Everything in Its Place

“You’ll want to know where I was,” said Lilian. “Everyone does. The wife is always the first suspect and the last to be asked anything else.” She poured the tea herself, carefully, a woman making an inventory of her own hands. “At home. Listening to him not come in. I stopped waiting up years ago.”

The kitchen clock ticked. It was an old, loud clock with a painted face, and she watched it as she spoke.

“He decided what I spent and whom I saw, and he called it looking after me. In the works I’m Mrs Crane. In the books I’m nobody. In the house I’m the one who knows where everything is, which is a kind of power that nobody counts.” She smiled thinly. “You could write a chapter on it. I expect somebody has.”

“Somebody has,” you said gently. “Several people. They would have recognised you.”

“Josiah Penhale came to the back door on Friday,” she said, as if remembering a letter that she had meant to post. “About four. Hollis sent him off, told him the chapel could keep its tin. Josiah stood on the step with his hat in his hands and looked at the house like a man at a graveside. I watched from the scullery. I didn’t think anything of it.” She paused. “I think now that I should have.”