Deliver Us from Evil by Peter Turnbull Page B

questions.’ Carmen Pharoah asked calmly.
    â€˜About what?’
    â€˜Your neighbour.’
    â€˜Which neighbour?’
    â€˜Mr Hemmings.’
    â€˜Oh . . . those two?’ The woman sniffed disapprovingly.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜Well, sit down,’ the woman spoke snappily, ‘the chairs don’t bite.’
    â€˜Thank you.’ Carmen Pharoah settled on the settee and opened her notepad. ‘Can I ask your name, please?’
    â€˜Winterton. Amelia. Miss.’
    â€˜Occupation, please.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜So, you are enquiring about the couple next door?’
    â€˜Yes . . . yes, we are.’
    â€˜She disappeared I heard . . . it’s the talk of the street.’
    â€˜So we believe.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Why do you say that? Did they argue?’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Yes . . . the wig.’
    â€˜She would go out alone in the evening. That’s something she did do,