One morning as I breezed into work, Elsie, the receptionist, who was on the telephone, began frantically beckoning to me with her free arm. I was about to ask her what the matter was when she put a finger to her lips.
I hurried through the door and round the back of the counter to where she was sitting.
‘Really, young man,’ she was saying in her best telephone manner, ‘now do go away and stop being so silly!’ With that she slammed the receiver down.
‘Who was it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know, Don. But he said he wanted to kick your head in,’ she replied, raising her eyebrows. Elsie had been with the Mercury for donkey’s years and was used to dealing with irate callers. She was not easily fazed.
‘Did he say why?’
‘He just said you would know why.’
‘Well, I might.’
She peered at me over her glasses. She was a tall, thin woman with a quick temper who was in her late forties and was always impeccably dressed. She didn’t suffer fools gladly and had a real bee in her bonnet about ‘time wasters’ interrupting her regimented routine.
Elsie then added casually, ‘To be quite honest, it’s the second time he’s rung.’
‘When was the last?’ I enquired.
‘A couple of days ago. I wasn’t going to mention it. He was more abusive the first time, rather than threatening. But if he’s starting to talk about beating you up, well, you should know. It was definitely the same chap. He didn’t sound particularly old.’ She paused, obviously waiting for me to explain.
‘I’m sorry, Elsie. If you get any more, don’t talk to him. Just put him straight through to me. Or if I’m out, hang up.’
I walked through to my office, leaving Elsie burning with curiosity. I was angry that someone was upsetting my staff, but if they thought they could put me off that easily, they had another thing coming.
Even at that early stage, I had a gut feeling about the case. Lots of people kept singing the same tune – Downing was serving time for someone else. I had an overwhelming desire to seek out the truth once and for all. If Stephen Downing was guilty and I could prove it, then it would at least end the mystery.
But what if he was innocent?
Certain prominent local characters and traders began to show a peculiar interest in my preliminary enquiries, displaying a curious nervousness about the victim’s past. Calls came in to me from a publican and several shop owners in Bakewell, asking me why I was suddenly ‘digging up dirt’ about this old case.
Feedback about my investigation also came from my advertising reps. They felt that pressure was mounting for me to drop the case. Advertisers were becoming nervous that it could have an adverse effect both on advertising revenues and the tourism trade, as Bakewell was not that sort of town.
More interesting to me, however, was the reps also confirming that the town was buzzing with gossip about the victim’s love life. It was being said that she had had several boyfriends, echoing what Ray and Sam Fay, my deputy editor, had told me the first time the Downings came to my office, and there was even mention of a love child, despite it being said at the trial and in the Home Office report that the Sewells had no children. I would have to look more closely at the life and times of Mrs Wendy Sewell.
My reporters also added that the local ‘plods and pips’ weren’t happy about me kicking up dust over an old case like this, which was already long gone and forgotten.
Reputations were on the line. I asked Jackie to make an approach to the duty inspector, but he seemed to be advising us to leave well alone. I asked her if he gave a precise reason. She shook her head and replied, ‘All he said was that Downing was guilty. A right little pervert.’ This claim was something I would come to hear a few times – but why?
‘It’s strange,’ I said. ‘But that’s what some other contacts have said. All very interesting, but I can’t find anything to substantiate their claims.’
All this was happening despite the fact that I had not yet published one word in the Mercury about the case. I did, however, start to gain a lot of support from many people who were starting to express their doubts and opinions about the case. The residents of some houses that overlooked the cemetery had lived there for years and confirmed that no routine house-to-house enquiries were carried out at the time.
Marie Bright, an elderly lady, asked to see me urgently. When I visited her home, she told me she was still worried – even now – about possible repercussions. She explained she’d seen a ‘pasty-faced’ man with a bright orange T-shirt hanging around the main entrance gates about an hour before the attack.
She claimed the man got off the bus from Bakewell at about noon. Mrs Bright said, ‘This man was aged about 40 to 45 and was acting rather queer. I hadn’t seen him around before and I think he was a stranger because he kept looking around, and at his watch. He looked suspicious, as though he was waiting for someone. I saw this man coming over the top of the wall, out of the cemetery, about an hour later.’
She said she had also seen another man parked up in a dark-coloured van near the phone box by the cemetery gates some time that lunchtime. She described him as a fat, bulky figure.
Margaret Richards, another elderly woman who lived close by, told me she too had seen a man standing close to the beech hedge by the cemetery gates. Her description of him was almost identical to that given by Marie Bright of the man in the orange T-shirt. She claimed he appeared to be acting suspiciously, looking at his watch, and was very nervous.
Both Bright and Richards said they had been to Bakewell police station to report their sightings. They had seen PC Ernie Charlesworth, who hadn’t seemed interested and told them they already had someone in custody charged with the murder. I knew Charlesworth and believed him to be an arrogant and lazy beat bobby. He was considered something of a bully by junior colleagues.
I wondered why he had not referred these witnesses to a more senior investigating officer. What I wasn’t aware of at that time was the fact that he had been the one who got the confession out of Downing, which he had boasted about for years.
I wondered, too, whether the noon bus driver had been questioned, or whether he had seen any suspicious characters running around. In those days everyone knew everyone, and a stranger would be noticed.
I was then contacted by another witness, a Mrs Gibson from a neighbouring road, who said the police did call at her home on the Saturday night after the attack and actually took a statement. She claimed she was told not to tell anyone or say anything to anyone else. But she too confirmed the police didn’t make general house-to-house calls.
This was agreed by housewife Pat Shimwell, who explained she had been chatting with a friend at the door of her house on Burton Edge, overlooking the cemetery, and noticed Stephen Downing leaving by the main gate at about 1.10 p.m. with his pop bottle.
She was standing at her garden gate with her arms folded as we spoke, relating her story in a matter-of-fact manner. Like many of the women who were eager to talk to me, Pat Shimwell was in her mid-fifties and had been at her home near the cemetery all day on 12 September.
I believed the police would have had a ready-made set of witnesses with any one of these plain-speaking women who apparently noticed everything – if only they had bothered to talk to them. Pat Shimwell later told me that she was in her bedroom tidying up when she heard a ‘commotion in the cemetery’, with several workmen yelling at each other.
She remembered someone shouting out something like ‘leave her!’ At about 1.30 she saw the policeman in the cemetery. She told me that a bobby asked if she had seen