We have to accept Jeremy wakes up from a sleep in the first place,manages to get down the stairs before the telephone stops ringing,that Nevill at the other end knows the Goldhanger number by heart and chooses to telephone this number rather than dial 999 himself,that Nevill manages to get to the telephone in the first place in an unharmed state,that it's immature Jeremy who decides to telephone the Police and not keep things in the family as was Nevill's justification for telephoning Jeremy in the first place. Far more likely Jeremy uses his answerphone to place a call from White House to Bourtree Cottage,then retrieves the tape on his return.
As for Sheila,we are not dealing with a mother in the normal sense of the word that final week let's be frank. Sheila is in a moribund state as evidenced by the Saturday night party,her reaction to the visit of the electrician,her vacant stare in the Tiptree store. Her personality is that of gullibility,of being easily led,of being unaware of people around her or of differentiating between the concept of fantasy and reality. Whilst this in theory gave Jeremy Bamber the opportunity to commit the perfect crime and use Sheila as a scapegoat the Jeremy supporters must also come to realize that when awoken in the middle of the night and quickly hurried by Jeremy under some pretext into the master bedroom Sheila would not have the first inkling of what was going on until it was too late..
RE your first paragraph. At a time when I was anticipating a phone call that I PRAYED wouldn't happen, I laid out, beside the phone, the numbers of all those I would need to contact. Some were numbers totally unfamilier to me, some were numbers I used regularly. I had the "luxury" of being able to prepare, thus making life easier for me at a hugely difficult time, for the call I was dreading. Jeremy had no such "luxury."
RE your second paragraph. How HUGELY amusing to hear from the ONE poster on this forum, who previously had proclaimed that there was NOTHING wrong with Sheila save exhaustion!! She'd made a sandwich for a party, she's cleared up the beans which had missed the toast, she'd had the twins to care for, she'd travelled from London to Essex, she was pre menstrual PERLEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE!!!!!!!!! But WAIT!!!!! NOW, she can't even be called a "mother in the normal sense of the word" I wonder what caused this EXTREME turnaround. The person you describe her as being COULD have simply been on recreational drugs. I wonder which description of her the Bambers would have preferred. Would they have been willing to share with those of their family and wider world that their daughter was a PARANOID SCHIZOPHRENIC who would NEVER be cured, OR would they have preferred them to think that on occasions she took a little too much of a naughty substance and would "grow out of it." You RANT about how much Jeremy knew of her condition and how he used it to his advantage, but other than what he MAY have picked up outside the family, which wouldn't have been VERY much because we know that Jeremy had little time for anything remotely academic, the sum of what he ACTUALLY knew was in what he said to the police. I would stake my life on that Sheila's condition was NEVER mentioned, other than in private conversation, when it couldn't be avoided, between June and Nevill and they couldn't have known the full facts because Sheila was over 21, an adult, and her consultant was forbidden by law to divulge details of her illness with ANYONE without Sheila's express permission. I really don't think ANYONE in WHF knew the full extent of the ramifications of Sheila's condition because none would have been entirely sure of what the condition was, partly because they didn't WANT to know.
