by Minette Walters

No man is so good as to be tree trom all evil,
nor so bad as to be worth nothing. Michael Crichton

*1*

COLLITON PARK, HIGHDOWN, BOURNEMOUTH
MONDAY, MAY 4,1970,1:30 P.M.

It wasn't much of a park, barely half an acre of wilted grass off Colliton Way where local people walked their dogs in the mornings and evenings. During the day it was hardly frequented at all, except by truants who hung around the trees that lined the fences. The police rarely visited it and, anyway, there was a hundred yards of open space between the only entrance and the offenders. In the time it took two overweight coppers to lumber across, the teens were long gone, vaulting the low fences into the gardens that formed the rear perimeter. As complaints came in thick and fast from homeowners whenever this happened, the police, preferring an easy life, tended to leave the youngsters alone.

The logic ran that while they were in the park they weren't thieving, and it was better to turn a blind eye and concentrate official efforts in the city center. To the cynical police mind, truanting came low on their list of criminal behavior.

Situated at the poorer end of Highdown, Colliton Way had little going for it. Unemployment was high, school attendance poor, and the proposed new buildings on the acres of waste ground behind it, which had promised jobs and houses, had faltered to a halt. The only site under construction was the Brackham & Wright tool factory, which was a planned replacement for the present, antiquated building on Glazeborough Road. This was no consolation to its workers, many of whom lived in Colliton Way, because up-to-date technology and automation always brought redundancies.

The most persistent truants were three boys. They were charismatic and generous as long as their leadership wasn't challenged, dangerously violent when it was. It made them a magnet for unhappy children who misinterpreted generosity for affection and cruelty for regard, and none of the children understood how damaged the boys were. How could they, when the boys didn't know it themselves? Barely able to read or write, only interested in immediate gratification and with no rein over their aggressive impulses, they thought they were in control of their lives.

That May Monday followed the aimless pattern of the many before. So entrenched was the boys' truancy that their mothers no longer bothered to get them out of bed. Better to let sleeping dogs lie, was the women's thinking, than face a beating because their overgrown sons were angry at being woken. The boys were incapable of getting up. None of them came home before the early hours, if they came home at all, and they were always so drunk their sleep was stupor. All three mothers had asked for them to be taken into care at one time or another, but their resolve had never lasted very long. Fear of reprisal, and misguided love for their absent firstborns, had always effected a change of mind. It might have been different if there had been men around, but there weren't, so the women did what their sons told them.

The boys had picked up a couple of thirteen-year-old girls in the center of town and brought them to the park. The skinny one, who had her ten-year-old brother in tow, held no interest for them; the other, a well-developed girl with flirtatious eyes, did. The girls sat opposite each other on a bench seat with their knees drawn up to their chins and toes touching while the four boys sprawled on the grass at their feet, staring at their knickers. Wearing knee-high boots, miniskirts and crocheted see-through tops with black bras underneath, the girls understood exactly where their power lay and it amused them. They spoke to each other about sex, and pointedly ignored the boys.

The response was lackluster. The boys passed round a bottle of stolen vodka but showed no interest in the crude flirting and, without an endgame, all sport grows tedious, even cock-teasing. The skinny girl, annoyed by the boys' lack of interest in her, teased them for being virgins, but the taller girl, Cill, swung her legs to the ground and shuffled her skirt down her bum. "This is silly," she said. "C'mon, Lou. We're going back down town."

Her friend, a small undernourished clone with smudged black eyes and pale pink lips, performed her own skirt-wriggling act and stood up. They both aped the fashion sense of Cathy McGowan from their favorite pop show, Ready, Steady, Go!, with belts worn at hip level and hair ironed straight to fall in heavy fringes over their forehead. It suited Cill, whose face was strong enough to take it, but Lou, who was tiny, like Twiggy, wanted to cut her hair in an urchin style. Cill wouldn't allow it. It was part of their friendship pact that they looked alike, or as near alike as was possible for a well-developed teenager and one who had to stuff Kleenex down her bra.

"You coming, or what?" Cill demanded of Lou's ten-year-old brother, nudging him with her toe. "Your dad'll string you up if the cops catch you, Billy. You see if he don't."

"Leave me alone," the child mumbled tipsily.

"Jee-sus." The drink had made her quarrelsome and she cast a scornful eye over the prone bodies. "Blokes are so fucking pathetic. Me and Lou's had the same as you, but we ain't passed out."

"Don't push your luck," said one of the boys. He wasn't the tallest, but he was dark-haired and dark-eyed, and to her immature mind he looked like Paul McCartney.

Another, a freckle-faced redhead, reached a hand up Lou's thigh. "Slut," he jeered, squeezing hard.

She squeaked and pulled away, smacking at him. "Virgin, virgin, virgin!" she chanted. "You ain't never gonna get it, you're too fucking ugly." He made a grab for her foot and she wailed at Cill to get him off. "He's gonna pull me over."

The taller girl put a boot on his chest. "Let her go!"

He relaxed his hold with a grin. "What d'you expect? You're a coupla tarts, ain't you?"

She maneuvered a stiletto heel over his nipple. "You wanna say that again?"

He was visibly pubescent, with hair above his lip and acne crowding his neck, and he was too drunk to be intimidated. "You're a fat tart," he slurred lazily," 'n' you've been laid so often I could park a car up yer cunt. Want me to try?"

His two friends rolled onto their fronts and watched the tableau with a gleam in their eye. To a girl with more experience, it would have been a warning sign, but Cill was a novice. She brought her full weight down on her heel as she stepped over him, dancing away before he could catch her. "'N' don't never call me fat again or I'll put my heel on your cock next time."

The redhead clutched at his chest. "That bloody hurt!"

"It was supposed to, dickhead." She jerked her chin at the other girl as she started to walk away.

But there was no such easy escape for Lou. She was trapped against the bench and lost her balance when the dark-haired boy made a lunge for her. He grabbed her arms as she fell and spread-eagled her on the grass, and her wails of fear brought Cill running back. Their mothers should have warned them about the dangers of whipping up testosterone, but the only advice either had been given was: if you dress like a tart, you'll get yourself raped, and it'll be your own fault when it happens.

Believing she was streetwise, it was Cill who was the more naive. With animal instinct, Lou became catatonic immediately and held no attraction for the aroused adolescents. Cill fought back determinedly and took the full brunt of the assault. She kept calling on Billy to run for help but, at ten and drunk, all he could do was bury his head in his arms.

It was when they pulled her by her hair into the lee of the trees that Cill gave up. The pain was indescribable and sent tears coursing down her made-up cheeks. It masked all the other pains she experienced. All three wanted her�she was the dominatrix�and they took it in turns to have her. The dark one raped her twice. She was too young to understand psychological trauma, but the ripping of her clothes�so loved and so longed for�the sweat, heat and filth of a prolonged gang bang and their leering, triumphant faces as they repeatedly violated her destroyed her in a way that their overexcited, briefly sustained penetrations could not.

"That's the last time anyone calls me a virgin," said the redhead, standing over her and zipping himself with a flourish.

The dark boy kicked her. "Bitch! If you run to the cops, you'll get more of the same. Understood?"

With a belated sense of self-preservation, Cill closed her eyes and shut him out. She could name each one, although she never would. Her dad would kill her if he knew she'd been raped, and the police wouldn't believe her anyway. It was broad daylight in a park in Bournemouth, and no one had done a thing to help her. Part of her brain wondered if the road was too far away for passersby to see what was happening, the other part reproached her for dressing sexy. Her mum was right�she had brought it on herself�but all Cill had ever wanted was for people to say she was pretty.

Lou crawled across the grass to lie beside her. "They've gone," she whispered, stealing her small hand into Cill's. "You OK?"

No-oo-oo! It was a scream that would reverberate in her head for days. "Yeah. What about you?"

The child curled into a fetal ball with her head on Cill's chest. "Your dad'll tan your hide when he finds out."

"I ain't telling him."

"What if you get pregnant?"

"I'll kill it."

"Billy'll tell our mum."

"Then I'll fucking kill him, too." She pushed Lou off and sat up. "Where is he?"

"Over there." She jerked her head toward the bench

"You shouldn't've stood on him, Cill. Ma says it's always the girl's fault when a man gets angry."

Cill tugged her torn top over her exposed breasts and stared at the hymenal blood on her thighs. She didn't need a lecture on blame, she needed to get home without being seen. With a vicious grab she caught Lou's hair and twisted it round her fist. "I wouldn't've 'ad to if you hadn't called him a virgin. Now, are you gonna help me, or you gonna drop me in it again?"

Tears sprouted in the other child's eyes. "You're hurting me," she pleaded.

"Yeah," said Cill unemotionally.

"It weren't my fault it happened."

"Bloody was. It was you called them virgins. You're a fucking stupid bitch, Lou, and you didn't do nothing to stop it."

"I was scared."

"So was I ... but I came back."

Lou gave an uneasy wiggle of her shoulders. "There weren't no sense us both getting done."

"No," said Cill, taking another twist of hair and digging her knuckles into the smaller girl's scalp. "But you fucking well will be if you or Billy ever tell on me." She stared into Lou's eyes, her own full of tears. "You got that? Because if my dad has a go at me again, I'm off ... and I ain't never coming back."
 

The cooling between the two girls was noticed by their families and their teachers. Once or twice Louise Burton's father tried to find out what had caused it, but Lou, who kept pestering to have her hair cut in the urchin style she so craved, shrugged and said Cill had found another friend. Billy slipped out of the room each time, but it didn't occur to either of his parents that he knew anything. Nor were they interested enough to pursue it. Free of Cill's influence, Louise reverted to dressing appropriately for a thirteen-year-old, and the brief flurry of truanting that had brought her to the unwelcome attention of her headmistress ceased abruptly.

For Priscilla Trevelyan's parents, the break was equally welcome. Their daughter had become wayward in puberty, but Louise Burton's unquestioning subservience had exacerbated it. Mr. Trevelyan, disappointed by Cill's unwillingness to apply herself and troubled by her early maturity, had exercised a tough, physical discipline to control her, and the sudden loss of affection between the two girls was acknowledged with relief but never mentioned. He was worried that talking about it would rekindle the dependence and he forbade his wife to show sympathy. He put Cill's bad temper down to the broken friendship, but overlooked it because of her new-found commitment to attending school.

The girls' teachers were less sanguine after a fight broke out between them during a PE lesson on Friday. May 29. There had been three weeks of hostile silence before Louise said something that prompted Priscilla to react. It was a catfight of teeth and claws with the smaller child taking the brunt of it before the pair were finally pulled apart by a furious games teacher and marched in front of the headmistress. Priscilla stood in stony-faced silence, refusing to speak, while Louise sobbed about having her hair pulled and Cill trying to persuade her to truant again. The headmistress, who didn't believe her, nevertheless made the decision, in the absence of apology or explanation, that Priscilla should be punished with a week's suspension while Louise was let off with a caution.

Predictably, Cill's father took out his disapproval in a thrashing and, as she had threatened, she ran away some time during the early hours of Saturday, May 30. Mr. Trevelyan described the punishment as "a couple of smacks" when the police asked if there was a reason for his daughter absconding, but otherwise he could not account for the out-of-character behavior. She had never done it before, she had a good home and was doing well academically. Yes, there had been a few truancy problems in the past, but that was the fault of the secondary-modern system. Priscilla was easily bored by lessons that were geared to the less intelligent.

Louise, under questioning by a sympathetic policewoman, began by saying that Cill would kill her if she told the truth, then confessed the rape. She couldn't name the boys, but her description led to them being rounded up and their homes searched for any sign of the missing girl.

They denied any knowledge of rape, Priscilla Trevelyan or Louise Burton, and nothing was found to connect them with an assault or the girls. It didn't help that Louise hadn't known their names, could only give vague descriptions, couldn't remember how they were dressed, and that Cill's crocheted top, miniskirt and knickers had been thrown away. Nor, when Louise tearfully insisted that Cill had brought it on herself by getting drunk and talking sexy, did the police believe an assault had taken place. Heavy petting, perhaps, but not full-on gang rape.

However, as the major stumbling block was the alleged victim's absence, the boys were released after token questioning at 1323 on Monday, June 1. Rape was taken less seriously in 1970.
 

The following is a single-chapter excerpt from
Dr. Jonathan Hughes's
Disordered Minds

Jonathan Hughes, 34, was born in London where he now lives. He graduated with a first-class honors degree from Oxford University in 1992 and has made a particular study of the Middle East. He lectures widely on comparative religion and internecine conflicts. His first two books, Racial Stereotyping, 1995, and Banishment, 1997, explore the problems of ghettoization and social exile. In Disordered Minds he reexamines some infamous twentieth-century miscarriages of justice, where the rights of vulnerable defendants were exploited by the system. He is critical of Western democracies that take their morality and virtue for granted.

Dr. Hughes is a research fellow in European anthropology at London University.
 

