Life Less Lived Ch. 14

"And Page-Turner had been trusted so much by Jimmy Johnson that he gave her enough information to be able to track down two of her half-brothers and organise them to come to Cambridge and er, attack me, using her refined date drug." Sophie said from the kitchen counter, conscious of the presence of the two Hammond children. "Fortunately for me, I consumed less than half the drugged drink so I woke up earlier than they expected and got out of the flat with a lot of evidence before Robertson and Clark woke up. Still the damage was done, although I expect Page-Turner tore them off a strip for almost being caught. They must've only just managed to get away before the police came to the flat and arrested the other culprits."

"So Page-Turner," Marina said, "in agreement with her father, claimed to have moved the Hammonds out of the Grange, hoped that they would leave, so she could put a drug dealer and grower in charge of the market garden, before giving him away to the police, to bring scandal on the family name. Then she murdered Dan's wife, assumed they had ruined his youngest daughter's life and, according to the notes she left, planned to infect Ginny with cancer cells using her pharmacologist's alter ego. Another plan was to kill off Barbara, if some relationship had developed between her and Dan, and finally, with Robertson and Clark as accomplices, confront Daniel with all the evidence that Jimmy Johnson had destroyed him while still in prison, and then drug Daniel, take him up to the Wicket Woods and leave him hanging from a tree, with his saddled horse nearby giving the authorities an idea of how he did the deed unaided."

"By then, of course, which Page-Turner hadn't foreseen, with Daddy occupied with grief over his wife, Johnson was released early, having served only two-thirds of his sentence. Daddy never developed any relationship with Barbara other than the already established family friendship and Marina, one of Johnson's first victims, came on the scene completely out of the blue. Johnson hadn't known that Daddy and Marina were in love all those years ago, and fell in love again. And Uncle Phil and Auntie Barbara got back together again."

"Another thing that Page-Turner couldn't appreciate until it was too late," Ginny said, "was how much Johnson hated females, hated them with a vengeance, which is why he abused young girls, he found it easier to prey on the weak, vulnerable and inexperienced. Once he was in contact with his sons Robertson and Clark, he listened more to what they were saying than what Page-Turner had meticulously planned. He was persuaded by them that he wanted direct action, thus setting the fire at the barn and the attempt to murder Daniel, Marina and Auntie Barbara."

Lauren was gobsmacked by the revelations. "This is almost unbelievable, how did this woman expect to get away with it?"

"Even with Johnson out of prison, being on the pedophile register meant that he lived forty miles away, was closely monitored by the police, and didn't have transport." Marina said. "She didn't worry about Philip and Barbara getting back together, as they were peripheral characters in her game. Nor did she know anything about me, I simply wasn't on her radar at all. Her plan was still to infect Ginny next. By attacking the Medcalfs in their home like her father did seemed clear stupidity to her."

"We know how she found out about WWAG being here," Daniel revealed, "because Alex had installed CCTV in the roof, trained on the front of the house so that movements could be monitored and also on the back, watching the barn. She had to hotfoot it down from London and when she got here, she saw that some of the captured were not blindfolded and she would be identified. If murders took place the police would probably find the cameras, trace then by fingerprints to Alex who would probably give away her identity."

"Why did all this not come out in the trial?" Lauren asked, "My questioning by the police was much gentler than I expected and I was only in the witness stand for a few minutes."

"The police already knew most of what had happened," Daniel said. "It helped that the culprit, Johnson, who was badly burned at the barn, was too ill to attend the trial. And Page-Turner was soon identified as the main planner of the revenge against my family. All this was discovered after she had committed suicide in a hotel only two days after the fire, with a bottle of her own date drug and a bottle of Grey Goose vodka."

"Lauren has already explained some of this to me, particularly Mark Clark's involvement but I am not sure who this Johnson character is and why he wanted revenge on your family." Colin said.

"I was heavily connected with the county police force throughout my time as a county councillor, magistrate and Justice of the Peace," Daniel said, "which led me into being invited onto the prison board and via that onto the parole board. The counties of Sussex and Hampshire had been plagued by a series of date rapes, with the drug virtually untraceable, most of the victims were underage and vulnerable and had no memories of the event. Several fell pregnant and suspicion often fell on members of the family. The ones that came to the attention of the police often led to broken families, and in one case suicide by a family member. Eventually the inspector in charge in Hampshire managed to track him down and Jimmy Johnson was arrested and given 30 years after asking for 100 cases to be taken into account."

"So what happened to Johnson after he was burned?" Colin asked.

"That's the curious thing," Ginny replied, "He was on recovery from his burns although kept in a coma to help him recover, but when they tried to get him out of the coma he wouldn't wake up for several months. That's why he couldn't attend his trial. If he had been administered anything to induce the coma, it was completely untraceable, but they did find curious antibodies showing he was suffering from cancer. Then, his body started to show symptoms of many kinds of cancer, it turned out he was riddled with slow acting diseases and suffered terribly for a couple of years and only died about six months ago, and Daddy was contacted."

"Why was Daddy contacted?"

"I was named as Johnson's executor, the Will drawn up by Page-Turner two-and-a-half years ago. He left everything he had to the Underhill Estate." Daniel spread his arms as if he didn't believe it either.

"Apparently," Marina added, "Patience worshipped Johnson as the father she never had, poor woman. She did everything for him, planning out his revenge in fine detail, even tracking down through the court cases his two idiot offspring. And then he treated her just as contemptuously as he had his female victims. Once everything was lost, she filed a Will that he had already signed, she left all her money to him, believing he would be too incapacitated by the cocktail of drugs to survive long enough to change his Will. We used the money to complete the rebuild, repair the damage to the Grange and leave us enough to carry out the pottery projects over the next couple of years and open up the Barn as a wedding venue. We had the venue licensed as a wedding venue over two years ago and Jessica and Pat and Dan and I were our first wedding and first double wedding, even though the barn was a ruin, with all the debris removed and the material stacked and sorted through for reuse."

"And we were next to marry," Giles said, "the roof timbers were in place but before the thatch was put on. We had the reception in a marquee close by."

"Everyone else here around the table has had a happy ending, everyone," Daniel smiled, his arm around Marina's shoulders. "That brings us to you, Lauren and Colin. Now, how would you like to be the first couple married in our newly completed barn?"

Lauren and Colin looked at one another before Colin spoke. "We can't afford a big wedding, Marina."

"Got a pound on you?" Daniel said.

"Sure, but -"

"We'll give you a receipt paid in full," Marina smiled, "All you lovebirds need to decide, is the date."

The End