Before the Poison

2

Famous Trials: Grace Elizabeth Fox, April 1953, by Sir Charles Hamilton Morley In his 1946 essay

‘The Decline of the English Murder,’ Mr. George Orwell noted several common elements of the type of murder that provides the greatest amount of entertainment and satisfaction for the English public. In particular, he identified domestic life, sexual passion, paltry amounts of money, and the fear of scandal. While the murder of Ernest Fox does contain a number of these elements, it performs a subtle alchemy on them and presents us with something far more complex and substantial. Nothing about the Fox affair was what it seemed. Ostensibly a reserved, educated and considerate wife and mother, Grace Fox was, in fact, in the throes of a passionate adulterous liaison with a man – nay, a boy – young enough to be her own son. On the surface a devoted wife, she did, according to the evidence presented against her at her trial, poison her husband not only once, but twice. What kind of woman could do such a thing? Well may you ask. We must, however, put ourselves in the jury’s place and ask ourselves, on the basis of the witness testimony and evidence presented, whether indeed Grace Fox was the monster depicted by the prosecution, or was she, in fact, a decent woman driven to an extreme act of evil by a cold, cruel and uncaring husband, and by the unexpected passion and hope unleashed in her by her young lover Mr. Samuel Porter? Our interest in a crime lies not so much in what is abnormal about it, but in those elements we may share with the criminal. Can any one among us, especially those members of the fairer sex, say that Grace Fox was so different from the rest, that she was set apart by anything other than her desperation, her impulses and her poor judgement? Most murders may well be sordid and commonplace affairs, but once in a while a murder grips the imagination of the public owing to the characters of those involved and their heightened circumstances in life and within the communities they inhabit. This is just such a murder. While the details may well be vulgar, even gruesome, the ordinary human tragedy they reveal is what truly grips the audience. It is not that Grace Fox used some hitherto unknown or exotic manner of dispatch; she did not; she used poison. It is not that she showed unusual cunning or intelligence in her planning; on the contrary, she was quite easily apprehended. It is not even that she demonstrated anything unique as regards motive. The age-old love triangle lay at the heart of it all. But as Grace Fox sat in court day after day, silent and unmoving as the witnesses for the prosecution were paraded before her, never flinching as the cruellest and most intimate details of her thoughts and feelings were laid bare in the cold light of the courtroom, we felt that we were in the presence of a great enigma. For there she sat, beautiful in the simplest of clothes, the dark waves of her hair tied back from her pale, expressionless face. Was this, we wondered, the face of a cold-blooded killer?

October 2010

My grief is a sharp blade. It pricks me when I least expect it, digs deep into me, stabs and twists, on and on like a cat worrying a bird. I might be shopping in a supermarket or eating a meal in a restaurant, and my eyes begin to burn with tears, my chest constricts. Once or twice, concerned shop assistants have worried that I was having a heart attack and offered to call an ambulance. Perhaps, in a way, I was.

That first night at Kilnsgate House, it was a dream of Laura that woke me. At least I think it was. Not a recurring dream; I don’t have those. And it wasn’t a nightmare, either, except that the emotions associated with its simple images shook me the way nightmares do.

Laura was laughing over a board game with her brother Clayton – Monopoly, I think – while I was in the next room with the door open, sorting through my things. I had to leave for ever that day and would never see Laura again, though I had no idea why, or even whose idea it was, and I didn’t know what to take with me and what to leave behind. Their unfeeling laughter penetrated me to the core. I was staring at an old black and white photograph of me and a school friend whose name I couldn’t remember. In the photo, I was sitting proudly on my brand-new sledge, and he was standing by me. We both wore mitts and woolly hats with pompoms. I remembered that my father had made that sledge for me, remembered trudging around the scrap-metal yards with him searching for the runners. It had gone like the clappers until I ran it into a tree one day and was lucky to escape with a broken arm. The sledge wasn’t so lucky. Perhaps it was all a bit Citizen Kane, but there I was in the dream looking at this old photograph, crying my eyes out, my life in tatters for no reason I could understand, while my wife and her brother were laughing in the other room over who was buying Madison Avenue. I awoke with a sense of guilt and panic that soon turned into deep sadness and vague anxiety. The digital clock said it was 4.24.

