The inspector over in Okeshot who had been in charge of the case against Lorimer was no longer with the force but a woman constable who had worked on the case–an experienced officer who had worked on several cases of a similar nature–was waiting for Chief Inspector Kelsey when Sergeant Lambert drove him over to Okeshot after a snatched meal of coffee and sandwiches in a roadside café.
The constable was a shrewd-looking woman in her forties who managed to retain an air of good-natured tolerance towards life in general. She had worked on the Lorimer case from the beginning and was able to recall clearly the people involved.
Victor Lorimer was an only child, brought up by his mother in a village near Okeshot. His conception had brought about the forced marriage of his parents and shortly after his birth his father had deserted his wife and child, vanishing without trace, never again supplying a single penny towards the maintenance of either of them, leaving his wife to struggle on as best she might on domestic work, dressmaking, fruit-picking, anything that might turn an honest shilling. It had been a desperately hard battle but she was determined that the boy should make something of himself, that she would have reason to be proud of him, that some good would result from that early, foolish mistake.
Victor grew up to be a quiet, well-behaved, studious boy, working hard at school; he and his mother were very close to each other. In due course he left school and got a job in the Okeshot public library. His mother was delighted; it was exactly the kind of secure, respectable, white-collar job she had dreamed of for him. He went into lodgings in Okeshot, later into little flats. Every month he set aside part of his salary for his mother, he often went home to see her. He never kept company with a girl, he appeared to have no interest in them. He was a regular attender at church, he had been brought up on strict religious principles.
And then, when he was almost forty, he had got married. He had met Enid Boland at church, she was two or three years older than Lorimer. After the marriage he moved into the house where Enid was living with her stepdaughter–the house to which James Boland had taken his first wife as a bride, the house where Karen had been born. It was some six months after Lorimer’s marriage to Enid that the charges against him were laid.
Kelsey asked how the case had arisen.
‘It seems that Karen’s schoolwork had very clearly fallen off,’ the constable told him. Her form teacher noticed that she looked unwell, seemed worried and unhappy. She asked Karen once or twice if anything was amiss, if she could be of any help, but got little response beyond an assurance that there was nothing the matter. ‘Then one afternoon at the end of lessons the form teacher came across Karen in the cloakroom, in tears.’ This time she wouldn’t be fobbed off, she pressed the girl, and it all came out.
Karen was at once removed from home and taken into care while inquiries went forward. She was fourteen years old. A medical examination showed that she was pregnant; the pregnancy was terminated.
According to Karen she had been uncomfortable at Lorimer’s attitude towards her since well before the marriage. She had feared to say anything to her stepmother, afraid that Enid would accuse her of jealousy, irrational animosity towards a new man about to be brought into the household in the place of her much-loved dead father. She had never felt close to Enid, her stepmother had never displayed warmth towards her. Since her father’s death she had always felt that Enid regarded her as a burden, a responsibility, even a nuisance, although Enid had never said as much and certainly always punctiliously carried out all her duties towards her stepdaughter.
After the marriage it appeared that Lorimer’s attentions towards Karen became more marked. He applied various emotional and psychological pressures, told her that if she complained Enid would certainly not believe her, would be only too glad to have an excuse to be rid of her, she would speedily be sent off elsewhere. This was a very real fear to Karen. Unsatisfactory as she felt her home and her relationship with her stepmother to be, they were none the less all she had to cling to. She couldn’t bear the thought of being flung out somewhere among strangers.
Kelsey asked how Lorimer had reacted to Karen’s accusations.
‘At first he denied them totally and strongly,’ the constable said. But his manner had been far from convincing. ‘His mother called in at the station,’ she added. ‘To speak up on behalf of his character, tell us what an upright man he was, how carefully she had brought him up, what a good boy he had been, what a devoted son, he couldn’t possibly be guilty of such a terrible offence. She was in tears most of the time she was here. She was certain the whole thing was a piece of mischievous invention on Karen’s part, that the truth would very soon come out and Victor would be totally cleared.’
