The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

thought. You’ve slipped up there. But Joan never faltered. ‘Well, I knew she’d disappeared, but I never knew the details. And I didn’t know it had happened in Bishop Barnard, the very place we’re writing about. When I first saw it in the old newspapers I gave quite a jump, didn’t I, Wendy?’

Wendy smiled and nodded, uncomfortable in endorsing these lies. Peggy Jones seemed such a nice, ordinary woman. Had the subterfuge really been necessary? Mightn’t she have agreed to talk with them even if they had explained their actual connection to the case?

Joan had clearly missed her vocation. ‘“My goodness,” I said. “That’s Dora. She was my mother’s cousin’s girl, or something like that.” I wasn’t sure of the relationship. One never is in big families like ours.’

‘So how did you find out about me? Old newspapers, you said?’

‘That’s right. The report said you came forward to say that you saw Dora on the day she disappeared.’

‘Eee … how funny, that you should come asking us after all these years. Mind, I cannot tell you owt what I didn’t tell the police at the time.’

‘Of course not,’ Joan agreed. ‘But we’d like to hear first hand from you what you remember.’

Peggy seemed to be in no hurry to impart what little she knew, firstly pressing them to have more tea (which they both declined) and then apologizing about the lack of biscuits, which, she explained, had all been eaten by visiting grandchildren the day before. Wendy noted that Peggy appeared much older than her forty-six years and had evidently embraced motherhood at an early stage in her life. Once they had surmounted the topic of refreshments, Peggy wanted to know how one went about looking things up in old newspapers. The idea that her brief moment of fame was preserved for posterity on microfilm seemed to appeal to her. At last she began to relate her story, scanning the faces of her visitors for a reaction, slowing almost involuntarily when she noticed Joan jotting down a word or two.

‘Well, I’d been bad, you see. I was often poorly as a bairn, on account of me chest, so the day it happened, I wasn’t out playing. Usually we’d have all been playing out. There was three of us. Me, I were the eldest, then our Joey, then Roger. Our Peter wasn’t born until after the war. There was big families in all the houses round by us, so the streets was just full of bairns the whole day long, only that day while they was all outside, I was up in the bedroom, on me own.

‘It were a lovely sunny day, so I were kneeling up, looking out of the window. We used to live in one of those houses off Chester Place, in Bishop Barnard. They’re still there, but there’s that new estate at the back of them now. I wouldn’t mind a house on there meself. Very nice they look, but they’re nearly all private, and even if we could get one, our lad would never agree to move from here. Too far from his club and his darts team …

‘Anyway, when we lived in our old place there was nothing at the back of us. You could look right across the fields. You couldn’t see nothing from downstairs, because of the hedge, and it were all blocked off at the back to keep the chickens in and all. You weren’t supposed to keep chickens, the landlord said, but they turned a blind eye when the war was on. Upstairs, though, you could see right across to the farm. We used to watch them getting the harvest in. They often used to bag rabbits and stuff, when they cut the last of it.’

‘That would be Holm Farm? So you could see the farm track?’ Joan prompted.

‘Aye. Part of it, not all. We couldn’t see the start of it, like, where it came off Green Lane, nor the end of it up by the farm, because there was trees and stuff in the way, but you could see a good long stretch of it, and I saw that Dora, all right. They said old Mrs Gregory was wrong, because of her eyes, and they said I was probably wrong too, being so young and probably just romancing, but it was her all right and some chap was following her.’

‘Did you know Dora?’ Wendy asked.

‘Not properly. Not to speak to. They were a right stuck-up lot. Lived in a big house on Green Lane. I recognized her, though. It was the hair. Blonde and curly. The opposite of mine. Course, I have to help mine now or I’d be mostly grey. By, I’d look a right mess if I didn’t dye it.’ Peggy chuckled to herself.

‘Did you recognize the man who was following her?’ Joan asked.

‘I can’t say that I did. It’s a pity I never got a better look at him, because it must have been him what done it.’

‘So you think she was murdered?’

‘Well, it stands to reason, doesn’t it? If a girl goes out and never comes back.’

‘They never found a body,’ said Joan.

‘Not looking in the right place, was they? I reckon that fella had got it all sorted out by the time the police started looking. Short-handed, they would have been, I suppose, what with the war and all.’

‘Do you think Dora knew she was being followed?’ Wendy asked. ‘I mean, was the man close behind her? Did she look back or anything?’

Peggy paused, as if attempting to replay the faded memory in her mind. A black cat emerged from behind the chair and began rubbing its head against her legs. ‘I know she never spoke to him or owt like that. I remember the police asking me and me saying no. He wasn’t all that close behind her, not really. In fact, he was a good long way back, so she might not have known he was there. Old Mrs Gregory, she said she