Page 102 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection
“You were the one who started picking at my private life. You told me to be professional and then crossed the line as soon as you had a chance. Don’t think you can stick your nose into my life and expect me not to have an opinion. That’s my opinion.”
He holds my eyes for a long moment that sends pricks of fear up my spine. There’s just nothing there in his eyes. Nothing at all.
He looks back down at his plate and picks up his utensils. “Noted.”
And he calls me cold.
Mortally offending De Leon, mercifully, stops the questions. Without his constant needling, I can focus on the interviews. The family neighbor, Patricia Paceman, or “Trish” as she asks me to call her is more than happy to tell me everything she knows.
I interview her over the course of two days, taking a leaf out of De Leon’s playbook and spacing out the tough questions, looping back to them several times until I have such a clear picture of Miranda’s familyIcould be the one who lived next door all my life.
With Trish’s introduction, I speak to several other neighbors as well. The first two don’t have Trish’s level of certainty about what happened to Miranda’s baby brother, although they’re happy to relate the same rumors.
With the third one, I hit pay dirt.
Matilda “Tilly” Mitchell invites me into her “three up, three down” townhouse on the end of a small, brick row in Tiverton, the town closest to where Miranda’s family lived. She’s a middle-aged woman wearing a tweed skirt-suit. I didn’t think they made those anymore. There’s a plastic cover on the couch where she offers me a seat, and she serves me tea in a tall-sided china cup painted with roses. I put it on the coffee table after taking an obligatory sip. I’ve discovered during this trip that, along with the weather and driving on the wrong side of the road, I don’t like British tea. More importantly, the possibility of accidentally cracking or chipping her china sends my anxiety skyrocketing. Give me a coffee mug any day.
I’m honest with Tilly, as I have been with everyone I’ve spoken to, about why I’m here and what I’m doing. Logan toldme not to hide anything. To be able to use the interviews in the custody proceedings, I’ve been video-recording them, so there’s no point in being duplicitous.
She locks her hands around her knee as she perches in a chair opposite my seat on the couch. “Such a bad business,” she says, although she appears neither regretful nor sympathetic. There’s a sharp-eyed look to Tilly Mitchell that says she enjoys her neighbor’s misfortune.
“How’s that?” I ask.
“That girl was always wild. Always scarpering off with this boy and that boy. I should know. My brother was one she messed about.”
“Messed about? How did she mess him about?”
“She was with him but not with him for ages. All while they were kids and then after they both got married. Shameful. I feel so for his wife and her husband.” Tilly clicks her tongue. “He was there that day, you know. He called me in a panic, crying. ‘She’s killed him,’ he told me. ‘She’s ruined it all.’ And she had, hadn’t she? Ruined that family, certainly. The mother off to the continent, in and out of hospitals. Absolutely destroyed that poor woman.”
Since I’m recording—with Tilly’s permission—I’m not taking notes, but I make a mental note to find out everything I can about Miranda’s mother.
“Your brother, sorry, what was his name? He was there the day Nicholas drowned?”
“Fred, and certainly he was there. Never far away from her, in those days. He followed her around. Most of the lads did. I told you she was wild.”
“You did. After Fred called you, what happened?”
“I went over, of course. He was in pieces. They had the poor little boy out of the pond by then, wrapped up in a sheet. Joseph Porter was with him. I waited with them until someonecame, then I drove Fred home. I think it was someone from the hospital, but they didn’t come in an ambulance. Just a car. Certainly, no police.”
“Why no police?” I ask.
“Because no one wanted that girl to go to jail, murderess that she is.”
“I’m confused about that,” I say, although I’m not. “What about justice for the boy?”
She clicks her tongue again. “No one spoke for him, poor wee thing. All the talk was about her and how it would ruin her when she had such a bright future. So, no, no police. Nothing but a notice in the paper and a private funeral.”
“But the coroner must have been involved,” I say, as though I don’t already have a copy of the report.
“I suppose, but the family wouldn’t say a word against her and without them or anyone who was there that day to speak for the lad, nothing happened to her. Not a thing.”
“But your brother was there. I understand there was a group of five or six others. Didn’t anyone speak up?”
Tilly’s lips, slightly chapped, thin into a white line as she shakes her head. “No one wanted to go against the Porters’ wishes.”
“You said Mrs. Porter went off to the continent. What happened to Mr. Porter?”
She sniffs. “Went to the City and stayed there.”
