WHY DIDN’T EVANS ASK THEM?

I've turned an Agatha Chrietie title round and come up with this....

The twins, Danny and Esmeralda, felt that something might be wrong when Uncle Thomas failed to turn up on their shared birthday.

They were twenty five, which seemed a particularly significant age, being quarter of a century, and therefore deservous of celebration, and consequently an invitation had been sent, by email and on paper using the service referred to as snail-mail by those who never used it.

But Uncle Thomas had neither replied to their invitation nor turned up, bearing smiles and gifts like he always did. They had looked out for him (they still lived in their parents house, though their parents had succumbed a couple of years earlier to the pressures of twenty-first century life and died, in order to escape its vulgarity.) Their atoms were in the air, probably blowing in a thousand winds until eternity drew a blind on everything, and the sun went out permanently for them.

“I know what I want to do,” said Esmeralda as they sat down that evening, not watching the television because not one thing on any of the channels appealed to either of their tastes despite it being their birthday, “I want to track down Uncle Thomas and give him a piece of my mind for forgetting our joint twenty-fifth.”

“I’m with you there,” agreed Danny, “let’s nip out tomorrow, it being the weekend and neither of us having much to do, and what’s more important than making sure the old fellow’s okay.”

“Old fellow? He’s not that old!” laughed Esmeralda, “I’d be surprised if he wasn’t still this side of sixty! But I know what you mean. He did seem sort of vague last time he came. Remember: he asked me what I was doing at school now!”

“I thought that was odd,” frowned Danny, “You’re probably right. I remember him when he brought me that train set way back when I was, what, ten or eleven, and he said it broke his heart to give it away because he’d had it when he was a boy himself and he made me promise to look after it.”

“And you did,” smiled Esmeralda, “you got dad to put it on the top of your wardrobe before you could even think of climbing that high yourself.”

“And it’s still there,” sighed Danny, “I forgot all about it.

“So what will we do, Danny? Tomorrow, I mean, when we start tracking him down.”

“We know where he lives. It’s only about fifteen miles away and we could start there. Hope he’s in and we can say we’ve come for a cup of birthday tea!”

“He was mum’s slightly older brother, and we know where she is.” murmured Esmeralda, suddenly serious. “We’re just assuming he’s still alive.”

“That thought crossed my mind too,” sighed Danny, “but surely someone would have contacted us if something like dying had happened to him?”

“We’ll have to be a bit cautious, though,” suggested Esmeralda, “and ready to hope the news isn’t bad. Let’s just hope and pray that when we knock his door he invites us in and puts that kettle of his on.”

Next day, as they had arranged, they set off in Esmeralda’s car because Danny was unsure that his own rather ancient vehicle, a Ford Popular from the nineteen sixties, would make the return trip. It was what he fondly called a classic car, but there wasn’t much that was classic about it if you discounted its age.

The journey the fifteen or so miles to Uncle Thomas’s home was done in only about a quarter of an hour, and when Esmeralda pulled up outside the front door of a terraced house that opened directly onto the pavement they couldn’t help noticing the FOR SALE notice in the window.

They climbed out, though, and went down a jitty that led round the back. The yard with a tiny lawn and small herb garden that their uncle had always been proud of looked uncared for, and the house had an altogether neglected look to it.

“You won’t find him in,” came the voice of an elderly woman from over an adjacent fence, “old sod’s in the clink, bless him!”

“What? Uncle Thomas?” gasped Danny, “what’s he done? He’s always been someone in our family to be proud of!”

“Murder,” the voice replied, and to accompany it a door was pushed open and a woman who looked as if she had come straight out of the nineteen fifties, dressed in a wrap-around pinafore and shaking her head. “Not that I believe it, but the cops reckon he did it and so he must have.”

“Who?” asked Esmeralda, “I mean, who did he… murder?”

“There was a lass who used to pop in and help him out because his knees were shot and he couldn’t do much for himself. Well, they reckon he did for her, but I still don’t believe it. They must have cause, though, the cops, or they wouldn’t put the blame on an old sod like him!”

“Who was the lass?” asked Danny, “he never had much to do with lasses. He told us, when we were old enough to understand, you know, that he was sort of gay.”

“I dunno nothing about that,” the woman shook her head and retreated back through the gate and into the privacy of her own back yard.

“Uncle Thomas would never even hurt a fly,” sighed Esmeralda, “I don’t believe it. I want to go to the police station and find out what this is all about.”

“I’m with you there, sis,” said Danny determinedly, “we might not have seen much of him lately, but he is family after all.”

“And there aren’t so many of us left in the family after our parents passed,” murmured Esmeralda.

“Come on then, I’m with you and we’ll find out what’s been going on right now,” insisted Danny, and the two of them returned to Esmeralda’s car.

