Martin Edwards - Yesterday's papers

Harry thought that in days gone by Cyril would have been the first to pass a pearl-handled revolver to a disgraced colleague and suggest that he pop next door to the library and do the decent thing. With an effort, he subdued his rising temper and said, ‘So you still believe he was guilty?’

Cyril smiled again. ‘Oh yes. As sure as I am sitting here, sipping tea and eating more biscuits than are good for me. Take it from me, Harry, for his terrible crime, young Edwin Smith certainly deserved to die.’

After saying goodbye, Harry sat in his car for a few minutes, mulling over what Cyril Tweats had told him. He found it was easy to discount the views of Cyril and Hugo Kellerman about their client’s guilt and at last he understood why Ernest Miller had been equally convinced that Smith’s confession was likely to have been false. One mystery, at least, had been solved. No doubt Marlene had discussed the case avidly with her husband and now, in his retirement, he had decided to poke around.

But in poking around, would he find that the embers of the Carole Jeffries case were far from dead? Harry felt a surge of anxiety on Miller’s behalf. The old man was playing with fire. He resolved to talk to Miller again and find out for certain exactly what he had learned.

The will provided at least a thin excuse for making a weekend call. Jim had kept his promise and had the document typed up before close of business on Friday evening. Harry drove through the quiet city centre streets back to his office and collected it, together with Miller’s red document folder, before setting off for Everton.

The journey took Harry to a maze of back-to-back houses. Every other Saturday from August to May the streets in this part of the city were thronged with supporters making their way to the match. It was a place of fierce loyalties, home to many of its inhabitants from cradle to grave, and yet Harry felt surprised that a man like Miller had stayed here so long. He was not a native of Liverpool and during his working life must have earned good money, with a useful second income whilst his wife was alive. According to the information he had given Harry, he was comfortably off, so why had he not moved upmarket? Had he simply grown accustomed to this place, too set in his ways to contemplate a change — or had the close ties that still kept this community together bound in even such an awkward cuss as Ernest Miller?

Miller’s house stood at the end of Mole Street and commanded a view of an iron foundry and a gasworks. The lace curtains at the windows were in need of a wash and the door had probably not been painted since the Brill Brothers were in the charts. In contrast, the step outside the house next door shone smugly, as if it enjoyed a through scrub once each day. As he parked, Harry noticed a twitching of the neighbour’s curtains. He guessed Ernest Miller seldom had visitors and the arrival of an MG was cause for curiosity.

He pressed the bell and heard its muffled ringing inside. No answer. He tried again with equal lack of response and was about to turn back to his car when the door of the adjoining house opened. A woman of about sixty with impossibly bright auburn hair peered at him like an ornithologist studying a rare species.

‘After Ernie, are you?’

‘I seem to be out of luck. Any idea when he’ll be back?’

‘I can’t understand it. He’s not taken his milk in today, or his News Of The World.’

Puzzled, Harry glanced at Miller’s empty doorstep and letter box. The woman explained, ‘A couple of kids pinched the bottles and the newspaper this morning. They were out of sight before I could get to my front door, the little monkeys. Only seven or eight, they were. If I was their mum, I’d give ’em a good hiding. It’ll be cars they’re stealing next and then who knows what will happen?’

‘Is it unusual for Ernest not to be about on a Sunday?’

‘Put it this way, I’ve lived next to him for years and I’ve never known it before.’

‘You think he’s gone away?’

‘Not without leaving word with me. I always keep an eye on the place for him when he’s gone on holiday and such-like.’ She had the simple confidence of the indispensable. ‘Besides, he was there yesterday. I heard him.’

‘Could he have been taken ill?’

Her expression blended concern, curiosity and excitement at the prospect of drama. ‘That’s what I’m wondering.’

Harry lifted the lid of the letter box. The hall inside was dark and yielded no sign of life. ‘Mr Miller,’ he called, ‘it’s Harry Devlin here.’

‘You’re a friend of Ernie’s, then?’ asked the woman.

‘I’m a solicitor,’ he said firmly, relying on her membership of a generation which retained a residual respect for the mystique of the law.

‘Ah, legal business,’ she breathed.

‘I don’t suppose you have a spare key so that we can go in and check to see that he hasn’t had an accident?’

She shook her head in regret. ‘Oh, Ernie would never let me have a key. He’s always been very close, always kept himself to himself.’

Without much hope, Harry gripped the door handle and gave it a twist. Unexpectedly, the door swung open.

The woman’s eyes opened very wide. ‘Yet he hasn’t been out for the last twenty-four hours. I would have known.’

Harry did not doubt it. Living next door to GCHQ would have carried less risk of surveillance. ‘I think we ought to go inside, don’t you?’

Thrilled, she said, ‘And you don’t reckon we should call the police, Mr…?’

‘Devlin. Harry Devlin.’

She stretched out a hand gnarled with arthritis. ‘Gloria Hegg. Pleased to meet you.’

Harry stepped over the threshold. The hall carpet was patterned with hideous red and yellow flowers; it seemed not to have been swept for weeks. The paper on the walls was peeling at the edges and spiders had traced cobweb patterns down from the picture rail. There were two doors on the right, a third under the staircase and a fourth, in glass, at the end of the corridor. As he took a pace forward, a musty odour made him wrinkle his nose.

Behind him, Gloria Hegg said in a whisper, ‘Something’s not right, Mr Devlin. I can feel it.’

Harry could feel it too. The stillness of the hallway troubled him, but more than that, he felt a chill down his back which he had experienced before. Gritting his teeth as he strove to summon up the courage to go on, he gestured towards the first two doors.

‘Sitting room and dining room?’

She had turned pale. ‘And that one leads down to the cellar. The one at the end takes you into the kitchen and scullery.’

Harry felt her hand grip his shoulder as he opened the sitting-room door. Even before he looked inside, he knew what he would find. When his companion screamed and pitched forward at the sight of the shrivelled body stretched across the floor, he was ready to break her fall.

After he had helped Gloria Hegg into the dining room, found a bottle of brandy in a wall unit and poured her a generous measure, he dialled 999 and summoned the police. His immediate duty done, he felt the numbing shock he had experienced at the discovery of Miller’s corpse begin to give way to a dull ache of despair. Although he had not cared for Miller, the ending of a human life always left him with a feeling of emptiness. Whoever it was who died, how could anyone not mourn the extinction of a fellow human being? And more than that, in the presence of death, how could anyone fail to be reminded of their own mortality?

He decided to pour another brandy for himself. The sight of those sallow features, twisted in an agonised parody of the habitual crooked smile, had filled him with nausea. And yet, for all his anguish, his mind had not seized up. Miller’s death was more than a mere source of misery. It presented him with a new puzzle to solve.