12.
Howard Stamp�Victim or Murderer?

Many would argue that the brutal murder of fifty-seven-year-old Grace Jefferies in June 1970 in Bournemouth, Dorset, was another case where public pressure influenced police handling of an investigation. Press outrage over the slashing and stabbing of shy, disabled Grace whipped the public into a frenzy, and pressure was on the police to find a culprit. The headlines of Saturday, June 6, 1970, drew parallels with the Manson family's killing of Sharon Tate less than a year earlier. (The trial of Charles Manson, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel began six weeks later on July 24, 1970.)

Police fear copycat murder as Manson trial approaches"; "Grandmother tortured in California-style bloodletting"; "Orgy of bloodlust"; "Walls daubed with blood." We must assume that these ideas came from the police, because there's too much unanimity to lay the blame on journalists. If so, it was criminally misleading. Grace was alone when she was murdered, unlike Sharon Tate whose five guests were slaughtered with her, and "daubed" was a fanciful description for the arterial splatters of blood on Grace's wall. It gave the impression that Bournemouth police had found something similar to the "Pig" scrawled in blood on Sharon Tale's front door.

Not unreasonably, the public was terrified. The "Tate murders" in Los Angeles on August 9, 1969, followed twenty-four hours later by the "La Bianca murders," had shocked the world. Newspapers obsessed on "drug-induced cult horror" after details of the massacres emerged. The Beatles were in the dock for their song "Helter Skelter," along with the Vietnam War, Californian "flower power," Woodstock, long hair, pot-smoking and free love. The idea that these American diseases had crossed the Atlantic to erupt in savage murder in respectable Bournemouth was so shocking that there was a collective sigh of relief on Sunday, June 7, when Howard Stamp confessed.

There was no gang involvement. It was a "domestic." Stamp, a retarded twenty-year-old with a noticeable harelip, was Grace's grandson. He had a history of truancy, bizarre behavior, refusal to work and an unhealthy obsession with the rock group Cream, particularly the drummer, Ginger Baker. He was held for questioning for thirty-six hours and finally admitted the murder at four o'clock on the Sunday morning. There was no solicitor present, and because he was illiterate his statement was written for him. It was an open-and-shut case and the accused was duly sent to trial and convicted in August 1971.
 

Disturbing Parallels

Open-and-shut cases had similarly led to the convictions of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley in the 1950s, and the later convictions of Stephen Downing for the murder of Wendy Sewell in 1973 and Stefan Kiszko for the murder of Lesley Molseed in 1975. Like Stamp, all four were illiterate or semiliterate with physical or mental disabilities, and all were highly vulnerable to police suggestion.

Timothy Evans, twenty-six at the time of his conviction, was retarded and illiterate; Derek Bentley, nineteen, was mentally handicapped; Downing, a physically immature seventeen-year-old, had a reading age of eleven; and Kiszko, twenty-four, who suffered from XYY syndrome, hypogonadism, had undeveloped testes and was described as "a child in a man's body." Three of these men were denied the services of a solicitor and made confessions that they later retracted, claiming the police had used coercion to obtain the statements or had written the statements themselves; the fourth, Derek Bentley, who was under arrest when his sixteen-year-old codefendant, Christopher Craig, shot PC Sidney Miles, accused the police of lying when they claimed he shouted an order at Craig to commit the murder and was therefore guilty of "joint enterprise."

Police and prosecution confidence in each man's guilt resulted in botched investigations and the suppression of evidence. Although it was recognized at the time that all four men were emotionally immature with learning difficulties, these factors were not taken into account during their interrogations or at their trials. Indeed, many would argue the opposite: their vulnerability was exploited to secure a quick indictment. It has taken years to exonerate them�in Bentley's case nearly half a century�but they are now known to have been victims of four of the twentieth century's most notorious miscarriages of justice.
 

Reforms of the System

Two pieces of legislation, PACE (the Police and Criminal Evidence Act), 1984, and CPIA (the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act), 1996, belatedly addressed many of the issues raised by both the Downing and Kiszko interrogations, although neither man's case had been reviewed at the time of the 1984 Act. The mainspring for that reform was almost certainly "Operation Countryman," an internal police investigation during the 1970s, which revealed terrifying levels of corruption in the Metropolitan Police. In its wake, Chief Superintendent Ken Drury of the Flying Squad was jailed, along with twelve other Scotland Yard detectives, for accepting bribes to falsify evidence.

Public confidence in the police was irreparably damaged and discontent with the whole criminal-justice system grew as doubts were raised about the safety of individual convictions. Prominent campaigns, claiming miscarriages of justice, centered around the Guildford Four�released in 1989; the Birmingham Six�released in 1991; and the Bridgwater Four�released in 1997. Other notable releases were the Cardiff Three and the M25 Three. In 1999 thirty convictions were quashed when it was revealed that the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad had fabricated evidence, tortured suspects and concocted false confessions. At the time of writing, dozens of appeals are still in the pipeline.
 

Stephen Downing

Stephen Downing served twenty-eight years before the Court of Appeal freed him in 2002. A small, shy seventeen-year-old with learning difficulties, he was interrogated by detectives for nine hours before, near to exhaustion, he agreed to sign a statement in which he admitted battering a young woman with a pickax handle in the cemetery in Bakewell, Derbyshire, where he worked. No solicitor was present to advise the teenager, nor was his father allowed to see him. At the time he signed the statement the victim, Wendy Sewell, was unconscious but still alive, and detectives assured the youngster that if he wasn't guilty Wendy would exonerate him when she came round. She died two days later and Downing was charged with her murder.

He retracted his statement immediately but his confession became the mainstay of the prosecution's case at Nottingham Crown Court the following year. He was found guilty and sentenced to life, with a recommendation that he serve seventeen years. This would have made him eligible for release in 1989, but, because he consistently denied his guilt, his applications were refused. It is a cornerstone of the U.K. penal system that remorse is a precondition for parole, so an IDOM (in denial of murder) prisoner will not be considered. To innocent men and women who are prepared to put their good name above a lifetime in prison, this rule is a catch-22.

Nearly three decades after Wendy Sewell's murder, the presiding appeal judge, Lord Justice Pill, acknowledged that errors had been made in Downing's interrogation. The court could not be sure, he said, that Mr. Downing's initial confessions to the police were reliable and it followed that his conviction was "unsafe." Downing's freedom and good name were returned to him but warning shots were fired across the Court of Appeal's bows. Don Hale, a crusading journalist who had worked for seven years to bring Downing's plight to public attention, said: "What worries me is how many similar cases lie buried in the prison system."
 

Stefan Kiszko

One such was Stefan Kiszko who was interrogated by police in 1975 for the murder of eleven-year-old Lesley Molseed in Rochdale. Convinced of Kiszko's guilt, police ignored the immaturity and social backwardness that had led to a lifetime's bullying, failed to tell him of his right to have a solicitor present, refused to allow him to see his mother (his only friend) and did not caution him until long after they had decided he was the prime suspect. When he finally confessed, he did so because police told him he would be allowed home as soon as he said what they wanted to hear.

Like Downing, he retracted his confession immediately but, again, the confession became the main plank of the prosecution case. Part of Kiszko's statement was a false admission that he had exposed himself some weeks earlier to two teenage girls who had named and identified him. Sixteen years later, when Kiszko was released by the Court of Appeal, these two girls, now grown women, admitted they had invented the story after seeing a taxi driver urinating behind a bush. More criminally, police withheld semen evidence at the trial which they knew would exculpate Kiszko.

As a sufferer of XYY syndrome, Kiszko was sterile. This was known to the police in 1975 because a sample of Kiszko's semen taken during the investigation contained no sperm. Yet the pathologist who examined Lesley Molseed's clothing had found sperm in the semen stains on her underwear. The police kept this evidence from the defense and the court, and it was only discovered when an inquiry into the case was ordered in 1990. Two years later, when an application on behalf of Kiszko was heard by the Court of Appeal, Lord Chief Justice Lane said, "It has been shown that this man cannot produce sperm. This man cannot have been responsible for ... [the semen found on] ... the girl's knickers and skirt, and consequently cannot have been her murderer."

Kiszko was released immediately. However, his brutal treatment at the hands of other prisoners, who had frequently beaten him, had driven him into a world of delusion where conspiracies abounded. Convinced that his mother�a lonely and steadfast voice on the outside claiming his innocence�had been part of the conspiracy to condemn him, he needed nine months' rehabilitation before he could return home to her care. He died after eighteen months, his physical and mental health destroyed, followed six months later by Mrs. Kiszko herself.

Public outrage at Kiszko's treatment was immense, although few recognized that by baying for blood in the wake of a child's murder they had added to the pressure on the police to find a culprit.
 

Howard Stamp

Bullied mercilessly at school for his harelip and defective speech, Stamp had a miserable attendance record. Described as "work-shy" at his trial, he had withdrawn into self-imposed isolation, too frightened to go out. "He was teased every time he left the house," said his mother in his defense. "He looked funny and he couldn't read or write."

Today he would have been dubbed a self-abuser. Not only is it clear that he suffered from an eating disorder�he was painfully thin with an immature physique�he made a habit of cutting his arms with razors. His mother, unable to understand or cope with behavioral difficulties that were barely recognized in the 1960s, begged her GP to certify him before he "used the razor on somebody else."

It was this request that convinced police he was guilty of the brutal murder of his fifty-seven-year-old grandmother, Grace Jefferies, on Wednesday, June 3, 1970. Found in a "bloodbath" at her home in Mullin Street, Highdown, on the border between Bournemouth and Poole, Grace had been stabbed and slashed thirty-three times. The press dubbed it "murder by a thousand cuts" because most of the nonfatal injuries were to her arms and legs, suggesting she had been tortured for some time before her throat was slit. The inescapable conclusion, according to the pathologist, was that she had staggered upstairs to her bedroom while her tormentor slashed at her arms and legs with a carving knife.

Suspicion focused on Stamp when witnesses came forward to say they'd seen him running from Grace's house on Wednesday, June 3, two days before her body was discovered on Friday, June 5. Bloodstains on his clothes seemed to confirm his guilt, and after thirty-six hours of interrogation he confessed to the murder. As with Downing and Kiszko, he had no solicitor present and retracted his confession shortly afterward. He admitted running from Grace's house, but claimed that his grandmother was already dead when he entered with his duplicate key. Horrified by what he had found, he fled home and locked himself in his bedroom, too shocked to tell anyone what he'd seen. It was another forty-eight hours before a postman reported that Grace's curtains had been drawn for several days.

It seemed a straightforward case, yet there were many inconsistencies in the evidence. The pathologist's first estimate suggested Grace had been dead four days before her body was found. This was later amended to forty-eight hours to tie in with the witness statements. At the trial, the pathologist explained the mistake as a "slip of the pen" and the defense failed to press him. In a similar volte-face, the postman who alerted police to Grace's drawn curtains told the court that when he'd said "several days" he had meant "two at the most." Again, the defense did not press the issue.

The flakes of dried blood on Stamp's trouser knees and shirt cuffs are consistent with his second statement: that ne knelt beside his grandmother's body (two days after the murder if the pathologist's initial estimate was correct) to see if she was dead. They are less consistent with police and prosecution claims that he took a bath to wash off Grace's blood, then, dressed in fresh clothes, brushed against a blood-spattered wall on his departure. If this were true, some of the blood would still have been viscous enough to be absorbed by the fibers, and Stamp's back, behind, shoulders or thighs would have been the contact points, not his knees and cuffs.

The defense made some attempt to challenge the forensic evidence, most of which centered on hair and dried scum taken from the sides and plughole of the bathtub. The prosecution alleged that Stamp had immersed himself in water after the murder in order to clean himself. Both sides agreed that whoever killed Grace would have been covered in blood. The prosecution case was that Stamp had either committed the murder naked or removed bloodstained clothes from the property. This latter suggestion gained credibility after a witness said Stamp was carrying a black polythene bag when he ran from the house. (This bag was never recovered despite an intensive police search.)

The scum showed traces of Grace's blood group, and the hairs were identified as Stamp's. In addition, Stamp's fingerprints were found on the bathroom door and lavatory seat. Adam Fanshaw, Queen Counsel, counsel for the defense, succeeded in striking out the fingerprint evidence by arguing that Stamp was a regular visitor to the house. However, he was hampered over the hair evidence by Stamp's own insistence that he had never taken a bath in Grace's house.

The pathologist for the defense, Dr. John Foyle, put up a strong argument against the hairs being Stamp's by quoting Professor Keith Simpson, the noted Home Office pathologist, in a comment made during the 1943 Leckey trial. (Gunner Dennis Leckey was tried for the murder of Caroline Traylor in 1943. Although found guilty and sentenced to death, Leckey was acquitted by the Court of Criminal Appeal on a technicality and allowed to walk free. Although Professor Simpson's comments referred to a 1943 case, they were still true thirty-five years later when he repeated them in Professor Keith Simpson; An Autobiography, published by Harrap Limited in 1978.)

The word "identical" does not mean the hairs necessarily came from the same person, only that they could have. That is the most one can ever say about hairs. Identical hairs are not compelling evidence like fingerprints, for they carry so much less detail.

Unfortunately, Dr. Foyle crumpled under cross-examination when Fanshaw failed to protect him against prosecution jibes of inexperience and publicity seeking. In a damaging about-face which implied the hairs were Stamp's, he said it was just as probable that "the hairs had been deposited in the bath on a previous occasion."

