Petunia placed her teacup on the table before her. ‘It started out as a concern for welfare. Lloyd and Charlie seized a hunting rifle from old Mr Morris because he had dementia and the neighbours were worried he might hurt himself. Lloyd said Morris didn’t know the gun was loaded when he handed it over to Charlie. He made out that it was a horrible accident. But not my Charlie. He was too careful to let himself get shot like that.’ Petunia drew in a raked breath. With a trembling hand, she pressed the mask to her face. The canister rattled as she sucked in precious breaths of clean air. ‘Afterwards, Mr Morris couldn’t remember a thing.’ She gave Naomi a knowing look. ‘People round here started talking. They said it wasn’t the first time something like this had happened. When Lloyd was a kid, his father shot himself while cleaning his gun. He was a brute of a man, an alcoholic who beat his wife. When Lloyd watched his coffin go down, it’s said he had a smile on his face.’ She pointed a finger to the door where her host was most likely hovering. ‘They know. They all know. That’s why they’re too scared to speak out.’

‘And so were you, I presume?’ Naomi said, trying to understand why Petunia had kept her silence for so long.

‘Lloyd came to see me after Charlie’s funeral,’ she said eventually, resting the mask on her lap. ‘He warned me to stop putting it around the village that he was involved.’

Naomi could imagine the scene. It wasn’t beyond Lloyd to threaten a vulnerable woman who had just lost the man she loved.

‘He was armed at the time,’ she continued. ‘He said there’d been enough tragedy, and warned me to keep my trap shut.’ On the wall, a clock ticked down the minutes as past and present merged. ‘I left Nighbrook the next day.’

Naomi nodded in understanding as Petunia unburdened herself, but she could see the toll it had taken. Her husband’s death, her sister’s disappearance and then there was little Grace, barely eight years old. Too much tragedy for one person to contend with. No wonder she had left the area. Nighbrook was not a happy place for her.

‘I left those video tapes for you,’ Petunia said wearily. ‘Had them put in the loft just before you moved in. And Susan’s old diary. But it wasn’t enough, was it?’

Petunia was right. There was room for one more question. One she had asked herself many times that day. She thought of Mrs Stevens, her ear pressed against the door. But Naomi was so close to answers. Placing her cup on the table, she leaned forward in her chair.

‘Did Lloyd kill your sister and her family?’

The time had come. She had to know.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE