that he felt rebuffed and regretted her bad-temper. She saw him look enviously as Jim Prior made a spectacularly neat turn on their avenue and then went speeding back to Brocklehurst in the flashy police car.

  ‘Why don’t we take Piper for a walk through the forestry woods, as soon as I’ve changed?’ she said impulsively, touched by his slightly forlorn expression. All the rest of Simon’s friends in the village had jobs to go to every morning. Even Anthony had now managed to get himself an office boy position in a solicitor’s office for the summer months. Only Simon seemed to be unoccupied. Simon and Darren, of course. Though Darren, she thought, had some sort of career in the drugs industry and no doubt he found that satisfying and lucrative.

  ‘Just give me two minutes to get changed and then we’ll go. It will be nice and shady for Piper, not like this hot garden.’

  For a moment she thought he would refuse, but then he looked at Piper, drinking noisily from a bucket, his tongue a bright shade of crimson and his face softened.

  ‘OK,’ he said carelessly. ‘I’ll turn the car, shall I?’

  Flora hesitated for a moment. She had planned to walk to the forest. However, there was no doubt that even in the middle of the day a walk with Piper was a trial. He barked at every passer-by, lunged at every dog, reared up like a stallion at the sight of a car, and became hysterical if a cat appeared on the scene. It would be easier to go by car.

  ‘Yes and you drive,’ she said briefly as she went indoors. So often she had to refuse the car to him. There was always a strong smell of alcohol in his room after an evening’s outing and even for the sake of peace she dared not trust him with the car, but insisted that he take the early evening bus to Brocklehurst and proffered her services to bring him home — something which he never accepted. Benjamin Price, she supposed, dropped him off and she could only hope that Simon wore a seat belt.

  ‘You’re a better driver than I,’ she said as he expertly backed her estate car into a gate gap in order to allow a tractor to pass them on the narrow lane at the back of her house. And then, before he could recover from that compliment, she said carelessly, ‘I’m saving up some money to buy you a second-hand car for when you go to university next year. You’ll find it very useful there.’

  He did not look at her as she said that, just concentrated on the tricky turn into the bigger road. She was content to allow the words to simmer, though. He would be twenty by the time he started at university, but what did that matter? Lots of kids took a year or two out from full-time education, went travelling or that sort of thing. He would find others of his age in the first year of university. He said nothing to show that he heard her but when he spoke his voice was relaxed and amused.

  ‘Bet old Piper starts to bark when we turn left up here. He hasn’t said a thing so far because he’s scared that he might be going to the vet when we go down this road, but when we turn he’ll know it’s the woods. You’re clever, aren’t you Piper, old lad?’

  Flora laughed and wondered whether Simon was trying to distract her from the sight of a few of Darren Frost’s disreputable pals holding up thumbs at the sight of her car. How often had Simon taken out the car when she was out of the way, she wondered? Or perhaps even at night when she had gone to bed. Leaving the car in that convenient spot near to the gate might be a time saver, but it could be a good idea to garage it and also to stop putting her keys into that bowl on the mantelpiece. She had a moment’s longing for John, not just for her own sake but for that of their son. But then she turned her attention back to Piper and laughed, as she was expected to do, when the big dog began a high-pitched song of ecstasy once the car had left the road leading to the vet and had turned down towards the forestry plantations.

  The whole village had been up in arms when the ancient willow wood had been sold by its owner to the forestry commission and a stubble of ugly young pines had replaced the old ‘sally gardens’. However, they had grown rapidly, the forestry had been generous with foot paths and cycle paths and now it was a pleasant place for a walk on a hot afternoon.

  Piper chased a few rabbits, but seldom looked like catching them as he lumbered through the dense undergrowth. Simon had forgotten the ball, but the dog was having fun anyway and all went well until his nose went up and he shot off at great speed.

  ‘Oh God, it’s a fox.’ Simon went after him. ‘Did you bring a lead?’ he yelled over his shoulder.

  ‘No, did you?’ Flora shouted but he had disappeared around the corner. She ran also, more for the sake of doing something than with any hope of catching him. Simon’s shouts of ‘Piper! Piper!’ would be similarly unavailing. There wasn’t the slightest chance of the young dog taking any notice of them while in pursuit of a fox.

  And Dewhurst Lane, leading to the motorway, was just at the end of this side of the forestry plantation. Only a few weeks earlier she had seen the squashed body of a young fox on the hard shoulder of the motorway.

