Lilly Thompson

Lilly Thompson enters the investigation not as a witness who knows who killed George, but as someone whose concealed visit to his caravan could make her look suspicious. Caught by Rebecca with George’s gun in hand, she admits that she had come for a receipt and establishes that she saw George on the night he was murdered. Her account also supplies a final, unresolved detail about his plans: he intended to visit The Mad Boar and say goodbye to someone.

The Caravan Encounter

Rebecca finds Lilly standing in the doorway with George’s gun. Lilly is staring at the pistol, and her first explanation is that she wanted to think about George. Rebecca doubts her, points the gun briefly towards the caravan door, and presses her to explain why she has come. Lilly is frightened, but once Rebecca encourages her to continue, she gives the practical reason: she wants a receipt.

The receipt matters because Lilly sometimes works at the Lonely Heart Inn. She explains that some of its customers come not only for sex but also to smoke grass, and that she bought it from George because she knew him. The landlady, whom Lilly describes as suspicious and greedy, wants a receipt bearing Lilly’s name. Lilly says she forgot it on the night in question; after George died, the missing receipt became a possible source of leverage against her. Once Rebecca lowers the gun, Lilly calms somewhat, but her relief does not erase the significance of her admission: she was at George’s caravan that night.

Lilly’s Account of George

Rebecca asks directly whether Lilly was present on the night George was murdered. Lilly explains that she bought grass and talked with him for a while. She firmly denies that anything else happened between them, objecting that people assume otherwise and will say whatever they like about her. Her defense rests on the ordinary character of their meeting: she says George was a good man with whom she could still speak as a decent human being.

That account gives Lilly a personal connection to George without establishing a romantic relationship or any involvement in his death. Rebecca points out that Ham was the only person who saw Lilly there and refers to his subsequent fall from the cliffs. Lilly remains fixed on recovering the receipt. The exchange leaves her visit exposed as a vulnerability, while her explanation of it is specific: a purchase, a conversation, and a document she fears others may use against her.

George’s Unfinished Plans

When Rebecca asks what George intended to do after their conversation, Lilly recalls a plan that had surprised her. George meant to go to The Mad Boar for a Guinness, although he almost never went there. He said he wanted to take one more look at the people inside and then say goodbye to someone.

Lilly cannot identify that person. George described it as an old story and laughed a little, but offered no name. The remark therefore adds a lead rather than a solution: it suggests that George’s movements on the night of his murder were tied to an unresolved connection, while leaving its nature and the intended farewell unknown.

Role in the Investigation

Lilly’s scene turns an apparently suspicious return to George’s caravan into a disclosure about fear of exposure. Her attempt to obtain the receipt could have encouraged suspicion, but she distinguishes that motive from any wish to conceal a role in the murder: she says she was retrieving evidence of a purchase made through her work at the inn. Rebecca’s questioning elicits both the circumstances of Lilly’s visit and the detail of George’s planned stop at The Mad Boar.

Her testimony does not identify a killer or explain who George meant to see. Its importance lies in narrowing and complicating the final evening: Lilly confirms a conversation with George, denies the rumors surrounding it, and passes on his unexplained intention to say goodbye. She is thus a limited but useful witness, with knowledge shaped by her own need to keep the receipt—and her name—out of other people’s hands.