Murder Your Darlings

by Mark McCrum

  ‘You know, the thing that really gets my goat with these grand English folk with their fecken titles,’ Liam said, ‘is when they lean down towards you and say, “Please just call me Poppy.” Why did you accept the fecken handle in the first place then? I have to say I did get considerable pleasure out of calling her Lady Poppy to her face.’

  ‘Like something out of the Wacky Races,’ said Tony.

  Francis laughed. ‘To be fair, Liam, it is Duncan’s title. For services to the Foreign Office. It’s pretty much automatic if you’re an ambassador.’

  ‘Yes,’ Roz agreed. ‘It is.’

  ‘You know about these things?’

  For some reason, she was blushing. ‘I am a civil servant …’

  ‘A very civil servant,’ Liam said. ‘I’d employ you.’

  He rested his hand on her knee for a moment until Roz reached out, quite politely, and lifted it off. Nothing was said, though Francis was amused to notice Tony bristle slightly. Was he embarrassed by the over-forward behaviour of a man of his age, or was this going to be the next thing? Liam and Tony battling it out for Roz? Had she even told either of them about her married man?

  SIX

  Thursday 27 September

  Diana was first down at breakfast again, out on her own at the long table in the sunshine.

  ‘Life must go on,’ she said with a stoic smile. ‘I’m always first for breakfast and I’m not going to stop now.’

  ‘I’m sure Poppy would have approved.’

  ‘I’m sure she would. She liked people who had that good old British quality: gung-ho.’

  Francis put down the cappuccino he’d just made on the table opposite her, then nipped sideways into the dining room to help himself to what was rapidly becoming his traditional Villa Giulia breakfast: a crusty roll, a curl of butter, a slice or two of ham, a croissant, a spoonful of homemade fig jam, and – greedy pig – a peach. The great thing about hanging out with this lot, he reflected, as he made his way back out into the sunny courtyard again, was that forty-eight didn’t seem old, though it increasingly did these days in London.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Diana went on as Francis took his seat. ‘Actually, it’s not at all funny. But in all the years I’ve been coming here, we’ve never had anything even remotely like this. A death. One year we had a woman who swallowed a wasp and had to be rushed to hospital. Turned out she was perfectly fine, only stung on the inside of her cheek. Then last year, poor Zoe had an asthma attack. We’ve had other guests who couldn’t come at the last moment because they’d been taken ill. And then Belle’s dear husband Michael died quite suddenly of cancer. One year he was right as rain, the life and soul of the party, the next he was gone. Of course, that hit me hard, because of my own scare …’

  ‘Your own scare?’ Francis asked politely.

  ‘Cancer, yes. Five years ago. I had to go through chemo and everything. Hideous. But luckily the Good Lord was merciful and I managed to chase it off.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  Diana was shaking her head. ‘But never an actual death. Here. On the premises.’

  ‘No,’ said Francis. ‘It is shocking.’

  ‘Accidents apart, we’re all getting on, that’s the trouble. You wouldn’t know this, of course, but quite a few of the regulars haven’t come this year. Julian and Esther, for example – they’ve been coming for years. Not that I particularly mind, because I’ve always found Julian a difficult man. He rather dominates the writing group when he’s here. Terrible stickler for grammar, which can be a bore. And he likes to read extracts from his self-published short stories, rather than do the exercises set by the tutor. Which isn’t really the point, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Francis agreed. ‘It’s good to get stuck in with what everyone else is doing.’

  ‘Anyway, poor Julian’s got something wrong with his bowels. Can’t walk very far at all, apparently. Certainly getting on a plane would be difficult.’ She gave him a sad look. ‘Old age can be very humiliating. You’re lucky you’re still young.’

  ‘Not that young.’

  ‘How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘Forty-eight,’ he admitted.

  ‘A spring chicken,’ she said. ‘And you don’t even look it.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think coloured people like you often have much better skin than us sallow whiteys.’

  He laughed, with surprise as much as anything else. He wasn’t offended by an old lady’s ignorance of the current terminology for people like himself, he just hadn’t heard a remark like this for quite a while and it amused him to see where she would take it. ‘I’m not sure that’s true,’ he replied emolliently.

