A forgotten man lay dead in his kitchen for almost two years - with classical music still playing and the heating on.

Thousands of people passed the house where Konstantinos Georgakopolos died before anyone came looking for him.

The 75-year-old was an eccentric with thick-rimmed glasses and thick black hair.

He would talk for hours about his life in Greece and drank with friends in Chatham’s pubs. But when he vanished, no one raised the alarm.

Thousands of people passed his terraced home at number 18 Luton Road, Chatham, but no one knew what lay within.

Only Maria Bruce, the manager at Linda Matthews lettings next door, had a nagging feeling.

Mr Georgakopolos had dropped in on his neighbour, who looked after his house when he was away, and chirpily said he’d see her in a few days. He never came back.

She told police of her fears. They knocked at his door and looked through his letterbox, but did not break the door down because they could not smell a body.

Finally, the law found Mr Georgakopolos where human compassion had not – he owed money in solicitors’ fees.

On September 26 last year, Miss Bruce joined a bailiff and two locksmiths who forced their way into the house he owned.

Classic FM was still playing on the stereo. The heating was still on. A small window was open to the world outside.

A garden strimmer from B&Q, the receipt dated November 2, 2010, was still in its carrier bag. On a table were his passport and plane tickets for November 14, 2010, never used. Post piled high at the door.

Mr Georgakopolos’s remains lay in the basement kitchen, infested with maggots and flies.

Locksmith Derek Chandler saw him first; he told everyone to get out.

Mr Georgakopolos had to be identified by comparing the DNA on his cigarette holders and lighters to a scrap of his leg bones.

For 24-year-old Miss Bruce, the guilt remains. She finds it hard to look in the window of the blue house next door.

“We’d known him for years and years,” she said. “He was more than just a client. He was an eccentric, in a lovely way.

"He once had a little rhyme to tell me how to remember his phone number. If you went over to his house, you knew it wouldn’t be a little five-minute visit. You could be there for hours.

“He didn’t look 75 – he looked about 50. He was a very good man. He split his time between his home here and in Greece.

“He had his shop in Greece. I think he ran it with his niece, so I’m not sure why they didn’t raise the alarm over there. The whole thing is unbelievable.”

The inquest into Mr Georgakopolos’s death held this week heard how the Medway coroner’s office eventually tracked down the family.

“I still feel so guilty. It’s so sad that someone was gone for two years. I kept thinking, oh my gosh, that’s two Christmases...” - Maria Bruce

None of them knew what Mr Georgakopolos had done for a living. No one attended the inquest.

Miss Bruce said she helped find the family, making repeated calls to the Greek embassy.

“We must be the only people who raised the alarm,” she said. “It’s like something you would watch on television. The problem was because he spent half his time in Greece, I thought something must have happened to him there.

“We had many a discussion about how we wanted to make sure he was OK, but we trusted what the police said. I won’t again.

“I still feel so guilty. It’s so sad that someone was gone for two years. I kept thinking, oh my gosh, that’s two Christmases.”

The inquest heard Mr Georgakopolos, who had a stroke in Greece before he returned to the UK, lived a basic existence.

Kent Police Sgt Michelle Burgess told the hearing: “No valuables were found at all. He lived quite a poor life really.

“There was tea and coffee in the main room, but no food items.”

Mid Kent and Medway coroner Patricia Harding passed her condolences to the family. But the mystery of Mr Georgakopolos’s death is no closer to being solved.

She said: “There is no evidence of third-party involvement in this death, despite the fact that there was a small window open.orgakopolos’s death is no closer to being solved.

“I am unable to establish the cause of death given the state of decomposition, and therefore I have no option but to record an open verdict.”