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The north London suburb of Muswell Hill is middle-class, residential, and almost intolerably placid. No events disturb its peaceful, thoughtless routine; there are no marches in the street, no pickets on the corner, rarely even the sound of a police and ambulance siren. The inhabitants of Muswell Hill get into their cars every morning, drive to work in central London, and drive back home at night. Their wives prepare dinner. They sometimes entertain. They enjoy a gin and tonic and pride themselves on knowing a little more about wine than the average supermarket shopper. And their weekends are spent gardening. Gardens are very important in Muswell Hill. As the name implies, it sits on relatively high ground overlooking the London basin and enjoys good, fresh air and full exposure to sun. Many of the roads slope, climb and undulate, making them unattractive to cyclists but enticing to the leisurely walker. More than one street is called ‘gardens’ rather than ‘road’. One such, Cranley Gardens, has given its name to a kind of sub-district of Muswell Hill, marked on maps of London as a focal point. Cranley Gardens itself is long, fairly wide, bright and cheerful. You could quite easily imagine children disporting themselves with skipping ropes along the pavement, except that Muswell Hill mothers do not approve of children playing in the street.
The houses of Cranley Gardens, built before the First World War, are semi-detached and stylish, with pointed roofs. Mostly painted white with beams and woodwork picked out in another colour, they are separated from the street by noticeably pretty front gardens, well tended and self-consciously aware of their charm. Gently they compete with each other. Except for one. The garden of Number 23 is woefully neglected, dank and brown without a splash of colour, overgrown and entangled by weeds. Even a daffodil would find it hard to thrust its way through to the sunlight. The house behind, too, is not in keeping with the rest of the street. White and pale blue, it looks rather scruffy, in need of a wash, lacking in the sparkle which emanates from neighbouring houses of the same shape and size. It looks haggard and forgotten.
While most of the houses in Cranley Gardens served their original purpose as family homes, Number 23 did not. At the beginning of 1983 it had for many years belonged to an Indian woman whose address was given as New Delhi and who may never have seen it since the day she bought it. The house was divided into six flats and bedsitting-rooms, and managed by Mr Roberts of Ellis & Co., an estate agent on Golders Green Road. Turnover of tenants was rapid and frequent, so that it was easy for the landlady and her agents to fall into the habit of neglect. No one was proud of the house, or gave it any attention. The stairs and hallways were unpainted and shabby, even unlit, for nobody took care to replace lightbulbs, and one had to use a torch in the winter months to find one’s way upstairs.
In February 1983, there were five people living at 23 Cranley Gardens. Two rooms on the ground floor were occupied by Fiona Bridges, a barmaid at the Royal Oak pub in St James’s Lane, Muswell Hill, and her boyfriend Jim Allcock, a builder. Miss Bridges had been there since the summer of 1982, and Mr Allcock had joined her some months later. Another bedsitting-room on the ground floor was shared by Vivienne McStay, a dental nurse from Wellington, New Zealand, and Monique Van-Rutte, a youth welfare worker from Holland. It was a room actually sandwiched between the two rooms let to Fiona Bridges, as she had taken over an extra room from a previous tenant who had moved out. Monique and Vivienne had moved in on 28 December 1982, and so had been tenants for only five weeks.