‘What do you think had happened?’

‘He tapped him for some money. That’s what I felt. Since then I’ve only ever had the impression of the brother visiting Mr Williams whenever he wanted money. Nothing regular about the visits…I mean, I’ve got one surviving brother and we see each other at the Sun each Sunday lunchtime. It was nothing like that. Mr Williams’s brother would visit as and when and stay for about half an hour then he’d not visit again for three, four months, then he’d turn up and leave again as though he’d got what he wanted. Didn’t take to him. Mrs O’Shea told me that Mr Williams was upset that his brother had kept his wife and children in the car when they visited that first time, he felt as if his brother was ashamed of him.’

‘Ashamed?’

‘Well, Mr Williams, he was about that high.’ Sam Sprie held a sinewy arm out level about three feet from the concrete path on which he and Yellich’s chairs stood.

‘Was he self-conscious about it?’

‘Well, if he was, his brother hiding him from his sister-in law and nephew and niece didn’t help, especially when the only reason they visited was to tap him for cash.’

‘It wouldn’t. I’m surprised he entertained his brother at all.’

‘He was a generous sort. He had a lake in the grounds.’

‘A lake?’

‘Very big pond, very small lake…it was circular, about from here to that tree from bank to bank.’ Sprie pointed to a magnificent oak tree in a field opposite the line of council houses. Yellich thought the distance between house and tree to be about two hundred yards.

‘Big enough.’

‘It was about ten feet deep with steep sides, it was excavated by the man who had Oakfield House built back in the eighteen-thirties. He created the lake and had it stocked with trout. Anyway, the lake hadn’t been fished for a while before Mr Williams moved in and when he moved in it was just teeming with fish. We were looking over the grounds after he’d taken me on and he told me he wanted the lake filled in. I asked him if we could take the fish, we have an angling club in the village…he said yes…we organized ourselves, no more than six rods at any one time, each man having a four-hour slot…and still it took us a week to fish out the lake. He was generous like that, but that week sticks in my mind because there were more folk in the grounds than ever before or since, and in that week I never saw Mr Williams once. But he was accepted well after that, people knew about him, and left him alone…not like the group of weirdos that are in there now…we don’t know what’s going in the house, aye.’

‘Any other visitors that you recall?’

‘Only one, a young man, called a few times…this was in the last year of Mr Williams’s life…a friend, a relative…I got the impression that he was calling on Mr Williams, not his money…he also liked the dogs and they took to him after a while…throwing sticks for them. He was seen in the village at about the time Mr Williams died. Not by me, by Sydney Tamm. He used to be the church warden at St Mark’s.’

‘Used to be?’

‘He’s still alive…’

‘Where do I find him?’

‘Ask at the vicarage. That’s St Mark’s.’ Sprie pointed to a steeple, dark grey against the blue sky. ‘The vicarage is behind the church. The vicar will put you right.’

‘I used to enjoy doing for Mr Williams.’ Tessie O’Shea sat in an armchair with a black cat on her lap. ‘Just me and Petal now, isn’t it, Petal? You know, you get to an age when all you can do is enjoy each day for its own sake and not worry too much about the future.’ Tessie O’Shea’s cottage was small and cosy and warm and homely. As much as Sam Sprie’s garden had been a gardener’s garden, Yellich thought that Tessie O’Shea’s cottage was a domestic worker’s domicile.

It was a stone-built structure with thick stone walls which Yellich knew would be warm in the winter when the open hearth was burning and he noted it to be cool in the summer.

The stonework above the door of the cottage had a date—1676 AD—carved into it and it sobered Yellich to ponder that when Napoleon retreated from Moscow Mrs O’Shea’s cottage was already in excess of two hundred and thirty years old. ‘But you want to know about Mr Williams?’

‘Yes. Huge house for you to look after.’

‘If he lived in all of it, it would have been, but he had the one bedroom, the one sitting room, the one study, he ate in the kitchen. The rest of the house gathered dust. So I could manage it. You know when I said he used to eat in the kitchen, I meant that he sat down with me and ate at the kitchen table, me and him ate together, him in his high chair…what kind of man would sit down and eat with his domestic? A gentleman would, that’s who would. He was a gentleman, treated me as an equal. I loved working for him. I did better for him because of it…his attitude, I mean. I always made sure he had plenty of tinned food in so he could survive if I wasn’t there, so he didn’t have to go out to the shops. He was a bit shy about his height, he was a small man, about three feet high. It wasn’t so bad when I was ill for a day or two, or at the weekends, but I used to enjoy a fortnight in Ramsgate every July. I’d worry about him then.’

‘I understand that it was yourself who found his body?’

‘Aye…me…I’ll never forget it…I knew something was wrong…the dogs, you see, they were in a strange state…looking sorrowful…whimpering…and they flocked round me when I rode up on my bicycle…as if I was a rescuer. I went into the house…the dogs had licked their water and food bowls dry…so I gave them some water, plenty of water…it was the summertime, this time of year…and then went looking for Mr Williams…calling out his name…found him in the bath…his little body and all that water. Face down, he was. There’s a few things that didn’t add up, oh no, they didn’t, didn’t add up at all.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, for one thing he didn’t take baths. He had a fear of drowning, he had the lake in the grounds filled in for that reason, pretty well the first thing he did was to fill in the lake.’

‘Sam Sprie has just told me, he let the angling club fish it out, and then filled it in.’

‘Yes…that’s right…the village liked him after that…but those people that have got the house now…but anyway, he always took showers, had a platform built to stand on…he had the shower put up for him, bit of a contraption but it worked. Then he had some steps built up to get from the floor onto the platform. The bath was a bit big for him to get into…you imagine a bath ‘Yes.’

‘The rim of which is just below shoulder height as you stand against it, if you’re in it and outstretch your arms, you can touch either side, just, and if you stand at the opposite end of the bath to the taps, it takes you half a dozen full-length strides, at least, to reach the taps…well, that was the size of the bath for Mr Williams. I can see why he was frightened of drowning.’

‘So can I, since you put it like that.’

‘And when I found him, the steps and the platform were up against the wall, well away from the bath…he couldn’t have got into the bath without the steps.’

‘Are you suggesting someone else was involved?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything, but…well, this is going back ten years now…but the bath was filled with tap water.’

Yellich raised his eyebrows as if to say, What other sort of water is there?

‘I mean,’ said Mrs O’Shea. ‘I mean as opposed to water from the shower. The taps on the bath were never used, they hadn’t been used at all during the time that Mr Williams was the owner. The house was empty for a while before Mr Williams moved in…they’d rusted shut…I couldn’t turn them on, I used the water from the shower when I cleaned the bath. I don’t say they were rusted solid, a strong man could have turned them on, but I couldn’t, and Mr Williams didn’t. But when I found him, the shower was dry, not dripping, because Mr Williams never turned it off properly, but the taps were dripping. And I turned them on and then off again, easily, they’d been freed off.’