After decades clearing homes, Merrick Hobb looks beneath a coating of dust and finds a devastating secret that changes everything.
Merrick Hobb knows his way around an attic. He’s cleared out enough. The cry goes round the eastern districts of Guardian City – get Merrick in, he’ll do you a good price.
Merrick is 73. Been in the house clearance game for more than half a century, since 1825 OT. He’s seen two generations of of families clear out the rubbish of the generation before, some of them lads he grew up with. Some of the stuff he shifts are mosaic pieces from his own life and he delights in recounting his finds in the Bane of Obscurity, his local.
He works steadily and with thoroughness. He had a partner, went solo and then picked up with his son, Stainge, but the son bailed out after a decade pursuing a new life selling syrup of figs in the north, saying that house clearance was depressing and dusty.
Merrick Hobb, living the dream
Never bothered Merrick Hobb. He’d found his calling. He was obsessed, people would say. He would tell them he loved finding tidying up after lives well lived, the odd treasure among the trash making it worthwhile.
So how come Merrick Hobb, a man for a crisis, a community man, the man you called straight after you called the undertaker, was in jail for two nights on charges of destruction of property and breach of the peace?
What did he find in the house of Nevin Ferrel that sent him over the edge, going to town on the possessions of that recently dead man with an axe?
The first clue to the secret
Here’s the first clue. Nevin Ferrel was Merrick’s old partner who still had an interest in the business. In fact the business is still called Hobb & Ferrel (House Clearance) and people used to joke – where’s Ferrel then Merrick? Shirking again?
How Merrick tells it, according to police insiders, he was taking apart a chest of drawers, nothing fancy – Nevin Ferrel did alright, wasn’t super rich – and he removed a panel with that axe.
Beneath the panel, an old copy of the Guardian City Gulp dated 40 years ago. Merrick likes these kinds of finds. Takes him back to the old days. He drinks his tea, nibbles on a mutton cob and flicks through the paper. Tucked away at the bottom of page 18, next to the BlisterWord puzzle and an advertisement for pig ointment, there’s a story, a couple of paragraphs, ringed in faded ink.
Story in an old newspaper
The piece told how a young woman was found on the banks of the Thames in the Obscurity, not far from where the Quarrel was that day, but that’s not seen as relevant. The woman was in her early 20s, black hair, pretty, distinctive features on account of one earlobe being a lot longer than the other.
Because of that and without any identity, she was cruelly dubbed the “elephant woman” in the story (although this was gone in later editions of the paper).
What was Merrick’s connection with this woman, who died 40 or so years before?
Did he know her? Related to her? Loved her? Lost her?
Killed her?
Merrick Hobb picks up the tale
We approached Merrick Hobb, out on bail and the charges likely to be dropped, and asked why this news had sent him over the edge.
He confessed all on the doorstep, occasionally tearfully.
He said, “Way back, I had no intention of getting into the house clearance game. Not my thing at all. I wanted to sing opera. Stupid, really. Who’s gonna take a chance on a skinny kid from the Obscurity with untutored pipes?

“Nevin comes along, a pal fresh out of the army and broke, and he says we should do something together. I was a gambler back then, horses, so I was always short and I thought it’s either labour with Nevin or likely some crime that puts me away for a year or two. And then what?
“So I throw my lot in with Nevin – Hobb & Ferrel! – and we get on and do some houses. Don’t take much. Heaving, lifting, throwing, sneezing till you get used to it. We were both young and fit.
A find that changes everything
“One day, we’re doing this house on behalf of the city, some old lady, no relatives, a bit doolally her neighbours say, not all there. And we find all these letters from her daughter. Writes every day to her mum, twice a day, talking about her ambitions, dreams of love, maybe one day becoming an actress. Her letters all boxed up nicely.
“She works the box office, the daughter says, in the West Country. Couple of minor parts in rep. Then suddenly she stops writing. Nothing. And the mother’s died of a broken heart, seems like, a month after the letters stop. All that fretting finished her off.
“Long story short, I’m obsessed. I’m doing houses to find more clues. It’s a longshot but that’s all I got. Nevin loses interest the next year. Finds himself a job in a stable in one of them Shimmerings big houses. I buy out the business from under and give him 10 per cent to use the name, what has got some reputation now.”
Nevin’s role in all this
“Only it turns out, Nevin knew what happened to the girl all along. He had the answer 30 years ago. I’ve been clearing out houses, shops, offices, abattoirs – you name it – looking for clues and he had the answer all along. Strung me along like an idiot. Story comes out in the paper a week after the clearance, explaining what happened to her girl.
“That’s as much as it is, the story,” he told us. “Nothing really. But I put my back into it, my life into it, into solving this mystery and it was all a lie. I had a good voice, baritone to bass because of the dust. I could have been a singer with the right management. I’m just full of regret, that’s all.
“When I saw the paper, I lost it. And I’m sorry,” he goes to return inside, turns round and says, “She was Patricia Renfield, the girl who died. The mother was Petal. Put that in your paper. Remember ’em that way.”
With that Merrick closed the door on our reporter.
Charges have been dropped because the damaged property had no actual value. Merrick and Ferrel (House Clearance) is no longer operating.