In his experience, all crimes had their roots in the universal deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, pride, envy, sloth and wrath. When Spokes had first heard of this tragedy from Lukha, he had believed that greed or envy would be at the bottom of the matter, as this was usually the case with family, especially siblings. However, Spokes soon realised that there was something different about this case. Envy would have perhaps killed the brother. Greed would have perhaps killed the brother and his wife. But to kill all the members of a family, including the mother you shared – that did not fit the profile of any of the deadly sins.

The burgeoning feud between the two brothers could not account for the decimation of an entire family. As Spokes looked at the photos of the family reaching for one another, and at the girl’s small, soft hand held firmly and reassuringly in her mother’s larger, calloused hand, what he saw before him was a family which was close even in death. Spokes was certain that in that closeness, one of them was communicating more than love. He followed the mother’s other hand, which lay with all fingers pointing towards the kitchen – and discovered another entry point that opened up the mystery.

At the epicentre of the case was an unmarked brown bottle, which Spokes had found in the kitchen. His investigation revealed that the brown bottle had had affixed to it a label with the word ‘arsenic’ written in a deceptively pretty and curlicued cursive when Mrs Bramley, wife of the mine manager, had thrown it out. The brown bottle, with its label written in the kind of handwriting that would be attractive to a nine-year-old child – a child who had only attended a few weeks of school before the war put an end to her education in 1977, a child who (at the moment her education was curtailed) had just started learning how to write, and had aspired to such handwriting herself – was picked up by said child while she was out rummaging with other children on rubbish collection day. She had taken it back to her homestead, where she had peeled off the pretty-looking label and left the brown bottle unmarked.