Felix Francis - Guilty Not Guilty

Especially when it wasn’t true.

But did they care?

Not one bit. They had probably filmed themselves doing it, and shared the footage with their supposed ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat, possibly all four.

With mounting trepidation I walked over to the front door.

As DS Dowdeswell had indicated, a large padlock hung on a shiny metal hasp that had been firmly attached to the heavy oak door and surround without any thought for the damage caused to the listed woodwork. English Heritage would have had a fit if they’d known.

The third key I tried fitted and the shackle snapped up.

I pushed open the door and stepped into what felt like an alien world of no warmth, no joyous delight at my arrival, no exclamation of love — no life.

Amelia and I had adored this house. We had transformed the dark drab interior of our purchase into a bright vibrant living space where we loved to entertain or just have quiet dinners à deux on our laps, sitting side by side on the sofa facing a roaring log fire in the space that had once held the blacksmith’s furnace.

But now it was cold and dark and silent — unwelcoming.

I switched on the lights in the hall but it made little difference.

It wasn’t so much the house that was dead, more my aching heart.

I picked up the post that had accumulated on the mat, most of it online shopping brochures addressed to Amelia, many of them encouraging early purchases for Christmas. But among the other detritus were three white envelopes addressed to me. Bills , I thought, and stuffed them into my trouser pocket, unopened.

Next I went upstairs to the master bedroom, collecting my black suitcase from a landing cupboard on the way.

So far, I had held things together pretty well, but the sight of our bed made me gasp out loud. My side was undisturbed while the other was turned back as if Amelia had just got out to go to the bathroom, her reading glasses still on the bedside table where she would have put them after checking her emails, something she had done every night before she went to sleep.

I lay down and wept, pushing my face deep into her pillow to try and detect her pheromones, to smell her scent one last time, but nothing remained. It was as if she had never been there.

After a while, the bout of sobbing subsided and I was able to get up and continue my packing, but I had no heart for it.

I wasn’t even fully aware of what I was putting in the suitcase, although I was careful to include my black tie. My father had a penchant for demanding that we dress for dinner, especially if there were guests in the castle. It was like travelling back to the 1920s.

‘One has to maintain standards,’ he would claim, as if what one wore made a huge difference.

At least he didn’t insist on white tie and tails, even if he did sometimes wear them himself.

I went into the bathroom.

Every surface was covered in a fine silvery dust and I remembered back to my conversation with the dabs man, the fingerprint finder. I wondered what prints he’d been looking for. No one had taken mine to eliminate them.

I collected my medication from the bathroom cabinet along with a fresh razor and a new tube of toothpaste, mundane necessities in extraordinary circumstances.

I took the suitcase back down to the hall and left it ready by the front door, along with my wellington boots, waxed Barbour jacket and tweed cap — essentials for a trip to Wales in October.

My computer charger was in the study so I went in there and collected it, along with some other bits and bobs from my desk. But I couldn’t find my phone charger.

Where was it?

I needed it as my phone was already running on reserve.

Then I remembered that I had last used the charger in the kitchen on Tuesday afternoon before I’d left for Birmingham.

The kitchen.

I stood in the hall seriously considering leaving it where it was and buying a new one, but where would I find a charger shop on the rural roads between Hanwell and North Wales without going miles off my route, maybe into Telford or Shrewsbury?

Perhaps I could use the internet to order one to be delivered direct to the castle, or simply go without. There was hardly ever any phone signal up there anyway.

But I told myself I was just being silly.

‘Stop being such a wuss,’ I said out loud. ‘Just go in and get it.’

So I went into the kitchen.

It looked just as it always had, apart from the slimy fingerprint dust on every surface and the splintered wood around the back-door lock.

I stared down at the floor but there was no sign of the horror that had occurred. No blood, no stains — nothing, just the washed flagstone floor, same as usual.

I didn’t linger — I had done enough crying for one day — so I picked up the charger from the worktop and left, collecting my stuff from the hall on the way out.

I reapplied the padlock to the front door — I may as well use the extra security — and loaded everything into the boot of the Jaguar. Then I drove out of the village, paused briefly at the main road before turning north, away from Banbury and towards Wales, with the padlock keys in my pocket.

I couldn’t be bothered to take them back to Banbury Police Station.

The police might arrest me for murder but they were unlikely to do so for stealing four keys.

Llanbron Castle sits in a commanding position on the top of a small hill overlooking a curve in the River Dee, just south of Wrexham in North Wales. It was constructed in the late thirteenth century as part of the ring of fortifications built by King Edward I of England to suppress and control the Welsh hordes.

Over time the castle had undergone many changes, not least in the mid-seventeenth century when, after surviving the English Civil War intact, it was besieged and then sacked by parliamentarian forces as a reprisal for supporting the Cheshire Rebellion of 1659, when a group of English and Welsh noblemen unsuccessfully attempted to revive the monarchy.

However, a year later, with Charles II now safely restored to the throne of England, Sir Thomas Humberly, owner of the castle at the time of the revolt, had his neck saved from the axe by the returning king, who then generously rewarded him for his loyalty. He was granted a sum sufficient to restore the structure to its former glory, with enough remaining to transform the former rather austere living quarters into something more luxurious for the period.

Over the next hundred years or so, the castle had again fallen into disrepair before being acquired by the Gordon-Russell family in a somewhat questionable manner.

My six-times-great-grandfather, Herbert Gordon-Russell, later created the first Earl of Wrexham in equally dubious circumstances, had reportedly accepted, unseen, the near-derelict castle as payment for a huge debt run up during a game of whist played in a London house of ill repute.

The afternoon light was beginning to fade as I drove up the long driveway, the sharply defined castle battlements silhouetted against the still-bright western sky.

I wondered what my ancestor Herbert must have thought of his gambling acquisition when he came here for the very first time, taking almost a week to travel from his London home by horse-drawn carriage. Did he consider it a millstone round his neck, as my father did, or as a safe haven from the stresses of an unfair world, as I hoped it might be for me now?

I pulled up in front of the imposing main entrance and my father came out to greet me, as if he’d been watching for my arrival.

‘Hi, Pa,’ I said, climbing out of the Jaguar.

‘William,’ he said, coming forward across the gravel to shake my hand. There were no hugs between male members of the Gordon-Russell family. Even as a small child, I’d only ever greeted my father by shaking his hand and it wasn’t about to change just because my wife was dead. ‘Good journey?’