I reread Janet’s statement to the police. Nothing new jumps out at me: she describes the day before Fred disappeared as being the same as any other day, in fact, her statement seems ordinary to the point of banality: too bland to convince, in fact.
I think back to the conversation I had with Fred’s niece, June Binns and how she described Janet as some sort of farming femme fatale – nothing banal there at all, in fact quite the opposite. But I’m also pretty sure that June’s description of Janet as a woman with her eye on Ball Beard Farm – and on Fred – is unreliable as well.
June is so ‘anti-Janet’ in her conversation it’s almost as if she is distracting me from something more important.
I need to speak to Fred’s 93-year-old sister, Mags.
But Mags, if you recall, is also the writer of the ‘libellous’ pamphlet I’m trying to track down; the pamphlet that the local history society appear to have ‘lost’.
No wonder the case is still open.
The Stranger In My Life 