The Missing Party-Girl: A Rags-to-Riches Cozy Mystery Romance by Nhys Glover (read after .txt) 📗

crossed out with a series of Xs when a mistake was made. Back then, they used typewriters. And they hadn’t even had Liquid Paper to cover up mistakes. Any copies they needed were made using carbon paper because there were no photocopiers.

Was that why the letters looked blurred? Was this a carbon copy of the original? There were also handwritten additions here and there on the pages. Combined with the forms themselves, it all seemed very officious and outdated. It made her realize just how far they’d come, from a technological point of view, in the last fifty years.

But once she got over the excitement of looking back into the past, she settled in to start reading.

“Okay we have suspect and witness interviews. From the look of it, there were no recordings of the interviews,” Cage said, studying a couple of pages closely.

“I think recordings were a fairly recent thing,” Cage went on, looking up the information on his laptop sitting on the floor beside him. “Yeah. 1991. That’s wild. How much went unreported. The tone and delivery gives away so much more than what’s actually said. And even that was likely imprecise, as I doubt too many cops used short hand. They’d have to rely on their memories for a lot of it. ”

Adie nodded. “So we’re only reading what the interviewer jotted down and then had transcribed?”

“I think the cop who did the interview probably typed it up himself afterwards. Seriously hit and miss approach. I know they’d get a witness to read through a statement after it was typed up and then sign it, but still. Highly inefficient.” He tutted a few times to indicate his thoughts on past policing methods.

“We can’t look at the past through modern eyes. They did the best with what they had,” Adie said, trying to end Cage’s rant.

He’d been looking for things to blame ever since they’d discovered Winsley was already ahead of the game. It was depressing, and Adie couldn’t help worrying that they’d already lost any advantage they might have had.

“From what I can see, the detective in charge was a Detective Sergeant Mitchell,” Cage went on. “I wonder if he’s still alive, and if he is, if we can talk to him about his memories of the case. If he has memories of it. I’d have trouble telling anyone about a case I worked on five years ago, no less fifty years ago.”

Cage went back to his laptop. In a couple of moments of frenetic typing he let out a curse. “Nope. He died nearly twenty years ago. That’s a dead end. Quite literally.”

Ignoring the bad pun, Adie selected another sheet from the pile that looked more like a report than a witness statement. “I think this is the detective’s findings. Do you want me to read it out or let you read it for yourself?”

“No, go ahead. You read and I’ll see if I can find the documentation that goes with it.”

“Okay, so here we go:

“Georgina Victoria Wyatt, twenty-nine, of Flat 4B 130 Dane Street, Soho, was reported missing by the head mistress of her son’s boarding school on 28th May 1965 when she failed to pick up her child for the Whitsunday long weekend. It transpired that her son, ten-year-old Rory Alastair Fredrickson hadn’t heard from his mother for several months, and he had grown increasingly distressed by her extended and unusual silence.

“Because of the delay reporting the disappearance, interviewees’ memories were not necessarily reliable and alibis were hard to corroborate.

“What we do know is that on Saturday 27th March of that year Wyatt left her flat sometime around midday, which she shared with two other actresses, Miss Minerva Reynolds and Miss Tanzy Tyler. (Interviews carried out 04/06/1965). ”

Cage busied himself selecting the relevant interviews but didn’t interrupt.

“She told her flatmates she’d see them later, at which time they planned to travel together to attend a party at the home of a film producer. When she didn’t return in time to leave for the party both girls went on without her. When asked if they were worried about their friend not returning, they both said Wyatt was unreliable when it came to appointments and they assumed she’d received a better offer.

“Reynolds said Wyatt may have gone away with a boyfriend at the last minute, because her overnight bag and her passport were missing. She knew nothing about this boyfriend other than he was supposedly rich and powerful, and his first name was Rolly or something similar. Tyler said it was just as likely she received an invitation to another party at the last minute. Wyatt was a ‘free spirit’. It was the reason they didn’t report her missing themselves. They were simply annoyed that she had left them without paying her rent for the month.

“When asked about the fact Wyatt left her possessions behind, Tyler laughed and said there was nothing of any great value. Nothing they could sell to recoup the rent owed.

“Reynolds claimed Wyatt was dedicated to her son and would never have left him stranded. Wyatt, from all reports, looked forward to her rare visits with the boy. Although she was unreliable in other areas, she wrote regularly to her son and always attended her assigned visits with him on time.

“It appears from witness statements that the boy’s father, Michael Fredrickson had custody of their son, and he kept the boy at boarding school, to restrict the mother’s access to the boy as much as for any educational advantages the school provided. It was said to have been a vicious divorce that had both parties petitioning the other on the grounds of infidelity. Because Fredrickson was in a better financial situation to care for the boy, and because of Wyatt’s choice of career as an actress and go-go dancer at a West End club, the father was granted sole custody of