Mr. Tyler lived alone in a dilapidated cottage on the edge of the village. The house had once won ‘best kept garden’ competitions but that was a long time ago.
Nobody was sure how old he was; it seemed he cut his own hair with a knife and fork and let his beard grow. Under all that hair he might have been seventy, or maybe forty. He didn’t care about his clothes and wore only one jacket – bought twenty years earlier at a charity shop.
He hardly ventured beyond his front gate and his neighbours learned not to bother him.
Mr. Tyler had a problem and it came to light after he lost £50,000 in a stock market investment. He went to the village shop to buy rope. Later, Mr. Bunce, the shopkeeper would testify Mr. Tyler haggled about the price and in exasperation, and to get rid of the man, Mr. Bunce knocked a few pence off for him.
A week later, the postman saw swarms of flies around the cottage window and the police cut down Mr. Tyler’s body.
A month after that a solicitor arrived to search for the documents he needed.
Mr. Tyler owned a Scottish castle, most of the terraced streets in an area of Middlesborough and more than five-million-pounds-worth of stock.
Villagers clucked; the coroner’s inquest decided being a miser was a ‘mental illness’ and the vicar cursed he hadn’t reached out to Mr. Tyler: he badly needed a new roof for the church.
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Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 