The Oakhurst Murders Duology

7-2

“HELLO, JOHN, CAN WE come in?” Mitchell asked when the front door opened.

The man who stood in the doorway looked, understandably, to be in the midst of a nightmare, Melissa thought as she took in his rumpled clothing, the stubble on his chin, and his generally unkempt appearance. She had never seen him look less like the accountant he was – he looked more like a homeless person.

“Ha-have you found Georgie?” John Ryder asked.

Mitchell inferred from that question that his friend had not heard from anyone in the village that morning. “We should talk inside,” he told his friend, his voice neutral to avoid giving either hope or cause for alarm.

“You have, haven’t you, you’ve found Georgie,” John said in a stricken voice as he stepped back to let the two constables in.

“We may have,” Mitchell said as he entered and made his way into the living room. “I’m sorry, but the body of a young girl was found first thing this morning, early indications are that it could be Georgina. We still need to confirm the identity of the girl,” he hastened to say, “and that could take some time.”

“What do you mean you need to confirm her identity?” John wanted to know. “You’ve known Georgie all her life, you’re the closest thing to an uncle she’s got, surely you can say if it’s her or not.”

“The outfit matches what you said Georgina was wearing when you saw her last, but there are complicating factors that make it hard to say for sure who the girl is; the length of time she’s been out there, the weather during that time, and the fact that she was...” Mitchell hesitated for a moment and then went on. “There’s no easy way to say this, John, but the girl found this morning was beaten – beaten to death, that’s why it’s hard for me to say that it’s definitely Georgina.”

“Georgina was murdered?”

The shocked question came from the doorway, not the sofa, and three pairs of eyes turned in time to see Verity Ryder collapse to the floor in a dead faint. John was on his feet in an instant, so he could hurry over to his wife, and with Mitchell’s help he got her to the sofa, where he set about trying to revive her – it took a short while.

“Is Verity right?” John asked hesitantly once his wife was fully revived, and he had assured himself that she was going to be alright, or at least as alright as anyone could be under the circumstances. “Was Georgina – was she – murdered?”

Mitchell would have preferred not to be asked the question, but since it had been asked, he couldn’t ignore it. “Based on what I saw this morning...” He nodded heavily, sadly. “Yes, the girl that was found this morning was murdered. But,” he went on quickly to try and forestall a second collapse from Verity, “we don’t yet know for sure that the body is Georgina.”

“How can you not know something like that?” Verity snapped. Although she appeared frail, and overwhelmed by the strain of her daughter’s disappearance, sitting there in the protective embrace of her husband, there was a strength to her voice. “You’ve known Georgie all her life, and honestly, how many missing girls can there be in the village?”

“As of Theresa Goulding’s report last night, two,” Mitchell told her. “Georgina and Lucy, and there’s always the possibility that the girl that was found is someone from outside the village. A slim possibility, I know, but one that can’t be ignored at the moment.”

“If you’re not sure it’s Geor-Georgina,” John said, his voice catching in his throat momentarily. “Why’re you here? Can’t you see what an effect this is having on Verity?” He tightened his arm around his wife’s shoulder, pulling her closer, as if to comfort her, though she seemed less in need of comfort than he did.

“I appreciate that, John, Verity, and if I could have avoided this visit, I would have, especially while the identification is uncertain,” Mitchell told his friends. “We all know how quickly gossip goes round the village, bad quicker than the good, though. Sooner or later, and more likely sooner, someone would have been in touch to tell you about the body that was found. Most likely they would have taken a small amount of information and embellished it out of all recognition. I thought, and Inspector Stevens agreed, that you would prefer to hear what was going on first-hand, from me, and to hear the facts, few as they are.”

John digested that for a while before nodding. “You’re right. There’s a lot of people in the village who like spreading gossip, no matter how bad, and they’re none too careful about getting things right when they tell people what they’ve heard. I wish, with all my heart, that we didn’t have to hear this, that Georgie would come walking through that door like nothing’s happened, and she’s only been gone for a few hours, but I think we both knew, when she didn’t come home that first night, that something had happened. She’s such a good girl, she’d never stay away from home without contacting us, not even for a night, not unless something happened.”

Mitchell was a little disturbed by the way his friend’s attention wandered, and how it seemed as though he was talking to himself. He made no mention of his concerns, however, just then wasn’t the time.

“Was Georgina really murdered?” Verity asked. “Could it have been an accident?”

“As I said, we don’t know for sure the girl found this morning is Georgina, we still need to confirm her identity. As for whether she was murdered – I wish I could say otherwise, give you some comfort, but yes, I believe she was. It will be for the pathologist to say for certain, however, once he’s completed the post-mortem.”

“A post-mortem? Is that really necessary?”

Mitchell nodded. “I’m afraid so; apparently, it’s a legal requirement under the circumstances. It’ll establish how she died and help confirm whether it is Georgina.”

John roused himself from the reverie he had fallen into. “Shouldn’t I go to the morgue and see if I can identify Georgie?” he asked.

Mitchell’s immediate thought was that it would do no good for John to go to the morgue, the odds of him being able to identify the girl were somewhere between slim and none. He didn’t say as much, though, for he suspected that going to the morgue would provide John with a measure of closure he wouldn’t otherwise get, despite the circumstances.

“One of you should,” he said, after thinking about it. “I’m not sure how much success you’ll have with making an identification,” he admitted. “But if you can, even if you’re only able to say that it isn’t Georgina, it will provide us all with an answer, rather than waiting for the results of whatever tests the pathologist has to run.”

“I’ll go,” John said decisively.