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I see Oliver Wolfensberger shiver slightly.
‘The saddest story,’ he went on. ‘She was adopted and only found out about this house on her twenty-fifth birthday. It was on the market for quite some time because it was in such a bad way. And possibly because of its associations. You understand?’
I nod because I am very much beginning to understand. ‘What do you know of the death of her parents?’
‘Not much. I think they committed suicide. A pact? Awful. Just awful. And I know some people might feel like that was some kind of a curse on a house. But I don’t believe in any of that. I have a very positive mindset, you see. I have come here to overwrite that bad history. Overwrite it all. But I do still think about it. The sadness of it. That sweet baby girl, left all alone. Someone wrote an article about it, you know? A long investigative piece. I didn’t read it because I didn’t want it to stain my consciousness, but I believe it was in theGuardian, a few years ago. We weren’t living in the UK at that time so I don’t know anything more than that, but I’m sure you could find it.’
‘Guardian’, I write in my notebook.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘And the name of the young woman that sold you this house? Would you be able to tell me that?’
‘Yes. Of course. Her name was Libby Jones.’
‘Libby Jones’, I write in my notebook.
‘Do you have any contact details for her?’
‘Sadly, no, I don’t. She didn’t live in London, though, I don’t think. Maybe just outside somewhere?’
‘Outside London’, I write in my notebook.
‘Would you mind if I had a look?’ I ask. ‘At the house? Just for my own’ – I tap the side of my head – ‘my own sense of place?’
‘Of course. Yes.’
Donal and I follow him to the hallway
‘Please, just wend your way. Go wherever you like. Open anything you like. I’ll be down here if you need me.’
The grey and white dog follows us eagerly. It is almost as if he is showing us the house himself. Donal fusses the dog, but I findhim a bit big for my liking. If he were a foot shorter, I would feel more comfortable.
The house has poetic symmetry. Everything mirrors everything so it is easy to feel our way from room to room and floor to floor. There are four bedrooms and four bathrooms on this first floor. From the back windows I look out at the garden. I look up at the trees and I take some photos, for the arboreal forensics guy, because of course I do not know what a London plane or a tree of heaven might look like.
A smaller staircase takes us to the top floor. Here the ceilings are lower and doors open from a narrow landing that goes from one side of the house to the other. Each door opens to a small bedroom with a sloped ceiling and windows overlooking either the garden or the street. Donal calls to me from one of the other bedrooms.
‘Look, boss,’ he says when I enter, pointing at a spot on the skirting board.
There is something scratched into the wood here. I crouch down to look and see the words: ‘I AM PHIN’. I take a photo.
In the long hallway outside a small metal ladder stretches up towards a hatch in the ceiling. I follow Donal’s large behind up the ladder and we emerge on to a tiny roof terrace. I take more photos of trees and of the roof itself.
There are a couple of channels up here, running between the pitched roofs. Although it is summer, they are filled with dead leaves, and I use the toe of my shoe to gingerly sift them. Mulch is underneath. I walk through the mulch to a chimney pot and peer behind it. Another channel filled with more dead leaves and mulch, but here the mulch appears to have been displaced and movedabout. I take more pictures and then we make our way back through the house and to the hallway.
Oliver Wolfensberger sees us off at the door, expressing complete willingness to help us in any way possible. He furnishes us with the name of the firm of solicitors who had been in charge of the trust that Libby Jones had inherited, and then he allows me to take more photographs of the front of the house and the trees in the gated strip of garden just opposite. Then we return to the car.
Donal pulls his seatbelt across in the driver seat of the car.
‘Helpful?’ he asks.
I make a noncommittal noise and say, ‘Well, I am ninety per cent certain that that is the house where Bridget Dunlop-Evers met her end.’
‘You are?’
‘Yes. What do you think?’
‘It had that vibe. It’s definitely a possibility.’
I nod. ‘I’d like you to drop me at the solicitors’ office please, Donal. It’s just over in Pimlico, not far. And if you could head back to the station after that and do some research into thisGuardianarticle, that would be great. Right now, I’m going to get these photos off to the trees guy and hopefully, by the end of today we will have accelerated our investigation. Hugely.’