Insomnia was hardly a novelty for me since Laura’s death, especially with the added confusion of my new surroundings, the wind howling outside, the rain lashing against the windowpanes, the water dripping from a broken gutter on to a hollow, echoing surface. The house itself, like Caliban’s island, was full of noises. Creaks in the old wood. An eerie whistling sound. A window rattling in its frame. A groan. A sigh. What sounded like anxious footsteps pacing up and down the corridor outside my bedroom. Lying there, unable to sleep, I began to feel quite scared, the way you do at 4.24 a.m. in an eerie old house, imagining all kinds of terrible creatures of darkness on the prowl. I could hear the soundtrack in my mind, a low-budget horror movie I had scored in my early days, all edgy strings, shrieking brass and staccato percussion. I remembered Heather Barlow and our talk of ghosts.

My anxiety persisted, and in the end, when I thought I could hear the sound of a child crying, I knew that waiting for sleep was futile, so I slipped out of bed, got dressed and headed for the stairs. I think I even searched under the bed first. There was nothing there, of course, nor was there anybody in the corridor, and only my own footsteps made the ancient floorboards creak. No crying child. No abandoned governess hanging from the rafters. Nothing. Too much M. R. James. Or was it Henry James?

It had been my intention, when I first got up, to go down to the kitchen to make myself a pot of tea, then perhaps sit and read for a while until I felt tired again, but I was so edgy by the time I got downstairs that I changed my mind. I knew I shouldn’t, but instead of putting the kettle on for tea, I poured myself a stiff tumbler of duty-free Highland Park, something to take the edge off, to calm my nerves.

I had reconnoitred the downstairs of the house very quickly the previous evening after Heather’s visit, so I knew that the television room was on the eastern side, the opposite side of the vestibule from the kitchen. Perhaps I was risking the wrath of the television licence people, as I hadn’t sorted that out yet – perhaps they had a van lurking down the lane right now – but I didn’t care.

I flipped through the DVDs I had bought in London, mostly old British classics, some I had seen in my youth, or later, and a few others I hadn’t seen at all but had always wanted to watch. The TV set was a good one – I had chosen a brand name I knew I could rely on – and its fifty-inch plasma screen fitted comfortably on the far wall. The picture was excellent, the BluRay player and surround sound ideal. I settled with my whisky into the reclining armchair, which was the perfect distance away to recreate being in a cinema, only I didn’t have to put up with obnoxious people talking behind me, texting on their mobiles, crinkling cellophane bags, or with my feet crunching popcorn and sticking to the cola-flooded floor.

In the end, I decided on Brief Encounter. For many years it had been one of my favourite films, and as it began, I sipped my whisky, snug in my armchair, a blue and white striped blanket I’d found in one of the cupboards wrapped around me, legs propped up on the footrest. The wind raged outside, the bumps and creaks continued within, and I tried to push the sense of uneasiness from my mind as Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson played out their tragic and so-very-English little drama in the old Carnforth railway station against Rachmaninov’s lush romantic piano concerto.

I awoke in the armchair with a stiff neck at about nine o’clock in the morning, the heavy curtains blocking out any early sunlight there might be. When I shuffled to my feet and flung them open, I saw that last night’s wind and rain had washed and scrubbed the landscape clean. It was all blue sky, green grass and silver limestone again, all planes, curves and angles like an abstract landscape, autumn leaves drifting across. A David Hockney Yorkshire Dales, perhaps. Even better than I had imagined it would be.

The TV screen was still showing the menu for Brief Encounter with a snippet of Rachmaninov playing over and over again. I couldn’t recall getting to the end of the film. Half my whisky was still in the glass on the arm of the chair. I walked into the vestibule, expecting to find a newspaper jammed in the letterbox and letters all over the floor, but there was nothing, only the refracted light through stained glass dancing on the walls and carpet.

