Matheson

Matheson was an isolated farmer at Greyscott whose suffering led John to kill him and conceal his body in a convent graveyard. His story emerges when John explains the identity of the hidden remains: Matheson’s death was presented as an act of mercy, but it also became the secret that shaped John’s later decision to settle at Coopers Chase and remain close to the burial place.

Identity and Circumstances

Matheson was an older farmer living at Greyscott, one of the sheep farms roughly ten miles from the area where John later lived. By the early 1970s, John had known him for some time through occasional visits. Matheson had no family nearby and no one to help him on the farm; his money was running out, and John remembered him as profoundly lonely. The bleakness of the farm and Matheson’s reluctance to let John leave give the encounter its particular weight: John saw not simply a farmer in difficulty, but a man in distress with little companionship or support.

The Visit and Matheson’s Death

John’s visit began with another animal’s suffering. A mare had given birth to a foal that died, leaving her in severe distress. Matheson did not want the mare shot, and John shared his objection; he injected her to end her pain. Afterward, Matheson made John tea, and the two talked. John was in a hurry, but Matheson wanted him to stay. John later described the farmer’s anguish by comparing it to the mare’s: he believed that, if Matheson had been an animal, he would have been screaming. John then offered Matheson what he presented as a flu shot to help him through the winter. It was the same injection he had just given the mare. John characterized the killing as putting Matheson out of his misery, a judgment he said he held both then and later. But the act was also impulsive: he had not prepared a poison that would evade detection in a post-mortem, and Matheson was left dead from pentobarbital. John recognized that the circumstances could invite investigation, so he decided he could not leave the body to be found at the farm.

The Secret Burial

John considered burying Matheson on the farm, but feared that the rapid purchase and development of farmland in the area could lead builders to uncover the body. Instead, he remembered a graveyard he knew from visiting Gordon Playfair. It was not farmland, the convent was unlikely to be bought, and the burial ground seemed quiet and rarely visited. A couple of days after Matheson’s death, John drove there at night with his lights off, carried a spade, and buried him. The grave remained undiscovered for about forty years. Matheson’s burial was not an incidental concealment for John: the possibility that development might disturb it stayed with him long after the killing. When John eventually saw an advertisement for Coopers Chase, he persuaded Penny to retire there. He later explained that he wanted to keep an eye on the grave, fearing that a cemetery could still be dug up despite his assumption that it was safe.

Narrative Significance

Matheson’s story is revealed through John’s account in response to the question of whose bones lie in the grave. The disclosure turns an unidentified burial into the consequence of a specific encounter: a lonely farmer, an act John framed as mercy, and a hurried decision to hide the body. It also recasts John’s presence at Coopers Chase. His move was not only a choice of retirement home but a way of staying near the secret he had buried, and of watching for the danger that the cemetery might be disturbed.