The officer called the following morning to clarify my note of Celia’s visit. She asked me to repeat the words I remembered about the first-aid box, and to identify which details had come in response to my questions.
“I asked whether it was from a packet,” I said. “She said yes, and that she’d opened it.”
“Did she describe the packaging?”
“No.”
“Did she say where she put the wrapper?”
“No.”
I could feel the temptation to infer. People generally dropped packaging near where they opened it. That was not something Celia had told me. I left the gap unfilled.
The officer asked whether I had personally seen the first-aid box before the night Martin died. I had been in the hall on the open day. I remembered a box on the wall, but not its contents.
“I took photographs of the room. You’ve already had those.”
“We’ll check the originals supplied. Please don’t alter them.”
I said I wouldn’t. I did not enlarge a blur until it began to resemble the thing I hoped to find.
After the call, I looked only to confirm which photographs I had sent and when. One showed the far wall beyond a group of chairs. The first-aid box occupied a tiny part of the image. Nothing in my photograph could tell me which packet had been opened later or what a person had done beside Martin.
It was almost disappointing to discover how little a picture could promise.
At the library, Marianne found me staring at a shelf without moving any books.
“Tea or a task?” she asked.
“A task.”
She gave me a trolley of returns. I could match labels to shelves. Each book went somewhere for a reason printed clearly on its spine.
Halfway through, Vivienne called. The police had asked her about first-aid supplies and whether she knew of any items removed or replaced after the open day. She had told them what she actually knew from the hall arrangements and directed them to the responsible records and people.
“Do you think they’ve found something?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Celia said there was a towel.”
I stopped beside the trolley.
“Is that her word, or yours?”
Vivienne was quiet.
“I’m not sure.”
“Then check your note of what she said. Don’t change it to match mine.”
I did not tell her the wording in my own account. We had spent enough time improving one another’s memories.
She agreed to explain her uncertainty to the officer rather than solve it with me.
Later, I wrote down that conversation too. The accumulating notes did not make me a detective. They made me a person whose contacts might matter, responsible for not pretending they had happened differently.
On my way home, I passed the hall. It no longer had the same visible police presence, though access and use remained subject to the arrangements in place. I stayed on the pavement. Whatever its current status, curiosity wasn’t permission to enter and examine a cupboard.
A poster for a postponed class curled at one corner behind the glass. I remembered the open day, the award on display, the room full of people using a shared space without imagining it would acquire another meaning.
George came out carrying an empty crate. He saw me and raised a hand.
“They keep asking me about that evening,” he said.
“Me too.”
He looked relieved by the simple answer.
“I don’t mind answering. I mind remembering it afterwards.”
I asked whether he had somebody he could speak to about that. His daughter was coming over, and he had accepted support offered to him. He sounded embarrassed to mention it, then annoyed with himself for being embarrassed.
“I used to tell people to ask for help,” he said.
“It’s a different skill from doing it.”
He smiled faintly and asked if I had time for a short walk the next day. He didn’t want to sit in the hall talking about the hall.
I agreed, making clear that we didn’t have to discuss the investigation.
“I know,” he said. “That’s partly why I’m asking.”
At home, I put the photograph folder away.
The questions about the box suggested somebody was checking an account against objects and records. They did not tell me the result.
I would have to wait for the part that wasn’t mine to invent.