Disordered Minds

Flat 2b Columbia Road

West Kensington

London Wl4 2DD

Email: [email protected]

Saturday, April 5

Dear George,

I'm embarrassed to think how badly I behaved the day we met, so please don't feel you have anything to apologize for. My trip to Bournemouth was a salutory lesson in my own stupidity. They say every cloud has a silver lining, and mine certainly has. I won't bore you with the Damascene conversion-you probably hate the cliche as much as I do-suffice it to say that I have taken Andrew's advice to live at peace with myself.

I was fascinated by your letter and the enclosures. You may by now have validated or refuted your assumptions. However, I draw your attention to the following:

·        Having studied the photograph of Priscilla Fletcher, I believe she may have been the woman who approached me on Branksome Station.

·        While there is a similarity between the photographs of Priscilla Fletcher and Cill Trevelyan, it appears superficial. It may be a result of the child having lost baby fat, or the fact that her picture is in black and white, but to my eyes the bone structure of the faces is very different. Cill has a heavier jaw and more pronounced cheekbone than Priscilla's rather delicate equivalents. Cill's eyes look darker, although this may be due to the monochrome.

·        Priscilla is extremely fair-skinned, giving her a 'Snow White' look-dark hair, pale face. While it's a common enough combination, fair skin is more usually associated with red or blonde hair, except in the Irish and Welsh(!!). Interestingly, my impression of the woman at Branksome Station was that her look was a manufactured one. The photograph gives the same impression. (Painted eyes, reshaped eyebrows, dyed [?] hair.)

·        If these are the same person, then there are some interesting discrepancies.

·        If they are two different people, then the similarity is striking, particularly as they are both called Priscilla, and Cill Trevelyan would now be in her midforties.

I imagine you have already scoured the newspaper archives for any information on Cill Trevelyan's return. You may even have located her parents, assuming they remained in the Bournemouth area. But if, as I suspect, you've found no evidence that she ever came back- (I'm guessing you did this research before you wrote to Andrew)-then the obvious question is: if Priscilla is not Cill, then why would she want to adopt the name and looks of a girl who vanished thirty-plus years ago?

Here are some other details that struck me as I read the newspaper clippings:

·        Compare: 'Three teenage boys ... matched descriptions given by one of her [Cill's] school friends...' with Jean Trevelyan's claim: 'One of her friends told the police she was gang raped...' There are various inferences to be drawn from these two statements: the friend either witnessed the incident or was told about it afterward; the friend only revealed what had happened after Cill went missing.

·        Compare: 'the youngster is believed to have run away after an argument with her father...'; 'neighbors mentioned constant rows between the two...'; '[her father] was worried about her truanting...'; 'Cill was always in trouble...'; '[Jean Trevelyan's] greatest anguish is that Priscilla felt unable to tell anyone she'd been raped ... [Cill] thought people would say it was her fault...' The strong presumption in all these statements is that David Trevelyan would not have been sympathetic if Cill had admitted to being raped.

·        'It takes two to make a fight and the other girl wasn't punished at all.' Again, there are various inferences to be drawn from this. The most common reason for children to fall out is when one says, 'I'll tell on you.' If 'the friend' was also 'the other girl,' then the rape was the secret they shared and a threat to reveal it may have been the cause of the fight. If it was a different girl, then either Cill lost her temper over anything and everything or the secret was out. The fact that Cill was punished and the other girl wasn't suggests Cill started it and/or was the more violent and/or refused to give a reason.

·        From all of the above references, it is reasonable to accept PC Prentice's analysis: 'Cill was a disturbed adolescent with complications at home and at school.' (There was an unusual amount of aggression in her life- hitting out at school suggests she was no stranger to being hit at home.) While a child like that may well abscond- research suggests that most runaways have suffered physical or sexual abuse-she was unlikely to keep her name. Indeed, if she hadn't been found in two months, and was still alive, she must have been calling herself something else. I believe that's the name she would continue to go by-even if she returned, home-because it would have been a demonstration to her father that the rules had changed and a new 'she' was setting the agenda.

I don't pretend to know any better than you which assumptions are correct. However, I do believe it might be worth trying to put a name to Cill Trevelyan's school friend. Presumably she was the same age as Cill, and a 13- year-old would have been deeply traumatized by the rape (more so if she witnessed it and did nothing to help), closely followed by the guilt of not speaking out, a spiteful threat to 'tell' and Cill's disappearance.

I am no psychologist so I'll rely on your expertise to throw the idea out if it's too far-fetched. The schoolfriend seems a more likely contender for Priscilla Fletcher than Cill Trevelyan. (Transference reaction? Mitigation of guilt by 'resurrecting' the wronged person? Envy/hero worship-Cill got away and she didn't?) Are any of these credible? Can trauma in childhood define behavior through to middle age?

I have failed dismally to make a connection between Cill's story and Howard's, although I have noted the skinny, ginger-haired 'rapist.' (Also the medium-build dark-haired duo, one of whom may have been Roy? Is that your thinking?) All I can say re: the boys is that it would require considerable chutzpah to leave a police station following questioning about a rape, only to break in on a vulnerable woman a few hours later and torture her to death. Again, I rely on you for an analysis of juvenile behavior.

Finally-unless you come back with evidence that Cill resurfaced-my strongest suspicion from reading the newspaper reports is that she never ran away at all, but was killed by her father. According to one of the articles, David Trevelyan was exonerated after being questioned by police, but I would need some very strong evidence to believe that. Statistics don't lie. Children who vanish into 'thin air' are usually dead, and children who 'vanish' are usually victims of their parents. David Trevelyan was a violent man, and I fear Cill may have made the mistake of trying to excuse 'the fight' by telling him about her rape.

I look forward to hearing from you again.

Yours sincerely

Jonathan Hughes

From: George Gardener [[email protected]]