Murder capital

‘Chair,’ said the free ad in the local paper. ‘Wing backed. Fireproof. As new. Never been sat in. £25.’ I rang the number and the owner suggested I went round and had a look at it right away. He sounded elderly and a bit desperate.

The address he gave was a modest bungalow in the village. Five minutes later I was pressing on his doorbell. I didn’t know him. The interior of his bungalow was in a terrible mess. The furniture was piled in heaps rather than arranged for use. A nest of blankets on a leather sofa indicated his sleeping place. The carpet was strewn with old letters, photographs, bills. It was difficult not to tread on them.

He was in the process of moving out, he explained, as he steered me through the piles to where the chair was. His wife had suddenly died, he said, and he was selling up and going to live in the Midlands to be near their only daughter.

Here we go, I thought. Another desperate pensioner dragging in his dead wife as part of his sales pitch. ‘You didn’t kill her, did you?’ I said.

He showed his appreciation of my little joke with a thin smile. For we’ve had another murder in the village. Another elderly woman has been done to death and another octagenarian male has been taken quietly into police custody. It’s like living in an episode of Midsomer Murders. Police cars parked everywhere. Local television news cameramen swaddled from head to foot in the latest outdoor clothing technology loitering self-consciously outside the victim’s home. And everyone rather thrilled to see our familiar houses and telegraph poles appearing on the local television news once more.