On Sunday, Vivienne asked me whether I thought Celia had killed Martin.
We were in her garden, where she had invited me to help move two pots too heavy for her to manage alone. Peter was away visiting his sister. The question arrived between lifting one pot and deciding where the second should go.
I put down my end of the handles.
“I don’t know.”
“After everything?”
“After everything I know.”
She looked towards the house. Her hands were muddy, and she rubbed them together without cleaning them.
“I keep trying to imagine another explanation.”
“There may be things the police know that we don’t.”
“That isn’t an explanation.”
“No. It’s a limit.”
We moved the second pot in silence. Afterwards, she made tea and brought it outside. The air was cold enough that we drank it quickly.
I could list what had changed. Celia’s errand had been false. She had met Martin. She had admitted giving him Beth’s old details and described financial misconduct and pressure. She said she touched him when he was injured and left without calling for help.
Those facts were serious. They did not give me a view through the hall wall.
“Someone could have come in after she left,” Vivienne said.
“Possibly. I don’t know what the investigation has established about that.”
“Or before she came back to him.”
“That’s a sequence she would need to explain accurately. We can’t improve it for her.”
Vivienne winced. She knew why I’d said it.
“I don’t want to do that again.”
“Then don’t turn a possible alternative into a memory.”
She sat on the bench and looked at the newly placed pots.
“People are naming Helen.”
My stomach tightened.
“Based on what?”
“Being angry. Being near the hall sometimes. I didn’t repeat it.”
“Being angry about false invoices isn’t evidence of killing somebody.”
“I know.”
We sat with the ugliness of it: an alternative theory could become another woman required to explain why she had objected to being harmed. I would not exchange one unsupported certainty for another just to feel fair-minded.
Vivienne asked whether I had heard anything more from the police. I said I had answered further questions but wasn’t going to compare them with everybody else’s. She accepted that, though curiosity remained plainly on her face.
Before leaving, I helped her carry the empty mugs inside. On the counter lay a draft of a fuller account of the notebook additions. She had written dates where she could establish them and marked uncertainties instead of concealing them.
“I’m still checking my messages to identify when I wrote which part,” she said. “I don’t want another vague apology.”
“That sounds useful.”
“It feels dreadful.”
Both were possible. I didn’t need to say it aloud again.
At home, Poppy wanted to know whether I could come to the school performance. I could. Tom had also arranged to attend, having checked the date before accepting another work commitment.
We wrote it in large letters on the kitchen calendar. For a while, the future concerned a child announcing winter rather than a court date nobody could yet give us.
In the afternoon, Ellen emailed the people entitled to receive the completed financial findings. Priya let me know that the review had reached a definite total and that the summary would be explained at a meeting the following day. I would attend only the non-confidential part, as before.
“Does it settle the money?” I asked.
“It settles what the review can substantiate. Recovery is a separate matter.”
“And the murder?”
“Nora.”
“I know.”
I had wanted one report to relieve more than one uncertainty. Hearing myself ask made the wish obvious.
That evening, I put my various notes into separate folders: my witness contacts, practical help, financial meetings I had attended. They did not become a case file because I arranged them tidily.
Then I closed the drawer and prepared the reading session for work.
The final story I selected involved a child who insisted a locked box contained a dragon. Everyone offered explanations based on noises they’d heard through the lid.
I almost replaced it.
Then I remembered that stories were allowed to be easier than the world, and left it in the pile.
The children deserved a reading session, not an indirect lesson about the investigation occupying their librarian’s thoughts.
Tom came into the kitchen while I was preparing the craft materials. He asked whether I wanted to talk about the garden visit. I said only that Vivienne was frightened and trying not to turn that fear into another claim she couldn’t support.
“And you?”
“Much the same.”
He sat down and helped cut paper shapes for the children. His were neater than mine. I gave him the good scissors.