A Good Street

The house was an odd thing to look at, a relic from the first settlement, refusing to be replaced by something grander.

While the neighbours had not been expecting the murder, on consideration, they found themselves agreeing that it was not surprising.

'He’s always been a strange one,’ said one neighbour, keeping his distance from the fence, ‘as was his father. We could never figure out what is they do that in house of theirs. They never came out, never seemed to work. Something had to happen.’

The front garden was piled high with scrap metal and wood arranged with some intention, but that otherwise could have been left over from an ill-fated renovation attempt.

'With a father like that,’ quipped Ms H, the neighbour to the left, ‘can you even blame him? He just wanted to build his little sculptures in the garden.’

There were neither mailbox nor doorbell, only two small windows facing the street, both of them boarded up long ago.

’The only question,’ another neighbour opined, leaning on the fence, ‘was which one of them would kill the other. Mad as hatters, the two of them!’