Emma Potter

84: The dream

The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it "the RiddleHouse," even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. It stood on a hill overlooking the village,some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivyspreading unchecked over its face. Once a fine-looking manor, andeasily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict, and unoccupied. 

The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was "creepy."Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happenedthere, something that the older inhabitants of the village still likedto discuss when topics for gossip were scarce.

 The story had beenpicked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so manyplaces, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was anymore.Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: Fiftyyears before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning, when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, a maid hadentered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead. 

The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village androused as many people as she could."Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in theirdinner things!" 

The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangletonhad seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement.Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about theRiddles, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr. and Mrs.Riddle had been rich, snobbish, and rude, and their grown-up son,Tom, had been, if anything, worse. All the villagers cared about wasthe identity of their murderer — for plainly, three apparentlyhealthy people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the samenight. 

The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade thatnight; the whole village seemed to have turned out to discuss themurders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when theRiddles' cook arrived dramatically in their midst and announcedto the suddenly silent pub that a man called Frank Bryce had justbeen arrested. 

"Frank!" cried several people. "Never!"

 Frank Bryce was the Riddles' gardener. He lived alone in a rundown cottage on the grounds of the Riddle House. Frank hadcome back from the war with a very stiff leg and a great dislike ofcrowds and loud noises, and had been working for the Riddles eversince.There was a rush to buy the cook drinks and hear more details. 

"Always thought he was odd," she told the eagerly listening villagers, after her fourth sherry. "Unfriendly, like. I'm sure if I've offered him a cuppa once, I've offered it a hundred times. Neverwanted to mix, he didn't." 

"Ah, now," said a woman at the bar, "he had a hard war, Frank.He likes the quiet life. That's no reason to —"

 "Who else had a key to the back door, then?" barked the cook."There's been a spare key hanging in the gardener's cottage far backas I can remember! Nobody forced the door last night! No brokenwindows! All Frank had to do was creep up to the big house whilewe was all sleeping. . . ."

 The villagers exchanged dark looks."I always thought he had a nasty look about him, right enough,"grunted a man at the bar."War turned him funny, if you ask me," said the landlord. 

"Told you I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of Frank,didn't I, Dot?" said an excited woman in the corner."Horrible temper," said Dot, nodding fervently. "I remember,when he was a kid . . ." 

By the following morning, hardly anyone in Little Hangletondoubted that Frank Bryce had killed the Riddles.But over in the neighboring town of Great Hangleton, in thedark and dingy police station, Frank was stubbornly repeating,again and again, that he was innocent, and that the only person hehad seen near the house on the day of the Riddles' deaths had beena teenage boy, a stranger, dark-haired and pale.