‘Hence the open verdict,’ Yellich said more to himself than Mrs O’Shea.

‘Probably. There was something deliberate about the death, but I don’t think anybody wanted to say suicide…no note or anything…Mr Williams wasn’t depressed…he was just trotting along with life and had a good sense of humour…I mean, he didn’t like being a cretin, he told me once that that was his medical condition…I’ve heard the word being used as an insult, I never knew it was a real medical condition until I met Mr Williams, but he just accepted it…his dogs didn’t see him as a dwarf. The gardener never saw him from one week to the next, he had few visitors…there was just me…and after a while, after a short while, I didn’t see him as different at all. I got to like doing for him, as I said. Used to talk to me, tell me how he’d done on the stock market…“Did well today, Mrs O’Shea,” he’d say or, “Didn’t do too well, but I’ll make it up tomorrow.” Then he’d spend time with his dogs. He loved them and they loved him…didn’t take them walks but they had the run of the grounds. He just wasn’t a suicide type person. There was nothing to do with the dogs after he died but have them put down. They pined for him…they wouldn’t be taken from the house…I know what they felt…I gave up my work after that and settled for my pension and my savings. I just couldn’t do for anybody after Mr Williams.’

‘Did you ever meet his relatives?’

‘His brother once or twice, Mr Max Williams, smooth type, gold fillings…all smiles and daggers…he visited once and left his wife and children in the car outside the house on a hot day…after that he just visited alone. One day…well, see, if you “do” for a man or a family long enough you get to know what’s going on and once Mr Williams told me that his brother was getting expensive, then he said, “but what can I do? Blood is blood.” That’s what he said. “Blood is blood.”’

‘Did you meet his nephew or niece?’

‘The nephew. The navy man. Arrogant giant of a man. The way he looked at me…like dirt. He called me “O’Shea” and he called the gardener “Sprie”, just surnames…but never in Mr Williams’s hearing. He was handsome in his uniform and he knew it, very full of himself. I suppose the girls would go for him. Visited Mr Williams a few times in the last eighteen months…spent time with the dogs…bought them licorice…dogs are fond of licorice…walking the grounds with them. They got to wagging their tails when he came.’

‘One last question, Mrs O’Shea, the day you found Mr Williams’s body. What day of the week was it, can you recall?’

‘It was a Monday. Definitely a Monday. It’ll be written up, you’ll be able to check it, but I can tell you it was a Monday. First day of the week, last day of my working life.’

Yellich walked the short, but not unpleasant, walk to the vicarage which was not, to his surprise, a stone-built, ivy covered house, but a newly built semi-detached house set in a neat garden and a gravel drive. He thought himself fortunate to find the Reverend Eaves at home. He revealed himself to be a tall, kindly seeming, silver-haired man and was pleased to direct Yellich to the home of Sydney Tamm who had been church warden at the time of Marcus Williams’s death.

Sydney Tamm was by contrast a short man with a furrowed brow. He drove the garden fork into the ground between the row of potato plants in his front garden and looked at Yellich.

‘Police?’

‘Aye.’

‘About?’

‘Marcus Williams.’

‘Aye. Sitting up and taking notice at last, are you?’

‘Should we?’

‘Aye. Mind, I can’t tell you anything that’s not known, isn’t known…well, you’d better come into the house.’

The closest description that Yellich could find for Sydney Tamm’s house was ‘refuse tip’. It even smelled like one. The accumulated tabloids revealed that it probably hadn’t been cleaned for the last five years. The house was probably difficult to live in in the winter but the summer heat made the smell near unbearable to Yellich. Many flies buzzed in the window or flew in figure-of-eight patterns in the air above the table on which remnants of food remained on dirty plates, themselves on newspaper which served as a tablecloth.

‘I’m not proud of my house. I’m not ashamed of it.’ Tamm sat in an armchair. ‘You can sit in that chair there, if you want, but most of my visitors choose to stand.’

‘I’ll stand.’

‘Suit yourself.’ Tamm reached for a packet of cigarettes, and taking one, lit it with a match, putting the spent match back in the box. ‘She’d turn in her grave if she could see her house.’ He nodded to a photograph of a bonny-looking woman which stood, in a frame, on the mantelpiece.

‘You were the church warden of St Mark’s?’

‘Was. Don’t qualify…not a Christian any more, am I? Can you imagine a Christian living in a house like this? Cleanliness is next to godliness. I had religion all my days, and then my Myrtle took cancer…if there was a God, He wouldn’t have let a good woman like her suffer like she did. I buried her decent like, but then I told the vicar I wanted no more of his cant. I spend my days down the Dunn Cow now with the rest of the old lads of the village…it’s the only pub around here for the fogies, all the rest is for the young ’un’s, all that music, them machines with their weird sound and the flashing lights. But the Cow, it’s still as a pub should be.’

‘You don’t use the Sun with the angling club?’

Tamm looked at Yellich, as if surprised at his knowledge of Little Asham. ‘No…no, I don’t use the Sun.’ Said as if there was a story…a fall-out with the publican, a row with the anglers. Something had happened. ‘The Cow’s all right and all those boys who have never had religion have all been right all along, and the vicar and me have been wrong all along. The vicar, he calls from time to time, but less so now, he’s giving up on me…his lost sheep is gone…devoured by the wolf at the Dunn Cow.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘The smell is terrible.’

‘It’s not so bad, a good clean, plenty of disinfectant, you could get on top of your house again in no time.’

‘Cancer. The smell of cancer. It’s a terrible smell. It’s one of those smells…smell it once and you’ll never forget it…it stays in your nose. Myrtle…she had it on her skin…started out as a mole…then it was all over in the end, all over her. Her skin looked like…poor Myrtle…even now, five years this November, I can still smell the smell. I sleep downstairs, the smell hasn’t left the room where she died. Not properly…I won’t open a window, nor the door.

Do you want to go up and smell it?’

‘No…I don’t think so.’

‘If you did, you’ll never go near those canting priests and their steeple houses again.’

‘Again, all I can say is I’m sorry.’

‘Aye…look, I don’t get my pension for a day or two, I don’t suppose you could let me have the money for a beer, only there’s a darts match at the Cow?’

Yellich took his wallet out and laid a ten-pound note on the sideboard. ‘Tenner OK?’

‘Thanks…I can go out tonight.’

‘So, Mr Williams?’

‘Aye, there’s still rumours about yon. I saw a young man driving through the village on the day he died, the Sunday. I’d locked up the church after Evensong, that would be at seven-thirty. I was walking home when the car passed me, going quite fast for the narrow road. Saw the driver, young man…’

‘He was driving away from Oakfield House?’

‘Yes. He came to the village and took the York road. It goes through Malton, but if he was going to the coast, there’s another road he’d take which would avoid Malton. It’s a fair bet he was heading to York, in that direction, anyway. I didn’t recognize him, he was a stranger. But I saw him just once again…he was a mourner at Mr Williams’s funeral; being a church warden, I was at the funeral…making sure everything was where it ought to be, and he was there, same young man, then he was in a naval officer’s uniform.’