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I notice Libby gulp before clearing her throat and I know that her answer to this question will be a lie.
‘My birth parents. Yes. That’s correct.’
‘And you’d never met your birth parents?’
‘No, never. They died when I was a very young baby. Can I ask what this is about?’
I feel myself on a tightrope across a crevasse. Libby Jones has already lied to me once and I don’t want to put her on the spot and make her lie again. I want only honest answers from her.
‘We are investigating the possible murder of a young woman called Birdie Dunlop-Evers in the late eighties to early nineties.’
I see a flicker of recognition pass across her face. But she shakes her head, signifying that she has never heard of Birdie Dunlop-Evers.
‘It is possible that she was living at number sixteen CheyneWalk at the time of her death,’ I continue. ‘I’ve read an article, in theGuardian, about the history of the house and of the terrible tragedy that befell your parents. I have read how you were found in a crib alone upstairs. I have read that there were other people in that house. Teenagers. Some reports say there were two teenagers. Some say three, some say four. Some reports say that there had never been any children living at the house that they could remember. A delivery man thought the house might be a nunnery? So many conflicting reports, in fact. Have you read this article too?’
‘Yes. Of course. Yes. It was one of the first things I found online when I discovered that the house had been left to me. Before that I’d never heard of the house or of any members of the family. It’s a very confusing article.’
‘Indeed. Many questions. Few answers. And so it felt possible to me, when I read this article, that in a house with such a chaotic and tragic back story, maybe a young woman could be subsumed into the fabric of that house without anyone noticing. Disappear entirely.’
It is not a question. It is a statement. Libby Jones cannot agree or disagree and I leave it there for a moment, to settle in the silence.
Libby Jones rearranges all her limbs, both legs and arms. ‘I genuinely have no idea,’ she says. ‘I only know what was in the article. I don’t know anything else.’
‘You saw the house though? Before you sold it?’
‘Oh, yes. Of course. I spent quite some time there after inheriting it. Exploring. Getting a feel for the place.’
‘And you never saw anything? Found anything? Anything thatmight have given more insight into what happened the night your parents committed suicide?’
‘No. Sorry.’
Her hand goes to her throat as she says this.
Damn. She has lied again. But this time it is a useful lie because it makes me believe that she has in fact found out something beyond the story contained in the newspaper article; that she does know something and that she is choosing not to share it with me; and if she is choosing not to share it with me, then she is trying to protect either herself or somebody else. And who could she possibly want to protect in this bizarre scenario other than another person involved in the story of that house?
The brother, perhaps, or sister?
Henry and Lucy were the names of the other Lamb children, according to the article. Is it possible, I wonder, that they had known of the date of the trust’s maturity and tracked Libby down to claim their share? After all, they had both been named on the trust, too, and neither had come forward on their own twenty-fifth birthdays. Might they have been waiting for a ‘clean’ person to claim the inheritance on their behalf? Someone who existed above the radar, unlike themselves? And if they couldn’t exist above the radar, then why not? Possibly because one of them had been responsible in some way for the death of Birdie Dunlop-Evers? But why? That is the question that I now know I must find the answer to. Why would a teenager, or even two, three or four teenagers, wish to kill a thirty-year-old woman?
‘I saw the house yesterday,’ I tell Libby. ‘Mr Wolfensberger let me look around. It’s quite characterful.’
‘Scary, you mean?’
‘Yes, I suppose. A little scary. It’s hard to imagine that a normal family ever lived there.’
‘Well, maybe they weren’t a normal family.’ Libby shrugs her shoulders. ‘I mean, normal families don’t tend to carry out suicide pacts, do they?’
I nod. This is true.
‘I was lucky,’ she continues. ‘Lucky to have been taken out of that environment and raised in a normal family.’
‘And now you are lucky because you have a lot of money?’
She smiles. I can see that this money has made her happy. And it makes me wonder what she has done with all that money. If the brother and the sister had tracked her down for their share of the money and tried to take it from her by force or blackmailed her into giving it to them, then she would not look so relaxed about her change of fortunes. But she is relaxed. So I think that maybe she has shared the money, happily, equally; that she is at peace with the money because she has comported herself in a reasonable and fair-handed way.
‘So, will you buy a larger property now?’ I ask.
‘Yes. I mean, I’ll keep this place. Rent it out for a very low rent to a young couple or a single person, someone who is struggling. I won’t need the income, but I know how hard it is to make ends meet for young people. Everything is so expensive. And I’ve been looking at a place further out in the country. With a bit of land. Somewhere I could run an interior design workshop. Maybe a barn or an annexe, something like that.’
