Who Wants to Live Forever? (6 page)

Louise stroked her chin as if deep in thought. After a bare moment’s hesitation, she asked the question that I’m sure was on everybody’s mind. “And what about Mike? Is he likely to turn up as well?”

“I wouldn’t think so, no.” She hesitated for a second, then continued. “I haven’t seen him since he made that call, and I don’t care if I never see him again.”

Louise still appeared to be considering matters, and an icy silence covered the room. Finally, she broke it by saying, “All right, then, Emma. Let’s make this a fresh start. Welcome back. I’m sure the group feels the same.”

“Yes,” we all replied, babbling and talking over each other in our relief that the moment of tension had passed. I’d almost forgotten that just a few moments earlier I had been feeling happy at the prospect of not seeing either of them again.

Louise opened her briefcase and pulled out some more sets of A4 handouts. As she gave one to each of us, I took a look, expecting to read more about the Enid Rodgers case, but this set of papers was headed
Len Phillips, 1922
.

“Aren’t we continuing with last week’s case?” I asked. “We still don’t really know what happened.” Gail and Trish said similar things while Debbie read the sheets she’d been given. Emma glanced at them briefly before looking up to catch Louise’s response.

“No,” she answered, “that one is finished with now. I want to move on to talk about something that is, on the surface, completely different.”

“But what about the first case?” asked Trish. “Do you know who really did it?”

“No, all I have is what you saw last week. As I said, I want to discuss a different case this week.”

“And does this one have a solution or will we be left in the lurch again?” asked Gail.

“You’ll have to wait and see. I assure you, it will all make perfect sense by the end of the course — or, at least, it should do. And, just maybe, you might be able to help me fill in a few gaps along the way. Like I said before, although it might not appear so now, I hope that by the end of the course we’ll be in a position to make a life-saving decision. Now, are we ready to start? Debbie? You haven’t said much tonight.”

“No, I haven’t. I’ve been thinking. But now you’ve asked, I do have one question. Are we always going to be talking about murders?” I thought I detected a note of fear in her voice. Did she find the topic too gruesome to even talk about?

“Why yes, each week I plan to discuss a different murder that occurred in the county. Didn’t I make that clear?”

“No,” I said, noting the discomfort on Debbie’s face. “You’ve not been that specific until now.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. It must have been with all the problems dealing with those two…er, with Mike. It slipped my mind. There isn’t a problem, is there?”

“Not with me,” said Trish. “I found last week fascinating. I’m just a little disappointed that we’re not continuing with that theme to a conclusion.”

I nodded my assent, but Debbie didn’t look certain. “I don’t want to sound like Mike,” she said, “but I thought local history would be about more than just murders. I wanted to find out as much as I could about the county during the last hundred years.”

“But you will, Debbie,” replied Louise. “Each case we cover will be from a different period of time and a different location, which — I hope — will help build up a more comprehensive picture of Lancashire through to the new millennium.”

Debbie didn’t look convinced, but it was obvious that Louise wasn’t going to change her lesson plan. Besides, Gail, Trish and I all seemed to relish the thought of another juicy tale to get involved with, so she was outnumbered four to one; Emma hadn’t said anything, so I wasn’t aware of her feelings on the matter. Whenever I looked at her, she seemed to continually glance across at Gail, before just as quickly looking away again.

“Okay, then, let’s begin, shall we? This week’s unexplained death took place in Ormskirk on Friday March twenty-fourth 1922.”

“Another Friday murder, then,” quipped Trish. “Must be somebody who had a really bad week at work!”

“It is a Friday, but I assure you that not every case occurs on a Friday. Anyway, back to Ormskirk. The victim was Len Phillips, aged sixty-two. There is no doubt whatsoever that this was a murder, as he was viciously bludgeoned by a heavy object, most likely a hammer. What makes it strange, though, is that Len was a churchwarden at the Ormskirk Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul. Nobody had a single bad word to say against him, either before or after his death.