Stamp's mother, Wynne, made a poor witness for hei son and should never have been called. Timid and of low intelligence, she stammered through her evidence, misunderstanding many of the questions that were put to her She used her day in court to highlight her own problems�"I've had a terrible time because of Howard's physical and mental troubles ... no one knows what I've had to put up with ... there ought to be help for people like me..." She could give no explanation for why Howard had been at Grace's house on the Wednesday when he'd been due to start a job at Jannerway & Co. (a local dairy) that afternoon, except to say that he was "lazy." Nevertheless, she held firmly to her belief that Howard would never have hurt his grandmother. "He always went to her when he was depressed. She understood him because she had a cleft palate too. It runs in the family."

Grace's disability (an untreated cleft palate had left her with a severe speech impediment) had made her as reclusive as her grandson. Sent into service in 1928 at the age of fifteen, she gave birth to Wynne a year later. Nothing was known about the father, although the fact that she continued to be employed by the same family, and was allowed to keep her child, suggests that she may have been raped by a member of the household. Ten years later, aged twenty-six, she married Arthur Jefferies, forty-three, a merchant seaman who adopted Wynne and provided the home in Highdown, Bournemouth, where Grace lived for the rest of her life.

Tragically for Grace, Arthur was killed in 1942 during an attack on a North Sea convoy, and she became a widow before she was thirty. Three years later, aged just sixteen, Wynne met, and subsequently married, Fred Stamp, a farm worker from Bere Regis in Dorset. The marriage was of short duration�Wynne blamed their baby's "ugliness" for the break-up�and mother and son returned to Bournemouth to live in council accommodation in Colliton Way, half a mile from Grace's home in Mullin Street. While there is no evidence that Grace and Wynne did not get on, it seems there was little communication between the two women.

Grace was variously described by neighbors as "odd," "eccentric," "a bit of a recluse," "shy," "not very friendly." She was probably all of these things because, like her grandson, she would have found social interaction difficult. Certainly she had few callers, although a more likely reason for Wynne's failure to visit was that she didn't have a car and worked full-time as a packer at Brackham & Wright's tool factory in Glazeborough Road.

There is some evidence that Stamp went to his grandmother's house whenever he bunked off school. Neighbors mentioned seeing a child in the garden during the summers of the 1950s. If so, Grace never reported it to his mother or the truancy officer, and this would have persuaded Stamp that his grandmother was a safe refuge from bullies. Certainly, as he grew older he became a more frequent visitor, which is why he was identified so easily by the witnesses who saw him running away. "It was that skinny grandson," said one. "He used to hide with Grace instead of signing-on [for work]."

The prosecution argued at trial that Stamp's instability and self-abuse had increased to such a point that Grace had become afraid of him. As proof they quoted a letter to Wynne in which she said, "Howard's started shouting again even though he knows it frightens me. I've told him I'll put the police on to him if it goes on." Further on in the letter, and not quoted by the prosecution, she added, "I said if only he could meet a nice girl he'd start to feel better about things but he told me to shut up. You should have had words with the police when they laughed at him about the bullying. That's what did it for him. He says it's a waste of time, but I got Arthur, didn't I?"

The defense failed to pick up on this, yet there are two reasons why they should have done so. First, Grace's meaning was surely this: Howard's been shouting again and it frightens me because I don't know how to help him. I've persuaded him to stop by threatening him with the police. We both know he's scared of them. They made fun of him when he told them he was being bullied, and he hasn't trusted them since. Second, if Stamp found the police intimidating, then nothing he said during his interrogation was reliable. Indeed his confession suggests that shocking them by admitting to a brutal murder was preferable to being jeered at for locking himself in his bedroom out of terror.

Stamp's case was never reopened because he hanged himself in 1973. However, even the most cursory comparison between Wynne Stamp's evidence and the prosecution case reveals alarming disparities. Wynne described her son as "not interested in cash because he hated going to the shops." The prosecution said, "Every drawer in Grace's house had been pulled out, either in a search for money and valuables or suggesting that Grace had disturbed a burglar." Wynne claimed she wasn't "a good housekeeper" and her son was always "tidying up" after her. The prosecution described Grace's house as "thoroughly vandalized." Wynne said her son was ashamed of his cut arms and wore long-sleeved jumpers and shirts to hide them from her. The prosecution said that "a man who reveled in using a razor on himself would take pleasure in slashing at a woman who was afraid of him."

There's no question that Stamp was badly let down by his defense team, and the inescapable conclusion is that they were as convinced of his guilt as the police and prosecution were. It's hard to understand why. However inadequate his social skills, however unattractive his appearance, he was clearly a vulnerable young man of low self-esteem and serious emotional difficulties. One theory that would fit the prosecution case is that Stamp was an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who erupted one day in a fit of delusional violence against a woman who loved him.

There is no evidence to support this. He was examined by two psychiatrists to establish if he was fit to plead, and neither diagnosed schizophrenia. The verdict or the prosecution psychiatrist was that Stamp was "self-absorbed and introverted, but otherwise normal." The defense psychiatrist found him "depressed and suicidal."

Howard is illiterate with a low IQ which means he has difficulty understanding simple instructions ... He is deeply reserved, particularly when speaking about himself, refuses to look his interlocutor in the eye and covers the lower half of his face with his hands. This self-consciousness, amounting to obsession, is attributable to a poorly reconstructed harelip ... Howard shows symptoms of agoraphobia and regularly betrays a sense of worthlessness ... These emotional difficulties are not helped by being on remand, as he is fearful of interacting with officers and other inmates ... these feelings of inadequacy are making him depressed and suicidal.

I am concerned by his lack of confidence both in himself and in his relations with others. He has no amour propre and seems to feel he deserves punishment. It is for this reason that he made a habit of cutting his arms during and postadolescence and is now refusing to eat in prison. I am confident that he is, and has been for some lime, suffering from anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder, which is rare in young men but not unknown. This disorder is triggered when an individual persuades himself he is unattractive ... In Howard's case, the deformity of his lip is clearly the major contributory cause.

...I consider him unfit to stand trial because he is incapable of taking a necessarily objective view if the charges are to be countered. In addition, he will be so distressed by his public display in court that he will be unable to function successfully. (Taken from Clinical Studies by Dr. Andrew Lawson (Random House, U.S., 1975).

The defense psychiatrist's recommendations were ignored and Stamp was ruled competent to plead.

With the knowledge that we now have about eating disorders, it is more likely that the young man was suffering from body dysmorphic disorder. BDD is associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder and is not a variant of anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa, although self-harm and a refusal to eat are typical symptoms as the condition worsens. In most cases, an individual's obsession relates to facial features�defects can be real, imagined or exaggerated�and the sufferer comes to fear ridicule in social situations. The disorder usually begins in adolescence, becomes chronic and, if untreated, can lead to loneliness, isolation, severe depression and even suicide.

If this is indeed what Stamp was suffering from, then it becomes less probable that he killed his grandmother. She was the one person he could feel comfortable with, because she shared his disability. She may not have had a harelip, but her speech impediment was more severe than his, her friends as few and her dislike of going out as great. They were two of a kind, both preferring isolation to ridicule, and it stretches belief that Stamp's personality could alter so radically that he would move outside his self-harming, self-obsessive, self-hating introversion to slash and stab the one person who protected him.

Even if Grace had attempted to jolt him out of depression by suggesting he "find a nice girl" because things had improved for her after she "got Arthur," and Stamp had become angry, it seems that shouting was the worst he did. Perhaps Wynne had tried making the same suggestion with the same result. She said at the trial, "He liked ladies better than men, but they didn't like him. It made him angry."

This was interpreted by the prosecution as "anger against women�one woman, his grandmother, Grace Jefferies, who had become frightened of him," but a more credible explanation is that Stamp voiced frustration when his mother and grandmother urged him to trawl for a date because he knew how painful and futile the exercise would be. Certainly, his suicide three years later is testimony that he found making friends of either sex difficult. A prison officer said at the inquest, "He was very timid. The other inmates picked on him because of it. He wouldn't come out of his cell unless he was ordered."

One can only imagine how lonely and desperate Stamp must have felt when even his mother believed in his guilt. "I stopped visiting when they moved him to Dartmoor," Wynne said at the inquest. "We had nothing to say to each other and it was a long way to go." The coroner, presumably wanting to rule out any suggestion of murder by other prisoners, asked Wynne if she thought Howard was the type to kill himself. She answered, "He had a lot on his conscience."
 

But Did He?

Police pay lip service to reopening cases, but the constraints of limited budgets and the time pressures of rising crime rates mean there is no realistic chance of anyone else facing charges. There is too little data on file, and precious little physical evidence, to indict a second individual a quarter of a century after the event. It's axiomatic� hence the reforms in PACE and CPIA�that if police believe a man to be guilty, they do not waste time looking for evidence that will exonerate him. In addition, and this is pertinent to a trial, the memories of witnesses who failed to come forward at the time or were never followed up will be deemed "unreliable" twenty or thirty years later.

Nevertheless, since DNA fingerprinting was first introduced in evidence in England in 1987 (Robert Melias in the U.K. was the first man in history to be convicted on DNA evidence.), the balance has swung against murderers who've "got away with it." While, to date, no prominent miscarriage of justice has been satisfactorily rectified by this technique, belated convictions have been achieved in a number of unsolved murders.

In 1970, DNA fingerprinting was a distant dream, yet inferences from press coverage of the trial in April 1971 suggest police did collect physical evidence from Grace's house that could even now exonerate Stamp.

"The prosecution alleges that a T-shirt found in the house belonged to Stamp. This was denied by the defense although Wynne Stamp later admitted that her son had owned one 'like it' " (The Times, Tuesday, April 13, 1971). "Discarded gloves linked to orgy of bloodletting" (Headline�Sun, Wednesday, April 14, 1971). "A pair of bloodstained gloves thought to belong to the victim was found in a litter bin near the home of Grace Jefferies. Police believe they were worn by her murderer and then discarded" (Daily Telegraph, Wednesday, April 14,1971). "The ace in the prosecution case is that hair found in Grace Jefferies's bath has been identified as the defendant's. Dr. James Studeley (Home Office pathologist) said the hairs were identical with Stamp's" (The Times, Wednesday, April 14, 1971).

"Adam Fanshaw, counsel for the defense, denied that hair recovered from Grace's bath could have belonged to Stamp. 'The defendant has never taken a bath in his grandmother's house,' he said, 'therefore any similarities shown by Dr. Studeley (Home Office pathologist) between the defendant's hair and hair retrieved from the bath must be coincidence' " (Daily Telegraph, Thursday, April 15, 1971). "In his summing up, Adam Fanshaw, QC said, 'Dr. Foyle (pathologist for the defense) has shown that the defendant's hair is comparable in character, color and form to his mother's hair, yet no one is suggesting Wynne Stamp committed this murder. The prosecution has failed to prove that the hairs found in the bath are the defendant's, merely that they are similar. Any ginger-haired person could have committed this crime ... However, it is equally probable that hair from the defendant may have dropped into the bathtub during a previous visit'" (The Times, Friday, April 16,1971).

This indecisiveness was damaging to Stamp's cause. Fanshaw, later to become a High Court judge, ran an inconsistent defense. On the horns of a dilemma because his client insisted he had never taken a bath in his grandmother's house, he offered alternative explanations to the jury. The hairs weren't Stamp's but, if the jury decided they were, then they must have dropped into the bath by accident. However, Wynne Stamp gave evidence that her son had not visited his grandmother's house between Thursday, May 28, and Wednesday, June 3. As she also insisted that her mother was too house-proud to leave her bath dirty, that left Wednesday as the only day for Howard's hairs to drop in "accidentally." Not unreasonably, the jury preferred prosecution claims that there was too much hair for this to have happened. The quantity was only consistent with someone immersing his head in water and rubbing it with shampoo.

If the pathologist's second estimate is to be believed, the crime took place between 1200 and 1400 on Wednesday, June 3, 1970. From the pattern of blood on the stairs, walls and floors, it was estimated that Grace had taken between one and two hours to die, and this fitted conveniently with sightings of Stamp. He was known to have left his mother's house at 1145 when he was seen by a neighbor. She described him as "looking normal" although she was unable to say what he was wearing. All the witnesses who saw him leaving his grandmother's house put the time at between 1400 and 1430 and their descriptions of his clothing were similar: "white shirt, not tucked in, and blue jeans," "shirt and trousers," "white T-shirt and Levi's." They all agreed his behavior was "peculiar." One said he was "running like a bat out of hell." Another: "He wasn't looking where he was going and bumped into the back of a parked car." A third: "He tried to hide his face but I saw it before he turned away. His eyes were mad and staring."

None said his hair was wet, nor that it looked different from normal. But they should have done if the prosecution was correct in its assumptions. In appearance, Stamp aped his hero, Ginger Baker, the legendary drummer with the 1960s rock group Cream. A photograph of Stamp taken by his mother three months before the murder shows him with a pale, pinched face, straggly mustache and beard, and a tangled mat of wiry hair hanging over his face and down to his shoulders. Wynne said he rarely washed it because it "frizzed up when it dried and stuck out round his head." She also claimed he "put Vaseline on it to make it heavier." In his summing-up Adam Fanshaw drew attention to these discrepancies�"if the defendant shampooed his hair, it must have been wet or sticking out when he left the house ... there were no residues of Vaseline on the hairs in the bath." But the jury wasn't impressed.

