‘Did you find out anything about him, anything at all?’
‘Came from Barrie, he said. He did tell me that.’
‘Barrie?’
‘Confess I had never heard of the place, but it’s north of Toronto. I could name Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver as Canadian cities but never heard of Barrie. . spelled with an “ie” at the end, not a “y”.’
‘Well, you got closer than anyone, physically closer, that is to say, and so we’d like you to help us construct a photofit of the man, or rather a computer generated image. What time would suit you?’
Selsey gave Yellich a sour look, ‘If you could manage to avoid weekend evenings I’d appreciate it.’
‘Later today perhaps?’ Yellich suggested. ‘Would that be convenient?’
Carmen Pharoah drove away from Stanley Hemmings’s house and then parked her car and walked back the 200 yards and knocked on his neighbour’s door. Her knock sounded loudly and hollowly within the house. As she waited for the knock to be answered she glanced at Hemmings’s house. She did not see him and thus was relieved that he clearly had not seen her. If he had noticed her it would not have mattered, but on balance, she preferred him not to have seen her. It made things easier somehow. The door was eventually opened by a late middle-aged woman, short, with a pinched face, who met Carmen Pharoah with a cold stare and clear dislike of Afro-Caribbeans.
‘What?’ She demanded. ‘What is it? What do you want? Who are you?’
‘Police.’ Carmen Pharoah showed the woman her ID.
‘Oh?’ The woman seemed to relax her attitude a little, though she still demanded ‘What?’ for a fourth time.
‘May I come inside? I’d like to ask you some questions.’ Carmen Pharoah asked calmly.
‘About what?’
‘Your neighbour.’
‘Which neighbour?’
‘Mr Hemmings.’
‘Oh. . those two?’ The woman sniffed disapprovingly.
‘Yes, those two.’
The woman stepped nimbly to one side and allowed Carmen Pharoah to enter her house. Carmen Pharoah read a neat, well kept, clean but spartan home; hence, she realized, the echoing quality to her knock, there being little to soften the sound. ‘Second on the left,’ the woman said, closing the front door behind her.
Carmen Pharoah entered the living room which had upholstered furniture and a table covered in a brown cloth. Of daffodils in vases and a small television set in the corner of the room on a small table. A modest coke fire glowed dimly in the hearth. The window of the room looked out over a small but well tended rear garden and the wooden fence which divided her property from Stanley Hemmings’s property.
‘Well, sit down,’ the woman spoke snappily, ‘the chairs don’t bite.’
‘Thank you.’ Carmen Pharoah settled on the settee and opened her notepad. ‘Can I ask your name, please?’
‘Winterton. Amelia. Miss.’
‘Occupation, please.’
‘Schoolteacher, retired recently, a few months ago. Still don’t know what to do with all my free time.’
Carmen Pharoah shuddered internally. She felt she knew the type of schoolteacher Winterton, Amelia, Miss, had been, acid-tongued, short-tempered. She had survived just one such teacher in her primary school on St Kitts.
‘So, you are enquiring about the couple next door?’
‘Yes. . yes, we are.’
‘She disappeared I heard. . it’s the talk of the street.’
‘So we believe.’
‘Oh, well, don’t know what I can tell you. . probably not much at all. He was a long time bachelor and then he takes her for his wife. I don’t think she was a happy woman.’
‘Why do you say that? Did they argue?’
‘No, I never heard any arguments or rows, nothing like that, not ever. She just didn’t seem right for him. If you ask me they made an odd couple. You know Stanley, he works in the biscuit factory, harmless, kind old man, sort of character that you find in children’s books, like the toymaker, and she. . sort of brash and materialistic. I just never saw her looking happy, if you see what I mean, and often going out alone. . separate. . by herself. But when we talked, over the back fence sort of chats, that is Stanley and I, I never talked to her, he just sang her praises all the time. Edith did this and Edith does that. He seemed so proud of her, but frankly I never saw her do anything. . good or bad. You know once I called round one Sunday morning because the brain-dead paperboy had delivered their newspapers to my address by mistake and he was in the kitchen in a pinafore very contentedly preparing Sunday lunch and I called again the same day and he was back in the pinafore equally contentedly doing the washing-up, and madam was just nowhere to be seen. He seemed to worship her and do everything in the house. She just scowled all the time.’
‘I see.’
‘Mind you, that Sunday I mention, in fairness that was just one day and so it might have been atypical. But I never saw her do any work. Never saw her weed the garden, put out the laundry on the line. She never brought shopping home, only him, only ever him in the garden, only ever him bringing the shopping home. She seemed to be content to stay in the house. They went out together occasionally in their little ex-post office van. She also wore a wig, she seemed to fancy being a blonde from time to time.’
‘Yes. . the wig.’
‘She would go out alone in the evening. That’s something she did do, go out by herself. I heard her heels click, click, click away into the night and she’d return late at night. It was a strange union, ill-matched. I could never see what they saw in each other. He seems lost now though. You know I went round yesterday to see if he needed any help at this difficult time. . found him sobbing his eyes out. . poor man. . he must have loved her very much.’
Yellich and Webster returned to Micklegate Bar Police Station. Upon arrival they shared the recording to be added to the file of the murder of Edith Hemmings. Yellich recorded the longer interview with Alexander Beattie and Webster the two shorter interviews with Ben Tinsley and Terry Selsey.
Yellich then drove thankfully home to his new build house in Huntingdon to the north of York. He halted the car by the side of the road as Jeremy ran out of the house to greet him and Yellich braced himself for the impact of the heavy, and large for his age, twelve-year-old. Father and son walked hand in hand back to the house where Sara Yellich welcomed her husband with a warm smile and told him that Jeremy had been a very good boy since he returned home from school that afternoon. Later, when he had changed into more casual clothes, Somerled Yellich took Jeremy for a walk in the fields close to their home as a reward for being a good boy and they observed the beginning of spring, the snowdrops and crocuses, the first leaves on some species of tree. . and geese. . a skein of geese flying northwards against the grey sky.
Somerled and Sara Yellich had, like all couples in such circumstances, experienced feelings of disappointment when told that their son would not be of normal intelligence but would be deemed ‘special needs’. In Jeremy Yellich’s case the diagnosis being Down’s Syndrome. But as Jeremy grew a new world opened up to them as they met other parents of similar children and formed real and lasting friendships with them. Jeremy too had given so much, developing as he had into a loving and trusting individual and one who would never be a source of angst to his parents as he grew into a teenager. For Jeremy Yellich the future would be of semi-independent living in a supervised hostel as he entered what might, sadly, be a short adult life with him achieving a mental age of approximately twelve years.
Later that evening Somerled and Sara Yellich sat with each other, resting against each other sipping wine and listening to Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto. There was just nothing they needed or had to say to each other.
THREE
Thursday, March twenty-sixth, 09.10 hours — Friday 02.00 hours in which a trail is followed, a revelation made, and Reginald Webster and Thomson Ventnor are separately at home to the kind reader.