The Remorseful Day

Two psychics and a hypnotist have already been involved in the case. It has caught the attention of the Still a Mystery series on ITV, although it has yet to be promoted to the Premier Division of such classical unsolved cases as the disappearance of Lord Lucan, the fate of the racehorse Shergar. or the quest for the Holy Grail itself.

Although the murder of Yvonne Harrison has long been out of the immediate headlines, we are led to believe that the box-files concerning the ease, stacked on the shelves at Thames Valley Police HQ, are definitely not accumulating layer upon layer of undisturbed dust. After all it is only just over a year since the body of Mrs. Harrison was discovered in the living room of her Grade-II-listed Georgian house, set in four acres of wooded ground in the Cotswold village of Lower Swinstead. The home. “The Windhovers.” was sold for £350.000 fairly soon after the murder, and the family have long since left the quiet leafy village all except Yvonne, of course, who is buried in the small, neatly mown churchyard of St. Mary’s, where, in the form of a Christian cross, a low. wooden stake is the only memorial to the body reposing beneath it:

Perhaps, when the ground is sufficiently settled, the murdered woman will have some worthier monument. But for the present the grave shows little if any sign of tender loving care, and flowers no longer adorn this semi-neglected spot.

Yvonne Harrison, a fully qualified nurse, had resumed work in Oxford after her two children had left home, and on the evening of her murder had returned to an empty house, her husband Frank, as normally during the week, spending his time in his London apartment. “The Windhovers” had been broken into a few years earlier, when TV sets, video-equipment, radios, a computer, and sundry electrical items had been stolen. As a result, the Harrisons had installed a fairly sophisticated burglar alarm, with “panic-buttons” in the main bedroom and beside the main entrance door: had enlisted in the local Neighbourhood Watch group; and had acquired a Rottweiler puppy, christened Rodney, who had subsequently displayed a healthier taste for Walkers Crisps than for any unwelcome visitors, and who had sadly been run over a few months previously.

With the smashed rear window, the burglary theory was at first the favourite, although there was no apparent theft of several readily displayed items of silverware and non-too-subtly concealed pieces of jewellery. What was far more obvious to those who entered the house later that night was a body the body of Yvonne Harrison, lying on the bed in the main bedroom: naked, handcuffed, and gagged. And dead.

What immediately caught public interest was the fact that the man who discovered the body was none other than the murdered woman’s husband.

A somewhat delayed post-mortem established that Yvonne Harrison had probably been murdered by some sort of “tubular metal rod” two or three hours before her body was discovered at 11:20 p.m.. and fairly certainly not after 9:30 p.m. Independent evidence corroborated the pathologist’s findings. A local builder. Mr. John Barron, had rung Mrs. Harrison at 9 p.m. on the dot. as instructed. But he had heard only the “engaged” signal. At about 9:30 p.m. he had rung again; but although he had persisted there had been no reply. The phone was quite certainly ringing at the other end. Hither the Ansaphone had not been activated... or else the lady of the house was not alive to take the call.

Another call however had been made more successfully that evening. An extraordinarily puzzling call. At just after 9 p.m. Yvonne’s husband picked up his phone in Pavilion Road. London, to hear a man’s voice informing him that his wife was in trouble and that he ought to get out there immediately. Normally he would have driven home post-haste in his BMW. But with the car in for repairs, he took a taxi to Paddington where he caught the 9:48 train to Oxford, arriving at 10:50, where he took another taxi for the ten-mile journey out to Lower Swinstead.

Late-night traffic was thin, and when Mr Patrick Flynn braked his Radio Taxi outside “The Windhovers” at 11:20 p.m. he saw a village mansion ablaze with lights turned on in almost every room, and the burglar-alarm box emitting sharp blue flashes and a continuous ringing. The front door stood open... and the rest is history.

Or it was history until a fortnight ago. when two anonymous phone calls were received at Thames Valley Police HQ. where it is the view of Chief Superintendent Strange that promising new lines of enquiry may soon be opened.

It is surely universally to be hoped that the identity of Yvonne Harrison’s murderer will finally be revealed; and that on some more permanent memorial in St. Mary’s churchyard the name of the murdered woman will be spelt correctly.