The Trials of Marjorie Crowe

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Those who live alongside Marjorie Crowe in Strathdorcha put her age at somewhere between 55 and 70. They think she's divorced or a lifelong spinster, that she used to be a librarian, a pharmacist or a witch. They think she's possibly lonely or ill or maybe just plain rude. She lives in a cottage on the edge of the village. The local kids call it the Hansel and Gretel house and make fun of her. With her few friends long gone, she's regressed into a quiet, almost mute, world of her own.Marjorie manages to look tall despite being only around five feet six. With her slim frame and long, unkempt grey hair tied behind her, she always walks with her head up. And she walks and she walks.Her daily strolls are the stuff of local legend. Twice a day, at the same time and the same pace each day, she walks. The locals can set their watches by her. She even goes in one door of the local pub and out the other, as if it isn't there.When Marjorie is seven minutes late walking through the back door of The Foresters Arms, it's noticed.That's the same day that 11-year-old Charlie McKee disappears.That's the day everyone wants to know what Marjorie knows.As the police descend on the village, angry parents and relatives arrive mob-hand at Marjorie's door demanding she talks to them. The woman huddles terrified in the corner of her living room.When questioned, she finally nods when they ask if she saw Charlie. And shakes her head when asked if Charlie was alone.She's quite clear. She saw the body of Charlie McKee hanging from the witching tree at 1.55pm. She says there was a tall man, dressed all in black standing by the tree.There's a problem. Two witnesses saw Charlie McKee on Louden Street in the village at 2.30. Alive and well.Anger and paranoia engulf the village. Police move among them, pressures rise, and old grudges emerge.People remember Amelie Cunningham who was thought to have run away to London but was never heard of again. They talk too of the young Ferris girl from nearby Inverdennan who was said to have been taken by travellers.When two dead rats are nailed to Marjorie's door, few have the courage to speak up for her. A bucket of pig blood over her door is the next step as tensions escalate.Marjorie has seen a young man hanging around near her cottage. She fears he's the one responsible for the assaults on her home. She leaves the cottage to confront him but he flees.When she sees the same young man being beaten up by three local toughs, she intervenes and scares them off, playing up to their portrayal of her as a witch. The young man, badly beaten, is Jibril, a 20-year-old former asylum seeker who's been living hand to mouth around the village, finding a bed where he can and doing odd jobs. Jibril too has borne the brunt of the villager's suspicions and that's why he was assaulted. Marjorie takes him in and tends to him, the pair becoming unlikely allies.Together, they begin to piece together the events of the day Charlie was found, their unique perspectives of outsiders meaning they've seen things that others haven't.When Marjorie recommences her walks around the village, Jibril by her side, it pushes the villagers to the edge of reason. And then another child disappears.