But she was dead before the gunshot reached his ears, showering the white walls crimson. The shock sent Billy reeling down the stairs where the police found him minutes later.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Imogen
They said he’d been having an affair with her. What did the papers know? ‘Man shot dead by lover’ran the headline. They’ll write anything if it makes a sensational story. Henry would never have had an affair. ‘A crime of passion’ they called it. I’d wanted to scream. It wasn’t him having the affair, it was me. She’d been mad, that woman. Her mother had been mad too, the papers said. They’d found her in a nut house somewhere. The shock had killed him. Not the bullet. Massive coronary the doctor had said.
The woman’s landlord, Billy Wallace, was arrested for possession of an illegal firearm. Released on bail, of course. Walking around now like nothing ever happened. He claimed the woman Rita was mad and he needed the gun for protection. People tell me that seeing Rita shoot herself had affected him in the head and that sometimes he thinks he hears her talking in her bedsit.
Henry had unwittingly interrupted a domestic dispute, the police said. They think he’d gone there to give the woman a bottle of perfume that he’d bought the day before. The bottle had broken when Henry had fallen, spilling its contents. They say the house still smells of bluebells, even today. But why would Henry buy perfume for a woman he didn’t know? Why did he go to her house? How did he even know where she lived? All that fuss he’d made about Jim, when there’d been nothing to make a fuss about. Surely he hadn’t been carrying on. Not Henry. Not with that woman. Her photo was on the front page of the newspapers. Rita Monk was her name. A loner, they said. Hardly ever spoke to anyone, the neighbours said. She’d worked in the supermarket, giving out samples. How could Henry have possibly knownher? Some woman who worked with her had tried to claim Henry had been stalking Rita and that Rita had been scared to go home alone in case he followed her. How ridiculous. Henry would never harass a woman. People will say anything to get into the papers these days. I don’t think the perfume had anything to do with Henry. Henry had obviously heard an argument and had knocked at the door, thinking someone was in trouble. He had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Henry the Good Samaritan, that’s what they should have put in the papers.
‘Don’t get involved in other people’s domestics,’ he’d always told me.
Oh, Henry, why did you get involved? I bet the loner, Rita Monk, never thought she’d be in the papers.
‘The bullet didn’t kill him,’ the doctor had said. ‘It was a soft tissue wound. He was unlucky. Anybody else would have walked away with that injury but unfortunately the shock brought on a massive heart attack.’
A tragedy everyone said. Life was cruel.
The day I’ve been dreading has arrived. I look at the dress and scarf that hangs outside the wardrobe next to Henry’s suit. I should put it away, but I can’t. Once I put the suit in the wardrobe Henry will be truly gone and I can’t face that. Not yet.
Jim keeps phoning.
‘I just need to see you. Please meet me,’ he asks.
I should have been more insistent that night. I should have said ‘I don’t want you to go out, Henry.’
I walk out of the front door and into the rain. It’s torrential. I hope it stops before Henry’s funeral. If I walked through a waterfall, I couldn’t get any wetter. I listen to the drumming of the rain on my umbrella, each drop a beat upon the fabric. It’s calming in a funny way. I’ve been anxious about today. I wanted everything right for Henry. His parents insisted it was a church service. Henry always said he didn’t care what happened after he was dead.
‘Chuck me in the garden,’ he would joke.
Jim is waiting outside Pansies. He is frowning but his face brightens on seeing me. He most likely thought I wouldn’t turn up. He pulls me into a hug and for a moment I fear I might take his eye out with the umbrella.
‘I didn’t want to come to the house,’ he says.
‘I don’t want to go into Pansies,’ I say firmly.
I can’t face that. Henry and I sometimes had Saturday lunch there after shopping.
‘Costa then?’ Jim suggests.
I nod and he leads me back along the way I’d just come.
‘I want to support you Imogen, that’s all. It’s a terrible tragedy and I want you to know you’re not alone. If there is anything I can do to help today, you just have to ask.’
‘I know.’
But I feel alone.
‘I know it’s over but …’
‘Jim, it never really started.’
‘It’s just. I can’t bear to think of you in pain. I want to be your friend, now more than anything and Henry, well, it was …’
He breaks off.
‘So tragic.’