“He was found lying in a pool of blood on the morning of March twenty-fourth, probably only a half-hour or so after it had happened. It was the church organist, a Miss Georgina Hastings, who discovered the body — she was a sixty-year-old spinster and you can imagine what a traumatic experience that would have been for her.

“It seems that it took some considerable time before Miss Hastings had recovered enough to be able to answer the police’s questions. She had been to visit the church to remove the old flowers, as there was a wedding booked for the following morning — there was nothing unusual about that, as she had taken that role on for much of the previous couple of years. Ever since Len had been warden, in fact, as if she had a fondness for him.”

“So are you saying she was the murderer?” asked Debbie, who now appeared to be fully interested in the case.

“No, not for a second, Debbie. Miss Hastings was a very frail lady, and certainly wouldn’t have had the strength necessary to inflict such a series of wounds.”

“So does that mean it had to be a man?” asked Trish.

“That seemed the most likely interpretation of events, although a fit woman would surely have been able to wield the hammer in a manner in which the fatal blows could have been delivered. But a man seems the most likely culprit judging by the nature of the crime. But remember, not everything is always how it seems to be.”

“Then are we to take it that a man was convicted yet you think it was a woman? Similar to last time?” I asked.

“Well, the strange thing is, nobody was
ever
convicted of this crime, male or female, and as far as I am aware it remains an unsolved murder.”

“So where exactly are we going with this?” asked Debbie. “I thought the reasoning behind these sessions was to look at miscarriages of justice rather than unsolved crimes.”

“A crime can remain unsolved and still be a miscarriage of justice,” answered Louise. “A man or woman doesn’t have to be convicted to be judged guilty in the eyes of the public.”

“It looks like we’re getting ahead of ourselves a little,” I said. “Perhaps we should allow Louise to finish telling us the tale before we start to ask questions.”

“I don’t mind the interruptions,” said Louise. “In fact I welcome them, for it shows that I have engaged your interest. But in this case, I think Ethan is correct, and if I tell you about the other people involved it might make things a little clearer. There are, in fact, three other people to talk about. First, there is the Reverend Jeremy Greenhalgh, vicar of the parish. Then there is his curate, Godfrey Wimbush, and finally there is the other churchwarden, Bea Ashmere.

“Although nobody had a bad word to say about Len Phillips, the same couldn’t be said about the Reverend Greenhalgh. He was disliked by many in the parish, especially as they thought he was too harsh in his treatment of his curate and the wardens. Indeed, Bea Ashmere had only been in post for a few months as the previous incumbent had finally tired of the reverend’s bullying and left for pastures new.

“The curate had put up with the bad-tempered reverend for more than a dozen years, but it was undoubtedly Len Phillips who suffered most from his anger as he became ever more popular with the congregation. Miss Ashmere, too, was the target of many of his criticisms, as he was distinctly old-school and didn’t believe that women had any role in the running of a church. Indeed, it wasn’t until after the Second World War that women were generally accepted as churchwardens, and nobody really knew why Miss Ashmere had been chosen in the first place, given the reverend’s supposed dislike of women officials. She wasn’t the first woman to have that role, though — for example, in 1916, a Miss Mary Hogg became the first woman churchwarden of St Paul’s Church in St Leonards, Sussex.

“The role of churchwarden was to maintain peace and order in the church and to assist the clergy in their work of ministry. And that is what Len Phillips did; perhaps too well as far as Reverend Greenhalgh was concerned.”

“So you seem to be saying that the reverend was guilty. Why wasn’t he convicted, then?” asked Trish.

“That’s the thing. He
couldn’t
have been guilty, for at the time of the murder he was actually visiting that other St Paul’s church in Sussex. That was indisputable, but it didn’t prevent the tongues wagging amongst the locals, and mud sticks, whether it has any right to or not. Some would say it was his own fault, and if he hadn’t been such a mean-spirited person, then nobody would ever have thought him capable of such a wicked act.”

“So if it couldn’t have been him, then who was it?” I asked, forgetting that I’d been the one who suggested we let Louise finish her tale before questioning her.

“That’s where the police gave up,” she answered. “It seems that once they had concluded that the reverend was innocent, they lost the will to continue the investigation as it didn’t seem that anybody else could have done it.”