  ‘Piper! Piper!’ Simon’s voice sounded despairing.

  And then Flora heard the clank, clank of Alf Barfoot’s digger. Another hazard. That enormous machine would break the young dog’s spine with one blow. Flora felt tears run down her face. She was gasping and she had a pain in her side. She knew that there was no hope of catching up with Piper, but felt that she had to keep on running.

  And then the clanking stopped.

  Simon had disappeared from view. He must be very near to the west entrance now. Thank God there was no squeal of brakes, no howls from an injured dog, but Dewhurst Lane was a quiet spot. Flora slowed to a stop. Her side was in agony and her breath came in great gasps. She could achieve no more. Now it was down to Simon. She thought that she heard a voice. Not Simon’s. Her son had inherited his father’s clear light baritone. This was more of a rumbling sound.

  ‘Mum, it’s all right. We’ve got him,’ Simon shouted. Flora mopped her tears with a tissue from her handbag, and deciding that the expensive make-up that she had so carefully applied this morning was probably a mess, used it to clean her face as well.

  By the time Flora came out from amongst the pines, Alf was sitting on the wall, eating a sandwich, Simon was perched high up in the driving seat of the Hi-Mac and Piper, a piece of narrow rope attached to his collar, his feet on Alf’s knees, his expression docile and adoring, was watching the man eat, dribbling slightly, but not venturing to touch the sandwich.

  ‘He remembers you, Alf,’ said Flora. ‘You managed to catch him.’ She was filled with a great sense of thankfulness and wished that she had a treat for the dog. Alf, she knew from experience, would never allow him to touch his sandwich and Piper had remembered that from months back.

  ‘Oh, aye. Kiger, smar’ dog,’ agreed Alf. He had great difficult with the letter P, but Piper never minded and was more obedient to the name of Kiger, than that of Piper. Alf took another bite from his sandwich. His eyes were on Simon. He said nothing for a few minutes, just munched his sandwich while Piper drooled and looked hopeful.

  ‘Wan’ a job,’ he called, looking very directly at Simon. ‘T’enty ‘oun’ the week.’ Flora’s heart stood still for a moment. Twenty pounds was nothing to Simon. He’d ask for that for a night out.

  ‘Yes, please.’ Simon’s eyes was on the powerful machine, though Flora guessed that he would mainly be working with a spade. Alf was a great man for a tidy job. Time and time again she had seen him get down from his Hi-Mac and use a spade to leave the drain under the hedge looking pristine.

  ‘O.K.’

  Alf swallowed the
end of his sandwich and then to Flora’s surprise, he took Piper, still on his makeshift lead and looking almost unbelievably docile, up the path towards the French window in the Trevor’s bungalow.

  And then he pointed to the ground. And said, ‘Seek.’

  He had done this with the puppy when he had been working on her garden. She remembered him showing Simon how to lay a trail and hide and then Alf had taken the endearing little ball of fur, his round nose almost glued to the ground, and together they had tracked the place where Simon was hiding.

  A good police dog, she had heard him tell Simon, but no one had continued the game when Alf had finished the job in Flora’s garden. What was he doing now? She watched Alf with Piper, maintaining a puzzled silence, while Simon went on examining the gears of the Hi-Mac.

  The dog had abandoned the locked French window and was now going across the lawn. Not in his usual tempestuous way, but slowly, his nose intent upon the grass, his eyes fixed on the ground. Alf kept a light hand on the rope, but it was obvious to anyone that the dog led the man, not the other way around. Flora watched as Piper led Alf across the lawn and stopped at the door of the little Wendy House which Rosie and Jenny’s grandmother had given to the girls about fifteen years ago. It was still in good condition. Mrs Trevor was not a woman to allow anything on her property to decay and it had received a coat of paint every year. Alf reached past Piper and turned the knob on the pink door. Flora went through the gate, slightly shocked. Was Alf thinking of using that as a kennel for the dog while he gave Simon a lesson on the machine? If so, she had to put a stop to it. She moved across the well-mown lawn with rapidity and then stopped and watched.

  Alf still kept a firm hold with his gnarled hand on the piece of rope, but otherwise he did not guide nor urge Piper forward. In fact, once the door to the Wendy House had been opened, he stood well out of the dog’s way and allowed him to wander across the floor until he came to the two-foot-high toy cooker.