I wandered into the kitchen and checked the cupboards, but I soon realised with a sinking feeling that there was no coffee-maker. Heather Barlow had brought me a vacuum pack of Douwe Egberts filter roast, and the previous owner may have left me a grandfather clock, a grand piano and any number of other odds and ends, but no one had left me a coffee-maker, alas, not even a simple Melitta filter or Bodum cafetiere.

Starting to panic a little – I can’t function without my morning coffee – I tried desperately to think of a solution. There was roll of kitchen paper, which looked strong enough to work as a filter, so I put the kettle on and doubled up a piece. When the kettle had boiled, I spooned what I thought was enough coffee on to the paper and tried to hold its edges over a cup with one spread hand, while I poured, slowly and carefully, with the other. It didn’t work very well, and the soggy paper dropped to the bottom of the cup, though fortunately it didn’t burst open. I left it there for a few minutes then used a spoon to try to fold it and lift it out and drop it in the rubbish. The result in the cup tasted a bit like metallic dishwater, but it was better than nothing.

As I sipped the dreadful liquid, I realised that I was hungry. Despite all the food Heather Barlow had brought me, I hadn’t actually eaten anything but a chocolate digestive since the previous lunchtime. Luckily, I’m a fair cook – Laura and I often had to share cooking duties owing to the vagaries of our respective jobs – so it was no great chore for me to whip up a plate of bacon, a cheese and mushroom omelette, and toast. After that, I felt much better and decided I needed a cup of tea to take away the taste of the coffee. Morning sunlight streamed in through the east-facing window and bathed the kitchen in gold. I decided I liked it the way it was and wouldn’t make any changes there. I wasn’t too sure about the rest of the house. It was time to make my daylight inspection.

I carried my tea with me and walked through the door beside the stairs into the living and dining area at the back of the house. It was big enough to hold a society ball. The grand piano at its centre was an old Steinway, its black lacquered surface chipped in places, ivory keys worn over the years, and stained yellow, like English teeth. It looked as if a dog had been chewing at the legs. It didn’t take me more than a few notes to realise that Heather Barlow had been right about finding a piano tuner.

At the eastern end of the room, to the right of the piano as I faced the back windows, the tan three-piece suite was arranged in a spacious semicircle around the glass-topped table in front of a huge stone fireplace. I found myself mentally claiming the chair on the right, angled so that it showed the view, with just enough flat space on the arm to rest a glass without its falling off.

At the western end stood another fireplace and a simple, sturdy dining table with eight chairs, though there was space enough for more, a large mirror hanging on the wall and a swing door leading through to the kitchen on the left. Perhaps I would throw large dinner parties when I got to know a few people. I loved to cook for company. The walls were painted in light earth, terracotta and desert shades, all a bit Santa Fe, but I saw no reason to change that. I had always liked Santa Fe. I guessed that the room had probably once been divided into two, perhaps even three, but I liked the openness, the sense of light and space. A hangover from life in southern California, perhaps.

This was the back of the house, facing the dale’s northern slope, and it had no side windows. There were, however, two large picture windows, one by the dining area and another by the three-piece suite. At the centre, between them, French windows led from the room into the garden, where an ornate circular wrought-iron table with six matching chairs stood on a stone patio under the shade of a copper beech. A perfect spot for a barbecue, another item to add to my list.

I went outside. Though there was a definite autumn chill in the air, it was pleasant enough to sit for a while in my sweater, sip my tea and watch the leaves fall. Other than the slight rustling or scratching sound they made as they fell, it was quite silent. There was a little garden shed, and on inspection I found the usual tools, weedkiller, spiders and plant pots. Perhaps I would take up gardening. There was no wall at the back. The garden simply sloped up from the patio through long grass to the treeline. I imagined sitting outside in spring and summer enjoying morning coffee, toast and marmalade, reading the papers, watching the flycatchers and warblers, robins, finches and thrushes flit from tree to tree, listening to the blackbird’s song. How my father would have loved it. How Laura would have loved it.

Then two large magpies flapped across the garden, and the moment was gone, the spell broken.

