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Something had been niggling at Lizzie all evening, so she left her lonely supper of cheese and toast and an apple and went back to the scene of crime, arriving at just past ten that night. It was a lonely, empty place now, unlike the hurly burly of the murder scene that morning. All that remained on the outside was the fluttering police ribbons, made grey and orange by the flat light from the sodium street lights. The Victorian house itself loomed out of the night, tall, thin, much older than the semis either side of its neglected, overgrown garden, weeds and wild bushes looming like dark shapeless forms in the night. The ancient sign proclaiming its name, ‘Deep Woods’, hung on the side of the porch way, swinging slightly, despite there being no breeze. It creaked on its chains. She fished the key from her pocket and walked up the gravelled path. She mused at how alone and important the house would have been in its heyday, a hundred years or more before, built as it had been at the very end of the Victorian era, a time when Oxford had not spilled up Iffley or Cowley Road, when one was a small village, the other a collection of farms, before even Morris had the idea of mending bicycles, let alone building affordable automobiles in a factory.
She flicked the light switch on and off a few times. She was sure that uniform had got the electricity reconnected that morning, the victim, in her nineties, had been disconnected some days before. Poor old thing, living alone in this great monstrosity for decades, forgotten and alone, all living relatives far away, and not really bothered, either, going from how hard it had been to get anyone to do a formal ID. In the end the community nurse had to do it. Had wanted her to move into a home, but the old dear refused to leave her family home and her sisters and mother, or something. Sounded crazy, but Lizzie had been told firmly by the nurse she’d had all her marbles.
Lizzie rushed back to her car for the heavy torch and went back, straight into one of the imposing reception rooms, long ago converted into a bedroom for the victim. There, on the dressing table, next to the talc and lavender toilet water and cold face cream was the white jewellery box, as Lizzie had remembered. Inside was little, as she had already seen that morning. She lifted the top layer and rooted about among the few costume necklaces and broaches until she felt a catch, and a second layer was then able to be removed, a much shallower tray than would have been guessed at. Inside was a red leather bound journal. Lizzie gingerly opened it – there, in spidery handwriting in lavender ink was the date from a few months back. She flipped through it. The last entry was only a couple of days a go, a day before her murder.
Lizzie looked up sharply, spinning around with a gasp.
With a pop, the hallway lights came back on.
Lizzie let out a sigh. She was relieved the electricity was on, and tried not to be freaked out by the way it came on as she found the diary. It was a coincidence, she was sure. She looked at the bed, with its old fashioned eiderdown counterpane, fluffy blankets and pink winceyette sheets and then at the floor, blood and other stains still there on the rug, where she had been brained with a frying pan, now with forensics to see if it gave then any DNA other than the victims, and shuddered.
Lizzie had sat at the dining table for a long while, engrossed in the minutiae of the elderly lady’s sharp observations of her neighbours, her exact recording of her mundane and lonely life, along with painful memories of her life, of lost children and a long buried husband, and a repeating guilt at attending some college ball with a student way back in the 1900s... no, that couldn’t be right, that would make her well past a hundred years old.
The dining room door suddenly slammed. Lizzie looked up, startled. She got up and opened it again, and as she did so she could have sworn she heard someone upstairs.
“Hello? Is anyone there? This is DS Maddox. This is a crime scene...” Lizzie called out as she climbed the stairs. She checked out the upstairs, flicking each light switch as she came to the rooms, but more than half were without a bulb, so she ended up flashing her torch in every room, brandishing it like a weapon. The rooms were either empty, or the furniture in the middle of the room, covered with ancient, greying and decaying dust sheets, but all entirely empty of people.
It must be the wind, Lizzie decided; despite the fact the night was a still, muggy night for the season.
As she came down stairs, she heard the front door open. “Who’s there?” she called, alarmed that her voice shook a little.
The lights went out again with a louder pop. Lizzie heard stumbling footsteps coming towards her, and without thinking, she lashed out, yelling, “Police!”
Her fist connected with something reassuring solid and mundane and fully human. The shoulder, probably, she thought. They gave a reassuring normal cry of “OW!” too, followed by,
“What was that for?”
“Who is it?” Lizzie demanded, or rather, she wanted to demand, but her voice still shook a little, she was a bit more unsettled by the unexplained bangs and footsteps than she would admit to.
“It’s me. Hathaway,” came a reassuring, if a little bemused, voice in the dark.
“Oh Sir! Thank God...”
“What’s going on Maddox? You called me, to say you’d found some evidence, her journals, there’s no need to sound so surprised. And why hit me? What’s been going on?”
“Sorry boss. I was a bit spooked. The lights have been playing silly buggers, and the wind’s been slamming doors and creaking floorboards. Old house I suspect.”
“There is no wind,” Hathaway said, mystified. “Show me this journal then.”
Lizzie flashed her torch towards the dining room door, and as she did so, the lights went back on with no sound at all. She flinched. James noticed but made no comment. Living alone was obviously getting to her. The sooner Tony came back, the better, he decided.
He sat down at the table, and pulling on a pair of gloves, began to read the entries, starting at the back as Lizzie had done. She stood behind him.
“I was only informing you. I didn’t expect you to come out. You could have waited ’til morning.”
“I wasn’t doing anything, and so far, we have no leads, do we?”
Lizzie didn’t answer as just then she heard another floorboard creak, this time on the stairs. She looked at her boss. Evidently, from his startled face, he had heard it too.
“What were you doing? Upstairs? When I arrived?”
“I heard someone up there.”
“What did you find?”
For some reason, both officers were whispering.
Hathaway pointed to the door, and they both went to the hallway and looked up the stairs.
“There’s no one,” Lizzie breathed out, relieved. For some reason, her quiet voice echoed up the stairs in a way it hadn’t before, when her inspector had arrived. She looked up at her boss, who was standing at the foot of the staircase, his face a look of concentration, obviously listening. He looked at Lizzie, putting his finger to his lips.
She could hear it too. People. Talking. A conversation, words murmured, just too far away to make out what was being said, but enough to know the voices were female, far away but in the house.
The dining room door slammed shut again. Both officers flinched, then looked at each other in alarm.
Hathaway pointed to the dining room door while he began to climb the stairs himself, long legs trembling his tight suit trousers, Lizzie noticed, giving her little confidence as she went back to the room where they’d been, holding her torch out in front of her like a weapon.
As Lizzie approached the table she felt the cool breath of someone close by, behind her, breathing gently on her neck...
Meanwhile, as James went into the first bedroom at the top of the stairs and as he stepped inside he felt a cool breath huff against the back of his neck...
Lizzie span around to see...
There was no one there; James was startled to find. He had half convinced himself his sergeant was playing a prank, but no...
“No one,” Lizzie said aloud, to give herself courage...
Just then, both officers, apart by a whole floor, heard the same thing, a child’s voice, annoyed,
“Make them leave Mamma, the police never helped us.”