  ‘I think it is. You know, you can get into terrible trouble for saying what you think, these days, but you seem like such a nice young man I’m sure you won’t take offence. Of course, I’ve never been involved with a coloured person myself, but I’ve often thought that they have much better physiques.’

  ‘Good at sport, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Please don’t get me wrong. That’s not to say they’re not good at other things too. Often very good. Look at Nelson Mandela. An absolutely brilliant man, in my opinion, even though technically he started out life as a terrorist. But when David and I went to Africa on business, which we did quite a lot, sourcing fabrics, I would often look around the local people – blacks, that is, am I still allowed to say that?’

  ‘You are …’

  ‘And think: now that’s what a real man should look like. You know. Muscly, a proper figure of a man. So many men at home these days are so unmanly really. And I’m not talking about gays. I mean normal men.’

  ‘D’you think?’ Francis asked, making no comment.

  ‘I do. What’s the word they use on the radio? “Metrosexual.” God help us! is all I can say. We get quite a few of those types in Aldeburgh. Visiting. In the summer. And the winter, for that matter, these days. I feel sorry for their women sometimes. I mean, what do they have to look up to, with these drips on their arms?’

  ‘I think it’s going back the other way now,’ Francis said. ‘With the younger men. They’re all terribly into their physique, spend half their lives in the gym.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Though not the gym, please. That always strikes me as such a terrible waste of time. What’s wrong with putting one foot in front of the other and going for a run? In the fresh air. As for all those other machines they have. They’d do better to lift some real weights. Of course, in the old days people didn’t need such things. They’d be out in the fields, wielding scythes all day long. Or chopping wood with axes. I’ll bet that built up the physique much better than some silly machine.’

  ‘I’m sure it did.’

  Diana’s attention had switched back to her croissant, which she was now slathering with jam. ‘Gooseberry,’ she said with a smile. ‘I do love the range of jams Stephanie provides. You know they make them all here, in the kitchen, with fruits from the garden.’

  ‘I thought as much, looking at the labels.’

  ‘Stephanie is really very clever, what’s she’s built up here. And she has one crucial skill, which I’m in total admiration of, not possessing it myself.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Delegation. She never lifts a finger herself to make the jams, for example. But she knows of a man who can. Or rather a woman who can. Lovely Benedetta. Works her fingers to the bone to give us all such delicious treats.’

  Francis watched as Diana munched away carefully and then swallowed. Then she gave Francis a long and candid look. ‘So what do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Poor Poppy, of course. I mean, you’re a crime writer. Do you think there’s something suspicious about this horrid accident? Or are the Italian police just making a meal of it because we’re foreign?’

  They were interrupted by Stephanie, sailing across the courtyard towards them i
n another colourful frock, this one bright yellow, with a filigree pattern of blue flowers.

  ‘Good morning, good morning!’ she called cheerfully. ‘Nice to see you both up so bright and early.’ She sat down next to them with her cappuccino. ‘Oh dear, what a business! I woke up this morning and had a glorious ten seconds of familiar Villa Giulia peace before I remembered.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Diana.

  ‘I suppose life must go on.’ Stephanie sighed and looked down. ‘So this morning the police are coming back to take statements from everyone. I’ll make a proper announcement when everyone else has appeared. We’re lucky that Gerry managed to dissuade them from their other suggestion: that our entire house party troop into the commissariato in Castiglione dell’Umbria and hang around all day there.’

  ‘The commissariato is the police station, is it?’ Francis asked.

  ‘Yes. In the smaller places. That’s for the State Police, the Polizia di Stato, as opposed to their old rivals the Carabinieri.’

  ‘Gerry was telling us all about that last night over dinner,’ Diana said. ‘It does seem unnecessarily complicated.’

  ‘The Carabinieri are sort of semi-military, like their own little army. Round here, they mostly come from down south. Some of the locals tell jokes about them being stupid, a bit like Irish jokes.’

