Lonelyheart 4122
Colin Watson
Chapter One
Arthur Henry Spain, butcher, of Harlow Place, Flaxborough, awoke one morning from a dream in which he had been asking all his customers how to spell “phlegm” and thought—quite inconsequentially: I haven’t seen anything of Lilian lately.
He nudged his wife.
“What do you reckon’s up with Lil?”
“Up with her? What do you mean?”
“Well, she’s not been round for ages.”
“She suits herself.”
“I’ve not seen her in the shop either.”
Mrs Spain pondered a moment. Then she shrugged away whatever thought had wriggled into her mind. “Oh, you know what Lil is. Probably taken the huff about something.”
“I’ll ask Mrs Maple.”
“Just as you like.”
Mr Spain did ask Mrs Maple. He had a word with Doris Bycroft, too. Then with the window cleaner from Cadwell Avenue. Quite casually, in the way of daily business. But none of them remembered having seen Mrs Lilian Bannister during the past two or even three weeks. Mr Spain resolved to call at her house on his very next early closing day.
He went there straight from the shop, thinking that lunch time would be the best occasion to find his sister- in-law at home; she was a stickler for her meals routine still, after nearly two years of widowhood.
He walked up the path of the small, semi-detached house in Cadwell Close and rang the bell. He waited and rang the bell again, this time without hope. Nothing happened. Mr Spain pushed back the flap of the letter box and peered in. A stair-post, shiny brown lino, an oak hall stand—all neat, clean and rather depressing.
Mr Spain unlatched the side gate and made his way to the back of the house, glancing through the windows of the sitting room, with its cold, bulgy leather suite; and of the kitchen, that looked designed for the preparation of tinned salmon sandwiches and bedtime Horlicks and nothing else; until he arrived at a door porched within a little glasshouse.
Here he experienced his first wave of real alarm. Ranged tidily beneath a slatted wooden bench were more than a dozen bottles of milk. The contents of those at the back were flocculent and tinged with a watery green.
He tried the door, found it locked as he had expected and went back to the front.
A woman stood on the path, gazing up dubiously at the bedroom windows. She was a very ordinary looking woman, middle-aged, dumpily dressed, bespectacled and hatted.
“Yes?” Mr Spain growled at her. He hadn’t meant to sound hostile, but the sight of the milk bottles had upset him.
The woman smiled nervously, then looked back at the house. “There doesn’t seem to be anyone in.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“I’ve called several times.” A touch of complaint was in her voice; it annoyed him.
“What for?”
“Well, to get in. It’s mine—or it will be on the 25th. That’s what I...”
“Yours?” Mr Spain’s small eyes were nearly swallowed in a scowl of incredulity.
“Yes, we’ve bought it. Me and my husband.”
It was true. Mr Spain went round to the estate agent whose name, like scriptural authority, the woman had quoted in final answer to his questioning. The agent confirmed that Mrs Bannister had asked him a couple of months ago to sell the house; he understood that a contract had been signed and that possession was to be given within the next few days.
“What on earth is the woman up to?” Mr Spain asked his wife over a delayed and somewhat acrimonious lunch. “She never said anything to us.”
Mrs Spain cut savagely into a suet pudding.
“What did that agent have to tell you about it?”
“Nothing, really. They don’t care, once the thing’s off their books.”
“No, and I don’t suppose he cares that there’s nearly a hundred pounds of ours in that house.”
“Well,
“Who’s the solicitor? She’d have to do it through a solicitor?”
“Scorpe, probably.”
She nodded imperatively. “You can go and see him this afternoon.”
“Yes, but...”
“Go and see him.”
Somewhat to Mr Spain’s surprise, Mr Justin Scorpe obviously found his visit welcome. He was, he admitted, a
