B= Chapter one

The Piano Teacher
Chapter one

"Twice before I had walked past the house where he used to live. The
first time
had been because I'd forgotten he wasn't there anymore."

Denise turned to wave at the familiar window and found herself with her
arm half-raised staring at the viciously wrinkled glare of his
housekeeper, Eartha Dublaine. Immobile and hideous this woman now
guarded the old man's window seat from intruding eyes. Denise
shuddered, but she waved just the same.
"Well sure the old bat's missing him and maybe her constipation's got
the better of her." Denise muttered in strong Dublin brogue with a
measure of sticky sarcasm to try to cheer herself. It was a horrible
moment all the same, as she was reminded of the meanness of that woman.
Not even a relative and barely a friend, that woman had arranged his
funeral while she, Denise, his closest companion, was away on holiday
with no notion even that he had died. Denise had come back and found
that she was barred from her piano teacher's house with no explanation.
Then came the discovery that her return had been a day late for his
funeral. A fresh crop of angry and despairing tears sprung from her
eyes and misted the pavement. Denise turned away and, pretending she
was in a hurry, started to jog down the street.
The second time Denise ventured that way was a month later, when she
had been hit with the full horror of the macabre truth about her piano
teacher's death. This time she found that his house had taken on a
sombre, desolate air. The curtains were now firmly drawn to exclude the
prying of any passer by and his garden was beginning to adopt an
un-shaved look, with whiskers at the lawn edges and dead heads on the
roses. Powerless to comprehend how such a terrible deed could have
happened, Denise had come, as others in the neighbourhood had done, to
stare and hopefully seek some sense in the turn of events.
The pendulum of village life had skipped a beat or two, as a real
Chiller Thriller stunned reasonably good and ordinary folk, spicing up
their soap opera lives way over the odds. Teeth had clacked and
imagination created giant sores. Telephone wires sizzled and hissed and
steam rose from the exchange, over that bizarre fortnight when Eartha
Dublaine was suddenly taken into custody. A gossip crazed community got
its cream and licked its pussycat lips with delicate precision over the
life and times of such a vindictive stranger in its midst.
Now Eartha Dublaine was gone, pre-deceased by her employer, Mr. Edward
Stenton, one time piano teacher, one time child prodigy. Denise, one
time befriender, one time pupil of Mr. Stenton, stood and stared at the
guttering which had come adrift at one end.
"He wouldn't have liked that," she had whispered between clenched teeth
and walked away again, desolate.
So, today, six months on, when she had bravely decided to pay her first
visit to the new incumbents of 43, Windsor Avenue, there was
considerable agitation in her breast. The mild mannered Mr. Edward
Stenton had confided in her that his niece was to be his heir, so in
some ways, she felt that she already knew a little of his niece and her
offspring, Daisy and Torrence. These must be the children who were
playing with their brightly coloured plastic toys, bickering over whose
turn it was in the pedal car. Torrence threw a yellow brick at Daisy
and it landed on the path just behind Denise.
"Who are you?" they both chorused and scuttled inside. Chattering and
yelping like puppies. Denise noted how unkempt the garden had become
and that the guttering was still hanging loose.

to be continued...chapter two next week....