  Diana raised her eyebrows. ‘So don’t tell me they’re about to turn up too,’ she said.

  ‘No, I think once the Polizia di Stato have got the case, they hang on to it. Anyway, I’m hoping that once we’ve got this bit out of the way they’ll let us get off and do our excursion to Gubbio.’

  ‘Do we have to ask their permission?’ asked Diana.

  ‘’Fraid so,’ Stephanie replied. And then continued in upbeat mode: ‘It’ll help take people’s minds off things. I’m sure it’s what dear Poppy would have wanted.’

  ‘And what about poor Duncan?’ asked Diana. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Still very shocked, as you’d imagine. Luckily his daughter Fiona is flying out from the UK this morning, so he’ll have company at least.’

  ‘He’s very welcome to join us,’ said Diana. ‘He doesn’t have to stay in his room. He does know that, doesn’t he?’

  ‘I’m sure he does, Diana. As I say, he’s still in a state of shock.’

  The police arrived promptly at ten and set up shop in the library. A long table had been carried in by Fabio and Gerry and upright chairs placed behind it for the officers, with one at the front for the individual witness. The good-looking policewoman was accompanied today by the handsome thirty-something of yesterday, along with the bald fellow in the lived-in grey suit. With them was another young agente, in the casual uniform of short-sleeved, dark-blue shirt, white belt and paler blue/grey trousers.

  The witnesses gathered next door, in the little side room with the Gaggia machine. They sat around the oblong marble table, nervously sipping coffee and tea and nibbling at biscuits, then going through one by one into the inner room at the invitation of the uniformed officer.

  ‘So what did you tell them?’ Tony asked, as Zoe reappeared, a tight little smile on her face.

  ‘What they wanted, I hope. That I was in bed asleep, yesterday morning. That I’d got everything ready for our trip out to Gubbio, then went down for breakfast, all set, only to be told it wasn’t happening and poor Poppy had got trapped in the sauna.’

  ‘Was that it?’

  ‘No. They were quite in-depth, I thought. The lady policeman has good English, too, with a rather incongruous Estuary accent. Apparently she has relatives in Essex. Anyway, they wanted to know what I’d got up to the night before, exactly whom I’d sat next to at dinner, whether I’d known Duncan and Poppy before the course, who had been here in other years – goodness, it was twenty questions and some.’

  ‘But you hadn’t?’ Francis asked.

  ‘Hadn’t what?’

  ‘Known Duncan and Poppy before?’

  ‘No,’ said Zoe. ‘I hadn’t.’ But there was something in her tone, and the flat, determined smile she gave them both, that made Francis wonder whether she was telling the truth.

  All too soon it was Francis’s turn. Despite the seven crime novels he’d written, he had only once given a police statement, four years before, during the strange case that had become known in the newspapers as The Festival Murders. In England, on that occasion, there had been just the one detective sergeant, who had taken notes in longhand, compiled a draft and read it back for signature. Now there were two police and a prosecutor. Marta Moretti, the officer in charge, was a commissario based in Perugia; her younger colleague, Lorenzi Ricci, an ispettore (inspector) from the same police headquarters; the crumple-suited bald one, Leonardo Sabatini was, as Francis had guessed, a procuratore or prosecutor, albeit a sostituto (assistant). The whole thing felt more like an interview than an attempt to compile a straight statement. Sabatini asked most of the questions, which were translated by Moretti in her funny Essex-Italian accent. Her uncle had a restaurant in Romford, she explained to Francis, and she had been over there to learn English as a teenager.

