The Harlow Case
I feel I must set down the facts of the Harlow case whilst they remain clear in my mind.
It began on the morning of the fourteenth of November. Elena Harlow was found lifeless in the upstairs bedroom of their house at 29 Garston Lane. The house is a perfectly ordinary old house in the Victorian style in the Abbeyfield district — red brick, oriel windows, and a front garden that is nothing but gravel. Her husband, David Harlow, telephoned the emergency services at 7:42 in the morning. He explained that he had just returned from his regular morning walk when he discovered her lying on the floor between the bed and the window. The ambulance crew pronounced her dead at the scene. She was only fifty-one.
I was assigned the case that same afternoon. It was standard procedure: an unexplained death with no immediate indication of foul play, but the circumstances were sufficiently peculiar to warrant further inquiry. In particular, there was the matter of the bedroom door, which had been locked from the inside. David told the police he had been obliged to force it open with his shoulder. The door frame was splintered, which was entirely consistent with his account. The key lay on the floor on Elena’s side of the room, approximately a metre from her right hand.
I visited the house on the fifteenth of November. The bedroom had been left precisely as it was. It was a tidy room — white walls, blue curtains drawn halfway across, and a glass of water on the bedside table still three-quarters full. Elena’s reading glasses lay folded beside the glass. The floor was covered in a pastel-colored fringed wall-to-wall carpet. The bed, an older sort with rails along the edges for a canopy, had been made. Lace trim on the pillow. Upon the bed lay a library book face down: a novel by Daphne du Maurier entitled The Scapegoat, open at page 174. I made a note of this. I make a note of absolutely everything; it is my method.
I spoke with David in the kitchen. He appeared composed — not cold, but controlled, in the manner of certain people for whom the alternative is to fall entirely to pieces. He told me that he and Elena had dined together the previous evening: pasta and a glass of red wine each. They had watched half of a film — he could not recall which — before she went upstairs at approximately ten o’clock because she wished to read. David had remained in the sitting room, fallen asleep on the sofa, woken at half past six, gone for his walk, and returned at ten to eight only to find the door locked. Where had he slept? In the chair, he said. I asked whether it was usual for the door to be locked. He replied that it had never once happened in their twenty-nine years of marriage. Nor had Elena been unwell; on the contrary, she had been in excellent spirits. She had recently begun volunteering at the Abbeyfield Library, shelving books on Wednesdays and Fridays, and he said she was thoroughly enjoying it. I took his statement and said I would be in touch.
On my way out, I stopped in the front garden. It was raining lightly and the gravel was dark. In the flower bed beside the front steps, I observed a single footprint in the mud — narrow and pointed, from a woman’s shoe — facing away from the house. Only one print. Not two. I made a note of this also.
On the sixteenth, I spoke with the neighbours. Mrs Denton at number 31 had heard nothing unusual on the night of the fourteenth. She described Elena as quiet and pleasant, a woman who kept her garden tidy and always returned things she had borrowed. She had seen Elena on the Tuesday carrying a bag of books towards the library. The neighbor at number 27, Mr Firth, said very nearly the same thing. He, too, had heard nothing, and he used precisely the same words as Mrs Denton: “a woman who kept her garden tidy.” That neighbors describe people in identical terms is not unusual; they see only the surface. He remarked that there were roadworks in the street, that they had commenced on the thirteenth, and that the workmen had carried on unusually late into the evening.
Before returning to the station, I had a look at the excavation. No one was working in the hole when I arrived, but it was surrounded by barriers so that nobody should fall in. It looked like any hole that is ordinarily dug. Cracked tarmac. A mound of earth. I noted this.
The post-mortem report arrived on the seventeenth of November. The cause of death was cardiac arrest, most probably an acute infarction. No signs of violence or suspicious substances. The pathologist mentioned one small detail — a faint, brownish discoloration on Elena’s left palm, perhaps ink or soil — but concluded it was of no relevance. On paper, the case was straightforward and ought to have been closed, but I could not put it down.
I consulted my superior and said I wished to keep the Abbotsfield matter under observation. He asked why, and I said I had a feeling, and he said one ought to trust one’s feelings but that I was not to let it interfere with new cases. I said that was quite all right.
I set everything down whilst it is fresh in my mind. In my notes I had written the following: a woman had been found dead, a door had been locked, a book had been left open, the curtains had been drawn back, there was a hole in the street, and a footprint pointing away from the house.
On the eighteenth, I returned to the house to examine the bedroom once more. No one was working in the street, and the hole was no longer there, nor were there any barriers. I checked the flower bed on my way in. A distinct impression. I wished to look at the key again. It was now standing in the door. The curtains: green, drawn halfway. The water glass: half full. The du Maurier novel lay on the bed, open at page 203. I noted this.
