Felix Francis - Guilty Not Guilty

‘That it had been me who’d killed her,’ I said, finishing her sentence for her.

‘Yes,’ she said sheepishly. She sighed. ‘I wish so much that she had come to stay with us that night, with you being away and all. I asked her to. Then she would still be alive.’

Her tears returned and we all sat in silence for a moment, lost in our own thoughts. Dave took another large gulp of wine.

‘Come on, Dave,’ Nancy said finally. ‘It’s high time we went home.’

She collected her empty casserole dish and the plate that had held the cake, and then steered her unsteady husband across the hall and out through the front door. I smiled to myself. I reckoned he might be in for a bit of a roasting when they got back to the safety of their own home.

It was a difficult time for all of us who were left behind and we all dealt with our grief in different ways. Dave’s method was clearly to hit the bottle, even though he didn’t usually need any excuse to do that at the weekends. For Nancy and me, however, it was mostly dealing with the anger and the guilt — anger that it had happened at all, and guilt that we’d been unable to prevent it.

And the guilt was by far the worse of the two.

I had berated myself thousands of times for having gone to Birmingham without her, or having gone at all, and also for not coming home again that night. All to have had a few glasses of wine at the charity dinner.

For Nancy, it was the guilt of not insisting that Amelia stay over with her and Dave that night, and also for being just across the road from the disaster, almost in full view, but still helpless to stop it.

Nancy and Amelia had been very close, even though Nancy was a few years older. Closer even than sisters. They had shared a special bond insofar that neither of them was able to have children and they had each comforted the other in that respect. And now, just as for me, Nancy’s best friend forever had suddenly gone, cruelly snatched away from life and laughter.

I loaded the dirty plates and glasses into the dishwasher. Then I noticed the little blue-covered notebook lying on the worktop.

I flicked through it and there, sure enough, all on one page near the back were all the login details for Mary Bradbury’s bank accounts, written in Amelia’s fair hand. Just seeing the neat flow of her handwriting caused me to choke back a wave of sorrow.

Thanks to the police, I had no computer to use, so I tried logging in with my replacement mobile phone.

Insert customer number — check.

1st, 3rd, 4th and 8th characters of the password — check.

Security questions: insert favourite place. I looked in the notebook. Venice — check.

Insert favourite book. Rebecca — check.

As if by some form of internet sorcery, Mary’s bank account details suddenly appeared on my screen.

I felt slightly guilty looking at them.

Her balance was almost six thousand and I could see that monthly direct-debit payments would soon be due for such things as gas, electricity and telephone.

But it was the historical transactions that I was interested in.

Fortunately, all account activity for the past seven years could be recalled so I asked the system to look for credits only from three years previously.

One, for just over three million pounds, immediately caught my eye.

That would have been the proceeds of the house sale, wired to Mary’s account by the lawyers, before being then invested in stocks and shares.

I searched for six months before that and for nine months after but there was no other credit remotely close to a hundred thousand, not even a tenth of it.

It didn’t exactly prove that Joe had kept the money — he might have deposited it straight into his mother’s investment plan — but it was enough for me to be suspicious. Plenty more than enough.

Sunday morning dawned with brilliant sunshine in a cloudless sky. Something I sorely needed to try and brighten the gloom and despair that had descended upon me once more.

It was the effect of excessive alcohol, I told myself, but that was only half the story.

For the past eleven days, I had been living in denial, dealing more with trying to prove my innocence of Amelia’s murder rather than with the reality of being permanently left alone. I had been half-expecting her to walk in at any time, laughing that it had all been a great hoax, and I had often caught myself believing I’d heard her voice, maybe in another part of the house, or out in the garden.

But last evening, with the arrival at my door of Dave and Nancy, I had begun to realise the enormous actuality of what had really happened.

As if on automatic pilot, I got up, showered, shaved, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, put on my clothes and went downstairs.

Sunday mornings at the Old Forge had always been lazy affairs.

Amelia would wear her dressing gown, cooking ham and cheese omelettes for breakfast, while I went to collect the Sunday papers. And then we would nestle together on the sofa, eating and reading.

During the winter months, I would light a fire in the sitting-room grate and we would pass the day in happy contentment, often making love in the afternoon on the carpet in front of the fire, bathed in the warming glow from the hot embers.

But, on this particular Sunday, the only things lying on the sitting-room carpet were the stacks of papers I had removed from Amelia’s desk.

I returned everything to the drawers from which it had come, even, for some reason, placing the Living or Dying with My Friend Suicide booklet back inside the cookery magazine as if accepting that, if Amelia had wanted it so hidden, I wasn’t going to differ.

Next I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee.

Damn it . I should have asked Nancy if she had any spare milk. I also found black coffee rather bitter but I didn’t fancy putting sugar in it.

Thinking about Nancy made me realise that there had been something else she’d mentioned on Friday that was relevant. She had said that Amelia had told her that Joe had conspired together with the estate agent. How had Amelia known? Had she simply assumed it was true, or had she been in contact with the agent directly?

With a jug in my hand as the pretext, even though it was true, I walked across the road and pushed the bell on the Fadeley front door.

From deep within, I heard a raised male voice ask, ‘Who the bloody hell is that at this ungodly time on a Sunday morning?’

Oops.

‘Dave, be quiet,’ said a female voice from much closer. Nancy.

She opened the door, wearing a thin housecoat.

I glanced past her.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said. ‘He can be a real pain when he’s been drinking. Got a thumping hangover too, but it’s no more than he deserves.’

‘Tell whoever it is to get lost,’ Dave shouted from somewhere out of sight upstairs.

‘Shut up, Dave,’ Nancy shouted back. ‘It’s Bill.’

A head with tousled brown hair appeared around a door frame, and bleary eyes finally focused on me.

‘Bit bloody early for a Sunday.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Dave. My fault entirely. Couldn’t sleep.’

The head disappeared.

‘What did you want?’ Nancy asked sweetly.

I held up the jug. ‘Do you have any spare milk?’

‘Of course.’

I remained at the door as she went to the kitchen and returned with an unopened carton.

‘Have this,’ she said. ‘We have plenty.’

‘Thanks.’ I took the carton from her.

‘Just one other thing,’ I said. ‘You mentioned on Friday that Amelia told you that her brother had conspired with the estate agent who sold her mother’s house. Did she say how she knew that?’