A Matter for the Jury Read Free

of the town. The Rosemary D had belonged to Ken and Rosemary Douglas, who were still something of a legend in St Ives. They had arrived in the town from London in 1959 with a great deal of money and a great deal of fanfare. They bought and renovated a large town house in the High Street. They also bought the Rosemary D . Rosemary became an active member of the Civic Society. Ken joined the Rotary Club and submitted an application for appointment as a magistrate.
    The Rosemary D was a Dutch houseboat. Her original name was De Grachtprinses . They found her berthed, apparently abandoned, on the Herengracht in Amsterdam. They fell in love with her, renamed her, and had her towed with enormous care to the Wash and up the river to St Ives. She was all of forty feet long, and had two sections – living quarters with a makeshift kitchen and a minute toilet forward, and sleeping quarters aft. Her exterior was painted in bright shades of red and green, with wispy harlequin figures in brown, silver and gold executing macabre dance moves, their arms and legs grotesquely hyper-extended along her sides. A number of hardy plants in large earthenware pots were strategically placed around the deck. Both the town house and the Rosemary D provided settings for extravagant parties, noted for the quantity and quality of food and drink. It was rumoured that more exotic substances were also available. There were whispered stories about scandalous goings on late into the night.
    Then, in 1962, the bubble burst. One morning in May, the town house was suddenly cleared out, and Ken and Rosemary Douglas left St Ives abruptly, never to be seen again. The police had uncovered the source of their money, and were seeking Ken and Rosemary’s help with their inquiries into a number of serious frauds. With the police and the bailiffs hot on their trail, they made good their escape to a warmer clime, a South American country which had not found it necessary to enter into an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom. Soon afterwards, the bailiffs put padlocks on both the house and the Rosemary D and it was generally assumed that both would be sold to satisfy the creditors. The house was indeed sold but, for whatever reason, whether through an oversight, a lack of energy, or a slow market in houseboats, the Rosemary D remained at her berth at Holywell Fen – deserted, locked, and apparently fated to begin a gradual decline.
    Enter the young courting couples of the surrounding countryside, from St Ives, Fenstanton, Hemingford Grey, Needingworth, Over, and Swavesey, who found the padlocks easy enough to pick, and began to make regular use of the Rosemary D for assignations forbidden to them in their parents’ houses. The Douglases had not had time to clear out the Rosemary D before fleeing the country, so the bed, bedding, chairs, kitchen table, glassware and cutlery remained in place. Word soon spread that an ideal spot for courting had been found and, in a remarkable show of social cooperation, a number of house rules developed and were generally obeyed. A length of rope daubed with red paint was to be left hanging from the door leading to the living quarters to show that they were occupied. No one was to occupy the boat for more than an hour, and at busy periods, forty-five minutes. The boat was to be kept reasonably clean and tidy (one couple regularly took the bedding away and returned it washed and dried) and all items brought on board were to be removed on leaving. The windows were to be closed. The padlocks were to be positioned so as to appear to be locked, but not actually locked. Above all, conversation about the venue was to be kept to a minimum, to reduce the chances of the bailiffs taking a renewed interest.
    Frank Gilliam found out about the Rosemary D from a friend at work. Frank was twenty-three, a management trainee at Lloyds Bank in St Ives, and over lunch one day he heard about her from Molly Smith, one of the tellers.