Pathologists had found that both women had been struck by a similar weapon, they thought the blunt end of an axe. Ruby appeared to have been hit several times either before or after the fatal blow to the base of the neck. Heather on the other hand appeared to have been hit only twice, again at the base of the neck. Although there was no witness to either murder, or indeed proof that Parker had dug the graves, testimonies from Ethel Parker and other neighbours about his violence towards his women weighed heavily against him. But it was the fact that he had reported neither woman missing which sealed his fate. Clearly the jury didn’t believe that an innocent man would just accept that his women had run off leaving their children behind, without making some attempt to find them.
‘What’s the matter?’ Maureen said as she got into bed that evening. Rosie had gone to bed early, explaining that she was overtired. Maureen had stayed downstairs in the staff room for a while, but she came up unexpectedly around nine and found Rosie not only wide awake but with eyes swollen from crying. ‘You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone else.’
Rosie would have given anything to have someone to confide in, but she knew there wasn’t anyone she could trust, and least of all Maureen.
‘I’m just homesick,’ she said, trying to smile.
In a way that was true. For the last couple of hours she’d thought of nothing else but home, and precious memories of her father.
Sitting on his shoulders, high above the crowds of people at the Christmas Eve fair at Midsomer Norton, the dozens of stalls lit by hurricane lamps. Hands sticky from toffee apples, tightly clutching a bag full of tangerines, nuts and pomegranates. She could remember loading the goose he always bought at the auction, the new barrel of cider, and a box of vegetables into the truck, and then having a blanket tucked round her while Cole went for one last drink of whisky before he drove her and the Christmas treats home.
Days at Weston-super-Mare in the summer, paddling in the sea, building sandcastles, riding donkeys and eating candyfloss. And the nights by the fire in the winter when the wind howled round the cottage and Cole would tell her of his childhood when the River Parrett burst its banks every winter and turned the moors into one big lake.
‘You aren’t thinking of leaving here?’ Maureen asked, and the anxious look in her eyes made Rosie feel even guiltier because she didn’t trust her. ‘I don’t think I could bear it if you were to go.’
‘No, I’m not thinking of leaving,’ Rosie sighed. She wished she could truthfully say she’d grown as attached to Maureen as Maureen obviously had to her, but she couldn’t. She tolerated Maureen, stuck up for her to the others, but she couldn’t really like her. As Linda had said, Maureen was odd; she might be cleaner now, and too loyal to Rosie to steal anything or get her into trouble, but there was something underhand and sneaky about her.
‘You know that Parker family, don’t you?’ Maureen said in an accusatory tone.
Rosie felt another cold chill go down her spine.
‘What on earth makes you think that?’ she said quickly, hoping she wasn’t blushing.
‘Because you haven’t once talked about them, like we all do. And I know it was that news which made you go all faint.’
‘You’ve got too much imagination for your own good,’ Rosie said with a sniff. That phrase had been a favourite one of her teacher’s, and it seemed appropriate now. ‘If you must know, I think there’s something weird about people who are obsessed with murder. Now for heaven’s sake stop keeping on at me.’
Rosie was very glad she’d had her day off changed to Friday, as it meant that the next day she’d be able to get out of Carrington Hall and escape any further discussion. But even though she wanted to just walk in the countryside, she awoke to find it pouring with rain and the library seemed the only sensible place to go.
There were no more than four or five people in the whole place, and only one old man reading the newspapers. Rosie hung her soaking raincoat up on a peg, and taking a seat as far away from the old man as possible, read one paper after another until she felt she had the complete picture of what had taken place in the courtroom over the past weeks.
She wondered how her father could stick to his plea of innocence, when he freely admitted that he was hot-tempered and sometimes hit women. He hadn’t denied any of the things Ethel said he did, except branding her with a hot iron, which had been virtually discounted by medical evidence anyway. His coarse words were that ‘she asked for trouble’. His barrister managed to cast doubt on her testimony because she ran off with another man and showed no concern for her children. But where Ruby and Heather were concerned, he could offer nothing substantial to sway the jury into believing in his client’s innocence, other than that Cole had no reason to kill them.