“But you think differently, don’t you?” said Gail.

“Yes, I do. And I think the police would have thought so too if they had continued the investigation. After all, there were only two other likely suspects: the curate and the second churchwarden. If they had taken the time to investigate the matter fully, I’m convinced they would have found the murderer, and — who knows? — perhaps saved other lives in the process.”

“Do you mean to say the killer struck again?” asked Emma, joining in for the first time.

“I can’t say that for certain, but surely it’s possible. It really depends if the brutal act was premeditated, or if perhaps the killer struck out blindly in panic for some reason. If it were the former, then I would expect the killer to go on and kill again. Anyway, let’s look a little more into the curate, Godfrey Wimbush, and the second churchwarden, Bea Ashmere.

“More is known about the curate than the churchwarden, simply because he had been at the church for several years. Now I’ve pieced this information together after quite a lot of research, but, when you are investigating something that happened more than eighty years ago, it isn’t possible to be totally certain that the
facts
are accurate. However, from what I’ve found, it appears that Wimbush had a drink problem, and he used to take money from the collecting plates in order to fund his excesses. So it is always possible that Phillips discovered what Wimbush was doing, challenged him over it, and Wimbush struck out with the first object he grabbed hold of and killed Phillips. From what I have been able to find out, Wimbush left his role in the church after the death of Len Phillips, but he doesn’t appear in any other records that I could find.

“So, as I said, it’s a possibility that Wimbush was the murderer, and if the scenario I suggested happened, then I don’t think it was a premeditated act.
If
it happened like that.”

“I take it you don’t think it was like that,” I suggested.

“No, I don’t. And for one reason — the brutality of the murder, where Len Phillips was, by all accounts, barely recognisable when he was found. He must have been hit repeatedly and venomously; if Wimbush had done it, under the circumstances I just described, then he would most likely have delivered a single blow.”

“But you’re making assumptions,” said Debbie. “Wimbush was a drunk and a thief…that’s what you said, I think…so he was already a criminal. You’ve already said you couldn’t find much out about him following the murder, so how do you know he didn’t sink further into debauchery and crime?”

“You’re right, of course. That could have happened. It’s just that I don’t think so. No, I’m more interested in the Ashmere woman. You see, although I could find out snippets concerning Wimbush, there is
nothing
about Bea Ashmere anywhere.”

“Didn’t you say, though,” interrupted Trish, “that she hadn’t been working at the church for more than a few months, whereas Wimbush had been there for years? Naturally, you’d expect to find out more about Wimbush.”

“That is correct, but I’ve checked the census records, gone through registry entries, and I couldn’t find a thing about Bea anywhere.”

“You’re making an assumption, though, aren’t you?” said Gail. “First, if she had only recently moved into the area, you wouldn’t find her records in the local parish register. Second, was she married? And if so, where did the marriage occur? Should you be searching the register and the census looking for her maiden name? There are so many unknowns, especially — as you said — when you are trying to investigate something that happened almost ninety years ago.”

“You’re right, I suppose, but I have this instinct that there’s something more. But I think that’s enough for the moment. Let’s go and have a coffee and we’ll talk about this in more detail afterwards.”

***

We spent the coffee break and the remainder of the class discussing the various characters and analysing the proven facts — as well as those that were just assumed. It was evident that Louise was convinced that Bea Ashmere was the guilty party, and nothing we said could make her change her opinion. I found it slightly frustrating, but also quite exhilarating to have such an intellectual debate, and I was saddened when Louise said it was nine o’clock and time for us to go. No sooner had she spoken than Emma had packed her things away and was out of the classroom, not even pausing to say goodbye before she left.

As the rest of us were leaving we chatted about the evening’s events, with Trish and Debbie engrossed in one conversation while Gail and I exchanged ideas. It was Trish who made the suggestion: “I don’t know about you three, but I’m not ready for home just yet. All these ideas are racing round my mind, and I could do with relaxing a little before going back. Does anybody else fancy going for a quiet drink and chat?”