Perhaps they thought frizzy hair and matted hair looked much the same. Perhaps they found Stamp's clean-cut appearance at trial�he had been persuaded to shave and accept a short-back-and-sides to present a boyish appearance�inconsistent with his mother's descriptions of him as "always plastering his hair over his face to hide his lip." They certainly accepted the prosecution's claim that shampoo, a detergent, dissolves Vaseline, a petroleum-based product, despite the defense's attempts to prove that Vaseline residues would have remained on the sides of the bath.

In one last twist, Stamp's mugshot, taken four days after he was said to have had a bath, presents an identical appearance to the photograph taken three months earlier. Pale, pinched face, straggly mustache and beard, and a tangled mat of Vaselined hair to his shoulders.
 

Irreconcilable Evidence

The earliest Stamp could have reached Grace's house was 1200, and the latest he could have left it was 1430. This would have given him two and a half hours in which to work up a rage, slash and stab his grandmother before cutting her throat, take a bath, wipe his fingerprints from the bath taps (they were clean), vandalize her house to cast the blame elsewhere, pull the curtains and secure the windows.

Even assuming all this were possible in so comparatively short a time, he also had to remember to dispose of a pair of gloves in a litter bin after he left. Yet witnesses described him as behaving peculiarly, running like a bat out of hell, bumping into things and having mad, staring eyes. In other words, he was a man in a panic.

It's difficult to see how this mad flight in the middle of a summer afternoon can be reconciled with the thoughtful way he appears to have acted in the wake of the murder. Why draw attention to himself after leaving the scene if he'd made an attempt�however poor�to cover his tracks? Indeed why was it necessary to leave the house in such a hurry? Wynne said he rarely returned from visits to his grandmother until the early hours�"they watched telly together"�so why didn't he do the same that day? Not only would it have given him longer to lay a false trail, it would also have allowed him to slip out under cover of darkness.

The more obvious explanation for his flight is that his second statement was true. He let himself into his grandmother's house and was so shocked by what he discovered that he ran home in terror to lock himself in his bedroom.
 

When Was Grace Jefferies Killed?

The pathologist's first estimate, later dismissed as a "slip of the pen," suggested Grace died on Monday, June 1, 1970. The postman's statement, amended at trial, referred to her curtains having been drawn for several days before he decided to report his concerns to police on Friday, June 5. The blood deposits on Stamp's clothes were described as "flakes," which implies dried blood. In his second statement Stamp said, "I knew Nan was dead the minute I pushed her hand. It was cold and her fingers fell open. When I touched her shoulder it felt stiff."

This gives us the beginnings of a time frame. Rigor mortis starts after three to four hours in the small muscles of the face, hands and feet, before affecting the larger muscles. As it wears off, it follows the same pattern. Stamp's description implies rigor was still present in the major muscle of the shoulder, but had started to disappear in the smaller ones of the hand. Because it's a chemical process, rigor can be affected by a number of variables: environmental temperature, body temperature, illness, activity before death, the physical conditions in which the corpse is left. Typically, a body that is described as cold and stiff has been dead between twelve and thirty-six hours, and one that is described as cold but not stiff may have been dead up to seventy-two hours. Cool environments and obesity delay onset, thereby extending the overall time frame. Warm environments and high metabolic activity before death advance it, thereby shortening the time frame.

Because of these variables, rigor is a poor indication of time of death. In Grace's case, there are conflicting factors. She was a large lady, but her metabolic rate must have been high in the hour before her death as she tried to avoid her tormentor. It was summer and the ambient temperature outside was warm; however, her curtains had been pulled to shut out the sunlight and police described the house as "chilly" when they entered. Loss of blood would have lowered blood pressure, while fear would have heightened metabolic activity.

The only records we now have of Dr. Studeley's findings come from newspapers:

"The pathologist detailed the postmortem results and said they were consistent with Mrs. Jefferies having been dead some forty-eight hours before he examined the body ... In cross-examination, counsel for the defense challenged some of his conclusions. 'Isn't it true,' he asked, 'that the staining of the abdomen suggests decomposition was of longer duration than two days?' Dr. Studeley denied this. 'The process is faster when a body is exposed to air.' Fanshaw then asked why he'd found no evidence of rigor mortis. 'Grace Jefferies was a heavy woman. Wouldn't you have expected lingering stiffness in the larger muscles?' 'By no means,' said Dr. Studeley. The weather was warm and Mrs. Jefferies suffered horribly before she died. In such circumstances the onset and completion of rigor would be comparatively quick' " (Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, April 13, 1971). "After taking into account various factors, Dr. James Studeley said the postmortem results accorded with Mrs. Jefferies meeting her death during the morning or afternoon of June 3. He rejected defense claims that some of his conclusions were questionable" (The Times, Tuesday, ApriM 3,1971).

Dr. Foyle's testimony for the defense put the death twenty-four to thirty-six hours earlier. However, he faltered under cross-examination.

"The pathologist for the defense argued that putrefaction was too advanced for the forty-eight-hour estimate. 'Green staining appears on the right side of the abdomen in the first couple of days. Thereafter the discoloration spreads and the abdomen begins to swell with gas.' He pointed out that Dr. Studeley's notes from the postmortem mentioned 'pervasive staining and some bloating.' 'This is more consistent with three to four days,' he concluded. When asked by prosecuting counsel if he'd examined the body himself, Dr. Foyle admitted he hadn't" (Daily Telegraph, Wednesday, April 14,1971). "Dr. Foyle said he believed the defendant's statement 'had the ring of truth.' 'Mr. Stamp's description suggests the process of rigor mortis wasn't complete at the time he found the body. This would agree with my estimate that Mrs. Jefferies died during the night of June 1 or by the evening of June 2 at the latest.' Asked under cross-examination if he'd seen the body, he said he hadn't. 'It's a matter of interpretation,' he said. 'Assuming Dr. Studeley recorded his findings accurately, then I cannot support his conclusions. In cases like this, time of death is always difficult to establish, but there's no doubt in my mind that Mrs. Jefferies was killed much earlier than is being suggested.' However, when pressed by prosecution counsel, Dr. Foyle agreed that Dr. Studeley's conclusions were 'not beyond the bounds of possibility' " (The Times, Wednesday, April 14,1971).

Interestingly, it was the prosecuting counsel, Robert Tring, QC, who referred to Dr. Studeley's "slip of the pen."

"Robert Tring asked the witness why he had written four days in his postmortem notes if he was now claiming that Mrs. Jefferies had been dead only two days. Dr. Studeley said it was 'a slip of the pen' which he corrected on the official report" (The Times, Wednesday, April 14,1971).

It's hard to understand why Adam Fanshaw didn't challenge this error when his own pathologist was arguing that three to four days was a more likely estimate. One explanation is that he planned to recall Studeley after his own pathologist had successfully established the night of June 1/day of June 2 as a possibility, and/or use the mistake as the main focus of his summing-up. Another explanation is that he didn't want to alienate the jury by badgering an elderly pathologist for a lapse of concentration, and intended to infer that Studeley had changed his mind under pressure from the police. In either event, the ground was cut from under his feet when Dr. Foyle agreed that Studeley's findings were "not beyond the bounds of possibility."

There was no reason why Foyle should have examined the body. Cause of death wasn't the issue; it was time of death that was in dispute. Stamp had alibis for June 1 and 2�Wynne had taken a two-day "sickie" in order to "make him look for a job"�and June 3 was his first opportunity to visit Grace. Nevertheless, even had the defense insisted on their own postmortem, which was their right, it wouldn't have been helpful.

The significant factors in establishing time of death�ambient temperature, rigor mortis, algor mortis (body temperature), livor mortis (settling of the blood), autolysis and putrefaction (indicators of decomposition)�are useful only when the body is first examined, not after a week's refrigeration. Nor was there any reason to assume Studeley's data was wrong. An important fact brought out at the trial was the reference to "pervasive staining and bloating" of the abdomen. If, as Foyle claimed, this was more consistent with three to four days of decomposition, then the algor-mortis readings were important (After death, body temperature cools until it reaches the level of its surroundings. This process takes between eight and twelve hours on the skin, and twenty-four to thirty-six hours in the center of the body. Once putrefaction begins�about two days after death�the temperature rises again due to the metabolic activity of bacteria.) and may explain why he was confident Grace had died "much earlier." In simple terms, if hourly readings showed an increase, then Grace's body had already cooled to the ambient temperature and was on the rise again.

Without more information, we can only guess what the debate was about, but the fact that it took place at all does seem to indicate the data was open to interpretation.
 

Who Killed Grace Jefferies? And Why?

Despite prosecution claims that Stamp rifled his grandmother's drawers for money, or set out to pretend someone else had, there's no evidence that Grace had anything worth stealing. Wynne thought she "kept some cash in a shoe box," but couldn't suggest anything else that might have been stolen. The obvious person to ask was Stamp himself, since he knew Grace's house better than anyone, but as he was the main suspect, asking him was never in the cards.

The house was described as "vandalized" and a brief description was given by the policeman who broke in through the front door.

"'I knew something was wrong when I saw the downstairs rooms. The place was a mess. Everything was broken: chairs, mirrors, even the plants had been torn out of their pots. It looked as if a kid had had a tantrum. I became alarmed when I saw blood on the stairs'" (The Times, Monday, April 12,1971).

The prosecution alleged that Stamp lost his temper and started breaking things, and when his grandmother remonstrated with him he pursued her upstairs with a carving knife from the kitchen. But if Stamp was innocent, then what does the destruction in the house tell us? Was it done for fun? Out of frustration? Anger? What kind of person vandalizes other people's property?

Research suggests he will be a young male with a history of truancy who associates with other delinquent youngsters. He will be living in a family with multiple problems, where there is little or no discipline and negligible supervision. Among his character traits will be aggressiveness, impulsiveness, self-centeredness, an inability to see another's point of view and a lack of forward thinking, all of which will make it difficult for him to understand the consequences of his actions and lead him to act on emotion and whim.

This is reflected in the policeman's remark: "It looked as if a kid had had a tantrum." Stamp certainly conformed to one of the above rules. He was a persistent truant, but he displayed the opposite character traits to a delinquent. He was too frightened to go out, too conscious of other people's opinions to forget his deformity, too aware of the consequences of his actions to attempt dating. Indeed, his vandalism was directed against himself. The more likely scenario if he'd killed his grandmother was that the police would have found two bodies when they broke in: Grace with a slit throat; Howard with multiple cuts on his arms before a last remorseful slice to his wrist brought peace.

Both prosecution and defense agreed that someone with frizzy or kinked ginger hair took a bath after the murder. The defense drew similarities between Wynne's hair and her son's hair not to suggest that Wynne murdered Grace but to demonstrate that hair was an unreliable method of identification in 1970 (Since DNA fingerprinting was introduced in 1987 it has become one of the most reliable methods.). If either Grace or Wynne had had siblings, it would be tempting to look in their direction, but Wynne was an only child and there is no record that Grace had brothers or sisters. The kinked gene may have come from Wynne's unknown father, but any links with him seem to have been severed very quickly and it's unlikely that he or his subsequent children would have sought out Grace to murder her.

More likely, Stamp was the victim of malign coincidence. Ginger hair is a characteristic shared by a significant number of British people and is frequently kinked�it appears to be one of its properties. Some past and present celebrities who've had it are Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth I, Vincent Van Gogh, Ginger Baker, Art Garfunkel, Bette Midler, Mick Hucknall. To recognize how such a coincidence might happen, it's important to recall the words of Professor Simpson: "Identical hairs are not compelling evidence like fingerprints, for they carry so much less detail."

In the end, the most convincing evidence for Stamp's innocence of this crime are the pristine bath taps and the bloodstained gloves in the litter bin. These point unfailingly to someone else being in Grace's house. The gloves were used to search her drawers, vandalize her house and take up a knife to stab her, and the taps had to be cleaned because her murderer removed the gloves when he got into the bath.

The prosecution painted Howard Stamp as an angry young man of low intelligence who erupted one day in a fit of violence against the loving grandmother who protected him. In order to get away with it he donned a pair of gloves, took a bath, wiped his fingerprints from the taps but failed to remove them from any other surface. Why? His prints were found elsewhere in the bathroom, even on the lavatory seat, but if, in the wake of the crime, he recognized that to leave them on the bath taps would be harmful, why go on to insist that he'd never used the bath? His detractors would argue that he wasn't bright enough to do anything else. Having confessed to everything at the beginning, he then rushed to denial. Indeed, the prosecution inferred that his denial was a tacit admission of guilt.

"In his summing-up, Robert Tring ... drew the jury's attention to the evidence from the bathtub. The defendant claims he never used it,' he said, 'yet we have shown that he did. You must ask yourselves why he lied when only a guilty man would have been afraid to admit he'd taken a bath in Grace Jefferies' house'" (Daily Telegraph, Friday, April 16,1971).