I was planning to work on a non-film project, a piano sonata I had been thinking about since Laura’s death. This was to be a major, long-term project, music people would listen to, I hoped, and even remember me by. Even though I had the grand piano, I would still need a study, somewhere I could park my laptop, send emails, check websites and contemplate the fruits of my labours. One of the spare upstairs bedrooms, I thought, would suit me perfectly.

The obvious choice was the other corner bedroom at the front of the house, but that, I decided, would make an excellent guest bedroom. It was the same size as the one I had chosen and also had en suite facilities. There was a double bed, bedside tables with lamps, and a large oak wardrobe, the heavy, old kind with a full-length mirror on the door. For some reason, it gave me a shiver up my spine. Perhaps I had once imagined monsters hiding in an old wardrobe and emerging when the lights went out? I gave it a wide berth. The cornices on the ceiling were elaborate bacchanalian swirls of grapes and laurels, as in my own bedroom.

I found myself drawn to one of the smaller back rooms – there were four of them in all, opening off the corridor that split the upstairs back half of the house into two, ending in a leaded-glass casement window looking out over the back garden.

The room I chose was a plain, small room right at the back, perhaps at one time a sitting room, study or sewing room, with nothing much to recommend it on the surface, except that it had windows at the back and side. But there was something about the atmosphere, a feeling, a tingling sensation in my spine, something I couldn’t put my finger on, that drew me to it and made the decision for me.

It bothered me because I don’t usually get feelings like that. I suppose I consider myself to be a fairly rational being – for a musician, that is – an atheist with no particular belief in life beyond the grave, or in a spirit world. But nor had I ever been the sort of person who pooh-poohed anything beyond the merely solid, physical and concrete. I had met enough gurus and religious freaks in LA, and I knew that the inexplicable happened, and that science and logic didn’t have an explanation for everything. I had no idea where my inspiration for music came from, for example, but that didn’t stop me from grabbing it and working on it. Whatever decided me, the small back room it was, and I was happy with my choice.

The walls were a pleasant, nondescript shade of pale blue, and a small oil painting of the folly across the dale, looking romantic and somewhat sinister in the moonlight, hung over the tiny fireplace. There was a worn armchair that had probably been there since the house was built, and beside it stood a small oval table inlaid with mother-of-pearl, on a level with the chair arms, where someone might rest a cup of tea, a book or a nightcap alongside a candle or small shaded lamp.

Most important as far as I was concerned, there was a chair and a wobbly roll-top escritoire, made of walnut, which was just about big enough for my laptop. The inside contained a number of pigeonholes and a little drawer. All empty. I wondered whether there was a secret compartment, as I had seen so often in movies, but I searched everywhere and found nothing. All I had to do to make it stable temporarily was wedge a folded sheet of paper under the guilty leg. Then, when I acquired some suitable tools, I could set about putting it right permanently. The top would be suitable for keeping a row of reference books handy.

There was also an old glass-fronted wooden bookcase filled with several shelves of coverless Everyman editions, poetry by Keats, Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth, Lamb’s essays, novels by Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, along with a number of cheap, ancient, musty-smelling hardcovers by writers nobody has ever heard of, the kind with no dust jackets, water damage and bent edges that you can buy by the boxful at charity shops like Oxfam or Sue Ryder.

When I opened the glass door and smelled the old books, I was immediately transported to the huge bookshop I had discovered in Milwaukee many years ago, a warehouse of a place, floor after floor and room after room of dusty books piled everywhere, torn and stained covers, a smell of mould and damp sawdust. Laura and I had spent an hour there and had come out with two carrier bags full – everything from old sixties paperback editions of Updike, Roth and Nabokov with lurid covers, to a tattered bicycle repair manual and a pocket Japanese dictionary. We had laughed all the way back to the restaurant, mostly because, if we really thought about it, that hour we had spent in the musty old bookshop was literally our first date. I had asked her to lunch with me the night before, and we had stumbled across the place on our way there.

