Villiers looked at him wide-eyed.
‘You asked earlier what bound such a disparate group together,’ she said, ‘when it clearly isn’t an interest in the Mass Trespass. Could this be it, Ben?’
‘Every one of them is indebted to Darius in some way? If so, that opens up a whole new can of worms. We’ll have to go back and ask them a lot more questions. The right ones this time.’
Villiers shuddered. ‘Darius Roth,’ she said. ‘What an egotistical monster he’s starting to seem.’
Cooper had to agree. He felt no satisfaction that his first instinct about Roth might have been the correct one.
Back at West Street, Millie Taylor and Karina Scott were waiting for their appointment to be interviewed. Carol Villiers collected DC Becky Hurst from the CID room and they went off to talk to the two students.
In his office, Ben Cooper studied the documents Luke Irvine had left on his desk about the Mass Trespass. Everything began somewhere. The reasons for Faith Matthew’s death on Sunday might go back to 1932 — or only to the day before.
Nick Haslam had been right. Many of the organisers of the Kinder Mass Trespass were Communists. Luke Irvine’s research revealed that the protest in 1932 was supported by fifteen Lancashire branches of the British Workers’ Sports Federation and two branches from Sheffield.
Cooper saw that the estimates of the numbers involved in the trespass varied considerably, as they always did. Organisers claimed between six hundred and eight hundred, while a reporter for the Manchester Guardian guessed between four hundred and five hundred. Other claims were much lower.
The confrontation with gamekeepers and bailiffs had taken place on the slopes of Sandy Heys. As the protesters returned to the village of Hayfield, five of them were arrested by police and taken to Hayfield Lock-up, which was now the offices of the parish council on Market Street. They joined another protester who’d been arrested at the scene of the scuffle.
The arrested ramblers were named as John Anderson, aged twenty-one; Julius ‘Jud’ Clyne, twenty-three; Arthur Walter ‘Tona’ Gillett, aged just nineteen; Harry Mendel, twenty-two; David Nussbaum, also nineteen; and the main organiser of the protest, Bernard ‘Benny’ Rothman, aged twenty.
After the arrests at the Mass Trespass, a group of fellow ramblers had waited outside the Hayfield Lock-up, expecting the imminent release of the prisoners. When nothing happened, a spokesman hammered on the door and offered bail for the arrested protesters. As the situation became tense, the six men were smuggled out of the lock-up and taken to New Mills Police Station, where they were kept overnight. A plaque still hung on the old police station commemorating the event.
Next day, the arrested ramblers were charged with unlawful assembly and breach of the peace. All six pleaded not guilty and were remanded for trial at Derby Assizes, sixty miles from their homes. Meanwhile, ‘wanted’ posters had been printed, offering a reward of five pounds for the identification of some of the ramblers who escaped arrest.
At the subsequent trial, Benny Rothman took the opportunity for some working-class rhetoric: ‘We ramblers, after a hard week’s work in smoky towns and cities, go out rambling for relaxation, a breath of fresh air, a little sunshine. But we find when we go out that the finest rambling country is closed to us, just because certain individuals wish to shoot for about ten days a year.’
Despite his defence, he and four other men were found guilty and given jail terms of between two and six months. John Anderson received the longest sentence for assault on the gamekeeper. Just one, Harry Mendel, was acquitted due to a lack of evidence.
It was the severity of the sentences that unleashed a wave of public sympathy and united the cause. Even those who’d been opposed to the trespass were appalled. A few weeks later, ten thousand ramblers gathered for a rally at Winnats Pass, near Castleton, and the pressure for greater access continued to grow.
‘There we are,’ said Cooper when Villiers returned. ‘Rothman not Roth. That’s what I thought. It was niggling at the back of my mind. It’s a long time since we were taught about the Mass Trespass, but I was right.’
‘Mr Roth hasn’t actually claimed that his grandfather was one of the men arrested, though, just that he was one of the leaders.’
‘True. So you’re saying the similarity of names might just be a coincidence?’
Villiers smiled. ‘You’ve never liked coincidences, have you?’
‘Not very much.’
‘But they do happen,’ she said.
Cooper looked at the list thoughtfully.
‘Darius Roth referred to his ancestor as a “martyr”. That does suggest he was one of those who were imprisoned and given heavy sentences. Suggests it without actually saying it. It would be quite enough for anyone who didn’t bother to ask questions or do their own research but accepted whatever Darius said.’
Villiers shrugged. ‘So he’s building up his personal narrative with a bit of exaggeration. Everyone does that.’
‘Mmm.’
Cooper still wasn’t convinced. But there were no complete records available of who had and hadn’t taken part in the trespass in 1932, so he could probably never be sure one way or the other whether Darius’s tales of his grandfather were true or not. He suspected it was a fantasy.
Did it matter? Perhaps not. But it was all part of a picture that was becoming increasingly disturbing.
‘Well, Becky and I have talked to Millie Taylor and Karina Scott,’ said Villiers.
‘Oh yes. What’s your assessment?’
‘We took them separately, and their stories tally in all the significant details. They say they stayed together on the walk all the time. In fact, after Mr Sharpe’s accident they stuck to Darius Roth’s side and never wandered off for a second. They were too scared after hearing other members of the group talking about the danger of falling off the edge near the Downfall. Millie and Karina wouldn’t go near any rocks after that, let alone try to creep up on someone near a steep drop.’
‘So you don’t think they had the opportunity?’
‘I’m sure they didn’t,’ she said. ‘Besides, they might seem like “silly girls” to the Gould brothers, but they’re actually very smart young women — and ambitious as well. They’re too adult, and they have their heads screwed on too well, to play those sorts of games.’
‘Do you think it’s a case of Theo and Duncan being prejudiced against them?’
‘Yes,’ said Villiers frankly. ‘Patronising at best, because of Millie and Karina’s age, and their gender. “Silly girls” is something they’re definitely not, Ben.’
‘That’s helpful, thank you.’
‘By the way,’ said Villiers, ‘I checked online and found Faith Matthew had both a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile. She lists Meadow Park Hospital among her previous employers on both. Her dates working there were between nine and four years ago.’
‘Good,’ said Cooper. ‘If only we could ask her directly what ward she was on and whether she met Darius Roth there.’
He looked at a large-scale map of the Kinder area on the wall of the CID room. The last positions of the members of the New Trespassers Walking Club on Sunday were marked on it, but only so far as they were known. There were queries on several of the names, indicating a doubt about their exact location, or the lack of definite corroboration.
The timing was confusing too. It was impossible to get a clear picture of where everyone was and when — either from the statements they’d given themselves or by working it out from other people’s accounts.
Cooper recalled Pat Warburton’s glasses, Theo Gould’s hearing aid. Even with perfect hearing and twenty-twenty vision, the group would have been practically deaf and blind to what was going on around them in the conditions they experienced on Kinder that day. The fog had been too thick. And as far as the inquiry was concerned, it still was.