Once we’d settled in the new house, my husband and I noticed our neighbour, Alberto, would sit out of an evening to read. He kept an idyllic garden, resplendent with glorious oak trees on which squirrels would chase and chirrup. I would watch him sitting on his antique red bench, quietly watching his flowers and the birds and squirrels do their thing, and glancing at his book. His garden had a sheer brick wall at the back which had the double benefit of affording him privacy, and shade when desired.
I was an avid reader myself. My friends and I had started a detective-fiction book club during the pandemic. We called ourselves the Code Red Gals. We were always on the lookout for new book ideas; and it occurred to me it would be neighbourly to share a conversation with Alberto about our books. It was clear his reading gave him immense joy. He always seemed to beam from ear to ear; having little moments of clarity as he read. I wondered if he was into crime and detective stories like my friends and I.
Pottering away in the garden one Sunday, I took more than a sideways glance to try and see if I could recognise his book. That was when I realised he wasn’t actually reading his book at all. Tucked away inside were a couple of loose folded-up pages; handwritten notes of some sort. This caught me off guard: his book was a ruse. I put my husband up to the job of gleaning more detail, for fear I might be taken for a busybody.
I despatched Eddie to the back lane with some recycling. He did as he was bid, and was able to reconnoitre Alberto’s hidden notes. I was making an excellent play of sorting dishes when Eddie blurted back into the kitchen.
“It’s a list of names, Emily,” he shuddered, his face in thrall. Eddie explained that there were two columns on Alberto’s notes. On the left-hand column, a list of names in red pen. On the right-hand column, a much longer list of names in blue; with names scored out.
Alberto hadn’t been reading that book at all (which, incidentally, was a biography about some American folk singer called Jim Sullivan). He had instead been perusing his strange lists, and for some months. Over the next few days, I conducted my surveillance. Occasionally he would smile that broad little smile of his, and sometimes chuckle at his own thoughts. Sometimes he’d walk up and down his garden, with a modest little limp, nodding to himself as if in memory of some old jape shared with an absent friend. This was all most unusual. My book-club detective alarm bell had been well and truly rung. This did not sit right with me at all.
He gave the outwardly appearance of a lovely man, from Mexico as it happens. His English was exceptional. Before my investigatory spree kicked in over that list of his, Eddie had attempted some loose Spanish conversation, and I think Alberto appreciated the effort.
Notwithstanding all those polite first impressions, I puzzled over his mysterious list. And then one morning I was disturbed to find him rapping on our front door. A part of me wondered if he was suspicious of our suspicions; I batted the thought away like a summer fly.
Alberto greeted me as pleasant as a picnic, and asked if Eddie would sign some photographs to help renew his driver’s licence. I knew Alberto used his car a lot for work; he was a professional photographer, always out at a wedding or graduation. But he’d been out of work with a dodgy knee; having fallen off a stage. He was waiting on a claim to pay out.
Eddie was out early that day for work, but I volunteered him with glacial calm, given my annoyance that our outwardly lovely but peculiar neighbour had not thought to simply ask me. As I sat down for my first coffee of the day, a plan had hatched in my mind. Like most men, Alberto had underestimated me. He did not think me even worthy of signing a damn passport photo. I knew I had an incredible gift for solving mysteries; a village detectorist. I resolved before my first sip of that coffee that Alberto and his strange list of names was now my present case. Oh, I reasoned there was bound to be some mundane explanation. But I did not like being taken for granted; so dear old Alberto was in my sights.
When Eddie appeared, I conscripted him to my plot. We’d wait until Alberto was sitting with his Trojan book, and Eddie would jump across the fence with a pen. He’d ask to lean on the book to sign the photos, and get a proper look at the list hidden inside.
Eddie, usually my down-to-earther, was pleasantly all-aboard my mystery train. I was pleased to see my enthusiasm for crime-solving had been rubbing off on him, as he was frequently feckless; though I do love him in my own way. “It’ll make for a good marriage,” my mother had said. She was right. It is a “good” marriage, and no more.
Early that evening Alberto finally appeared in his garden to enjoy the last of the sun. I watched him hobble across his lawn and plonk himself on that red bench. Soon enough, he was running his fingers up and down the list, pondering whatever was in that mind of his, and chuckling away, before returning it to the pages of the book. Eddie planted an unexpected kiss on my lips before he swashbuckled out the back door replete with new-found derring-do. God, he looked like such a moron.
I peered through our kitchen window as they exchanged pleasantries. Alberto was, as ever, the vision of a gentleman. I was willing Eddie to get on with it; he lacked bite. My mind was whirring with impatience. Just what was on Alberto’s odd list?
I saw Eddie’s meagre heart skip a beat when he finally got a good look. The colour in his face drained. He looked up at me and his eyes had such darkness in them I dropped my coffee mug (which proudly proclaimed “I put the Pink in Pinkerton”: a Christmas gift from the Code Red Gals) in the sink, shattering it.
Eddie ambled back in torpor, falling in the kitchen door as if under the influence. Unusually, he locked it. By this time, my curiosity had been replaced by adrenalin. I asked him to get straight to the point; I was not for Eddie’s dilly-dallying. I simply had to know what was on Alberto’s list.
Eddie confirmed it was a list of names. People’s names. It was like an accounting tally, names being moved from an “in” column to an “out” column. It made little sense, but what had panicked Eddie was his recognition of two names on the “out” list.
The first name he divulged was Annabel Lay. Of course, I recognised it straight away. She was the old lady who had lived in our house before us. The house had lain empty for years because she had gone missing, and her estate had been tied up in legal wrangles. Her body had never been found. Eventually, her daughter managed to get her declared dead, and the house was put on the market.
