Page 12 of Murder in the Winter Woods (Julia Bird Mysteries #8)
Julia was dressed and breakfasted, having fed the cat, dog and chickens, and was about to embark on her morning Wordle, when there was a knock on the door.
She had not slept at all well, thinking of poor Matthew, the state they had found him in, and the fact that this was the second hit-and-run accident that she had almost witnessed in a matter of weeks.
Mostly, she felt a deep sadness that the world, and Hester, had lost a gentle and kind man.
At the sound of the knock, Jake started hurling himself about in such a fit of excitement you’d have sworn a delivery of warm pork sausages was waiting for him on the doorstep. Julia managed to circumvent him with her shins intact. When she opened the door, she saw Hayley Gibson.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course,’ Julia said, stepping aside to let the inspector in and Jake out.
‘Sorry to drop in unannounced, but I was next door.’
‘How is she?’
‘Not well,’ said Hayley, shaking her head. ‘She’s taken it very hard. Unsurprisingly, I suppose.’
‘Matthew was a lovely man. It’s a terrible loss to all of us who knew him.’
‘Well, that’s why I stopped in. I wanted to ask, how well did you know Matthew?’
‘Quite well. He was a good man. Solid. Down-to-earth. Gentle. Very kind. He’d always give me a jar of the new season’s honey.
When the tree in their garden toppled onto the fence in that big storm, he was the one who cut it up and then mended the fence.
He said I could have half the wood for my fireplace, even though it was their tree.
He even brought over the logs for me and stacked them up neatly in the woodpile. A thoroughly decent man.’
Julia got up and fetched a teapot from the kitchen counter. She added teabags and boiled water. She poured the tea into two mugs and handed one to Hayley, who dosed it liberally with what Julia considered far too much milk.
‘Heaven knows, we could do with more thoroughly decent men in this world,’ said the detective grimly. ‘What do you know about his friends and family?’
‘He and Hester kept to themselves. They were quiet people who doted on each other. Hester, in particular, was cheerful but very shy, but Matthew did like a chat.’ Julia paused, her eyes filling with tears as she thought of that last chat with Matthew.
If only she’d shown more patience, and spoken to him for a while longer, maybe none of this would have happened.
‘Is there family?’
‘There’s a daughter, Violet, who comes by with a sweet little toddler. I can’t remember the child’s name.’ Julia tapped her forehead in frustration, which did nothing to dislodge the name.
‘Not to worry. It’s not relevant.’
This was true, but still, Julia would like it if her brain was better at retrieving proper nouns.
‘Their bees kept them busy. There always seemed to be something going on – getting the honeycomb out, and what have you, I don’t know what exactly. And then pouring it into jars and selling the honey, of course.’
It was incredibly sad. Hester and Matthew had been so close.
When Julia thought of one, she thought of the other.
Hester holding the ladder while Matthew sawed a branch off the tree.
Matthew handing over a jar of honey while Hester took the money from a customer.
The two of them checking on the hives together in the early morning.
Poor Hester would be lost without him.
Hayley Gibson’s phone rang, interrupting Julia’s thoughts.
When Hayley answered, a voice could be heard indistinctly on the other side of the phone – it sounded like a man, but Julia couldn’t be certain.
On this side, Hayley spoke in brusque monosyllables, questions and acknowledgements: ‘Yes…Mmm…Mmm…Time?…How many?…Right. Okay.’
She ended the call and drained her tea, placing the mug down with a heavy clunk and standing up like a determined drunk finally leaving a bar. ‘I’m off. Bob Jones from forensics says the results are starting to come in.’
‘Good luck with it. I hope you find whoever did this.’
‘Oh, we’ll find him all right. I hope the tyre prints are more helpful this time. Nice and clear.’
‘This time? You don’t think…I mean, do you imagine that the two accidents might be connected? Or…’
‘I’m not in the business of imagining, fortunately,’ Hayley said. ‘I’m in the business of evidence. Which I’m going to examine now. Thanks for the tea, Julia.’
After Hayley left, Julia sat alone at the kitchen table, draining her second cup of tea.
It was cold and unpleasant, but it did the job that was required of it, which was that of delaying her visit to Hester.
Julia had made many difficult visits, under difficult circumstances, to many different people, but today she was thinking of the first one.
She had been nine years old when her friend Gladys Painter’s father had died.
The families lived on the same road, and the two girls had played together all of their young lives.
And then Gladys’s father had died of a heart attack.
This in itself was unimaginable. A grown-up, one who Julia knew well, one who wasn’t someone’s grandfather or great-grandmother, had died.
‘Get your coat,’ Julia’s mother had said, when the news came through from the neighbourhood. ‘We’re going to pay our respects to the Painters.’
Her mother put on her hat and waited while Julia stood rooted to the spot. ‘I can’t go.’
‘It has to be done.’ Her mother spoke firmly, but not unkindly.
‘What will I say?’
‘You will say that you are sorry for their loss.’
‘Please don’t make me go.’
Julia knew that she couldn’t possibly go, just as she knew that she would have to.
‘Julia, the Painters are our neighbours. Gladys is your friend. We have to visit her, because seeing a friend might make her feel just a little bit better.’
With trembling hands and tears welling behind her eyes, Julia nodded. She put on her coat.
‘Good girl. We have to do a hard thing because someone else has a much harder thing to bear. It’s what we do. We do what must be done.’
And so it was now, more than five decades later, with trembling hands and tears welling behind her eyes, Julia put on her coat. She walked across her lawn, out of her little gate, into Hester’s little gate, and across the neighbour’s lawn.