‘Which is when the house was built, at the beginning of the reign of George I and in the era of Handel and Bach, and. . I glanced at my son’s history books before I began the inventory. . just to make it even more interesting,’ Seers explained with a brief smile. ‘I really don’t carry that sort of historical knowledge in my head.’
‘Impressed, nonetheless.’
‘Well, I have to detail everything inside the house. . and I mean everything. . from the recently purchased twenty-first century tea mugs in the living area to the dust-sheet covered paintings, which may be old masters lost to the world for centuries and may be worth more than the house itself. . all has to be catalogued. A very, very interesting job.’
‘Sounds so, and I can understand why you pulled rank to get it.’
‘Indeed. . then we have to take the contents into storage by a firm of reputable auctioneers and valued. We use Myles and Innche.’
‘Miles and Inch,’ Hennessey grinned.
‘Yes, it is an unusual name. . both units of linear measurement. . but not spelled the same.’ Seers told Hennessey how the auctioneers was correctly spelled.
‘All right. . so the owner. . the last owner died recently?’
‘Very recently. . a matter of days ago. Poor old gentleman, you see, he had all this to live in. . all this garden and the grounds beyond the garden. . all of it was his and yet his final days were spent in a little room where he cooked, ate and slept, and he used a bathroom across the corridor for his ablutions. He lived in something akin to a dole collector’s miserable accommodation. . and just look at the state of the gardens. Mr Housecarl was a career soldier and his last action in life was a systematic retreat, first from the garden and then from the house, little by little, until he had just one room and a bathroom upstairs on the first floor, and there he made his last stand, fortunately for me, covering the contents of each room with dust sheets before closing the door of said room behind him for the final time.’
‘Eventually fetching up in a box room on the first floor?’
‘So it would seem.’
‘He would normally be our number one suspect, but it seems that he might have known nothing of what was going on outside his house.’
‘Yes. . as I pointed out to the other officers. . the doors, you see. . apart from the door of his box room and the bathroom he used, apart from those two doors, all the hinges on all the doors had stiffened with long-term non-use.’
‘Hasn’t been opened in years, you mean?’
‘If you like, yes, had not been opened in years. That is also apart from the back door and the door of the porch which enclosed it. He had a service from the Meals on Wheels people or rather a privately owned catering company. Meals on Wheels proper provides a service only to those folk who live below a certain income level.’
‘Yes. . yes.’
‘And I understand that a district nurse called once or twice a week, so he was probably visited about four days out of seven.’
‘I see. . that is useful to know, thanks.’
‘So, just four doors opened with ease.’
‘Back porch, back door, his bedroom door and his bathroom door?’
‘Yes. All the others were stiff, seized with, as you say, not being opened in years but. . but. . the door to the kitchen garden had been lubricated. It just did not open easily, it opened almost silently.’
‘Almost silently?’
‘Yes, as though it was overdue for lubrication. I knew then that something was amiss. . but I didn’t think. . wow. .’ Seers shook his head slowly, ‘three skeletons. . all in a row.’
Hennessey kept his own counsel in respect of the discovery of two further skeletons. ‘How long had the deceased, your client, been housebound?’
‘I don’t know, but from my examination of the house I think it could have been a very long time. . twenty, twenty-five years.’
‘As long as that?’
‘Well, he was ninety-seven when he expired, so probably in his seventies when he became housebound. The meals delivery people and the medical people will be able to help you there.’
‘Yes, we’ll be talking to them.’
‘The kitchen garden could have been abandoned thirty plus years ago. . the outbuildings. . it was like going back in time, a car from the 1930s, a lawnmower of similar age, really robust looking garden tools, the sort of kit that would last a gardener all his working life.’ Seers paused. ‘Sorry, this is your area of expertise, not mine, but some years ago, long time ago now, when my wife and I were newly married and in our first house. . our next door neighbour was an elderly lady. . lovely old soul and we noticed how she was often, and I mean very frequently, visited by youths and children, even as young as twelve years, girls as well as boys. She used to call them her “young visitors”. Said young visitors always carried bags which appeared to be laden when they arrived and empty when they left just a few moments later, so they were not stealing from her house and because of that we delayed calling the police. . you gentlemen. . but we did eventually phone the police.’
‘They were depositing stolen goods in her house to collect later.’
‘Yes,’ Seers nodded, ‘that was it exactly.’
‘I was ahead of you. . that does happen from time to time, sadly so,’ Hennessey growled, ‘makes you angry.’
‘Yes,’ Seers glanced at the sky and mopped his brow, ‘it made us very angry. . all the people in the area, not just my wife and I. Lovely old lady and they were exploiting her like that. I mention that incident because the same thing probably happened here. . someone. . some felons chanced upon Bromyards and realized that it provided an excellent place to deposit illegal matter. Not stolen goods, as in the case of the elderly lady’s house all those years ago. . but bodies. I mean, three skeletons all in a row. . even I know that that has to be murder.’
‘Indeed. .’ Hennessey replied and at that moment his attention was drawn to a red and white Riley circa 1947, which was driven slowly and was carefully parked beside a police patrol car. As he watched the car Hennessey felt a rush of warmth within him and his chest seemed to expand.
‘Lovely old car,’ Seers commented. ‘It looks quite at home here.’
‘Yes, it belongs to our pathologist. I’ll have to go and talk to her. . but thank you, Mr Seers, it’s been very useful. One of my colleagues will have to call on you and take a written statement in the next few days.’
‘Of course,’ Seers smiled. ‘I quite expect that.’
‘But thank you again.’
Strange things had happened to the man during his life, strange other-worldly supernatural experiences, such as the elderly relative who appeared to him at what transpired to be the precise moment of her death and who looked at him with warning and admonition and disapproval in her eyes. He had also once walked into an alley in a northern city and sensed that ‘something happened’ in the alley, and later found out that a violent murder had once occurred there. The ghosts he had seen, three all told, in his life, when other people in his company saw nothing of them. He also knew that things had happened before any news was broken or any report made. He was sitting in the front room of his home reading the
His wife turned and nodded solemnly, and replied, ‘I know,’ she sliced potatoes and dropped them into the steamer, ‘this morning.’
‘You said nothing?’
‘I was waiting to see if you felt it. If you hadn’t said anything I would have told you after lunch.’
‘I see. When did it come to you?’
‘About fifteen minutes ago.’
‘They will be finding them just now in that case.’
‘Yes,’ his wife replied calmly. ‘So now we have to wait; now we will find out if we were as careful as we thought we were.’
‘We took all the top clothes to charity shops in different towns and nothing less than one hour’s drive from