‘How did Enid take all this?’
‘She never altered her opinion from first to last. She refused even to consider that Lorimer might be guilty. Understandable enough. She hadn’t long been married, she was very much in love.’ Enid had appeared to close her mind resolutely to the possibility of her husband’s guilt, to be psychologically unable to countenance the possibility that the accusations might be true. Even the undeniable fact of Karen’s pregnancy couldn’t shake her, though she could offer no suggestion as to how the pregnancy could have come about if Lorimer hadn’t been involved. She could tell them of no other man who might possibly have been responsible, she knew of no boyfriend. She was forced to admit that Karen had always been a quiet, well-behaved girl who had never given any trouble, never caused any concern. Enid had never detected her in any falsehoods, had never caught her out in devious or wayward behaviour.
The constable gave a wry smile. ‘Enid more or less backed herself into a corner. She ended up trying to take two contradictory positions. One: Victor was totally innocent and nothing whatever had taken place between Karen and Lorimer. Two: If Lorimer was guilty it was entirely because Karen had led him on. The seduction was wholly on her side, none of it could be set down to him.’ She waved a hand. ‘That’s not unusual on the part of the wife. In these complicated family situations you tend to get complicated responses.’
‘You told us earlier,’ Kelsey said, ‘that Lorimer at first denied everything. Did he change his mind later?’
‘Yes, he did. Word of his trouble got round the town and it became known that he was strenuously denying the charges. It wasn’t long before two women called into the station, two separate women, totally unconnected. They both said that Lorimer had at some time in the past interfered with children, though neither had ever reported the matter.’
The first caller was an elderly woman. She had had sole charge of her granddaughter after the death of the girl’s parents. At the time of the alleged offences, some eight years previously, the girl had been thirteen years old. She had reading difficulties but was anxious to do well at school. In the course of her visits to the public library she had spoken to Lorimer, had asked his advice about which books to choose.
Lorimer had been kind and helpful, had offered to give her a little unpaid coaching. She jumped at the offer and went along to his flat several times, unknown to the grandmother who believed she was at the house of a classmate.
One day the grandmother chanced to meet the classmate in the street and the lies were revealed. The grandmother had to press the girl hard to discover where she had actually been going. The girl was very reluctant to say anything against Lorimer, she was clearly attached to him. But in the end she did admit to some intimacies, though she maintained that nothing had been done against her will.
The grandmother didn’t go to the police; she was afraid that if she did so the girl might be taken into care. Instead she went to see Lorimer.
He strongly denied any impropriety, resolutely maintained that the girl had invented the whole story, there was not one shred of truth in it. The grandmother told him that if he ever had anything to do with the girl again she would at once inform both the police and the library authorities. There had been no further trouble. The girl was now grown up, married, settled down, a good, sensible young woman, living with her husband in the next county. As there would no longer be any question of involving the girl the grandmother had decided to come forward, in case, as she put it, Lorimer got off. It had often worried her that he might still be getting up to the same tricks, perhaps with more serious consequences. She couldn’t bear the thought that he might be able to lie his way out of court, that an innocent young girl might be pilloried as a liar, have her whole life ruined, with Lorimer going unpunished.
The second woman to call in was much younger, in her late thirties. The events she spoke of had taken place some five years earlier, not long after she had been widowed. She was in sore financial straits, having been left with a four-year-old daughter to bring up on a slender income in a run-down Victorian house bought on mortgage. Her late husband, a do-it-yourself enthusiast, had intended to restore the house himself but had died when the work was barely started. She decided to let off the basement as a flat, though she couldn’t charge much of a rent, because of the state of repair and the fact that the flat wasn’t self-contained.
Lorimer had called in answer to her advertisement. She was delighted to find such a quiet, well-mannered, eminently respectable tenant, with a secure income.
She had been unable to look for work because of the child and she mentioned this casually to Lorimer. Not long after he was installed in the house he told her that if she could find an evening job he would be happy to keep an ear open for the child. It would be no trouble to him; he would in any case usually be in his flat, reading or watching TV.