The barrister had played long and hard on Cole’s fierce masculinity and asked him questions to try and bring out his deep shame and hurt that two more women he loved had left him, to try and show that this was the only reason he hadn’t reported their disappearance. But Cole had remained unemotional and inarticulate. His plea that he was afraid his daughter might have been taken away from him didn’t ring entirely true, particularly as he had freely admitted he had no time for Alan.
When the prosecution summed up the evidence there was really no debate or deliberation necessary to find him guilty. As the barrister pointed out, ‘Maybe someone with a grudge against Cole Parker could have come to the cottage and killed his women. But were they then likely to bury the women tidily and efficiently on his land, all before he got back from his work?’
Rosie could just about accept that her father may have killed both women in a fit of temper because they said or did something he didn’t like. But when she read the lies that both her brothers had told about Heather she almost screamed out her anger right there in the library. They claimed that Heather was a loose, slovenly girl who had preyed on their father’s vulnerability, citing how quickly she had ended up in his bed and produced another child for him to keep. According to them she drank cider all day, and they’d heard it rumoured that men were seen calling at the cottage during the day when they were out. Seth even said he believed Alan wasn’t Cole’s son.
Rosie’s heart went out to Thomas. She could imagine what it had done to him to hear such filth. She had never been more ashamed and disgusted by her brothers.
When Norman spoke of the night he and Cole had come home from Birmingham to find Ruby gone, he was speaking the truth, because it was just as Rosie remembered it. She had been left with a neighbour called Mrs Mirrel that day, while Ruby went to visit a sick friend. Norman said Cole had only said Ruby was killed in an air raid because he thought Rosie could deal with death better than abandonment.
Norman could not comment about Heather’s disappearance as he was away doing his National Service, but he’d been told that his sister had come home from school to find Heather and her belongings gone and baby Alan still strapped in his pram down in the orchard.
The prosecution drew Norman’s attention to the testimonies given by several neighbours and the village school mistress who all said that both women were conscientious mothers who would never walk away from their children. He asked Norman to consider this. Norman pointed out that these same neighbours had also claimed his own mother was conscientious, yet she most definitely had cleared off and left two small boys on their own.
When Rosie saw a photograph of Seth grinning triumphantly outside Bristol court after his acquittal, she felt sick. He looked the way he always had when he’d got away with something. He didn’t even care that his father was on his way to a condemned cell. She knew then without any doubt that he was guilty. Maybe he hadn’t actually killed the women, but he had created the trouble which had led to Cole losing his temper. She was certain that he’d helped dig the graves too. Rosie just knew her father wouldn’t have gone through that alone.
She spent the afternoon walking in the rain, unaware of where she was going, taking paths across fields as she came to them, almost blinded by tears. In a few weeks’ time her father would be hanged in Bristol prison, his body sprinkled with quick lime and buried there without a marker or prayers.
But it was her own guilt which stabbed her like a knife through the heart. She should have gone to the police and told them about Seth, just as she should have told her father what she’d seen Seth and Norman do to Heather when it happened. She should have been brave enough to insist on being a witness; perhaps if she’d been able to tell the judge and jury her view of her family, the outcome might have been different.
But it was too late now. Seth couldn’t be tried for the same crime again. It wouldn’t save her father and all it would do would be to hurt Thomas more.
She wondered how Thomas felt today? Another less sensitive man might celebrate, but she knew he would be too keenly hurt by the things her brothers had said about Heather to even feel satisfaction at the verdict. She doubted she would ever hear from him again.
There was no doubt in her mind either that Seth and Norman would soon be in some sort of trouble again, now they no longer had their father to hide behind. She never wanted to see either of them again as long as she lived.
As Rosie was walking through rain-sodden fields, crying to herself, Matron was in her sitting-room, her stockinged feet up on a stool in front of an electric fire, smiling triumphantly to herself.
