Blue Murder Stories

Devices

Charlotte wondered if there'd been any time in her life at all that she'd told a lie as great as the one she'd told the police on the day of the crime. There was a lot after that day that she would wonder about her life—about Andrew and the boarder, Sam, as well—and a lot she chose also not to think about at all.

She'd wondered about Sam the first day he had arrived to take up the room in her house. She hadn't seen him before confirming his short-term lease but was surprised at the pained-looking limp he took in every step as she helped him carry his few bags upstairs to the room. She even thought for a few moments that she recognised him from somewhere, but didn't have a clue where from. Once he reached the top of the stairs she asked him casually if his leg was alright or if he would rather he swap for Charlotte and her husband's room on the ground floor if it was easier.

'It's alright, thank you very much,' he said without looking at her.

'I'll bet you're used to it by now,' she said with a simple smile.

He didn't nod. She opened the door to the room and straightened his bedspread for him. She knew she shouldn't, but was caught in a silent moment with him in the bedroom long enough as he limped inside to ask with an attempt at tactfulness, 'Is it from childhood? Your...'

'A spinal injury,' he said quietly. 'A long time ago.'

He said nothing else and she didn't press on it.

'Well, I hope you enjoy your room—please let me know if you need anything at all,' she said with an amiable look, and shut the door.

As she went back downstairs she thought to herself that when there was another chance later for idle conversation she might try to open with a casual inquiry of where she might know Sam from, but was content to leave him solitary for the time being if that was what he wanted.

Their house was a broad Colonial deep in the suburbs with enough extra bedrooms on the upper-floor for Charlotte to make her own living leasing them out on short-term rentals. It was usually young people, students mostly, who took up a bedroom for a couple of weeks or a month at a time. She wasn't surprised that Sam was as young as he was, but he hadn't mentioned studying anywhere nearby and was a private enough person to not have volunteered in conversation what it was he was using the room for. Charlotte didn't ask, already feeling mild remorse at the polite misstep she'd made in asking about his injury, and hoped it wouldn't be awkward in passing him in the house while he was residing there.

But Sam hardly left his room at all. There were long, dull hours while Andrew was at work and Charlotte was home that she wouldn't have even known there was a boarder upstairs at all if he hadn't kept up his rent payments.

It didn't matter much to her. People's business was their business. Whoever the young boarder might have been, he didn't seem the type to hole up in a stranger's house to commit whatever illegalities she would have been thinking of. He was just an anxious young man with a lonely demeanour who seemed to demand of his life the privacy of a rat with a hole in the wall. Perhaps he was a writer, or an artist.

When Andrew came home from work in the evenings neither of them said much. Once as she was serving dinner, Charlotte said something about how the young boarder upstairs hadn't seemed to have done much at all that day just as he hadn't the last few days as well, and Andrew had said, 'I don't like him, you know—people like that.'

'What's wrong with him?' Charlotte asked, a little surprised at the tone of her husband's sudden bitterness at the matter.

Andrew shook his head, made a sour face. 'He's probably a bloody heroin addict or something. You've seen how he looks.'