She had leapt at the chance. There was never any shortage of evening work in the town, in hotels, restaurants, residential care homes, factories on the industrial estate.
The arrangement appeared to work very well. Some months went by. She was beginning to feel solid ground under her feet. And then something in her daughter’s prattle, in her play with her dolls, began to make her uneasy, and, very shortly, downright suspicious.
She had no proof, she didn’t see how she could come by any proof. She felt unable to confront Lorimer–and she had liked him, felt grateful to him; he had, whatever his motives, very definitely helped her. It never occurred to her to go to the police. What could she tell them? How could she level such a charge without an atom of substantiation against a respectable public servant? She felt she had enough on her plate already; she had no stomach for any further hassle.
She simply told Lorimer he must leave the flat, must at once find somewhere else. She would be quitting her evening job immediately, wouldn’t be going out to work again until she had made other, more suitable arrangements. She had felt deeply awkward and uncertain, she had scarcely been able to look him in the face–but she couldn’t see what else she could do.
Lorimer had acquiesced without demur, had asked no questions, didn’t demand to know the reasons, expressed no upset. He left the house a few days later.
The episode had always troubled her. If Lorimer was innocent, what had he made of the incident, of her attitude, after all his kindness? If he was guilty, then ought she not to have taken some more definite steps in the matter, made sure he wouldn’t repeat the offence? When the rumours of an impending trial reached her ears she felt impelled to call in at the police station and unload it all, drawing no conclusions, simply relating the whole thing to the police, let them make of it what they would. At least she could at last get it off her conscience.
When Lorimer learned of the appearance of these two women, it wasn’t long before he changed his tune and decided to plead guilty. ‘But it made no difference at all to his wife’s attitude,’ the constable told Kelsey. The man whom Enid loved so dearly, of whom she thought so highly, could never have committed such acts, therefore he must be innocent, therefore, by the same logic, the two women–as well as Karen–must be lying; it was all perfectly straightforward, blindingly clear. These so-called events hadn’t been reported to the police at the time. How could they be taken seriously now? They were obviously nothing more than totally unsubstantiated tales, prompted by gossip and rumour, by a desire for attention.
What did they actually amount to? Nothing more than adolescent inventions and fantasies on the part of the granddaughter, resentment and spite on the part of the widow when her unwelcome advances had been rebuffed by Lorimer. Enid maintained that this was the version of past events given to her by Victor, that he swore they were true.
He told her he had decided to plead guilty solely because of pressure from the police, from his solicitor, pressures he felt unable to resist any longer. ‘It’s purely for technical reasons that he’s changed his plea,’ she kept repeating, able in some fashion to protect and reassure herself with this vague, all-embracing expression, able also, like most people, to believe what she wanted or needed to believe, however improbable. From the day Karen was taken into care Enid obstinately refused to see or speak to her.
Kelsey asked how Karen had taken it when she learned that her stepmother intended taking Lorimer back after his spell in gaol, with the consequence that she herself would never be able to go back home but must remain in care.
‘By the time she was told of it officially,’ the constable said, ‘it didn’t come as such a shock. She knew the stand Enid had been taking, she had begun to realize the way things were likely to go. I’m sure it never occurred to her to start with that such a thing could happen.’ Karen had had a youngster’s black-and-white view of the situation, of the probable course of justice: Lorimer had done wrong, therefore he would be punished, he would be the one to be sent away.
‘In the event,’ the constable added with a sad little shake of her head, ‘what Lorimer had threatened her with did come to pass: she was taken into care, she did lose her home and what was left to her of her immediate family.’
Kelsey asked if Lorimer was still in gaol. He might very well be out by now, the constable thought. And a phone call to the prison did indeed reveal that Lorimer had been discharged four weeks earlier.
It appeared that Enid had visited him regularly, had been waiting for him outside the gates. It seemed that she was no longer living in Okeshot. Lorimer’s address on release had been given as Furzebank Cottage, in a hamlet twelve miles to the north-west of Cannonbridge.