See how easily distracted I am by memories of Laura? These are the blind alleys I suddenly find myself wandering down, the cul-de-sacs of lost love, where the grief waits with its sharp blade, jabs at me all of a sudden like a mugger in the night and makes my eyes burn. These are the deserted plazas of the heart, my very own boulevard of broken dreams. Get a grip, you sad old bastard, get a grip.

‘Problem, Mr Lowndes?’

I was standing outside the bank a couple of hours later, getting in the way of the people queuing for the cash dispensers, when I saw Heather Barlow.

I smiled. ‘Chris. I told you.’

‘Chris, then. But you seem a bit discombobulated.’

‘You could say that.’ I gestured towards the bank. ‘They won’t let me open an account without a utility bill. I told them I’ve just moved in, and I haven’t received one yet, and I need a bank account so I can pay my utility bills. They don’t seem to get the irony of it. They don’t care. They say it’s the Bank of England’s rules to protect them from terrorists and money-launderers. Do I look like a terrorist or a money-launderer?’

Heather looked me up and down. ‘Well, you could probably pass for a money-launderer, but a terrorist, no, I don’t think so.’

‘And when I told her I felt like I’d just been in a Monty Python sketch, she pulled a face and said, “Who?”’

Heather laughed.

‘I’m glad someone thinks it’s funny,’ I said. ‘Look, I need a drink. In fact, I think I need two. And maybe some lunch. Care to join me?’

Heather glanced at her watch. ‘Why don’t we go to the Black Lion? It’s just down Finkle Street here. They do a decent pub lunch.’

‘Lead on.’

We entered a narrow street beside the bank, pedestrians only, except for local delivery vans, and walked past a row of shops, including a butcher’s, a charity shop and a post office. ‘What will you do about the banking?’ Heather asked.

‘I suppose I’ll leave things as they are for the moment. I can put everything on plastic and have it paid off by my US bank until I get a utility bill.’ I shook my head. ‘I even threatened to take my business to another bank. Guess what the girl said?’

‘What?’

‘“You’ll have no luck there. They’re worse than we are.”’

‘You’re not in Los Angeles any more.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘It’s just here.’

We walked through the door and down the short flight of steps into the pub. To the right was a flagged dining area, and one of the tables near the window was free. The room wasn’t quite a basement, but I still got the sensation of looking up at the people passing by outside.

Heather took off her coat and shook her hair, then sat down. ‘How about I get us each a glass of champagne,’ I said, ‘and we can have that toast?’

Heather laughed. ‘You can try,’ she said. ‘More realistically, I’ll have a glass of white wine, please. Dry, if they ask.’

When the polite young barmaid asked me what I wanted, I chickened out of the champagne and asked for a pint of Black Sheep and a glass of dry white wine. Yorkshire pubs have come a long way during my lengthy absence, but perhaps not as far as chilled Veuve Clicquot for lunch. The menu was chalked on a blackboard over the fireplace at the back of the dining room. Heather decided on chicken casserole, and I ordered the ‘monster’ fish and chips. My cardiologist would probably have had something to say about the fried food, but at least it was fish, not the ubiquitous roast beef. Against Heather’s protestations, I paid for both the drinks and meals at the bar.

‘We might as well drink a toast to your new home, anyway, don’t you think?’ said Heather, raising her glass. ‘Even if we don’t have any champagne.’ We clinked glasses.

We chatted easily for a while as we waited for our food, Heather telling me more about the ins and outs of local life, where to get this, why to avoid that, how to do this, where the fitness centre and swimming pool were located. Our meals arrived, my battered piece of fish hanging off the plate at both ends. Heather laughed at my expression. ‘Get that in LA?’

‘We did have a fish and chip shop, as a matter of fact, but they mostly served Pacific snapper en papillotte and seared mahimahi with a guacamole roulade.’

I washed the fish down with Black Sheep and everything tasted good. When you’re living away from England and people ask you what you miss the most, you usually say, quite spontaneously, the pubs and the fish and chips. It was interesting to learn that there was more than a grain of truth in that.

‘How are you finding the house?’ Heather asked. ‘Anything you want rid of?’

