A Girl, a Murder, and Twelve Dreadful Children

Chapter XII: Fancy Meeting You Here!

...humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific abysses. -- Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives' Tale

If Dani's life had taught her anything, it was that mysterious, out-of-nowhere recollections of trivial facts were rarely coincidences. God or Fate or whatever was in control of the universe had a terrible sense of humour and even worse timing. She hadn't thought of Beechview House for years. She couldn't remember ever being through its gates. Yet now she had been dragged into a mystery involving it.

There were far too many mysteries lately. First Courtney's murder while holding Dani's phone number. Then the unknown someone who had directed Claire to Dani. Now Beechview House and its supposed occupant.

Really. Was it too much to expect some peace and quiet once in a while?

~~~~

Finding an excuse to travel to Enniskillen without the children was as hard as Dani feared. She had only to mention the possibility of going there alone, and was immediately almost deafened by a chorus of, "But we want to go too!"

"I have to go and visit my parents," Dani said, using the first excuse that popped into her head. "Do you really want to see them again?"

Suddenly none of the children looked nearly as enthusiastic.

"Why do you have to go and visit them?" Jack asked. "They're horrible!"

Dani felt torn between the truth of what he said and the urge to tell him to respect his elders. "They're still my parents. And my mother's ill." Yet another lie. "She gets even grumpier than normal when she's ill."

None of the children felt any wish to go with her after that.

~~~~

For once Fate had something helpful in store for Dani. It came in the form of a field trip to the Tayto factory[1] for the younger children. That meant the only children at the house would be the teenagers -- plus Max, but they were old enough to keep an eye on him. And they would be at school for most of the day.

So Dani prepared lunches for all of them, dropped them off at school, and set off on the long, arduous journey to Enniskillen.

Really, she thought to herself, if I'd known I would have to come back here so often I'd never had moved so far away.

She'd had her reasons for moving so far away. But after forty miles of driving for the second time in two months, they suddenly didn't seem such good reasons.

Finally she reached the town. She parked on a side-street a short distance away from Beechview House. Then she walked up to the house. It was just as she remembered it -- the glassless windows like empty eye-sockets, the front door off its hinges, the upstairs windows hidden under a mass of ivy. It certainly didn't look as if anyone had lived there recently. The garden was overgrown and choked with weeds. Grass grew amidst the gravel of the driveway.

The gate had long since fallen off its hinges. Now it lay, a heap of rusty metal, on the ground. Dani strode purposefully through the empty gateway. She'd learnt years ago that if a person tried to sneak into somewhere they weren't supposed to be, someone would notice and be suspicious. But if you openly walked into a place, making no attempt to hide your presence, everyone would assume you had a good reason for being there.

She boldly marched up to the front door. Unlike the gate it wasn't lying on the ground. Instead it was slumped against the wall at an awkward angle. Anyone who wanted to enter the house that way would have to clamber over it and the pile of debris that had collected around it.