On Saturday afternoon, the police received a visit in person from the resident of Number 10 Linden Drive. Her high heels clicked on the tiled floor as she came to the desk. The duty officer looked up to see a smartly dressed, elderly woman smiling down at him.
‘I would like to see whoever is in charge of searching for Nesta Gwynn,’ she said very precisely. ‘That’s the girl who has gone missing from Linden Drive.’
The duty officer nodded.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘If you have any information, we would be very pleased to know about it.’
He pressed the phone on his desk. A voice answered immediately.
‘There’s a lady here would like to speak to you about Nesta Gwynn.’
The duty sergeant pressed another button on the desk and said, ‘Just go through that door there, madam. Sergeant Miller will see you.’
‘Do sit down, Mrs . . .?’
‘Mrs Jolly,’ said the lady as she sat down quite elegantly on the chair in front of the sergeant’s desk. ‘I live next door to the Gwynns. I would have come earlier, but I feel a little foolish about this. It is probably something or nothing. And I do feel treacherous coming here. The Gwynns are such a nice couple. But things do happen, even with nice couples. I mean, they do, don’t they?’
‘Yes,’ said the sergeant slowly, ‘I suppose they do.’
Mrs Jolly seemed to him to be fluttery and unreliable and he hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about.
‘Just take your time,’ he said, ‘and tell me what it is that is worrying you. Have you seen Nesta today or yesterday maybe?’
‘No, no,’ said Mrs Jolly. ‘I haven’t seen her all this week. But that’s not unusual. I don’t often see her. It’s just that when I saw on the local news that she was missing I was niggled by something odd I saw from my bedroom window on Thursday. It baffled me at the time. Now it seems to me that it might even be somehow sinister. I hope you’ll tell me I’m stupid. I honestly don’t mind being stupid.’
‘You might be mistaken,’ said the sergeant, ‘but there is no way I would say you were stupid. Tell me what you saw and perhaps we can consider it together. Two heads, they say, are better than one.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Jolly, leaning forward and feeling much more relaxed now that the introduction was over. ‘I was just closing my bedroom curtains. I always close them before I put the light on, an old habit. My late husband used to insist upon curtains being closed before the lights were switched on. It used to annoy me, but I got so used to it that now I just do it automatically even though Edward died five years ago. You know how it is . . .’
Sergeant Miller took the chance to interrupt her.
‘So what did you see when you looked out of your window?’
‘Them – Mrs and Mrs Gwynn, out in the back garden near the pond with that great ugly frog on top of it. They were fiddling around somehow. I couldn’t see properly, of course, because our fence is quite high and then there are the trees at the end of their garden. They are quite old trees, you know, older than any of the houses. I just have one. They have three of them. And we aren’t allowed to cut them down: they’re protected.’
Sergeant Miller plunged in again when she stopped for breath.
‘So the Gwynns were out in the garden in the dark engaged in some activity near the old trees?’
‘Or the pond,’ said Mrs Jolly firmly. ‘They’re always having trouble with that pond. Just last week they had to drain it. But if it weren’t there we might have water coming into our place – I still say our place, even though there’s just me now. And the two cats. My son lives in Scotland and, I’ve got to say it, I hardly ever see him.’
‘So the Gwynns were down by the pond doing something. Can you be more specific? Did they have spades or anything? Were they carrying any sort of bundle?’
‘Not that I could see,’ said Mrs Jolly. ‘Nothing like that. I am not suggesting they were burying a body! Heaven forbid! They seemed to be leaning over and talking. Couldn’t hear what they were saying, of course, not through the double-glazing, and you wouldn’t want windows open at this time of year, now would you? To be honest with you – and I know this’ll sound daft – I thought they were having some weird sort of prayer meeting! Especially when they lit the blue taper and it flared up.’
‘A blue taper flared up?’ said the sergeant. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Just what I say,’ said Mrs Jolly. ‘I mean, I couldn’t make anything out properly, but that’s what it looked like to me. Then they practically ran into the house and that was the end of it.’
‘You saw no more?’ said the sergeant.
‘I closed the curtains,’ said Mrs Jolly primly. ‘I don’t spend my time spying on my neighbours!’
And that, thought Sergeant Miller, after Mrs Jolly left, amounts to what I would call suspicious circumstances.