  How had Poppy looked the night before her death? Sabatini wanted to know. Was there anyone in the writing group who obviously disliked her? Had Francis ever met her and Duncan before in the United Kingdom? For how many years had he been teaching? How many courses had he taught? Had anything like this ever happened on one of his courses before? The questions seemed wider and wider of the mark, or of anything that might be required for a single statement, and it took almost forty minutes before Francis’s short account of what he’d seen and heard was written out in Italian, then read back to him in English by Moretti and finally signed. He had decided not to tell them about his strange dream, with the African drummers and the distant screaming. Instead he kept things simple. Stephanie, he told them, had woken him and called him down to the sauna, where he had witnessed the horrid scene he described. Nor did he mention the odd early scream of the day before, allegedly Belle’s nightmare. He wasn’t keeping things from them; he just didn’t want to be here all day. He wasn’t sure, anyway, about his dream. Had those drummers been Poppy’s fists, hammering on the glass door of the sauna? Even though his room, Masaccio, was more or less above the sauna, it seemed hard to believe. The walls of the villa were thick, and there was a whole floor between them, where the kitchens and scullery area were. Diana, who was resident in Michelangelo next door, had heard nothing, she’d said. Nor had Zoe, over the corridor in Caravaggio.

  When he finally emerged, the side room was empty. There was a new distraction. Duncan’s daughter Fiona had just arrived, driven in from Perugia Airport by Fabio. She had been greeted by Gerry at the front door and then taken straight upstairs to see her father.

  Diana already approved, albeit without introduction. Fiona seemed very nice and approachable, she said, not at all like her mother.

  ‘But she isn’t her mother,’ Roz said.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Zoe asked.

  ‘Duncan’s her father, but Poppy’s not her mother. She’s a child from Duncan’s first marriage. Poppy never had any children.’

  ‘How on earth d’you know that?’ Liam asked.

  For a moment Roz looked stumped. Then: ‘Duncan told me,’ she said. ‘We were having a chat about marriage and kids and stuff the other night at dinner. He told me then that he and Poppy had never managed to have children.’

  ‘There’s a turn-up for the books,’ said Liam. ‘So there’d technically be no one to inherit Framley Grange. Except Duncan and the daughter. Unless it goes to the hated sister.’ He looked over towards Francis and gave him a big Irish wink.

  After lunch, Francis took himself off for another walk. Stephanie hadn’t brought up the idea of teaching again, and he wasn’t going to raise it with her, especially as he now felt he’d do anything to get away from the strange, increasingly stifling atmosphere of the villa. Did any of them really believe that Poppy had been murdered? By one of them. But then again: wh
at if she had?

  This afternoon he went a different way, down the overgrown track directly below the tennis court and round on to a little twisting lane, lined on both sides with tall dark cypresses. There was a sprinkling of village houses here, some with tumbledown outhouses. The grey rendered wall of one was covered with colourful plastic ornaments: ladybirds, butterflies, cockerels, saucepans, spoons, a moon embracing a sun. A real cockerel, meanwhile, crowed behind the netting of a chicken run. As Francis passed, two dogs battered their noses against a fence, barking aggressively. Why was it that foreign dogs seemed scarier than English ones? Up at the villa they had all mocked Zoe and Diana’s feelings about foreign policemen, but perhaps that was just a version of the same naturally xenophobic instinct.

  The bends in the road widened and the cypresses gave way to shimmering poplars. As Francis came to the bottom of the hill, he could see the big grey sheds of the battery chicken farm. You could smell the pungent shit of the poor fowl, trapped in the gulag, drifting across. Turning left, he took the track along the bottom of the valley, keeping the dried-up bed of the stream to his left. He passed a couple of women, one old, one much younger, picking what looked like small green fruit, unripe plums perhaps. He greeted them – ‘Buonasera’ – and asked them in English what they were collecting. They had even less of his language than he had of theirs, so it was in a mime exchange that he discovered they were noci, nuts – walnuts, in fact, on closer inspection. They offered him a couple. He cracked one open between the palms of his hands and declared it delicioso. Was that the right word? Why was his Italian so terrible? John and Susan Meadowes, his adoptive parents, had sent him to a good school and he’d gone on to uni in York, where he’d been fired up about reading English, ‘getting to grips with the whole canon’ as his enthusiastic A-level teacher Mr Watson had put it, but now how he wished he’d chosen languages, which would have given him a chance to read the literature of other cultures that he would never have the leisure to study properly again; and pick up, at the same time, a useful language or two. Ah well, he was never one to dwell on the might-have-beens in life. ‘I should have done that’ was a pointless sentiment.