When people describe this as ‘Constable Country’, it is no idle boast here in the Suffolk village of Brantham. Not only did John Constable paint the altarpiece of St Michael’s Church; he married the rector’s daughter and produced his most famous work, The Hay Wain, at Flatford Mill, an hour’s walk upstream along the River Stour.
However, there has been little talk of Constable in recent weeks. Visitors now allude to another cultural reference point. And it is one which infuriates the residents of Brantham.
‘We are not Midsomer. What has happened here is completely outside our experience,’ says district councillor Alastair McCraw, dismissing any comparisons with the equally picturesque but serially homicidal setting of ITV’s drama Midsomer Murders.
Yes, Brantham is pretty and rural (I would even go as far as saying ‘sleepy’, although that may be down to the baking heat when I arrive). However, it remains utterly astonished and appalled by the sort of crime which has recently propelled it into the headlines.
‘The last murder here was more than 150 years ago and people were still talking about that one,’ says Mr McCraw. ‘We are now a community united in sympathy for a family who have lost a much-loved mother and grandmother.’
It is now nearly four weeks since Anita Rose, 57, set off from her home at sunrise at 5am to take her springer spaniel, Bruce, for his morning walk. She never returned. An hour and a half later, she was found unconscious by a cyclist on a public footpath off Rectory Lane (which leads up to the church where Constable painted Christ And The Children). Bruce, unharmed, was loyally at his mistress’s side.
By nightfall, police confirmed they were investigating an ‘attempted murder’. Four days later, that was tragically elevated to ‘murder’ after Ms Rose died of ‘head and facial’ injuries in hospital. Yet, three arrests and more than 630 police interviews later, the residents of Brantham – population: 3,500 – are as baffled and worried as ever.
Indeed, there is not yet even an official cause of death since the post-mortem report remains inconclusive, pending ‘further tests’. Until then, there can be no funeral and the grieving family are left in limbo.
Two men, one aged 45 from Ipswich and another in his 20s from the village itself, have been arrested on suspicion of murder. Both have been released on bail with a condition that the younger man is not to return to Brantham or neighbouring Manningtree until a fresh hearing in October.
A woman, aged 37, was also bailed after being arrested on suspicion of handling stolen goods. Locals have seen police experts in white boilersuit kit turning a house near the church upside down. Police have also used phone data to establish and publish the route of Anita’s last walk.
The hunt continues for her missing pink waterproof jacket, new pictures of which were issued yesterday – as was an image of her black wallet-style phone case which has a gold crown and studs.
Suffolk Police ‘urge people to please refrain from speculating about the incident’. Yet you can hardly blame the people of Brantham for doing just that.
There were initial fears that poor Anita might be used as some sort of catalyst for mob violence, as happened after those ghastly murders in Southport five days after her death. Social media trolls wasted no time in stirring the pot.
Some, including far-Right agitator Tommy Robinson, spread rumours that Anita had been killed by two Somali migrants. These unfounded lies prompted a swift and unusual intervention from the police who stated that such talk was ‘a dangerous piece of misinformation’.
Suffolk was duly spared any subsequent civil disorder while the national media spotlight focused on violence elsewhere.
Yet, that has not stopped more genuine, legitimate questions from the residents of Brantham. As Councillor McCraw points out: ‘People still need to walk their dogs.’ But where? And when? It also raises the broader question of how a hitherto happy and harmonious community is supposed to move on and revert to ‘business as usual’ when there is, as yet, no prospect of any sort of closure, least of all for Anita’s family.
For now, it is clear that, while there is nothing akin to panic in these parts, people are quietly changing the way they go about their lives. Footfall is certainly down along the tracks and bridleways, both among residents and those from miles around for whom the paths between the village, the Bull at Brantham pub and the Stour estuary have long been a popular circuit.
‘You would normally see a lot of walkers round here, certainly more than just local dog-owners,’ says the Reverend Chris Willis, the rector of St Michael’s. ‘But I have noticed that there are now fewer people out walking and a lot more of them are in pairs.’
