“Five at the end of July.”
“But rather small for her age.”
“A little bit.”
“Bright as a button though.” She wipes the blade of the knife on her pinny. “I know Mrs. Pett teaches Reception. I know all the teachers at the school.”
“All the kids seem to love her.”
“Of course they do.”
I give her a tight smile. If she’d had children of her own—and there had been no mention of any—they would have been a long way past primary school age. But Mrs. Evans did genuinely seem to be one of those people who had a nose for everyone else’s business. An observer, a watcher. A collector of facts.
She has pushed open her front door a little wider and my eye is drawn to a dozen pairs of eyes, all staring at me. On a windowsill at the bottom of her staircase, a line of lifelike dolls are seated in a row, moon-faced and passive, hands folded in their laps. They are horribly real-looking, dressed like small children, glassy eyes staring into nowhere and yet all seeming to focus on me.
“I wanted to ask,” I say, “did you by chance see anyone come by my house yesterday? Anyone who looked like they might be delivering something, or dropping something off?”
“An Amazon person?”
“No,” I say. “Not a delivery company. Someone else, maybe in a car, or on foot.”
She considers for a moment before shaking her head.
“Did you have a parcel stolen off the doorstep? I’ve heard about that happening. Scandalous. People just wandering up bold as brass and walking off with them.”
“No, it was…” I glance down at Daisy but she’s transfixed by the row of dolls on the windowsill. “There was a pigeon left on the doorstep.”
“Oh.” She looks taken aback. “That’s awful. Could have been that big ginger cat of yours, I suppose?”
“We’re not really letting Steve out yet,” I say. “Until he gets his bearings in the new house. So, you didn’t see anyone?”
“Afraid not.”
Callum tugs my hand, a silent message that says,Dad, can we go now?I squeeze gently back:In a minute.
“There was one other thing,” I say to my neighbor. “And forgive me for a rather random question, but does the name Adrian Parish mean anything to you?”
She considers me for a moment, unblinking, before giving a single shake of her head.
“Can’t say that it does, no. Who was he?”
“I wondered if he might have been a friend of Mr. Hopkins.”
“The name doesn’t ring any bells, I’m afraid.”
“Doesn’t matter, it was just—”
“What makes you think they were friends?”
“Nothing,” I say. “It’s not important.”
The knife is still gripped tightly in her gloved hand, the steel tapering to a razor-sharp point. There is an odd feeling at my shirt collar and it’s only after a moment that I realize the small hairs at the back of my neck are standing up. I shift position to look toward my house, through the screen of hedges. I can just make out my car on the drive, an edge of the front door. All quiet.
I take a step back, out of the glassy-eyed view of the creepy dolls.
“Anyway, thanks again for the cake. I’ll leave you to it.”
It’s only when I’m in back in my kitchen, putting pasta in a pan for the children’s tea, that Eileen’s words come back to me.Who was he?The way she had referred to Adrian Parish in the past tense. Or was that just one of her peculiarities? Perhaps she assumed everything was past tense if it related to my house and its previous owner. I’m mulling over the rest of our conversation when a faint sound reaches me, quickly growing louder, the crunch of gravel on our driveway. Running feet pounding up to the house, nearer and nearer until the crunching is replaced with a desperate hammering on the door—bang bang bang—the temporary doorbell chiming at the same time, then more impacts against the wooden frame of the door—bang bang bang—