Unfortunately for Stamp the jury accepted this at face value instead of questioning why, if he was willing to say his confession had been coerced, he wasn't equally willing to "remember" a recent bath. While it would have been wrong for his barrister to suggest such a thing, there is no doubt Fanshaw would have discussed the evidential conflicts his client faced in such a way that the implications were clear. "My job would be a great deal easier if you'd used your grandma's tub, Howard. Are you sure you never did?" Wouldn't a guilty man have jumped at a way out?

In light of the Evans, Bentley, Kiszko and Downing miscarriages of justice, it's impossible to examine Stamp's case without having similar misgivings. He was an immature man with learning difficulties who was convicted on a retracted confession and disputed evidence. It's arguable if he even understood the case against him, let alone had the clarity of thought to present a viable defense.

Less than three years after his trial Howard Stamp was dead, driven to suicide by loneliness and despair. In his comparatively short life he had been teased and bullied for his harelip, mocked for his stupidity, accused and convicted of murdering the one person who protected him, then abandoned to fend for himself in the harsh environment of prison. Most would say it was a fitting punishment if he had murdered his grandmother. All would raise their hands in horror if DNA evidence proved tomorrow that he did not. (Anyone who has information relating to the murder of Grace Jefferies and/or the conviction of Howard Stamp can contact Dr. Jonathan Hughes, c/o Spicer & Hardy, Authors'Agents, 25 Blundell St., London W4 9TP.)
 

Appendix

When I consulted Michael Williams, professor of behavioral science at Durham University, he suggested a profile of Grace Jefferies' murderer. "I have drawn some general conclusions, based on limited facts. Normally, I would visit the scene and study all available evidence. This is clearly impossible when the event happened thirty years ago, therefore much of this offender profile is informed guesswork. Victim-profiling has gained in importance in the last decade since it was recognized that a victim's pattern of behavior can also give clues to his/her murderer. Without more information about Grace Jefferies' character and lifestyle, my deductions are again guesswork."

This murder was an isolated event and not part of a series. As there was no evidence of a break-in, and Grace was described as "reclusive," it's reasonable to assume she knew her killer. This persuaded her to open her door. Because she was protective of her grandson, we can also assume she was protective of herself, which means her visitor was a regular caller or someone she recognized from the neighborhood. The murderer may not have intended to kill when he entered the house but, once inside, he lost his temper. He wreaked destruction out of frustration, possibly when he realized there was nothing worth stealing. Grace's speech impediment may have been the trigger for torture. He slashed at her to make her "talk" (either because it amused him or because he wanted her to tell him where her money was hidden). Oblivious both to the passage of time and the consequences of being caught on the premises, he took a bath to wash off her blood.

If we absolve Howard Stamp (Professor Williams added a caveat: "It was not unreasonable for the police to fix on Stamp as the prime suspect. He was Grace's only regular visitor, she thought of him as safe, he was frustrated with himself and his life and he was known to lose his temper. There remains a question mark over his guilt, although I agree with Jonathan Hughes that [1] the time frame appears to have been distorted and [2] Stamp would have reacted differently if he'd committed the murder.), then the crime took place earlier than midday on June 3,1970. This would expand the time frame during which the killer was able to operate.

A significant factor was the closing of the curtains, which suggests he was in the house during the hours of darkness and feared being seen. It also explains why he was able to come and go without being noticed. Nevertheless, Grace was unlikely to open her door after dark unless she thought her visitor was "safe," and this implies an accomplice, almost certainly a girl, who was known to Grace and had a good excuse for being there. If this girl stayed to witness the crime, it is certain she experienced the same terror that Grace experienced; if she left after her boyfriend gained entry, then she was easily persuaded of his innocence and/or terrified into silence. In either case, she would not have spoken to the police.

Significant features of the crime are: an expectation that there was something worth stealing; limited knowledge of forensic techniques (he left evidence of himself behind); sudden uncontrollable anger (he started destroying furniture); cruelty (he tortured his victim); a lack of forward thinking (he killed her regardless of the consequences); inexperience (he didn't expect to be covered in blood); no concern about being caught in the act (he took a bath afterward).

The killer was an immature person with a disorganized mind and anger/emotional problems. He may have been high on drugs, drink or glue. He believed Grace would be an easy "score" and was unnaturally confident about getting away with it. He was used to making threats�"land me in trouble and you're dead"�and he expected to be obeyed. This suggests a disdain for people in general, a disdain for the police in particular and a history of criminal behavior. There was no prior planning�he'd heard rumors that Grace kept cash in the house but he didn't bother to find out whether they were true. He was used to having his own way and became violent when he was thwarted.

Today he will be in his late forties and he may have a drinking or drug problem. He has, or had, ginger hair and will have spent time in prison. While in his teens he lived in or around Mullin Street in Highdown, Bournemouth. He was part of a deadbeat family who were disliked by their neighbors. He rarely attended school and regularly ran into trouble with the police. He was charismatic enough to attract a girlfriend (probably because he ran with a charismatic gang). He was the dominant partner in the relationship, although she was probably brighter. Because he is illiterate or semiliterate, he is unemployed or works as an unskilled laborer. He is easily roused to anger. If he lives with a partner and children they will be terrified of him; if he doesn't, then there are women and children in hiding who know him.
 

A selection of the 100-plus letters
received by Jonathan Hughes:

Tithe Cottage
West Staington
Dorset DT2 UVT

Sunday, August 12, 2001

Dear Dr. Hughes

I have just finished your book Disordered Minds. I was particularly interested by the chapter on the Grace Jefferies murder as my wife and I were living in Bournemouth at the time. As you know, it was a cause celebre which filled many column inches in the national press. Indeed nothing so dreadful had happened in the town since Neville Heath's atrocious murder of Doreen Marshall in 1946.

With respect, I cannot accept your proposition that Howard Stamp was innocent. My wife and I were personally acquainted with one of his schoolteachers at St. David's Primary School, and she said he was a "wrong-un" from the age of six. While I accept that this is hardly evidence of guilt, I do believe that teachers have a feel for these things.

I fear you have fallen into the fashionable trap of looking to excuse sin, either by laying the blame at someone else's door or by portraying the sinner as a victim of circumstance.

Yours sincerely
Brendan McConnell

Replied, asking for name of teacher. Followed up on 10/3/01 and 11/14/01.
No response.
 

The man you're looking for is Barty Morton. He's got red hair and lives at 3 Springhill Close, Christchurch, nr Bournemouth. He regularly beats his wife and kids.

Received on 9/15/01. No address or signature. Checked out Barry Morton�too young (2 yrs. old in 1970).
 

Bournemouth

Dear Dr. Hughes,

I was at school with Howard Stamp. He was bullied all the time. Not that he turned up very often. Sometimes his mother dragged him in by his ear when the school inspectors got on to her. She wasn't a nice woman, she was always hitting him. I felt badly about the way he was treated. He was called terrible names. Even the teachers were nasty to him. I never believed he killed his nan but I don't know who did.

Yours sincerely,

Jan

Unable to reply without a full name and address.
 

COUNCILLOR G. GARDENER
25 Mullin Street, Highdown, Bournemouth, Dorset BH15 6VX

Dr. Jonathan Hughes
c/o Spicer & Hardy Authors' Agents
25 Blundell Street
London W4 9TP

December 17, 2002

Dear Jonathan Hughes:

After hearing an interview with you on Radio 4 some weeks ago, I was prompted to buy your book Disordered Minds. You will have noted that I live in the street where Grace Jefferies was murdered although, as I'm sure you're aware, her house and the two on either side were pulled down in 1972 to make way for a block of flats. I moved here from London in 1985 and by then her story was forgotten. I became aware of it after a spate of burglaries in the area when a neighbor mentioned that she hadn't seen so many police since Grace's body was found. Naturally, I was curious and she gave me the details.

For over a century, Bournemouth has been depicted as a tranquil place of substantial villas, beautiful beaches and conservative (with both small and big Cs) inclinations, where the wealthy middle classes choose to retire. In some ways that is still what it represents, but an influx of service industries�finance, insurance, tourism�plus the inauguration of the university in 1992 and the success of the international airport, has brought a multitude of job opportunities to the town. It is now regarded as one of the "buzz" cities on the south coast.

With that in mind, it's difficult to imagine the "ghetto" that Highdown was in the 1960s. Trapped between the borders of Poole and Bournemouth, it was a dumping ground for difficult families where two, and sometimes three, generations were dependent on the dole. Most lived in council accommodation, while the 35% who owned their homes were widows or retired couples surviving on small pensions. The crime rate was disproportionately high compared with more affluent wards, although it tended to be opportunist thieving from property and gratuitous vandalism rather than the mugging and stealing of cars which is prevalent in other cities today.

This may go some way to explaining the shock that local people experienced when Grace was murdered. There was always concern among homeowners about the "deadbeat" families on their doorsteps, but they had learned to lock their doors and protect their possessions. A "California-style" killing was a different matter altogether, particularly when the victim was a shy widow with few friends. You make some reference to that in the book, but by no means enough. The local panic engendered by press headlines on the Saturday after the body was found was enormous.

The police in all parts of Bournemouth were besieged by terrified women convinced they were going to be next. There was a mass exodus from Highdown as widowed ladies went to live with their sons or daughters rather than face a madman. Most remembered the murder of Doreen Marshall by Neville Heath, who was an early "serial killer." The convictions of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley for the Moors murders in April 1966 were still fresh in the mind. Charles Manson and his family were about to go on trial in America. It seemed as if the world was turning to multiple murder.

You mention the "collective sigh of relief" when Howard Stamp was arrested and charged, but it wasn't until the evidence was heard at trial that local people felt able to relax. My neighbor said they all thought the police had arrested the wrong person. She described Stamp as "someone who wouldn't say boo to a goose let alone murder anyone." In fact it was widely believed that the police had frightened him into making his confession, especially as none of the witnesses who saw him running away remembered seeing any blood on his clothes. There was a continuing fear that the real murderer was still at large.

As you make clear in your book, it was the forensic evidence that not only swung the jury against Stamp but also persuaded local people that he must be guilty. One detail you omitted was that Dr. James Studeley for the prosecution had trained under Sir Bernard Spilsbury�the "father" of forensic medicine�in the 1930s. Much was made of this by the prosecution during their cross-examination of Dr. Foyle, whose qualifications were "pedestrian by comparison," since he had trained in Australia under an "unknown." At one point, Robert Tring, Queen's Counsel, asked him to name a pathologist with whom he'd worked that a member of the jury might have heard of. He was unable to do so, and could only claim to have read their work. As this came after a similar question to Studeley, who cited not just Spilsbury but also Sir Sydney Smith, Professor Keith Simpson, Dr. Francis Camps and Dr. Donald Teare, who between them had founded the "Association of Forensic Medicine" in the late 1940s, Foyle appeared to be a lightweight.

In particular, his quoting of Keith Simpson's comments on "identical hairs" lost credibility when Studeley was able to counter with remarks made by Simpson at another trial. "The supporting evidence of identical hair is useful when everything else is pointing in the same direction." In Stamp's case, of course, the "everything else" was his confession.

I applaud your efforts to bring Stamp's case to public attention, although I gather from your Radio 4 interview that you've had little success to date. From my own research I support your view that he was convicted on a coerced confession and unreliable evidence. However, in the absence of another suspect, it will be hard to prove. Sadly, my only neighbor who was here in 1970 died five years ago and, while I believe Wynne Stamp is still alive, I have never been able to find out where she went. Rumor had it she changed her name to escape publicity, but I have no firm evidence of that.

If I can be of any further assistance, please feel free to write.

Yours sincerely,
George Gardener
George Gardener

Replied 1/5/03. During subsequent correspondence arranged a meeting for 2/13/03 at the Crown and Feathers pub in Highdown.

 

*2*

HEATHROW AIRPORT, LONDON
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2003, 11:00 P.M.

The news that evening was bleak. The government had ordered a ring of steel around Heathrow Airport. Scimitar lightweight reconnaissance tanks were parked menacingly along the perimeter walls, soldiers and armed policemen patrolled the terminals. London felt ominous. Even leaderless. The threat of looming war with Iraq�an unstoppable war if the BBC and the broadsheets were to be believed�depressed and worried its inhabitants. For many, the argument for a preemptive strike against a crippled country and a broken-backed dictator hadn't been made, and few understood why it was necessary to rattle sabers at Saddam Hussein when for fifteen months the enemy had been Al Qaeda.

There were rumors of splits in the Cabinet, and the Prime Minister's popularity had reached an all-time low. The Government had looked weak since a negotiating shambles had persuaded the firefighters to go on national strike, sucking soldiers away from the front line in order to man the pumps at home. People talked gloomily of a return to the "British disease" of the 1970s, when strikes had been commonplace. Patriotism was quoted as a reason why firefighters should remain at their stations. The air was thick with recrimination as the country took sides...

It was felt by every returning traveler to Heathrow that evening. They were warned to expect tanks and troops, but the reality of hard-faced soldiers and armed policemen in and around the terminals was shocking. It smacked of the military dictatorships they were being urged to mobilize against, and the more skeptical among them questioned the political convenience of unspecified terrorist threats so close to war. It was clever propaganda if it meant a reluctant population was frightened into accepting the necessity of preemptive strikes.