By the time we came across it, the price had tumbled. No one, it seemed, wanted to buy the house of an old lady missing and declared dead. But I liked a house with character. What a story it made for the Code Red Gals. Eddie grumbled, but I soon had him quietened down.
Thinking of Annabel Lay filled me with a hunger. Why did Alberto have her name on a list? And why was poor old Mrs Lay in the “out” column? I felt partially out of control of events; I could feel beads of sweat appearing on my brow. And then, Eddie told me the second name he saw on Alberto’s list. Peter Carpenter.
It was a name which lived in infamy in the local area. He had lived across the street. His dog walker had found his house like the Marie Celeste and the police suspected foul play. No body was ever found. It remained an unsolved case all these years later. I felt a cold, grasping hand on my neck; not fear – desire; a need to know, to solve. Two missing persons from the same street. Both on Alberto’s strange list? I stood up, shocked, my heart thumping, and looked out our kitchen window. There he was, friendly old Alberto, limping with that bad knee of his as he tended to his rose bushes.
Eddie asked about calling the police. I dismissed him instantly. What would they do with us? They’d think us a couple of loons; pearl-clutching, curtain-twitching loons. No, we couldn’t call the police. Our clear option was to undertake our own investigation; at least for now. Perhaps there was some ordinary answer to all of this.
Eddie then stupidly suggested about calling it out, to his face. But Alberto carried the hallmarks of a lovely old man. If we erroneously accused him of some clandestine tomfoolery involving a list of missing people, well, we’d be as good looking for a new home. We’d never be able to show our faces again in the village.
Eddie finally relented to my superior logic and we resolved to set a further trap of sorts, to get inside Alberto’s house for a look around. If there was anything suspicious, I convinced Eddie, then we could bring the police in.
Eddie had an electric leg massager which he had used for a football injury. It wrapped round the leg and had a small contraption which he could set to flex and restrict the pad like a blood pressure cuff. We invited ourselves round for tea and offered him the massager for his knee.
Alberto seemed delighted that I had been so thoughtful and he gave us the opening I was looking for. “Do you know, I don’t think the previous occupant of your house ever offered me something as friendly as this. I am incredibly grateful. I shall try it this evening,” he had said. Before I could give my deft, pre-planned reply, Eddie went in (yet again) with both feet.
“We did wonder what happened to that old lady,” he said, demonstrating the tact of a rubber mallet. As I hid my rolling eyes, I sensed the atmosphere drain from the room. Alberto’s posture changed; as if a switch had been flicked.
“Ah,” he finally said. “In which case I have something I think I need to show you.” He stood gingerly, and took a grip of a ladder he had resting against his impressive bookcase. He took the first two steps. Alberto is on to us.
I peered up to the top of the bookcase and caught my breath: a crowbar protruded over the lip. He’s onto us, I thought. He knows we know he had something to do with the missing people. Eddie, unobservant as usual, had no idea Alberto was about to reach for a weapon; doing his best not to comprehend my obvious facial expressions. Our suspicions could not be uncovered. I knew there was only one thing to do and it wouldn’t be clean.
As Alberto reached the top of his little step ladder, his hand reached up … and I … I stepped forward and gave his bad knee just the slightest of tweaks with my finger and thumb. It was just a little nip, really.
Alberto screamed in pain and confusion, grabbing some loose papers which lay atop the bookcase next to the crowbar. He fell, and with a horrid somehow high-pitched clunk, his head smashed on the coffee table. As Eddie and I watched on, his body just sort of slooped onto that awful purple carpet of his. He blinked – just once – which was enough for me to register cold surprise in the recess of his pupils, then; his eyes closed for good. Around us, the papers he had grasped while going for the crowbar came to rest.
“Emily … what … what have you done?” Eddie mouthed. Such a dull comment, it really gave me the ick. Eddie can be so unhelpful in these situations.
As I stood up to decide our next steps, I found myself facing his books. I instantly recognised a great many authors in his collection: it was rammed with true crime and murder fiction. Oh, he had the odd adventure story and even a horror or two, but as I surveyed his books I realised with a dull thud (like the noise his body had made hitting that dreadful carpet) that poor old Aberto was just a fellow detectorist; a hobbyist like me. Eddie, face ashen, was picking up the loose papers. Having glanced at them, he passed them over to me like he was serving a summons.
Alberto’s papers were organograms; case notes and theories about the missing people. They were his ideas; his suspicions. His private detective work. As I perused his notes, and thought of his book collection, I finally understood. All those times he had been in arboreal contemplation he had been mentally dissecting the cases of our missing neighbours; trying to solve the mystery for himself. Poor old Alberto. He ended up being another one of the missing; a name on his own list.
It took Eddie three nights to dig a grave below the rosebushes, though it ought to have been done in one. With the high brick wall and oak trees for sentinels, Eddie was lucky he had such seclusion given his lethargy.
It was a month before the police came knocking. Alberto’s doctor had reported him missing, having missed two appointments about that dratted knee. Thankfully, they didn’t seem interested to speak with Eddie. He would have been awful at that sort of thing. I, on the other hand, relied on my gossamer-like-touch, and developed an instant camaraderie. I ended up teaching those officers a thing or two: they seemed immensely grateful for my insights.
Eddie has become so tiresome; I continually have to convince him we can’t be held to account for what happened; not really. It was an accident, that’s all. Just an accident. Eddie started on some sort of mood depressant after his garden nightshifts, an uninspired decision, given he was hardly a bon viveur to begin with. He’s now doubled up on the pills; telling me its “his way” to deal with it all, whatever that is supposed to mean.
Poor old Eddie, if he’s not careful, he’ll overdose.
*****
JS Apsley is an aspiring author based in Glasgow, Scotland.
