5. Prisoner Evelyn Enderby

THE ACCUSED Part 5

Detective Inspector Rosie Baur sat at he small table that she had piled some papers on, left by the solicitor that had been appointed to her defence.

There wasn’t much of a pile, and when she read through it she could have laughed out loud at the nonsense on it. There was even a spelling mistake! The deceased was Mary Griffin, not Marv Griffin. If this amounte3d to the care that was boing taken by him she had no hope.

She was beginning to wonder how to react to it when the cell door was opened and a second remand prisoner was shown in.

“You’re in here, Enderby,” rasped the warder, and she nodded at Rosie, “it’s quite likely you’ve got quite a lot in common.”

Rosie wondered what she might mean by that.

When the two women were together and the other woman, Evelyn Enderby, had accepted she had to have to top bunk, the two women sat on the bottom bunk where Rosie often sat alone.

Evelyn was obviously younger than Rosie, maybe in her late twenties, and her expression was uncertain, and when she glanced at her cellmate it was with a look of doubt. But then that was only to be expected. They were totally strangers.

“So the warder said we might have something in common?” said Rosie in order to break the ice.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” came the reply.

“I know how you feel,” smiled Rosie, “and there’s no need to. As for me, my boss has turned against me and he’s the Superintendent of police in Brumpton and would have me up for s dozen murders if he could.”

“You’re a copper, then?”

Rosie nodded. “For my sins,” she said quietly.

“When I married him,” whispered Evelyn, as if she’d already recounted the first half of her story despite the fact the she didn’t want to talk about it, “Ernest, I mean, I thought he was the perfect man. I teach, or rather taught, at the comprehensive.”

“You look like a woman of letters,” smiled Rosie warmly.

“Then when I married him I found out about the man he really is.. He was a control freak, and if he couldn’t get his own way with words, then he had his fists, didn’t he?”

“I’m luckier that you, though I am a widow and my old man and I got on fine.” Rosie felt uncomfortable mentioning her late husband, who had been dead for some years by then, and to a total stranger.

“I’m a widow too,” whispered Evelyn.

“It was do this and do that all the time, and do it my way, not your way, and I was the chief bread-earner, and goodness knows, teachers aren’t the richest people under the sun.”

“Some men can be so inconsiderate,” sighed Rosie, almost meaninglessly.

“he was worse than inconsiderate!” declared Evelyn, “Ernest was a b*****d of the worst order! He gave me enough bruises and two broken ribs that didn’t half hurt, and one day he got the iron frying pan on his head, and he fell down and never got up. So I’m in here, charged with manslaughter.”

“You poor soul,” breathed Rosie.

It must have been the tone of sympathy in her voice, but Evelyn started crying, a gentle little sob that wanted to tear the heart out of her cellmate.

“The cops don’t seem to want to be bothered about the why and the wherefore, just that they’ve got their paws on a woman who bashed her bully of her husband with a frying man and cracked his skull,” moaned Evelyn.

“I work with them and I know what some of them can be like,” nodded Rosie, “and I know for a fact that even police officers can be domestic bullies. I’ve met a couple over the years.”

Then, to change the subject she recounted the events leading up to her own arrest.

“All I wanted to do was save my caravan for what I thought was a thief,” he said, “you know, there are some quite valuable things in a caravan that’s used regularly, like a telly and microwave. I know they’re not worth anything like a fortune but to a sneak thief looking for a fix they might last a day or two.”

“That’s awful!” murmured Evelyn, “as if anyone’s boss could be like that.”

“Well, he is. It even shocked me,” sighed Rosie, “there are some men you can’t trust no matter how high they climb up whatever ladders they’re on.”

“My Ernest worked in an office,” the other woman told her, “not a posh office or anything like that, and not drawing much in the way of wages. But we would have got by fine if he didn’t want to push me around all the time. He even accused me of having another man on the side, and when I pointed out that there aren’t so many men prepared to take on a bunch of bruises like I was, he started again. That’s when I grabbed the frying pan! I couldn’t help it. I mean, me having an affair, and he said it must be a student in the classroom storeroom. As if I’d even dream of that!”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t. But can’t your solicitor get you off using self-defence as an argument, because that’s exactly what it sounds like to me, Rosie told her.

“What about you? If yours was an accident and nothing to do with you, will you get off?”

Rosie frowned. “I hope so,” she said, “but Superintendent Knott’s got a way with words. I wouldn’t trust him even if he made stuff up to ensure my conviction. At first I thought it was matter of anything to get rid of a coloured woman and replace her with a white man … but I don’t know.”

There was a bell sounding out in the open corridor.

“Time for tea,” Rosie told her, “and if you’ll taker a tip from me, you need to keep your strength up even if the food isn’t always fit for pigs!”

Evelyn, no longer sobbing, nodded.

“I’d worked that out for myself,” she said.

© Peter Rogerson 18.04.21

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