The feat of the mass killer

[Erik Narramore]

Jeremy has claimed that there was a conversation at the kitchen table about fostering the children and his impression was that Sheila was quiet or non-responsive.

I see the guilt camp's point that this is merely something Jeremy is reporting, and I recognise the plausibility behind the general idea: essentially, Jeremy is setting the scene and laying down a pretext for Sheila to later go crazy with the rifle, etc.

What I don't understand is this: If Jeremy is guilty, then why is Jeremy telling people that Sheila was quiet or non-responsive?  Why doesn't he report that Sheila was more animated with an argument or similar, maybe with Sheila upset, tearful or storming upstairs, etc?

To attempt an answer to my own question, I recognise that the psychotropics may have had a sedative effect on Sheila in the sense that it levelled-out her moods, meaning she was not very expressive, and Jeremy may have known this; and, Jeremy may have realised that others would know this, and some of this is supported by Pamela Boutflour's witness statement.  Yet Jeremy is not a psychiatrist and has no medical knowledge or expertise, and he does not live with Sheila.  Jeremy needs to compellingly point the finger at Sheila, so his actions in this respect (and a few others) represent a self-defeating paradox.

It seems to me that by saying Jeremy is guilty, we are on several fronts crediting him with quite an advanced level of insight, indeed foresight, and planning, not to say quite a bit of luck.  Somehow he has pedalled to and from the farmhouse in the middle of the night with his lights on and nobody sees him.  I think he must have gone on foot, but others insist that he went by push bike.  Who am I to argue?

Nobody notices him leaving Bourtree Cottage and the village, or returning.  This is very fortunate.  He decides that Sheila was not having an argument with her parents.  This must be because Jeremy has been reading those psychiatry journals or watched that episode of Murder She Wrote and took notes.  He doesn't leave the rifle in Sheila's sight, but out of the way in a back corridor, and somehow she finds this rifle and the ammunition.  Jeremy did it this way so that it doesn't look obvious, hoping that Sheila, with little gun experience, would guess the location of the rifle and then load it, and she did.  This is very clever of Jeremy.  He manages to return the silencer to the gun cupboard without leaving a drop of blood.  This is indeed very lucky, especially when you consider that he could have just left the silencer next to the body.  Why didn't he just do that?  Then Jeremy decides to be a good sport and lets the suspicious relatives have the keys to the farmhouse, with part of the murder weapon still there.  It just wouldn't be cricket otherwise.

It's almost as if Jeremy has over-thought some things, as odd as that may sound, and made the mistake of not 'keeping it simple', while enjoying tremendous luck in other areas.

All in all, it's a very strange case.