I spoke with David again in the kitchen. He was perfectly calm. I asked whether I might have Elena’s shoes. He gave them to me — they were clean — and said they had eaten fish for supper on the last evening. I wrote this down. I sat in the car for a long while. The rain was coming down in sheets. It occurred to me that I ought to check the footprint in the bed, but it had been washed away by the rain. I pressed the shoe into the earth and compared it with my notes. One footprint, a woman’s. Pointing away from the house. When I picked up the shoe, I noticed a brownish mark on my left palm. Soil or ink.
On the nineteenth, I went to the Abbeyfield Library to speak with the head librarian, Mrs Chalmers. She was a small, precise woman who wore her spectacles on a chain. She confirmed that Elena had been a reliable and punctual volunteer who had worked there since September. She had been responsible for shelving fiction and was very particular about the system.
When I asked whether Elena had seemed troubled or had mentioned anything out of the ordinary, Mrs Chalmers hesitated. She adjusted her spectacles and said: “There was one thing.” I leaned forward and underlined the words in my notebook. She told me that Elena had spent a great deal of time in the local history section. Not for work, but to read. She had been looking at the same documents each time (parish registers or maps, I noted) and had taken photographs of the pages with her telephone before replacing everything with great care.
Mrs Chalmers rose to show me which folders were in question. I followed her through the reading room and along a corridor that smelled of dust and old carpets. At the far end was a small, windowless room marked LOCAL HISTORY ARCHIVE. She walked to the third row of shelves, reached for a folder, and then stopped abruptly.
She stood there with her hand in the air, quite still. The ceiling light hummed. I ought to relate what happened next, for it was perhaps the most important moment in the entire case. It was then that everything changed. Mrs Chalmers turned to me and said—
I should describe the archive room in greater detail. The shelves were standard grey metal shelving, approximately two metres high. The floor was dark green linoleum, cracked at the skirting boards. There was a solitary desk in the corner with a magnifying glass and a logbook. The logbook lay open at the twenty-ninth of October. The ceiling light vibrated with a sound one could almost hear, a sort of tremor. The shelves were grey, as I have said.
I wish to set down the facts of the Hollow case whilst they remain clear in my mind. On the fourteenth of November, Elena Hollow was found lifeless in the sitting room on the ground floor. David telephoned at 7:42, and the door was unlocked. The key was in David’s pocket. The curtains were drawn. The water glass stood on the bedside table beside a book open at a page I ought to have written down but which I have mislaid. I note everything. It is my method. The bed was of the older sort. It had been made, but slightly rumpled, as though someone had lain on top of the covers. The pillows were dressed in cases with lace trim. Beneath the bed lay—
I spoke with Mrs Chalmers at the library. She said the most important thing anyone has said in this entire case. I have written it down in my notebook, on the page between the footprint and the report, but when I look for it, the words are indistinct. I can see the indentations of the pen in the paper, but the ink has gone.
I spoke with Mr Firth. He said he had heard something that evening — the sound of something falling on the gravel. He said there were roadworks in the street that evening. He said he had seen Elena on a Thursday. I said nothing, only wrote it down. I spoke with David. He was always sitting in the kitchen. He could not remember what they had eaten. He said she had gone upstairs, then said she had not gone upstairs. I noticed that he had the same brown stain on his left palm as Elena had. Ink or soil. The footprint in the bed pointed towards the shed at the bottom of the garden. I intended to search the shed.
The shed stood at the far end of the garden, beyond a lawn that had not been mown for some time. It was twenty-nine paces to the shed (I noted this) and the shed was wooden and secured with a padlock. David gave me the key; it was warm from having been in his pocket. Inside the shed, it smelled of damp earth. A lawnmower, garden tools, and a bag of compost. On the workbench stood a jam jar full of nails, and beside it, a small cardboard box.
I opened the box. I must be precise now. The box was brown and unmarked. Inside the box was—
On the twenty-ninth of November, I submitted my report. I wrote that everything pointed to natural causes. No indication of criminal activity. I wrote that the case could be closed, and my superior concurred. The case was officially concluded. I never mentioned the box, or Mrs Chalmers, or what she had said in that room with the grey shelves and the humming light. I did not mention the footprint, or the book and that the page number in the book had advanced twenty-nine pages in an empty room.
I did not mention it because—
I note everything. The Harlow case is closed. I have set down the facts whilst they were still clear. The facts are these: A woman was found dead. A door was locked. A book was open. A shed contained a box. And the box contained the usual things.