This was certainly Dr. Jonathan Hughes's position as he emerged, tired and angry, from Terminal 4 at eleven o'clock that night and lit a much-needed cigarette outside the exit doors. He was a tall, good-looking man with close-cropped dark hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, but that night he looked ill and drawn. He'd had trouble at both ends of the journey: four hours of checking in at JFK airport and a tailback of queues at Heathrow's passport control. Depression swamped him as he looked at the tanks and thought how easy it was for demagogues to whip up religious and racist hatred.

New York had been bad, but this was worse. He watched a woman wearing hijab cross the pavement toward him with lowered head, her tight shoulders betraying her fear. Airports were uneasy places since 9/11, and it wasn't just police and immigration officers who looked with suspicion at anyone with Arab features or Islamic dress.

Perhaps the Muslim woman felt Jonathan's gaze because she glanced up as she approached. The hijab, a pale green scarf wrapped like a nun's wimple round her forehead, cheeks and neck, performed its intended job of stripping her of her allure, and not for the first time Jonathan wondered why so many women were prepared to cover themselves rather than put the onus on men to behave with decency. At times like these the hijab bore such obvious witness to a woman's faith that it was dangerous. He felt his usual contempt for Muslim men. Not only did they want their wives to take responsibility for their own chastity�"a woman should be concealed, for when she goes out the devil looks at her"�they were too cowardly to advertise their own belief. Where was the male equivalent of the veil?

The woman scurried by, dropping her eyes the minute she met his angry ones. If she expected sympathy, she was out of luck. Jonathan studied comparative religions, but only for academic reasons. He didn't admire or approve of any of them. For him, the world was a godless desert where belief systems clashed because man's aggression was untameabie. God was just an excuse for conflict, like capitalism or communism, and he found it laughable when leaders quoted morality as justification for their actions. There was no morality in killing people�a peasant's genes were as valuable to the species as a president's�merely expediency.

He dropped his cigarette and crushed it underfoot, the expression on his face showing his irritation as he stared after the woman. He deeply resented the implication behind the hijab, that every man was a potential rapist. Jet-lagged and cynical from a week in New York where reasoned discussion on a Palestinian state and the problems of Islamic fundamentalism had been impossible, Jonathan found his homecoming deeply dispiriting. It might have been Hiram Johnson who said the first casualty of war was truth, but to Jonathan's jaundiced eyes the first casualty was tolerance. As far as he was concerned, the world had gone mad since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
 

*3*

HIGHDOWN, BOURNEMOUTH
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2003

He was in no better frame of mind by the morning. If anything, another sleepless night had made his depression worse. He should be using the day to recover instead of flogging himself to death to meet George Gardener. His interest in Howard Stamp was intellectual�a careless judicial system was indicative of a tired democracy�but he had no real desire to launch a crusade to clear one individual's name. He was a man of letters, not a man of action. He stared impassively out of the train window and wondered why he'd left it too late to cancel.

Sleet driving in on an icy east wind rattled the panes every time the train slowed. The other passengers, wary of meeting Jonathan's eyes, pointedly read their newspapers. He was an unsmiling man whose spectacles made him look older than his thirty-four years. The spectacles were cosmetic, his eyesight was perfect, but he wore them because he disliked not being taken seriously as an academic. He was dismissive of poor teaching and lazy thinking and had a reputation for departmental infighting. It won him few friends but it meant his intellectual authority was recognized. Certainly his fellow travelers found the brooding, introspective stare intimidating.

"For God's sake, Jon, everyone takes you seriously ... they wouldn't dare do anything else..."

In the gardens and parks on the outskirts of town, thick layers of ice had formed on lakes and fish ponds, but when Jonathan finally disembarked at Branksome Station, after a cold wait at Bournemouth Central for a local train, the sleet was turning to water on the pavements. Shopkeepers, already suffering the knock-on effects of war jitters and plunging stockmarkets, stared despondently out of their windows as the wind-chill factor persuaded customers to stay at home. The weather would make the headlines on the local news that evening when Age Concern made a plea for help with pensioners' heating bills. Zero temperatures were a rarity in Dorset, which was why so many elderly chose to live there.

"Blair orders in tanks" read a stand outside a newsagent halfway up Highdown Road. It was a solitary shop, a tiny trading post in a run of shabby terraced housing. Jonathan glanced at the front pages of the newspapers on the racks inside the door. It was old news about the tanks at Heathrow. The war was still phoney. He crossed a side road and sheltered in the lee of a house to consult his map, cursing himself for coming. A jet-lagged body was unequal to the task of providing warmth, and his lightweight raincoat was about as waterproof as a piece of gauze. Worse, he had stomach cramps because he hadn't eaten since eight o'clock last night.

He screwed his eyes against the wind and sleet to read the street sign and wished he'd had the sense to look at a weather forecast. Irritation bubbled briefly against George Gardener. The councillor's last letter had said the Crown and Feathers was within easy walking distance of Branksome Station, but the man probably belonged to the Ramblers' Association and hiked twenty miles for pleasure every weekend. Easy walking distance to Jonathan was a couple of blocks, not a trek through a snowstorm. His fingers were numb, his shoes were leaking and he didn't believe this wild goose chase would lead to anything. His depression rode him like a black dog.

He took out a cigarette and cupped his hand round the flame of his lighter. The wind blew it out immediately. It was symptomatic of the day. Walking in Howard Stamp's footsteps thirty years after his death in order to talk to someone who'd never met him was pointless. He flicked the lighter again with the same result and blamed himself for ever allowing Andrew Spicer to include a contact address in the book. "If you believe what you write, then do something about it," Andrew had said. "If you don't then stop lecturing the rest of us on injustice." Jonathan tossed the cigarette into the gutter and clamped down on his simmering anger.

What did Andrew know about injustice? Jonathan should have taken him to New York and introduced him to some of his black and Islamic friends who were too frightened to go out. Hate crimes were increasing as troops were dispatched to the Gulf. If the whites weren't worried about war, they were worried about their investments. It was not a good time to be an American Arab or American Muslim. Even Jews were being targeted because of Israel's perceived intransigence toward a Palestinian state. At the bottom of the heap were north Africans on educational scholarships. As Jonathan knew well. He'd flown out to attend the funeral of Jean-Baptiste Kamil, a twenty-three-year-old student of his, who'd asked directions of the wrong man.

Divorced old Etonian Andrew Spicer, whose mouth had been stuffed with shiny white silver on the day he was born, was never going to suffer that kind of discrimination. Instead, he needled Jonathan. "It's time you left your ivory tower and got your hands dirty," he told him after reading Gardener's letter. "It'll make a good follow-up if you can prove your theory, and I won't have trouble getting an advance either."

Jonathan was reluctant. "It'll be time-consuming."

"You need the money."

It was true... "Not that badly." Certainly not badly enough to have another book "spiced up" by Andrew's editing. It had turned a thoughtful study on injustice into an unashamedly commercial book. "You ruined the last one."

"It wouldn't have sold if you'd done it your way. As it is, you made a nice little profit. You'll stand to make a bigger one if you mount a campaign for Howard. Look at Ludovic Kennedy's 10 Rillington Place. It was made into a film." Andrew folded his fat little hands on his desk. "You need the money, Jon. You can't buy Paul Smith suits and go to the opera every night on an academic's salary."

Money. With it, a man could lock his resentments in a box and be the person he wanted to be. Without it, he was nobody. Jonathan checked his map, saw with relief that Friar Road was the next on the left and battled on, head down. He didn't notice the BMW that drew quietly into the curb behind him.

The Crown and Feathers was on the corner, a dark Victorian building with pebble-dashed walls and signs in the windows advertising live music on Saturdays and discounted meals for senior citizens on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Jonathan's misery deepened. He loathed cheap and cheerful. No doubt the pub was a pit stop for coachloads of old-age pensioners on day trips to the coast. Or, worse, a drop-in center for the ones who lived there. There would be piped Vera Lynn singing The White Cliffs of Dover" and "We'll Meet Again," the food would be inedible and the wine, if it was offered at all, would be vinegar. He should have stuck to his guns and insisted on a restaurant in town, but he might have had to foot the bill. With a sigh he shouldered open the door to the lounge bar and was surprised to find it almost deserted.

An elderly man sat on a bar stool, sipping beer and staring into space. A middle-aged couple were tucked away in a corner, heads together, sharing secrets. All three looked in Jonathan's direction when he entered, but the lack of response told him neither of the men was George Gardener. There was no one serving. He peered through a doorway marked "saloon," but it was empty except for a snooker table. The only food on offer appeared to be a list of sandwiches tacked to a wooden post; the only wine a couple of bottles beside the till with their corks pushed in. It was a place of cheap ale and no frills, and he wondered what sort of man would choose it for a meeting. Old Labor, Jonathan decided gloomily, and still fighting the class war.

Cold and wet, he shrugged off his raincoat and parked himself beside the bar. As an afterthought he took off his spectacles and tucked them into his breast pocket. Looking like an academic was the least of his problems. It was sporting the designer suit and shirt that was the mistake. He looked like a peacock in a chicken run, as out of place in the Crown and Feathers as the ancient beer drinker beside him would have been at Covent Garden. He felt the old man slide off his stool to move closer and studiously avoided his gaze. He was never in the mood for small talk�it was a talent he didn't possess�and especially not with a stranger who looked as if beer was his staple diet. The marbled hands were shaking so much that the decrepit Methuselah needed both of them to lift his glass.

"Don't get many of your sort in here."

Jonathan ignored him. It didn't take any deep intellect to guess what he meant by "your sort" and he wondered why it was always the elderly who came out with such statements.

A bony finger poked his arm. "I'm talking to you."

Jonathan lowered his leather briefcase to the floor and retrieved his cigarette pack from his raincoat pocket. "What sort is that?" he asked, ducking his head to the lighter. "Men who wear suits?" He shifted his glance to stare pointedly at the jabbing finger. "Or men on very short fuses?" He made a fist of his right hand and rested it on the bar.

The old man, perhaps mistaking the signet ring for a knuckle-duster, put some space between them. "Landlord's out back," he said. "Keep telling him he's losing customers, but he don't pay no heed. There's been a couple come and gone before you walked in."

"Mm."

"You should help yourself. Roy won't mind ... long as you pay, of course."

"Mm."

"Maybe you don't go for ale? Not used to it, eh?"

"Mm."

"Don't say much, do you? Cat got your tongue?"

Jonathan made an effort. It wasn't the old man's fault he was overdressed for the occasion. He should have built in time to go home and change before a night with Verdi at the Royal Opera. "I'm in no hurry. I'm meeting a man called George Gardener. Do you know him? He's a local councillor."

The rheumy eyes gave a flicker of amusement, presumably anticipating that an Old Labor dinosaur and a peacock would make uneasy bedfellows. "Maybe."

"Is he a regular?"

"Comes in a couple of times a week. Sits over there to listen to the moaners." He nodded toward a window table. "Calls it a surgery or some such nonsense. Bloody waste of time I call it. How's a councillor going to increase benefits, eh? That's the government's job." Jonathan gave a noncommittal nod. "They should get off their arses and look for work," the old man grumbled. "No sense bellyaching to someone who can't do nothing."

"No."

"What you want with George, then? Looking for somewhere to live?"

"No."

"Good thing, too. Them as can afford it buy off the council ... them like me what ain't got two farthings to rub together get down on bended knee and pray we don't get turned out." He stared into his beer. "It isn't right."

"No."

Belligerence sparked abruptly as if the repeated monosyllables annoyed him. Or perhaps it was the chill in the air�there didn't appear to be any heating in the room. "What would you know about it?" he snapped. "Where you from?"

"London."

The old man gave a derisive snort. "Timbuktu, more like."

"It's only two hours by train," said Jonathan mildly. "I did the trip this morning. It wasn't that difficult."

He was rewarded with a suspicious glare. "You making fun of me?"

"No."

"You'd better not be. I fought in the war so the likes of you could make something of yourselves. I got medals for it."

Jonathan took a thoughtful puff of his cigarette. The sensible thing would be to move to one of the tables, but he was damned if he'd give the old brute the satisfaction. He loathed senility with a passion. It was rude, it was self-absorbed and it contributed nothing to man's advancement. Rather the opposite, in fact. It was a destructive force, both in families and in society, because of the insatiable demands it made on the next generation.

The finger started jabbing again. "You listening to me?"

Jonathan took a deep breath through his nose before whipping up his hand and grasping the frail wrist. "You don't want to do this," he said, lowering his hand to the counter. "I'm cold, I'm wet, I'm tired and I am not in the best of moods." He relaxed his grip. "I sympathize with your housing problems but they are not my responsibil-ity. I suggest you take them up with your MP, although he'll probably tell you to be grateful to taxpayers like me if you've been living on benefit all your life."

"Don't you lecture me," the old man snapped. "I got rights. More'n you'll ever have. I'm a Christian, I am, and it's a Christian country ... or would be if we didn't keep opening our doors to heathens."

"This man bothering you?" asked a burly, dark-haired man, appearing through the saloon door.