However, Anita’s death has underlined the strength of community spirit. ‘We are a quiet, country community but not a community of strangers,’ he adds. Although he did not know Anita, who is understood to have moved to the village with her partner, Richard, and one of her six children a few years ago, he says that many people have been coming to the church to ‘reflect’ and to light a candle in her memory.
I walk from the church down Rectory Lane, which gradually turns from road to track to footpath as the tree cover gives way to open fields. The tranquillity is only interrupted by the occasional honk of a train on the London to Norwich mainline. A little cluster of flowers and cards rests against a fence.
‘We will miss seeing you on our morning walks,’ says one card, signed ‘Honey and Holly’. One or other is presumably the golden labrador in the attached photograph. The canine connection runs deep here.
In the course of a couple of hours on these paths, I meet just a handful of people and all are here with dogs. Deanna and Mark Pyke, both retired, have driven down here from Ipswich to walk their chihuahuas. ‘I like the views and he likes the trains,’ jokes Deanna, adding that she would no longer come down here on her own.
Eventually, I reach the spot where Anita was found. The police report describes it matter-of-factly as ‘next to the sewage works and railway line’. It makes it sound like some unsightly industrial blackspot, which it is not. However, it does sit in a leafy dip in the path leading down towards the river.
The railway embankment running along the top is so steep that a train passenger would struggle to look down on this spot. Nor is it visible from the surrounding fields. Only the unoccupied sewage plant has a view. If someone was going to lie in wait for whatever reason, this would be as good a spot as any.
Further down the hill, the path goes over a stile and across the mainline. Walkers have to look left and right and move swiftly over the tracks. Hence all that honking of train horns. This is a key part of the route along the north bank of the Stour. Police have also issued appeals for information at all the local railway stations, just in case an early morning commuter might have spotted anything odd.
After walking for an hour, I meet a gentleman who would rather not give me his name (he is an off-duty civil servant) exercising his two labradors. ‘You do try to keep things in perspective and remember that this is a peaceful place with all the cliches about village life, you know a sleepy place where you can leave your keys in your car or not lock the house and so on,’ he says.
‘But then you find that you just want to err on the side of caution. So my wife or daughter might usually go and walk the dogs but now I just say ‘I’ll do it’.’
Like many hereabouts, it has not escaped him that both murder suspects are out on bail and that the results of the post-mortem examination have yet to be determined. It all compounds a general sense that the trail has gone decidedly cold. .
Suffolk Police simply point out that ‘when bail is imposed, it can be granted with restrictions where it is proportionate and necessary to do so’ and that ‘a person’s status in an investigation may change as the case develops’.
However, all those I meet seem to have considerable sympathy for the police. There is no sense that the cops are taking their eye off this particular ball.
At the other end of the village, I drop in at the leisure centre, home to ‘The Imps’, Brantham Athletic Football Club. General manager Tony Hall tells me that the police have been maintaining a regular presence. ‘It is reassuring to see them,’ he says, ‘but you do notice many more people now walking round in twos and threes.’
Later on, I bump into accountant Lauren Groves, Brantham born and bred. She has finally resumed walking her dog, Paddy, down Rectory Lane for the first time since Anita’s death. ‘You get to a point where you think, ‘Am I never going to walk this route again?’
‘I didn’t know Anita by name and I don’t think she lived in the area that long. But I used to see her quite a bit on her walks and she was always very friendly, a really lovely lady. She walked her dog a lot, maybe three times a day for two hours at a time. My mum would often stop and talk to her. They had a good chat a few days before Anita died and she was very happy and bubbly.’ All of which merely makes this terrible story more puzzling and peculiar.
Brantham’s two pubs are shut today. But over at the waterside cafe in Constable Park, next to the Stour, my waitress, Remi, is doing her best to keep things in perspective. ‘You have to hope that this was just a tragic one-off,’ she says. ‘I used to live in Kilburn in north London. I would say that I still feel a lot safer here.’