The police station wasn’t so far away from Slice Row, the row of Victorian terraced houses where Uncle Thomas lived, and Esmeralda parked almost right outside its front door.

“If they want me to move on then I will, when I get some answers,” she said grimly.

“I’ve not seen you like this for ages!” Danny said with a humourless smile.

“Come on, bro,” she hissed, and led the way through a double swing door into a lobby. To the left was a desk marked ENQUIRIES and she marched straight up to it, where a bored looking uniformed officer was sitting on a stool and twiddling a pencil

“Excuse us,” demanded Esmeralda.

“Yes miss,” the officer said, barely looking up at her.

“We’ve come to see why my uncle Thomas is in trouble,” asked Danny, “he’s our uncle on our mother’s side and probably the only blood relative we’ve got. His neighbour said he was behind bars for committing murder!”

“You need to see the Inspector, because all I do is sit here, get mocked by drunks and twiddle this pencil,” replied the officer, “hang on and I’ll give him a buzz.”

They had to wait for about half an hour, sitting on a pair on uncomfortable straight-backed chairs, and a plainly clothed officer in a charcoal suit appeared through a closed door made himself known to them.

“You were enquiring after Mr Thomas Evans?” he said rather sourly and using the tone of voice that implied that his time was precious and they’d best not be wasting it.

“He’s our uncle and he should have come to our house yesterday because he was invited to our birthday tea. We’re twins, you see, and he always comes.” explained Danny

“Yesterday, you say? Are we talking about the same man? Thomas Evans? Of 34, Slice Row?”

“That’s his address, which you would know if you have him in custody,” snapped Esmeralda, “and we can’t see him doing anything wrong.”

“Like murder, you mean?” growled the officer, “well, that’s easy to answer. Because he said that he did.”

“We don’t understand,” sighed Danny, “he’s such a peaceable, loving sort of man, brother to our later mother, bless her.”

“Then I’ll fill you in on what we know, which ain’t much,” growled the officer, “if you don’t mind coming with me into a room where we won’t be overheard.”

They stood up and followed him into a room marked INTERVIEW ROOM A, which was sparsely furnished with a table and four chairs which looked every bit as uncomfortable as those they had been sitting on in the entrance lobby.

“Well, the facts are these,” said the officer using a formal tone of voice, “a young woman was attacked and killed walking through Brumpton Woods, let me see, exactly a year ago yesterday, it was, mid afternoon, and we drew a blank, couldn’t find any reason why anyone should want to hurt a hair on her pretty head. And a pretty young thing she was, too. Why anyone would want to hurt her I don’t know. Real sweet, she was, though dead when I saw her.” He sighed and actually wiped a tear from his eyes.

“And?” asked Esmeralda.

“Well, we investigated the crime, of course we did, quite thoroughly as it happens because the lass deserved an answer, and we found out that she did for Mr Evans of 34, Slice Row, but when we first asked him where he’d been when the murder was committed, he didn’t know. Seems his memory ain’t what it was. I struck me that he wasn’t quite unsure about anything. Did you know that?”

Esmeralda shook her head. “Though when he came to our last birthday he did seem a bit vague,” she told the officer, and Danny nodded in support.

“Anyway, we drew a blank and then, the other day, he marches into this station bold as brass and said he’s had time to think about it and he was sure it was him who had killed the lass because, he reckoned, he was in love with her and knew that he was much too old for her. And it would have been a year ago come yesterday. So we arrested him. Seems he’d even put his house up for sale, not expecting to need it again on account of thinking he’s spend the rest of his days behind bars for murder!”

“A year ago yesterday, in the afternoon,” frowned Esmeralda. “We came here to find out why he hadn’t come to our birthday tea yesterday because he always has, ever since we were born. Every birthday, without missing one on the same date every year.”

“It was even quite embarrassing when we were at college and he turned up,” added Danny, “a group of students celebrating in Th New Inn and a middle-aged bloke wanting to join in. But we liked him, so it was all right.”

“And you say the girl was murdered exactly one year ago yesterday?” frowned Esmeralda, “and he said he loved her? That’s odd. We always thought he was gay,”

“Exactly one year ago,” nodded the uniformed officer, “and one of my chaps mentioned his sexuality. Said he knew all about it.”

“Then he can’t have killed the girl,” Esmeralda said, knowing for a certainty that she was right, “because yesterday one year ago exactly Uncle Thomas was at our twenty-fourth birthday tea from after lunch untul dark.”

“And we could have saved him a lot of worrying if we’d known about the girl in the woods,” added Danny, “Why didn’t Uncle Evans ask us?”

© Peter Rogerson 14.04.23

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Reviews

[AYVID N]

A very interesting story this was. Indeed, why didn't uncle Evans ask them? The answer will remain with him somewhere in his clouded mind. Another good read. Thanks.