Jonathan shook his head.

"I wasn't talking to you, mate. I was talking to my regular. I don't tolerate assaults on old guys. Certainly not by jumped-up wogs in fancy dress."

It was like a punch to the midriff. Jonathan hadn't been called a wog for years.

"That's a bit strong," said the old man. "He'll have you in court if you're not careful, Roy."

"What did he have hold of your hand for? Was he hurting you?"

"No," Jim admitted fairly. "Didn't like me poking him."

"Then I apologize. No insult intended," Roy said, raising a trap in the counter and moving behind the bar. "Should have called you a black." He stood with his arms crossed, eyes narrowed aggressively, as if pulling a pint for this customer was the last thing he wanted to do. "What can I get you?"

"Nothing." Jonathan squashed his cigarette into the ashtray with a shaking hand and reached for his raincoat. "I'd rather take my chances in town." He took a card from his pocket and flicked it onto the bar. "If George Gardener comes in, tell him he can reach me on that mobile number. I'll give him the time it takes me to eat lunch, then I'll leave."

The landlord's expression changed. "Christ! Are you Jonathan Hughes? Listen, mate, I'm sorry. You should have said."

"What?"

"Who you were, for Christ's sake. I've been expecting a white bloke. Does George know you're a darkie?"

Jonathan took another calming breath. "Don't worry about it," he said, shrugging into the sodden coat and lifting his briefcase. "I'll chalk it down to experience." He retrieved his card and tucked it into his pocket. "On reflection, you can tell your friend I've changed my mind about meeting him. I don't like the company he keeps." He headed for the exit.

The landlord called after him, "Hang on, mate..." But his words were lost in the wind as Jonathan flung open the door.
 

After two hundred yards his furious pace slackened as a sense of proportion returned. He told himself to follow his own advice and chalk it down to experience. It wasn't the first time it had happened and it wouldn't be the last. His passport was scrutinized by zealous immigration officers every time he entered the country. He'd learned to bite his tongue, particularly since the events of 9/11, but it still maddened him. As a child his brain had churned with hatred every time he was slighted�ignorant racists ... low-grade trash ... foul-mouthed illiterates�but he had never said the words out loud.

If Andrew was to be believed, he should have done it. Holding back anger during adolescence had led to repression.

"You never stood up to your bullies, pal. You'll argue a point to death in an article or a letter, but you won't do it face to face. Christ knows why. You're aggressive enough ... on paper, anyway."

"I confront my colleagues and students every day."

"Where it's safe. It's not as if your students are ever going to hit you. You're two different people, Jon. A Rottweiler inside your department, an obedient whippet outside."

"They're dogs."

"Don't split hairs. You'll write damning critiques of your colleagues�it's made you a hero with your students�but you shy away from confrontation on the street. You spend a fortune on flashy suits to get yourself noticed, then hunch your shoulders and wear old men's glasses in case you are. You go to the opera, but you always go alone because you think an invitation might commit you to a relationship. It's a pity you didn't deck a skinhead when you were fifteen. You've been suppressing your feelings for so long you don't have any anymore."

"What makes you think it was whites who were the only problem? The Jamaicans and the Chinese were just as bad, and they ran in bigger gangs." Jonathan's face hardened at some distant memory. "They were illiterate and stupid, and none of them could speak English well enough to be understood." He gave a cynical shrug. "You try being half Iranian, half Libyan in that kind of environment ... with a dark skin, Caucasian features and an English name that no one believes you're entitled to. Trust me, you keep your head down and work like crazy to get yourself out of it. The last thing you do is take a swing at anyone."

"For an anthropologist, you have a great dislike of people, Jon."

"It has nothing to do with anthropology. Abstract science doesn't generate hate."

"Then what does?"

War, thought Jonathan. His anger and aggression had increased by leaps and bounds since his passport had started being questioned. At the back of his mind was a constant fear that if he lost it, he would lose everything. As always, he patted his breast pocket to reassure himself it was there. The gesture was so automatic it had become a nervous tic.

A car drew up to the pavement beside him. It was an ancient Mini Cooper with its backseat piled high with books and files. "Excuse me ... excuse me!" a woman called in a shrill voice as she wound down her window. "Are you Jonathan Hughes?" The voice rose to hideous vowel-strangled stridency. "Excuse me ... excuse me!"

Jonathan ignored her.

He heard the gears crunch as she set off in pursuit on the wrong side of the road. "Please stop!" she shouted, pulling round a parked car to draw ahead of him. "Oh, help!" Her wail reached him as a van appeared out of the sleet in front of her and she slammed on her brakes.Jonathan screwed up his eyes in pained disbelief and waited for the inevitable to happen. She was lucky. The reactions of the van driver were as quick as hers and he stopped his vehicle a yard from her bumper. His views on women drivers, mouthed through his windshield with his finger pointing skywards, were inaudible but intelligible, and none of it was complimentary. In particular, he didn't like fat women drivers. With a shake of his fist, he reversed up and pulled away.

Jonathan bent down to look through the window. "You'd better pull over before anyone else comes," he said. "I'll wait."

She was red-faced and shaking, but she had the presence of mind to do as he said. "God, that was stupid," she said, opening her door and climbing out. "I am so, so sorry. What must you be thinking?" She was zipped into a padded red coat with Wellingtons on her feet and a lime green woolen hat clamped to her head like a Roman helmet, none of which did anything for her figure or her complexion. She looked like a squat garden gnome and Jonathan wondered if she ever bothered to consult a mirror. He put her age at about sixty.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"I'm George Gardener." She offered an apologetic hand which he shook reluctantly. "I can't tell you how embarrassed I am about this. I could murder Roy and Jim for being so crass. I'm not going to make excuses for Jim�he's rude to everybody�but I'm afraid Roy thought you were a crack-cocaine dealer." She pulled a wry face. "The police keep warning us about London-based gangs moving in and he thought you were one of them."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

The color deepened in her roughened cheeks. "I'm just trying to explain why he said what he did."

"I thought crack-cocaine dealers were Jamaican Yardies. Do I look like a Jamaican?"

"No, but ... well, you have a very English name and you don't look like an Englishman either," she said in a rush.

Jonathan was unimpressed. "And you have a very male name, Mrs. Gardener, but I didn't insult women because I was expecting to meet a man." His mouth twisted cynically. "Does your friend assume all white men who enter his pub are drug dealers?"

She hesitated, considering the wisdom of answering. "As long as you don't mind my quoting him, then yes, he would ... if they were flash bastards in smart suits ... and the police had told him the gangs were white. People like that don't go into his pub." She wrung her hands. "Please don't be offended. Roy wasn't being racist, he was just trying to explain why he hadn't recognized you. He works very hard to keep drugs out of that pub, which is why most of his customers are elderly and he doesn't make any money. It's not a trendy place. The young wouldn't be seen dead in it."

Jonathan could well believe that. He wouldn't frequent the Crown and Feathers if he were paid. But he wondered at her naivety and was tempted to repeat the conversation from his point of view. There was no question in his mind that Roy was as racist as they came, but there was little point arguing about it. "All right," he said with a curt nod. "I am not offended."

"Then you'll come back?" she asked eagerly.

"No. I'm freezing to death and I'm not a beer and sandwiches man, Mrs. Gardener. I'll find somewhere with a more substantial menu."

She sighed. "It's Miss actually, but I can't stand being called Ms. I'd rather you called me George."

Why wasn't he surprised? No man in his right mind would want this earnest little bumpkin with her terrible fashion sense and bulky body.

"Roy made a hotpot specially," she told him. "He's a good chef�truly�and he's given us one of the private rooms. There's a fire going. The only reason I chose the Crown and Feathers was because Roy knew Howard Stamp." She placed a small, pleading hand on his arm. "It all went wrong because my car wouldn't start. It's the cold. I should have put newspaper under the hood last night, but I wasn't expecting a freeze. You wait: statistics say that at least two of my constituents will have broken a hip by this evening and fifty percent of the rest will be shivering in blankets to avoid upping their heating bills. Those are the pensioners like Jim."

Jonathan might have said that Bournemouth was holding fewer and fewer attractions for him, but he hesitated when she mentioned Howard Stamp, and she saw the interest in his face.

"Oh, brilliant!" she said, clapping her hands like a born-again Christian. "Hop in and I'll drive."

He almost abandoned it there and then. "I'd rather walk, thank you."

"Oh, come on," she said, shepherding him round the hood. "I need Roy to charge the battery for me, so there's no point leaving the car here. You don't want to pay any attention to what that van driver said. My eyesight's fine and I've had a license for years. Also, I don't usually drive on the wrong side of the road."

She didn't seem to understand "no" and, with resignation, he folded his tall frame into the cramped passenger seat. She was sorry she couldn't adjust the seat, but the Mini doubled as a filing cabinet and there wasn't enough room. Jonathan's knees were almost touching his chin and he smiled rather sourly. The only thing he was grateful for was that none of his students could see him. Slumming it wasn't Dr. Hughes's style at all. George chattered like a little bird back to the pub, parked in a courtyard at the back, then solicitously helped him unfurl in order to march him upstairs to the private room where he was forced to accept the landlord's apologies.

It didn't go as well as she'd hoped. Roy Trent wasn't the type to eat humble pie, and Jonathan, who struggled with his own racism in a way that whites would never understand, was immediately reoffended to be called black. Despite his dark skin, he never thought of himself as black, only as an Arab. His irritation increased as George urged him forward, butting against his back with a large plastic carrier bag that she'd retrieved from the back of her car. She looked like a tramp, the landlord�the chef�looked as if he hadn't washed his hands in weeks, and Jonathan's fastidious nature recoiled at the whole idea of breaking bread with them.

"I could probably take the racism ... I don't agree with it, but I suppose I understand the history. It's the snobbery I hate. You have such an inflated opinion of your intelligence, Jon. You think it puts you above everybody else ... but clever people do not set out to patronize everyone they meet..."
 

*4*

Inside, the two men eyed each other like a couple of silverback gorillas preparing to fight over a ripe female. Roy Trent, at a disadvantage because he was on his knees trying to bring the fire to life, or because he genuinely cared for the fat little gnome behind Jonathan, capitulated first. "Listen, mate, I'm sorry," he said, shoveling coal into the grate. "I saw this big black geezer gripping old Jim's hand and giving him the evil eye, and I thought, shit, he's dressed up like a dog's dinner and he's talking like Laurence bloody Olivier. I mean, it's not normal, is it? We all know Jim's a miserable old sod, but we tend to switch off and let him get on with it. It's George's fault really. All she told me was that an author was coming�some fellow who'd written about poor old Howard�so I was expecting a puny little critter in an anorak. I mean, Howard's hardly front-page news, is he?" He flicked Jonathan an assessing gaze. "The real trouble is, you don't have a foreign name. I mean, Jonathan Hughes�what could be more English than that? Now, if you'd been called Mohammed or Ali, there wouldn't have been a problem." He stood up, wiping his coal-blackened hands on his trousers. "Apology accepted?" he asked, proffering his right.

Jonathan, well aware that he'd been purposely maligned, grasped the hand firmly in his and bore down heavily on the man's metacarpal bones. "As long as you accept mine."

There was a flicker of irritation in Roy's eyes but he answered pleasantly enough. "OK. What do you want to apologize for?"

"Making wrong-headed judgments about whites," said Jonathan. "It's a bad habit of mine. You all look the same to me."

"Go on, I can take it. What's the punchline?"

"Germans are well educated, the French are well dressed, the Irish have talent and Americans are polite." He shrugged. "As the British are none of these things, I invariably make mistakes in my dealings with them." He removed his raincoat and hung it on a hook beside the door before smoothing his jacket and hoping the shiny patches on the elbows wouldn't be noticed. "I apologize for the suit. I wore it as a courtesy to the person I was meeting�" he felt George stir uncomfortably behind him�"but I should have realized how inappropriate it would be. Of course, if your pub had been called the Pig and Wallow, there wouldn't have been a problem�I'd have had an idea what to expect�but the Crown and Feathers suggested a classier establishment."

There was a long pause while Roy thoughtfully massaged his fist. "Just for the record, so you don't get it wrong another time, you can't tell a pub by its name, mate. The Pig and Wallow could be the best inn you'll ever come across."

Jonathan smiled slightly. "Thank you for enlightening me," he murmured. "Being black and foreign does make the vagaries of English naming traditions very difficult to understand."

Roy jutted his chin aggressively. "You left out our good qualities. We don't take life as seriously as the Germans ... we don't bellyache like the French ... we don't emigrate at the drop of a hat like the Irish ... and we don't worship money like the Americans." He tugged his old jumper over his beer gut. "I'll concede the bad dressing, though. So what nationality are you?"

"As British as you, Mr. Trent."

"Except I'm English."

The room was a small one with a table laid for two and a couple of leather armchairs on either side of the fire. Jonathan motioned to one of the chairs, inviting George to sit down. "May I take your coat?"

She clamped her arms over her chest. "No, I'm fine."

He wondered what she was wearing underneath. Pajamas? It wouldn't surprise him. Nothing would surprise him today. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

"Please."

