listening and she was too afraid to stray from the version he'd taught her. If you take Sasha's view that she was playing a game, then she wanted to engineer a confrontation that would involve the police being called. She said afterward that she'd expected Sasha to dial 999 immediately instead of weighing into the fight.' He folded his hands in his lap. 'Her statement
'I know,' said George with sigh, 'and you can understand how reluctant she might have been to make it without some strong guarantees that it was taken seriously. Talking to a private detective agency, or a couple of amateurs like me and Jon, wouldn't have got her anywhere. Even talking to the police without support from people like you would have been a gamble.'
Bartholomew nodded. 'Trent denies it, of course.'
'He sent George a copy of his statement,' said Jonathan. 'Did he send you one?'
'Yes.'
'It's a spinning war. You pays your money and you takes your choice. Roy makes a good point at the end when he questions why Howard never mentioned Cill in his defense. I checked it with Howard's solicitor. He was astonished to discover that two schoolgirls were regularly truanting in Grace's house. He said that if they'd known there was a disturbed adolescent in the house on the Saturday, they'd have concentrated their efforts on her. According to him, Cill was the reasonable doubt that might have swung the jury in Howard's favor.'
'Assuming he didn't kill her,' said Bartholomew dryly.
'Oh dear!' sighed George. 'It's
Jonathan stood up and walked to the kitchen area to plug in the kettle. 'Is there anything going for Howard?' he asked.
Sasha took out her notepad. 'There's one small discrepancy,' she said. 'Louise authorized Nicholas Hurst's consultant to give me whatever information I requested. He vouched for his patient's brain damage, catastrophic amnesia and unpredictable aggression. He also paid tribute to Mrs. Fletcher for her care of a man who's greatly disabled.' She looked up. 'That's why she wanted me to talk to him. He couldn't praise her enough ... said that if she hadn't stayed with him, Nicholas would have died a year ago. As far as the consultant's concerned, whatever she inherits is cheap at the price.'
Bartholomew's thin face broke into a smile. 'He was very insistent about it, apparently ... says he's known grizzly bears with more charm. He's never understood how Louise put up with it.'
'She didn't have to,' said George cynically, propping her chin on her clasped hands. 'She watched him on the monitor at the Crown and Feathers.'
Sasha moved to the next point on her pad. 'The consultant also confirmed some old knife-wound scars on Hurst's right arm. The scars healed well, so he clearly received treatment for them, which I believe is what Roy Trent told you.'
George nodded. 'They took him to hospital.'
'I also checked with David Trevelyan about Wynne Stamp's drinking. That's true, I'm afraid-apparently she was quite notorious-so the alibi she gave Howard for the Monday night isn't reliable.'
'Does he know what happened to her?' asked Jonathan, spooning tea leaves into the teapot.
'He said her drinking spiraled out of control in the lead-up to Howard's trial, so Brackham & Wright's paid her off and she was rehoused somewhere along the south coast-possibly Weymouth. We've made inquiries there, but we haven't found a Wynne Stamp or a Wynne Jefferies.'
'It's the name that's the problem,' Bartholomew put in. 'If she changed it, we've virtually no hope of locating her. We've tried the Public Record Office at Kew to see if she registered a new one, but they have no record of anyone called Stamp changing his or her name between 1963 and 1983. It doesn't mean she didn't do it, of course- it's not compulsory to place it on public record. Her most likely course was to do it free by adopting a new one through usage ... but that makes tracing her impossible.'
'Is that legal?'
'Perfectly legal. You can't alter your birth certificate, but you're entitled to call yourself anything you like. You can change your name every other day if you want to. Louise Burton's been doing it for years. That's why she remained hidden for so long.'
Sasha moved down her pad. 'I've tried the Dorset crematoria in case Wynne died,' she said, 'but I've had no success there either. No Wynne Stamps or Jefferies have been cremated in the time frame we're looking at. I wondered if the housing department might have kept her details.'
George shook her head. 'They were the first people I went to when my neighbor told me Grace's story, but they'd shredded their files from the 1970s long before I arrived.'
'If you really want to find her, then the best course is to advertise in the local newspapers,' said Bartholomew, 'but I wouldn't pin your hopes on her coming forward.'
Jonathan nodded. 'What about Robert Burton?' he asked. 'Did he agree to see you?'
The man nodded. 'He did ... heavily chaperoned by his wife. Very strange characters, both of them. We don't have a tape because they refused to be recorded, but they were in bullish denial for half an hour.' He gave an abrupt laugh. 'How dare we believe anything their drug-addicted daughter said about her wholesome, upright father? How dare we suggest that a good Christian woman like Eileen would lie to the police?' He jerked his head at the tape recorder. 'When we got bored, we played them that interview with Louise.'
'And?'
'Robert went to pieces,' said Sasha, 'but Eileen continued to deny everything. It was interesting. She's a tough woman-there's no way she's going to take responsibility for anything her husband did. She described Louise as a compulsive liar and was adamant they never knew Cill was with Grace.' She turned to George. 'She latched onto your point immediately: why would they have sent Louise to school on the Monday if they'd known where Cill was? She says Louise could never have kept the secret because all the children were firing questions at her about the fight on the Friday.'
