The Family Remains(54)

‘Sorry. He’s not my dog. He belongs to my mother. I’m just looking after him for her. He’s a bit over-protective.’

I nod. ‘That is his job. A dog needs a job to be happy and if they don’t know what their job is, they make one up.’

Libby Jones issues a small note of laughter and leads Donal and me through a door behind her and into a tiny flat on the ground floor. The flat is very pretty, a reflection of Libby in its neat shelves and ordered surfaces, its bland attractiveness. We are seated in the living room on cream linen sofas and given glasses of water by Dido in the boiler suit.

‘So,’ I begin. ‘Miss Jones. I was given your details by Smithkin Rudd & Royle solicitors in SW1. They tell us that you inherited a property at number sixteen Cheyne Walk around a year ago?’

‘Yes. That’s correct.’

‘And that you sold it recently?’

‘Yes. The sale completed about ten days ago.’

‘To Oliver and Kate Wolfensberger?’

‘Yes. That’s right.’

‘And I understand the house once belonged to your parents?’

I notice Libby gulp before clearing her throat and I know that her answer to this question will be a lie.

‘My birth parents. Yes. That’s correct.’

‘And you’d never met your birth parents?’

‘No, never. They died when I was a very young baby. Can I ask what this is about?’

I feel myself on a tightrope across a crevasse. Libby Jones has already lied to me once and I don’t want to put her on the spot and make her lie again. I want only honest answers from her.

‘We are investigating the possible murder of a young woman called Birdie Dunlop-Evers in the late eighties to early nineties.’

I see a flicker of recognition pass across her face. But she shakes her head, signifying that she has never heard of Birdie Dunlop-Evers.

‘It is possible that she was living at number sixteen Cheyne Walk at the time of her death,’ I continue. ‘I’ve read an article, in the Guardian, about the history of the house and of the terrible tragedy that befell your parents. I have read how you were found in a crib alone upstairs. I have read that there were other people in that house. Teenagers. Some reports say there were two teenagers. Some say three, some say four. Some reports say that there had never been any children living at the house that they could remember. A delivery man thought the house might be a nunnery? So many conflicting reports, in fact. Have you read this article too?’

‘Yes. Of course. Yes. It was one of the first things I found online when I discovered that the house had been left to me. Before that I’d never heard of the house or of any members of the family. It’s a very confusing article.’

‘Indeed. Many questions. Few answers. And so it felt possible to me, when I read this article, that in a house with such a chaotic and tragic back story, maybe a young woman could be subsumed into the fabric of that house without anyone noticing. Disappear entirely.’

It is not a question. It is a statement. Libby Jones cannot agree or disagree and I leave it there for a moment, to settle in the silence.

Libby Jones rearranges all her limbs, both legs and arms. ‘I genuinely have no idea,’ she says. ‘I only know what was in the article. I don’t know anything else.’

‘You saw the house though? Before you sold it?’

‘Oh, yes. Of course. I spent quite some time there after inheriting it. Exploring. Getting a feel for the place.’

‘And you never saw anything? Found anything? Anything that might have given more insight into what happened the night your parents committed suicide?’

‘No. Sorry.’

Her hand goes to her throat as she says this.

Damn. She has lied again. But this time it is a useful lie because it makes me believe that she has in fact found out something beyond the story contained in the newspaper article; that she does know something and that she is choosing not to share it with me; and if she is choosing not to share it with me, then she is trying to protect either herself or somebody else. And who could she possibly want to protect in this bizarre scenario other than another person involved in the story of that house?

The brother, perhaps, or sister?

Henry and Lucy were the names of the other Lamb children, according to the article. Is it possible, I wonder, that they had known of the date of the trust’s maturity and tracked Libby down to claim their share? After all, they had both been named on the trust, too, and neither had come forward on their own twenty-fifth birthdays. Might they have been waiting for a ‘clean’ person to claim the inheritance on their behalf? Someone who existed above the radar, unlike themselves? And if they couldn’t exist above the radar, then why not? Possibly because one of them had been responsible in some way for the death of Birdie Dunlop-Evers? But why? That is the question that I now know I must find the answer to. Why would a teenager, or even two, three or four teenagers, wish to kill a thirty-year-old woman?

‘I saw the house yesterday,’ I tell Libby. ‘Mr Wolfensberger let me look around. It’s quite characterful.’

‘Scary, you mean?’

‘Yes, I suppose. A little scary. It’s hard to imagine that a normal family ever lived there.’

‘Well, maybe they weren’t a normal family.’ Libby shrugs her shoulders. ‘I mean, normal families don’t tend to carry out suicide pacts, do they?’