I don’t listen to the radio (the wireless when I was a kid) as much as I had planned in my retirement. I noticed I had set this as a goal in 2014 when I re-read my recent retirement blog about goal-setting, but I do listen a bit and I did hear this piece of information a couple of weeks ago.
It said, as I remember – to have a happy life (or words to that effect), a person needs one hour free time a day. If you have more than that – four hours was mentioned for some reason, then you will be unhappy. Hmm, I’m not sure how they get this sort of data. But, OK. I can see how that might have relevance for the retired person. I have to say that such is my retirement life I feel I have almost no free time but maybe that’s just my imagination.
Anyway, this information came floating back to me last week when I solved the question of the murder in our street. Spoiler alert, there wasn’t one but I was convinced there had been. If ever there was a case of a man with too much time on his hands and an over-active imagination then this was it. Or think of it as a classic example of an interfering old busybody, in the manner of Miss Marple, anyway you get the idea.
There is a great Hitchcock movie called Rear Window starring, I think, James Stewart. He’s broken his leg or something and he’s in a wheelchair and has little else to do but spy on his neighbours across the courtyard at the back of his apartment.
Now I haven’t broken my leg although it sometimes feels like I have and I’m definitely not in a wheelchair but I do overlook our neighbours across the street. In the film Stewart believes his neighbour has murdered his wife. I have the same belief. Yes I know it sounds unlikely, but hear me out. First she (my neighbour’s wife) had disappeared. Neither of us had really seen her for months. Ah pandemic you say. Well, maybe but as far as I was concerned her non-appearance went beyond this explanation.
And there were other factors (you might even call them clues). First, he borrowed my cutting tools, hedge cutters, chainsaw (I admit I made this second one up to add a little spice to this story, but even so an electric hedge cutter can be pretty lethal in the right or wrong hands). Oh and they use my leaf blower at night. True you’d hardly use a blower on body parts but you never know..
Don’t stop reading, there’s more. My neighbour and his two sons completely dug up their back garden and relaid the whole thing with slabs. You see now you’re getting into it aren’t you? And then he wants to borrow my van but I’m not sure why. It could be to transport a body although if he’s buried her in the back garden (James Stewart believed his neighbour had buried his wife in the rose bed so it’s not just me) that doesn’t make much sense. However, carry on.
Then there was the freezer. He had mysteriously acquired a large freezer which was full of meat and he wanted to empty it. Why would he want to empty it? True they don’t eat meat but then why get the freezer full of the stuff in the first place? Anyway he gave us loads of meat and we weren’t going to say no to that not with all the supermarket food shortages even if he did need it empty to hide the body.
There’s more. They have had a massive gate erected down the side of their house. He used my van to fetch the first gate but this wasn’t private enough so he sold that one and bought this huge thing you can’t see through, (the first one had holes) which looks more suited to a compound than a suburban driveway.
I suppose if he has murdered her and he is arrested then we will be regarded as accessories after the fact I believe the term is. Even the first gate went in our van but not the second one, your honour.
This state of affairs went on for months and I could stand it no more. I decided we needed to take action or more accurately Mrs Summerhouse did. Mrs Summerhouse herself was somewhat unconvinced by the ‘we’ as she had never fully believed in my theory although she did admit it was a bit strange we hadn’t seen her. I decided ‘we’ needed to get to the bottom of the mystery even if sacrifices would need to be made.
My brilliant crime-solving idea was to send Mrs SH over there on the pretext of getting a recipe and check whether she was in fact alive. Yes I know what you’re saying. You think I was prepared to risk the life of Mrs SH sending her over to the house where a murder may have been committed. I’m not heartless, I said look if you’re not back in an hour I’ll find an excuse to come over and find you or at least your body.
If you’ve seen the film (Rear Window) you will know there is a scene in which Grace Kelly (I think) positively insists on checking out the apartment while the suspected (and actual) villain was out, to see if she could find the body. Of course the villain returns while Grace is still in the apartment. Much tension.
Needless to say none of that happened here. Mrs SH was a long time and I was just about to check her out – honest – when she returned. Not only with the recipe but actual examples of the food itself. Our neighbour, the wife, had shown her how to make them. And yes, she was absolutely fine. But she (the wife, not Mrs SH) could have been dead and we hear too many stories these days of uncaring neighbours who suspected a crime had been committed but did nothing. But not me, no siree, Bob. Well I mean what would you have done in my place?