The next morning DI Yarrow read Rawlings’ report together with the typed and signed confession of Adelaide Milburn. He did not like either. Rawlings’s report was too thin on facts, he had not questioned Mrs Christina Wallace, the complainant, in any depth and his conclusion that Adelaide had panicked and thrown the allegedly stolen earrings into the river did not bear up either. Why did she panic? The police were not involved at that time. It did not make any sense.
Nothing about the report or the confession stood up. Rawlings had not properly interviewed Mrs Wallace, simply assuming that the complaint was genuine. He had then automatically assumed guilt because the accused happened to be a West Indian immigrant. The time scales were wrong, the geography was wrong, everything about the co
