A Quiet Purchase

Detective Inspector Halloway retired on a Friday and bought the house on a Saturday, which she later considered the first of her mistakes.

Bellweather Lane was the kind of street that appeared on postcards and in the dreams of people who had never lived in a small town. There were lime trees, and a butcher who knew every customer by name, and a pub that served a stew so good it was almost worth the weather. The house was stone, two stories, and had a garden that had been loved by someone, once.

The estate agent had mentioned, only in passing, that the previous owner had been elderly and had died in the house. "Peacefully," she said, with the particular emphasis people use when they are not certain. Halloway did not ask more. She had spent twenty years asking more, and she was tired of the answers.