‘MY CLUE SOLVED THE CASE’

An exclusive inetrview with mudrered author Helen Bailey’s next-door neighbour

Mavis Drake’s house has an inviting drawing room and cosy snug, but her favourite place to pass the time of day is upstairs by her bedroom window. Here, perched on a stool, she has a bird’s eye view of her local tennis club courts across the road. At 82, Mavis no longer plays, but she loves to watch, and she keeps a pair of binoculars on the windowsill expressly for that purpose.

One summer morning nearly four years ago, however, it was not the match that commanded her attention, but the comings and goings next door. Her neighbours were moving out ‘and I was in floods of tears because we had lived happily alongside each other for more than 40 years,’ she recalls. Having hugged her friends goodbye, the curious Mavis went to her vantage point for a first glimpse of the newcomers.

Sure enough, before long, an attractive dark-haired woman appeared with a stocky man at her side. ‘I waved, and the woman smiled and waved back. I knew in that instant that we would be friends,’ Mavis says. ‘The man didn’t make eye contact and he struck me as a bit odd. But still, I would never have guessed in that moment that we had a murderer moving into our midst.’

Today, the whole country knows of the gruesome drama that was to unfold on Mavis’s doorstep. The couple who walked hand-in-hand through the wrought-iron gates of their recently acquired seven-bedroom arts and crafts Mavis today. Left from top: Helen with her partner Ian, who was found guilty of her murder, and the missing poster he paid for