‘I don’t think so. Not yet. Apart from some old books, and I can take them to the Oxfam shop myself. No, it’s fine. A lovely place. I’m sure I’ll settle in well enough. I have one question for you, though.’

‘Yes?’

‘Who was the owner? I didn’t really pay much attention to the paperwork, to be honest. I let my lawyer deal with it. But when I looked it over I saw that the owner was listed as a partnership of solicitors.’

‘That’s right. Simak and Fletcher.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Exactly what it says. Kilnsgate House has been held in trust by Simak and Fletcher for many years now. There was enough money in the estate to pay for the upkeep. They acted as the owner’s agent in the sale.’

‘So that’s why it’s their name on the deeds and contracts?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you don’t know the family that owned the house before?’

‘There’s been no family there for years except occasional paying tenants. Not since long before my time.’

‘It seems a bit odd, though, doesn’t it? The anonymity. Everything shrouded in secrecy and mystery.’

‘You’re reading too much into it. It happens more often than you’d think.’ We ate in silence for a while, then Heather said, ‘So you’re not too lonely up at Kilnsgate?’

‘Well, I haven’t had any company yet, but no. Too much to do to be lonely. Why don’t you and your husband come over for dinner some evening? Bring the children, too, if you have any. The more the merrier. I’m not a bad cook, though I’m a bit out of practice, and I have to get used to the different ingredients over here.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘That’s an excellent idea. We can have seared mahimahi with guacamole roulade.’

‘Now you’re making fun.’

‘Couldn’t resist.’

‘I promise you something very English. How’s that?’

‘What makes you think I don’t like mahimahi? Do you think we’re all boring backwoods provincials up here?’

‘I don’t think you’re boring at all. How about Saturday?’

‘Let me check and give you a ring. No kids, by the way. You mentioned you had two?’

‘Yes. Boy and a girl, Jane and Martin. Both in their early twenties. They both went off to university within a couple of years of each other – one to Stanford, the other to Johns Hopkins. Now they’re settling down. Jane’s pursuing a medical career in Baltimore, still single, and Martin’s in computers, married with one child already.’

‘That makes you a grandfather.’

‘Yes, but I’m a very young-looking one.’

She smiled. ‘I can see that. So neither plans on coming to live with you over here?’

‘God, I hope not,’ I said, then paused. ‘I didn’t mean that to sound so bad, like I don’t love them or anything, and I certainly hope they’ll be visiting. But I’m looking for a bit of peace and quiet. There’s something I… I’ve got work to do, and I just, you know, I need to be on my own for a while, to sort myself out. It seems the last twenty years or so we didn’t slow down enough to see the world going by, and Laura’s death was such a blow. I don’t really think I’ve come to terms with it yet.’

‘Of course not,’ said Heather. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

‘It’s all right.’ We ate in silence again for a few moments, then I said, ‘What you mentioned yesterday about houses having their secrets, their darker memories. What did you mean?’

‘I’m not sure that I meant anything in particular. It was just an off-the-cuff remark.’

‘I don’t think so. I mean, it didn’t sound like that. It sounded a bit ominous, as if you know something I don’t.’

‘Why do you ask? Did something happen? Has someone said something to you?’

‘No, nothing like that. It’s just a feeling.’ I drank some more beer. ‘You do know something about the house, don’t you? Is it something to do with the owner wanting to remain anonymous?’

Heather laughed, but it sounded a little more nervous and less musical than her previous laughter. ‘I really don’t know much about that at all,’ she said.

‘But there is something?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose you could say that. A little ancient notoriety, perhaps.’

‘Like what?’

‘It was a long time ago. I don’t really know any of the details.’

‘But it’s not the kind of thing you rush to tell prospective buyers?’

She seemed to relax at that and leaned back in her chair and sighed. ‘It’s nothing, really,’ she said. ‘Neither here nor there. But you’re right, I suppose. It’s not something you advertise. Discretion just becomes second nature in this business.’

‘What is it? Will you tell me now? I promise not to ask for my money back.’

‘Of course. You’ve bought the place now, after all, haven’t you? Signed, sealed and delivered. Kilnsgate House used to belong to a local doctor, a GP, I believe. This was in the war and during the early fifties, you understand. A long, long time ago. Before I was even born.’

