Aftermath by Peter Turnbull Page A

sir.’
    â€˜Well, what can I say? We . . . my wife and I, were disappointed of course, but he gives us so much. He’s so warm and generous and a whole new world has opened up to us, and for us, as we have met other parents with Down’s Syndrome children.’
    â€˜I know what you mean, sir. You know I loved my son more when he became ill. I just don’t want him to be a future prime minister any more . . . or an international sportsman.’
    â€˜I feel the same. So, Bromyards . . .’ Yellich brought the conversation back on track but he sensed he had developed a rapport with Jeff Sparrow. He sensed he had made an ally.
    â€˜Aye, Bromyards . . . the bodies. I saw the television news last night . . . a rum do.’
    â€˜You wouldn’t know anything about that?’
    Jeff Sparrow smiled. ‘No, it’s ten years now since I left Bromyards. Mr Housecarl just shrank back into the house, lost interest in the garden. They tell me that he was living in just one room at the very end, poor old soul.’
    â€˜He was,’ Yellich nodded and committed the ‘ten years’ to memory. It meant none of the remains could have been there for more than ten years.
    â€˜I just don’t like that thought, the thought of him dying like that. Once he lived in the whole house and saw to it that the gardens and grounds were well tended. Then one by one the staff were let go, and he was generous, each man or woman got a year’s pay as a . . . there’s a word . . .’
    â€˜Severance pay?’
    â€˜Possibly that’s it . . . but a whole year’s money. Generous . . . I used my money to help Tom furnish his flat.’
    â€˜Good of you.’
    â€˜Well, there’s no pockets in a shroud.’
    â€˜Indeed. So tell me about the kitchen garden.’
    â€˜That was one of the last places to be abandoned. The lawn in front of the house was the last part of the garden to be tended to, the kitchen garden was the next last as I recall.’
    â€˜Did it have a lock on the door?’
    â€˜Yes it did, it was always kept well-greased against the elements but it was never locked. I mean, who’s going to walk a mile from the road to steal some carrots and walk a mile back? No need ever to lock the kitchen garden.’
    â€˜So anyone could enter?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Who would know it was there?’
    â€˜All the estate workers . . . whether gardeners or domestics . . . they collected the vegetables.’
    â€˜The domestics dug them up?’ Yellich was surprised at the notion.
    â€˜No, we planted them, we dug them up when they were ready and stored them, the domestics collected them from the vegetable cold store.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜It wasn’t a secret garden like in a children’s storybook.’
    â€˜Could it be overlooked from the house?’
    â€˜Not fully if I remember. If you stood by the door of the garden you could see the upper windows of Bromyards just above the far wall of the garden. So I would say that about two-thirds of the garden, that is the two-thirds nearest the house, could not be overlooked from the house.’
    â€˜Got you.’
    â€˜But I took up the last vegetables just before I left and then closed the door behind me. The old garden just got overgrown I suppose . . . well, it would have done.’
    â€˜Did you ever return to the house?’
    â€˜Bromyards? Yes, I did. I used to walk up there to look at the gardens. I put my life into those acres, there’s a whole lot of me in that soil. So, yes, I used to walk up there, not so often now, but newly left I went up each week to walk the grounds. A lot of folk went to poach and I’d often meet someone I knew with a pair of hares slung over his shoulder . . .’
    â€˜Yes, Penny Merryweather told me that the estate