The newspaper was on her lap, but she’d read everything she wanted to. She knew now who Rosemary Smith was.
There was no hard or fast proof of course, just guesswork, and a couple of pointed remarks from Maureen Jackson. But nurses and doctors often made an accurate diagnosis based on nothing more than a few symptoms, some pertinent questions, and guesswork.
The girl was the right age, from the right area, shielded by a social worker, and of course mental homes were ideal places to hide away misfits. They hadn’t even had the intelligence to change her name dramatically. Rosemary Smith was Rosie Parker, the only daughter of the man dubbed the ‘Moorland Monster’.
But what was she going to do with the knowledge?
Her first thought had been to call a staff meeting and denounce her in public now while the news was hot. But after a moment or two’s thought she guessed Lionel would be very angry with her if she did that. If it got around it might place the future of Carrington Hall in jeopardy. Besides, just throwing the girl out would be a hollow victory. On top of that the girl was also a good worker and she’d be hard to replace.
Weighing it all up, Freda thought she’d do just what she always did when a juicy bit of information came her way and keep it to herself for the time being. It might be a trump card to have up her sleeve at a later date. She folded the pages of the paper containing the story and pictures of the Parker men and tucked them away in her desk.
On Saturday morning of the following week Matron swept into the day room just as Rosie and Simmonds were stacking the breakfast things on to the trolley. Maureen was moving the chairs back against the wall assisted by Donald. The rest of the patients were scattered around the room, some merely standing and staring at nothing, others in chairs rocking themselves. Tabby was knitting frantically. It was tipping down with rain outside again and both Rosie and Maureen had already discussed that it would be a long day today as they wouldn’t be able to take any of the patients out into the garden.
‘Smith, come here,’ Matron said curtly.
Rosie moved over to the older woman, expecting some sort of complaint. She hadn’t been herself all week, even though she’d tried to hide it. The least little thing had set her off crying – a difficult patient, a sharp word from one of the other girls – and her mind had been continually on her father, imagining him in that cell awaiting death.
Her sixteenth birthday had come and gone and she hadn’t had the heart to mention it to anyone, much less plan some kind of celebration. There had been a white fluffy angora jumper from Miss Pemberton and a nice card signed by Auntie Molly, but that was all and so it had gone unnoticed by everyone.
Even the weather depressed her; it had rained almost constantly, the trees were losing their leaves and when she looked out of the windows the views were as bleak and cheerless as her future. She thought Matron must have heard she was off-colour and was going to take her to task for it.
To her surprise, Matron smiled at her. It completely changed her face, everything grew wider, her eyes and her mean mouth, and for a brief second she actually looked quite attractive.
‘Mr and Mrs Cook, Donald’s parents, are coming to see him this afternoon,’ she said in a low, almost conspiratorial tone. ‘I want you to make sure he has a bath, and give him his best clothes. I’d also like you to accompany him for the visit. Mrs Trow will let you know when they arrive.’
‘Yes, Matron,’ Rosie replied. When a patient had guests, a chargehand or nurse had to be present throughout the entire visit. Rosie had heard about patients who got agitated, sometimes violent when relatives called, but in Donald’s case this was very unlikely. She wondered why Matron was singling her out for a job which normally went to the senior staff.
‘Make sure your apron is clean and your hair neat and tidy,’ Matron said, looking her up and down. ‘I want to create a good impression for the Cooks. I told them on the telephone that you seem to have formed a close relationship with Donald, and it was they who requested to meet you.’
Coming from anyone else, Rosie would have considered this praise. But Matron was a very odd woman and Rosie had a feeling that today was to be some kind of test.
‘Can I tell Donald?’ Rosie asked. ‘Or will you?’
‘You can inform him, but for goodness’ sake don’t get him too excited,’ she said as she turned to walk away.
It would have been too much to expect Matron to just leave without finding fault with anything. Ignoring Alice who shuffled over to speak to her, she crossed to the windows and ran one finger along the sill, moved a couple of chairs and sniffed.