“Hey, Ol’ Man Lovell. You killed your wife yet? Did you bury her in the garden?”

The flap shut, and he trapped and held his next breath. There would be more. And so there was.

“It’s you, isn’t it? You’re The Doll Maker. Are you going to give us some ickle-wickle dolly-wollies, you fucking sicko? Or are you going to murder us?” It was a teenage boy’s voice. He laughed again, and Lovell recognized in it a kind of shocked delight.

Trefor freed the air from his lungs and contemplated his next move. He needed to leave for work. He had orders to fulfill, and he was behind. Perhaps he should chase them up The Avenue. Give them a scare. But the last time he’d done that, they’d stuck soiled sanitary napkins to his windows. After a day in the sun, the odor had made him gag as he’d cleaned up the mess.

The tips of the boy’s fingers appeared in the mouth of his front door. Trefor frowned. What were they up to? Muffled conversation and an exclamation of disgust. A giggle, but stifled, as if Trefor would hear, open up and demand to be in on the joke.

He took a step down the stairs, intending to confront them.

Bunches of dried lavender that hung from the banister brushed against him, sending tiny, fragrant flowers tumbling over his shoulders. His wife, Annie, had loved these vibrant blooms before she’d left him, and so he’d placed them in every room.

A small envelope—the padded type, thick with Bubble Wrap and about the size of a birthday card—dropped through the letter box, the sound breaking open the silence of the house.

WIFE KILLER was scrawled across the front.

Fire burned in him. He had never done anything to hurt his wife. It wasn’t his fault she’d gone; he’d begged her not to leave him. It wasn’t his fault that he could not bring himself to talk about it, could not face the onslaught of his neighbors, raking over the memories of his marriage, sticking their noses in. It wasn’t his fault that because the gossips hadn’t seen her for a few months, conveniently forgetting she’d been housebound and rarely went out, and because he was a closed and private man, they’d drawn their own conclusions, laced with a cruelty born of ignorance.

It wasn’t his fault that in the end he’d been forced to lie, to pretend she was staying with her goddaughter to satisfy the busybodies who might feel inclined to voice their suspicions to the police.

The sensible course of action would be to ignore the envelope and dump it in the bin. But a part of him was wounded by these accusations. It fed his masochistic need to pick at the scab of this injustice.

The envelope was as light as a feather.

He shook it, but could feel nothing inside, no shift of weight, no displacement of contents. He frowned. Perhaps it was a note. Well, damn them all. He could handle that. He ran a finger along the seal and peeled back the flap.