‘I can tell that you don’t like him much either,’ Douglas said with a laugh.
‘You’re dead right there,’ I agreed. ‘But what he did to Amelia was even worse. I blame him completely for her mental illness and for putting her in hospital. He’s done nothing except continually undermine her confidence for years and then he drove a wedge between her and their mother. And now he’s killed her.’ I choked back the emotion. ‘I intend to nail him for that.’
But I felt better for having had a bit of a broadside against my brother-in-law and it was with a lighter heart that I packed up my stuff and caught the train from London to Banbury.
20
The first thing I did on arriving home was to paint over the ‘killer’ graffiti on the garage door.
I’d taken a taxi from Banbury station and had asked the driver to wait at a DIY superstore while I went in and bought some dark-green paint and a paintbrush.
I stood back and surveyed my handiwork.
The paint I had bought wasn’t exactly the same shade of dark green as the rest of it but it would do. I would repaint the whole thing at another time.
Next I opened the padlock on the front door and went in.
As before, the house was cold and lifeless but, this time, I didn’t dilly-dally in the hall but forced myself to go straight into the kitchen and then through into the utility room.
The central heating had been switched off by someone so I turned it back on again and the boiler sprang into action, bringing a sense of life back to the house as the pipework creaked as it heated.
I went round the house switching on all the lights and even set the music system in the sitting room so that Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ blared out of the speakers at full volume.
Adele had been Amelia’s absolute favourite singer and we had been lucky enough to catch her final live concert at Wembley Stadium, buying horrendously inflated tickets off the internet with gay abandon. But it had been worth every penny to see my wife happy after so many desperate months of psychiatric treatments and mental institutions. Even Adele’s mournful lyrics couldn’t prevent me from now smiling at the memory.
For the next two and a half hours, I busied myself clearing up the mess left by the police forensic team, wiping away the mass of fine metallic fingerprint powder left on every surface, exercising the vacuum cleaner all around the house and tidying away stuff into the wardrobes and bathroom cabinet. I re-laid the fire in the hearth, plumped up all the cushions on the sofa, discarded a vase of flowers that were well past their best, and, finally, I swept up the broken wood by the back door and washed the kitchen floor, which I found very difficult.
I realised what I was doing.
I was keeping myself busy so as not to dwell on the fact that I was alone in this house and evermore would be.
It was the little things that I found the hardest to bear — Amelia’s toothbrush still in a tumbler next to the bathroom sink; her shampoo in the shower; and particularly her multiple lip salves left at strategic points all over the house. Dry lips had always been a problem for her, however much I had tried to kiss them better.
Finally, when there was nothing left to clean and I was pooped, I made myself a cup of instant black coffee and sat down in the sitting room, flicking on an afternoon TV programme about buying antiques to further distract my mind.
So far, so good.
But then there was a heavy knock on the front door.
Who could that be? I rather hoped it wasn’t either the police or the press.
It was neither.
Standing on my doorstep was a smartly dressed slim woman with long blonde hair. She was holding a large plate on which sat a sponge cake, and she was fiddling nervously with a string of large pearls around her neck.
‘Hello, Bill,’ said Nancy Fadeley. ‘I saw you earlier painting the garage door. I thought you might need something to eat. This is all I could think of. I’ve just baked it myself.’
She held out the plate and I took it.
‘How lovely, Nancy,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much. Please come in.’
She hesitated, looking past me towards the kitchen, and fiddled some more with her pearls.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Amelia would have been so happy that you’ve come over.’
Just my mention of Amelia set her off crying, huge tears rolling down her face and dripping onto the doormat. I handed her my handkerchief.
‘I can’t believe she’s gone,’ she said between snuffles. ‘I loved her so much.’
‘So did I,’ I said with a sigh.
‘I know you did,’ she said with more sniffs. ‘You absolutely adored each other. That’s why I can’t believe what everyone in the village is saying. People can be so nasty.’
Tell me about it.
The two women had been best friends ever since we had first arrived in the village. I had also become friendly with her husband, Dave, a London-based jewellery dealer, and the four of us had regularly had boozy suppers in each other’s homes, and had even once rented a villa together for a week in Greece.
‘Won’t you come in?’ I said.
Nancy hesitated again and I wondered if she was worried about coming into a house alone with someone that everyone else in the village was calling a murderer. Hence I didn’t push the point, remaining standing in the doorway.
‘Amelia told me on the day before she died that she was going to have a drink with you at the pub.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s right,’ Nancy said. ‘She called me. But we only had a quick one. I had to get back to finish cooking supper for Dave. I asked her to join us, seeing that you were away, but she refused. She said she had some things to do and she wanted to have an early night.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Oh, you know, the usual.’
The ‘usual’ was the state of Amelia’s health. Nancy and Dave had been there for us during the bad times as well as the good. Indeed, Nancy had been Amelia’s rock and mainstay even in her darkest hours, and she was also well up to speed with all the problems between the Bradbury siblings.
‘Was there any specific reason why she wanted to meet you that particular evening?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She put her head on one side as if thinking back. ‘We initially chatted about all sorts of mundane stuff but I now remember that there was one thing she told me as we were walking back that I thought was quite interesting.’
‘Which was?’ I asked.
‘She said that her brother would soon be getting his comeuppance. She was convinced that he’d stolen some money from his mother during the sale of their family home. Something about him and the estate agent conspiring together to lower the reported sale price so that they could pocket the difference.’
Wow! Now, that really was interesting.
‘I wonder why she didn’t mention it to me.’
‘She said was going to just as soon as she was sure of it. Seems she didn’t want you going off half-cocked before she had the proof.’
‘Did she tell you how she knew?’ I asked.
‘Not exactly,’ Nancy said. ‘It was something to do with a couple who were her parents’ old neighbours in Surrey. Seems they came to visit her mum and it was something they said that made her wonder, but I don’t know what it was.’
‘Did you tell the police about this?’ I asked.