The body in the garden
How do people respond when there’s a murder in the neighbourhood?
There has been a murder.
A real-life murder. With a badly-burned body.
On Wednesday evening, parents collecting their children from school noticed a large bonfire and a ‘strange barbecue smell’ coming from the back garden of a house in house in Pulborough Road, a short walk from here.
The police were called and discovered a badly-charred body in smouldering remains of the bonfire. It’s believed the victim is Sophie Lionnet, a French au-pair; the couple she worked for have been charged with her murder.
People have not been able to talk about anything else.
- I’ve lived here for 35 years. There’s never been anything like this.
- Last week we had a terrorist attack. Now we have a murder.
- They tried to burn a body in a back garden in the middle of Southfields? That’s a bit stupid, isn’t it? No wonder they were caught.
Everyone loves a good murder, it seems. Especially one with a gruesome twist. For people who didn’t know anyone involved, there’s a deliciously horrible pleasure in considering the details. Crime can easily become entertainment. After all, this is what makes crime fiction so popular.
But this murder was real.
A young woman was killed.
For those who knew Sophie Lionnet, if only very slightly, this story takes on a different meaning. Those living in the same street would have recognised her face, even if they never knew her name or ever spoken to her. A real person with a real life, with hopes and fears and aspirations. From what we know, she was deeply unhappy with her life as an au-pair and had intended to go back to France.
There’s an added poignancy in that; maybe she’d still be alive if she had booked her tickets early. Or maybe not.
At this stage, we can only speculate.
Murder is a rare crime, and it’s not hard to see why.
The moral implications of killing another are more than enough to prevent most of us from ever taking another person’s life. Most people, for all they might fantasise about killing someone who is making their life a misery, will never go further than dreaming up imaginative ways of dispatching them.
But it’s the knowledge that some people step over this moral boundary that helps to create our fascination with such crimes (whether fictional or true). Then there’s the rupturing of our sense of reality that a murder causes: how can such a horrific, extraordinary crime be carried out by such apparently ordinary people in such an unremarkable place?
One neighbour observed of the couple charged with the killing: ‘They seemed quite normal but they always do.’
But then again, what sort of person do you expect to be a murderer? And what sort of place is a suitable setting?
The murder will eventually become a stain on the area’s collective memory. Neighbours will pass the story down to new arrivals like a bloodstained heirloom, whilst generations of future house buyers will stumble upon the story when researching the local area. The story will develop a life of its own, refusing to be forgotten.
There has been a murder. It happened not so very far away from here.
A young woman was killed, a life snuffed out.
And you need a little time for that to sink in.
The Storyteller on the District Line — №12
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But not only out of morbid curiosity, I hope!