‘I understand. What happened?’

‘His wife poisoned him.’

‘And what happened to her?’

‘She was hanged. Quite a cause celebre at the time, but a bit of a flash in the pan, not much remembered these days. That’s all I know. Honest.’ She grabbed her coat and bag from the other chair. ‘And now I really must be getting back to the office. Thank you for lunch. Hope to see you on Saturday. I’ll ring tomorrow.’

I sat in the large dark room at half past three in the morning playing the third Schubert Impromptu, the one in G flat major, on the out-of-tune grand piano, a tumbler of whisky balanced precariously at one end of the keyboard. I had found the sheet music among a collection in the piano stool. Someone had made notes in the margins in a neat, tiny hand. Bad dreams and strange noises had woken me yet again – wind in the chimneys, the usual creaks and groans from the woodwork and the boughs of the trees outside. It would take me some time to get used to it. The apartment in Santa Monica had been quiet.

As usual, when I awoke in the middle of the night I missed Laura the most. The sense of loneliness is sometimes so intense that I can find no reason to get up in the morning, no reason to play or write music, no reason to do anything. I drink, perhaps a bit too much, but I don’t think I’m an alcoholic. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suicidal. I don’t want to end my life, even at my lowest ebb; I just want it to ramble along smoothly and indifferently without any effort or participation on my part. And perhaps Kilnsgate House is just a bit too perfect an environment to indulge in that lassitude. I have to keep reminding myself that I have come here to work as well as to heal. This is my chance to be remembered for composing something other than music nobody listens to.

Schubert’s beautiful andante sounded so badly mangled that I had to stop playing. Luckily, I had found a piano tuner in the Yellow Pages, and he had agreed to come over the following day. It meant I would have to stay in, as he couldn’t guarantee the exact time of his arrival, but it would be worth the inconvenience to have the Steinway in good working order.

I picked up my whisky and went to stand by the French windows. I could see only the vague silhouette of the treeline against the night sky beyond my own reflection in the glass; there were few stars visible through holes in the clouds, but they shone brightly. Here, the darkness was almost as total and overwhelming as the silence.

As I stood, I thought about what Heather Barlow had told me that lunchtime and how it had subtly shifted my perspective on Kilnsgate House. I know it all happened a long time ago, and that many people have lived in the house since then. The place has no doubt seen numerous happy moments, and the halls have echoed to the sound of children’s shouts and laughter, not screams and cries. But that vague something I had sensed in what was now my office, and in other nooks and crannies, the feeling I had that the house had been waiting for me, that it had secrets to tell me, somehow took on a new perspective now I knew that a tragedy had occurred here. Perhaps I was imagining it all with the benefit of hindsight. I wasn’t used to living in old places full of other people’s memories. Everywhere I had lived in LA was new.

Knowing didn’t really alter my feelings. It didn’t disgust me or frighten me. If there were ghosts, I thought, they were pretty harmless. I knew why Heather had kept it from me. She was a practised saleswoman, and there’s no point even hinting at something unsavoury about what you’re selling. There are no doubt people who would baulk at living in the house of a murderess and her victim, no matter how long ago the events took place. But not me.

I didn’t think I was enjoying some sort of vicarious thrill in the world of the sensational and the macabre, but I was interested. I have a naturally curious nature, and it intrigued me that the house I was now living in, now owned, had once been home to a murderess. I knew nothing about these people and their lives – or deaths; Heather hadn’t been very forthcoming about the details. But I wanted to find out more. Put it down to having too much time on my hands. Let’s face it, even if I was going to work on a piano sonata, there was only so much time in a day I could spend on it. And with no one around to talk to, and not much else to do except read, watch TV and work on DIY projects – a slap of paint here, a new door handle there – I would have plenty of time to research a forgotten piece of local history.

I took my drink with me into the TV room and flipped through my selection of DVDs. In the end I settled for Billy Liar. It was my story, after all, except at the end I would have gone to London with Julie Christie like a shot.