He crossed one elegant leg over the other and put on his spectacles. "If you're asking what my racial roots are, Mr. Trent, then my father's family is Iranian and my mother's family is north African. I have an English name courtesy of my paternal great-grandfather, who was called Robert Hughes, and the reason I'm British is because I was born here and hold a U.K. passport. I attended a London comprehensive school, won a place at Oxford and am now a research fellow in European anthropology at the University of London. I speak English, French and Farsi fluently and can get by in German and Spanish." He steepled his hands under his chin. "So what are your racial roots? I'd say there's a lot of Welsh in you."

"None at all," said the burly man suspiciously. "My parents are both Dorset folk."

"Interesting. Yet your Celtic genes are so strong."

"How do you make that out?"

"Body shape, stature, eye color, facial type. A true Englishman would have Anglo-Saxon characteristics. He'd be taller and fairer, with blue or gray eyes and a finer bone structure. You have strong Celtic features�wiry dark hair and brown eyes�and your body shape is endomorphic. It's why the Norsemen called the Welsh trolls, because they were short, dark, hairy men with big bellies." He glanced at George as she made small tut-tutting noises. "I'd say you're at least seventy-five percent Welsh, Mr. Trent."

That's rubbish," said the other man crossly. "You can't tell an Englishman just by looking at him. I'm fat because I eat too much. It doesn't make me bloody Welsh."

Jonathan touched his hands to his forehead in obeisance. "I do apologize. I hadn't realized being Welsh was such a problem for you. It's another area of the English psyche that I've never understood. I thought it was the Scots and Irish you didn't like."

"I am not Welsh."

George gave a nervous little wave. "He's teasing you, Roy. The Angles and Saxons were Germanic peoples who invaded England in the fourth century ... at the same time as the Jutes and Vikings. The Jutes were Danes, the Vikings were Norwegian. Prior to that we were conquered by the Romans�who were Italians�and seven centuries later we were taken over by the Normans who were French." She squeezed her eyes at Jonathan in painful pleading. "Dr. Hughes was joking about endomorphs�I'm one, you're one�an Iranian could be one. It's got nothing do with nationality, anymore than color has. For most of us nationality's a choice, Roy ... not a birthright."

"Not for me it isn't," he said stubbornly. "I was born here. It's the asylum seekers who look around for something better that choose."

George gave a disheartened shrug as if his xenophobia was not new to her. "At least recognize that it was the whites who invented economic migration, Roy. Everyone who went to America was looking for a better life."

Jonathan watched the man's mouth set into even more obstinate lines. He was tempted to tell him they both belonged to the same racial group, Caucasian�the non-Negroid peoples of Europe, the Middle East, north Africa and western Asia�including the Welsh�but it would only offend him. Instead he took pity on George's red face and extended a hand. "Shall we start again? I'm afraid I've been very ill-tempered since last night when I flew in from New York and was put through the wringer by an immigration officer. He asked me my views on Osama bin Laden. When I refused to answer, he kept me hanging around for an hour while he checked to see if my passport was genuine."

Roy accepted the olive branch. "Why did you refuse?"

"Because there was only one answer. Even bin Laden's most fanatical supporters are hardly likely to admit it to an immigration officer."

Roy appreciated the point. "Did he ask the whites the same question?"

"What do you think?"

"No."

Jonathan nodded. "You learn to live with it, Mr. Trent. At times like this, when people are frightened, there's always a presumption of guilt if your face doesn't fit. It's depressing. It happened to the Irish living in England every time an IRA bomb went off. It happened to Howard Stamp when people thought a Manson-style killer was roaming Highdown."

But mention of Howard Stamp brought an immediate cooling. Roy glanced at his watch. "I'd better see what's going on downstairs. Can I get you something to drink? Are you allowed alcohol? George suggested a Gevrey-Chambertin to go with the hotpot but perhaps you'd prefer something else? Wouldn't want to offend your religion or anything."

"I'm an atheist," said Jonathan, watching him, "and the Gevrey-Chambertin sounds excellent. Thank you."

"I'll be back shortly." He patted George's arm as he passed. "If you don't take that coat off soon, girl," he murmured, loud enough to carry, "you'll spontaneously combust ... and the hat's not doing you any favors either, trust me. If you're going to be judged on your looks, you might as well get it over and done with as quickly as possible."
 

Trent closed the door behind him, but listened for a minute or two before he walked away. His first remark to Hughes had been accurate. "A jumped-up wog in fancy dress." The man was certainly doing himself no favors with George. Apart from anything else, he was insisting on calling her Miss Gardener. With an amused smile he walked down the stairs and pushed open the kitchen door, only for his amusement to turn to anger when he saw his ex-wife watching the CCTV monitor in the corner.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked angrily. "I told you to stay away."

She glanced at him. "I fancied a look at the famous author."

"Why?"

"So I'd recognize him again. I don't trust you, Roy, never have. When were you planning to tell me he was black?"

"I didn't know myself." He stared at her for a moment before taking a couple of wine glasses from a cupboard and transferring them to a tray. Age had been kind to her, whereas George looked every one of her years. The difference was character. George was ugly, unassuming and kind; his ex was a good-looking bitch.

She flicked the fringes of her cashmere scarf. "A sad little anorak, you said, who doesn't know shit except what he's got from old newspapers. Instead Denzel Washington turns up."

"He says he's an Iranian."

"Who cares? He's black enough to be a nigger." The woman's pale eyes narrowed aggressively. "Your girlfriend's going to bust a gut to help him whatever he is. She's a do-gooder, for Christ's sake, and it's PC to be nice to wogs."

"Yeah, well this one's an arrogant bastard. I don't think George likes him much." He grinned suddenly. "You can thank me for that. I put his back up before she even arrived, and now she's having to grovel."

The woman looked interested. "Did you do it on purpose?"

He nodded toward the monitor. "Seemed worth a shot. I watched that old fool Jim Longhurst needle him for ten minutes, then went out and added to his grief. He's easily offended ... but it doesn't stop him looking down his nose at proles. He's treating poor old George like something the cat brought in."

"I watched her go after him. She'd have licked his black arse if he'd given her half a chance."

Roy gave a contemptuous snort. "You might ... she wouldn't."

"He's not bad looking."

"Looks like a woofter to me," said Roy, wiping his hand on his trousers as if it had been contaminated. "It won't cut any ice with George. She's only interested in what he can do for Howard."

"You sure she doesn't know anything?"

Roy shrugged as he reached for the Gevrey-Chambertin. "What's to know? If it wasn't Howard who killed Grace, then it was some other kid with ginger hair. The best either of them can do is clear the little sod's name." He placed the bottle on the tray with a corkscrew. "But there isn't a chance in hell they'll put anyone else in the frame�" he flicked her a speculative glance�"unless you know something I don't, Cill."

"Don't call me that," she snarled. "What about DNA? He mentions it in the book."

He could feel the heat of her impatience. "There's nothing to test it against," he said calmly. "All the evidence was destroyed after Howard died. George pestered the police for years until they told her it was incinerated." He hefted the tray and pushed past her. "Now get lost before someone sees you."
 

"I suppose you heard that," said George with a sigh as the door closed behind Roy.

Jonathan nodded.

"Oh, well." She tugged off her hat and sent her stubbly gray hair shooting skyward with static electricity. "I had an argument with the hairdresser," she explained apologetically, before discarding her coat to reveal an old yellow jumper with car oil down the front and a pair of equally grubby gray leggings tucked into her boots. "And I'm on nights at the moment so I didn't wake up till eleven. I thought I'd check the car before I put on my glad rags and, when it wouldn't start..." She gave a self-deprecating shrug. "I agree with you about it being courteous to dress up, Dr. Hughes, but I ran out of time to change. I rather hoped you'd be an elderly, short-sighted professor ... and wouldn't notice."

Her hair looked more like the aftereffects of chemotherapy, and he wondered if the glad rags included a wig. He rose to his feet and pulled the other chair forward. "The only reason I'm wearing a suit, Miss Gardener, is because I'm going to Verdi's Falstaff tonight." He smiled as he sat down again, but it was a mechanical civility rather than an expression of friendship. "Let's just agree that first impressions aren't always right ... and take it from there."

Her enthusiasm returned immediately. "Oh, thank goodness," she said with feeling, dropping into the other chair. "I was beginning to wonder how we'd get through this meal if I had to watch my p's and q's for hours. Putting on airs isn't my strong point�as you've probably noticed." Her voice had no accent until her pitch rose and the vowels betrayed London roots. "My poor mother despaired of me. She wanted a dainty, well-behaved daughter and she got a bull in a china shop."

"Is she still alive?"

"No. Died of breast cancer when I was fourteen." She pulled another face as if screwing her eyes and lips into gargoyle twists was a nervous mannerism, and Jonathan thought how astonishingly ugly she was. "She was ill for a long time before that so I was effectively brought up by my father. He had no airs and graces either, which is why I never learned them."

"What did he do?"

She smiled affectionately, bobbing forward to sit on the edge of her seat. "He was a postman."

Jonathan stretched his feet toward the fire and leaned back to put distance between them. "Is he still alive?"

She shook her head. "Heart attack fifteen years ago. That's when I upped stumps and came to Bournemouth. I'm afraid the genes aren't healthy on either side. If I make old bones it'll be a miracle, though it won't upset me hugely if I don't," she said matter-of-factly. "There's a lot of misery in old age."

"Jim being the perfect example," Jonathan said dryly.

Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "You can't blame old age for that. According to Roy, he's always been miserable. Did he tell you about his medals?"

Jonathan nodded.

"You have to feel sorry for him. He has flat feet so he spent the war emptying dustbins. He's told the medal story so often that I think he believes it now, but it's sad when someone has to invent a history because their lives have been such a disappointment." The eyes, a bright blue, examined him closely. "My father always said the hardest cross to bear was a chip on the shoulder. The more you resent it, the heavier it gets."

He wondered if she was having a dig at him. "How come the night shifts? What do you do?"

"Nothing very grand. I work in a nursing home."

"As a nurse?"

"Just a care assistant. I used to be a tax inspector when I lived in London." She smiled at his expression. "We don't all have horns, you know. Some of us are quite nice."

"Why give up? Couldn't you have transferred to a tax office down here?"

"It seemed like the right time to reassess priorities. In any case, I enjoy working with dementia. All my patients have amazing imaginations, none of which bears any relation to logic or reality. I have one old lady who's convinced her husband was murdered. She tells everyone he was bludgeoned to death by angry neighbors."

Jonathan looked doubtful. "Doesn't it upset her?"

"Only when she's told it's not true. It's her fifteen minutes of fame to produce a conversation stopper while a naive young nurse is trying to feed her. She sulks if people point out that her memory's at fault. It's like telling Michael Jackson he's black." She squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh lord! Foot in mouth. Didn't mean to use the b-word. Sorry!"

"Just don't use the w-word," Jonathan said, hiding his irritation.

"What's that?"

"Welsh."

She gave a squeak of laughter. "Oh dear! That was quite funny, wasn't it? What's wrong with the Welsh, for goodness sake?"

"King Offa built a dyke in the eighth century to keep them in Wales," he said ironically. "I expect it has something to do with that."

Another giggle. "How did you know Roy would react the way he did?"

"Because he wants to be thought of as English. If I'd accused him of being Scottish or Irish, he'd have been just as angry. He probably doesn't like Lancastrians or Yorkshiremen either, so his Englishness is very much West Country based." He raised an eyebrow. "If you scratched him hard enough, his preferred passport would say Dorset. That's the only tribe he wants to belong to."

She examined his face for a moment. "And you, Dr. Hughes? What tribe do you want to belong to?"

It was a question he couldn't answer. Indeed, it was easier to list the tribes he didn't want to join�blacks, whites, yellows, browns, mulattos�than to name the one he did. His father wanted him to acknowledge his paternal roots, his mother hers, and all he could do was make the best of being British. And that wasn't easy. Easy would have been for his warring parents to have remained in their own countries, rather than emigrate to England, produce a single child and wait eighteen years to declare their hatred for each other. Had Jonathan been born in the homeland of either of his parents, he might have felt he belonged. Instead they'd left him rudderless, with only a flimsy passport to prove who, and what, he was.

He reached for his briefcase. "Shall we talk about Howard Stamp? I thought you might be interested in some of the letters I've received."

"If you like," George agreed.

"He's the reason we're here," Jonathan reminded her.

"Oh, I doubt it," she said. "I can't think of a single occasion when I've had just one reason for doing anything. Can you?"

He snapped the catches on his briefcase. He had no intention of discussing philosophy with her. "There's a woman who was at school with him�Jan�but she didn't give me an address or surname. Roy might be able to identify her. Another correspondent mentioned a schoolteacher. It would be useful to find her if she's still alive." He extracted the letters and handed them over.

George didn't read them immediately. "Have you ever thought that Howard's only purpose in life was to be a scapegoat? That's rather sad, don't you think?"

Jonathan nicked through the remaining letters. She'd be telling him God moved in mysterious ways next. "I'm more interested in the shortcomings of the police and judicial systems," he said patronizingly, "particularly when they have to deal with inadequate personalities or accused from different cultures who don't have a facility with language."

"I see," was all she said, before bending her head to the first piece of paper.