Emma Potter

84: The dream

 Nobody else in thevillage had seen any such boy, and the police were quite sure thatFrank had invented him. 

Then, just when things were looking very serious for Frank, thereport on the Riddles' bodies came back and changed everything.

The police had never read an odder report. A team of doctorshad examined the bodies and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated, or (asfar as they could tell) harmed at all. In fact (the report continued,in a tone of unmistakable bewilderment), the Riddles all appearedto be in perfect health — apart from the fact that they were alldead. The doctors did note (as though determined to find something wrong with the bodies) that each of the Riddles had a look ofterror upon his or her face — 

but as the frustrated police said,whoever heard of three people being frightened to death?As there was no proof that the Riddles had been murdered at all,the police were forced to let Frank go. The Riddles were buried inthe Little Hangleton churchyard, and their graves remained objectsof curiosity for a while. To everyone's surprise, and amid a cloud ofsuspicion, Frank Bryce returned to his cottage on the grounds of theRiddle House. 

" 'S far as I'm concerned, he killed them, and I don't care whatthe police say," said Dot in the Hanged Man. "And if he had anydecency, he'd leave here, knowing as how we knows he did it." 

But Frank did not leave. He stayed to tend the garden for thenext family who lived in the Riddle House, and then the next —for neither family stayed long. Perhaps it was partly because ofFrank that the new owners said there was a nasty feeling about theplace, which, in the absence of inhabitants, started to fall intodisrepair. 

The wealthy man who owned the Riddle House these days neitherlived there nor put it to any use; they said in the village that he keptit for "tax reasons," though nobody was very clear what these might be

. The wealthy owner continued to pay Frank to do the gardening, however. Frank was nearing his seventy-seventh birthday now,very deaf, his bad leg stiffer than ever, but could be seen potteringaround the flower beds in fine weather, even though the weeds werestarting to creep up on him, try as he might to suppress them.Weeds were not the only things Frank had to contend with either. 

Boys from the village made a habit of throwing stonesthrough the windows of the Riddle House. They rode their bicyclesover the lawns Frank worked so hard to keep smooth. Once ortwice, they broke into the old house for a dare. They knew that oldFrank's devotion to the house and grounds amounted almost to anobsession, and it amused them to see him limping across the garden, brandishing his stick and yelling croakily at them. 

Frank, forhis part, believed the boys tormented him because they, like theirparents and grandparents, thought him a murderer. So when Frankawoke one night in August and saw something very odd up at theold house, he merely assumed that the boys had gone one step further in their attempts to punish him.It was Frank's bad leg that woke him; it was paining him worsethan ever in his old age. 

He got up and limped downstairs into thekitchen with the idea of refilling his hot-water bottle to ease thestiffness in his knee. Standing at the sink, filling the kettle, helooked up at the Riddle House and saw lights glimmering in its upper windows. Frank knew at once what was going on. The boyshad broken into the house again, and judging by the flickeringquality of the light, they had started a fire. 

Frank had no telephone, and in any case, he had deeply mistrusted the police ever since they had taken him in for questioningabout the Riddles' deaths. He put down the kettle at once, hurried back upstairs as fast as his bad leg would allow, and was soon backin his kitchen, fully dressed and removing a rusty old key from itshook by the door.