The hall’s gardening talk was cancelled, along with the choir practice, the chair exercise class and the reading session I had only begun to arrange.
On Monday, a notice appeared on the door directing enquiries to a committee email address. Behind the glass, Saturday’s robin poster still promised an instructive afternoon.
I stopped across the road on my way to work. There was no reason to go closer. The tape meant exactly what it said without needing words.
George stood near the corner, holding his birthday card.
“They brought it round,” he said when I greeted him. “Very kind.”
“Did you get a quiet day?”
“Some of it.”
He looked at the hall, then away.
“Funny what you miss. I keep thinking I haven’t checked the back window.”
I had no answer that would help.
“Someone will have checked it.”
“I know.”
He folded the card carefully into its envelope.
We did not discuss what he had found. I wasn’t entitled to a description because I knew the layout of the room.
At the library, Marianne had moved my session to a smaller space. She showed me the revised rota without making a performance of the inconvenience.
“We can manage here.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s a room, Nora. We haven’t lost the idea.”
I held on to that while setting out chairs. The first reader arrived complaining about the weather, which made me almost fond of the complaint.
Our reading group discussed a passage in which a character misread a letter. One woman thought the misunderstanding was convenient for the author. Another said people misunderstood letters all the time, particularly when they already knew what they wanted them to mean.
Normally I would have encouraged both arguments. That day I kept thinking about Vivienne’s account of Helen’s email and had to bring myself back to the page.
Marianne appeared at the door to ask about a reservation. The interruption helped. I found the right book, checked the name and returned to the circle able to listen again.
At the end, the woman who had complained about the weather thanked me. She said the group made Mondays easier. I had done nothing remarkable for her, only kept a room open and a conversation moving. It was useful to remember that this counted as something, even while events elsewhere felt much larger than anything I could manage.
During my break, Beth rang.
“They’ve told me they’re treating it as murder.”
I sat down.
Until then, I had avoided putting a name to what might have happened. Martin had been found dead. There were questions. We had all been answering them. Those statements had allowed a little space in which the worst possibility was not yet a fact we had to speak.
“Beth?”
“I’m here.”
“Who’s with you?”
“Rachel. I’m not alone.”
She was silent for a while.
“They’ve asked more about his work. People he was dealing with. Things he hadn’t told me.”
“Do you know?”
“Some. Not all. He liked being the person who knew.”
She sounded exhausted, not vindicated.
Later that day, a brief official appeal appeared online. It asked for information about activity near the hall that evening. I read the wording twice, then stopped before opening the comments.
A reader at the desk asked whether I lived on that street.
“Yes.”
“You must have heard all sorts.”
“I’ve heard enough rumours.”
She looked embarrassed. I helped her find a travel guide, grateful for a task with a destination.
On my way home, Vivienne called me over from her gate.
“They’ve been asking about things in the hall. Who used which rooms. What belonged there.”
She held a folder of old photographs against her coat.
“I’m finding pictures for them. Before the fair, after the refurbishment. That sort of thing.”
I remembered the brass sun beside the office.
“The photographs on the wall?”
“Some of those too.”
She showed me one, not an image of anything terrible. A cheerful committee stood together, holding the award. I recognised the curtains I’d seen in another picture.
“Do they want that one?”
“They asked about the award. I don’t know why they need every angle.”
Neither did I. I wasn’t going to pretend that I did.
Vivienne put it back in the folder.
“So many people have handled things in that place. Moved them, cleaned them.”
“Then tell them that.”
“I have.”
For once, her irritation was fair. I apologised.
At home, I opened the photographs I’d taken for Marianne during the drop-in session. They showed the smaller room, the table and the entrance. Nothing dramatic. I contacted the officer whose details I’d been given and said I had them if they were useful.
I kept the originals untouched. There was no reason for me to crop or interpret them.
Then I closed the laptop.
Poppy came in with a school worksheet and asked whether I knew what an inference was.
“An idea you reach from something you know,” I said.
“So guessing?”
“Sometimes a careful kind.”
She considered that.
“Can it be wrong?”
I looked at the closed laptop.
“Yes,” I said. “It can.”