A Beginner’s Guide to Murder

by Rosalind Stopps

  ‘That poor girl,’ I said in agreement.

  That part I was sure about. Nina and I had bonded right from the first moment we met. She reminded me of everything I’d lost. Daphne was nodding away too.

  ‘Could we…’ Daphne said, ‘I mean, I know it’s… but I was thinking… would it be a good idea… do you think we could possibly… make a pact?’

  Grace and I didn’t say anything. Daphne shuffled and coughed and blushed until I had to put her out of her misery.

  ‘A pact. I think that’s a good idea.’

  I didn’t, not really, it sounded like something that a bunch of schoolgirls would come up with, not a group of three senior citizens with a girl to rescue. I just couldn’t bear to see her looking so out on a limb. I had to speak. It was the fact that she was clearly used to being the odd one out, that was what I noticed. I had often felt the same in my marriage, even though there was only Henry and me. I would hate anyone to feel like that. The three of us were going to have to stick together if we wanted to get this done and bring Nina back. I thought that we had better start working on it now.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Grace. She looked vaguely around the late-night coffee shop, as if there might be instructions on the wall with the sandwich menu. ‘I’m not sure how that works, though.’

  ‘I think we’re supposed to cut ourselves or something like that,’ I said, ‘mingle our blood and swear an oath. Isn’t that how they do it?’ I hoped they would say no. I didn’t need to be any more battered.

  ‘Well, I beg everyone’s pardon,’ Grace said, ‘but I need every drop of my blood for myself. I’m seventy-five years old and I’m not taking any chances. But I’m happy to take an oath on something I hold dear. Any ideas?’

  We looked at each other, then at the table. No one knew what they were looking for but I had an idea. I rummaged in my bag. I didn’t want to be the first one to say anything in case my idea was stupid but I couldn’t bear the silence so I jumped in. I could hear Henry’s voice in my head saying, That’s our Meg, jumps in with both feet and lands in the shit, but I did it anyway.

  ‘I’ve got a picture,’ I said, ‘of a dog I used to have. A photo. He was a lovely dog.’

  I got it out and put it on the table. Let them laugh, I thought, let them mock, I don’t care, I’m trying my hardest. I didn’t look at Bingley as I put him on the table, I didn’t trust myself to. Bugger Henry, I thought, Bingley was a good, good dog.

  ‘OK,’ Grace said, ‘I haven’t got a picture but I’ve got this.’

  She scrabbled in her bag and brought out a tiny, dirty old bear. It looked as though it would fall apart if it went near soap and water, but my hands itched to scrub it anyway. She put it on the table and I noticed that she seemed to find it as difficult to look at as I did the photo of dear old Bingley.

  Daphne was still scrabbling in her bag and I suddenly thought, what if she hasn’t got anything? That would be so awful for her. I looked at Grace and I could see she was thinking the same thing.

  ‘Here we go,’ Daphne said. ‘I knew there was something.’

  She pulled out a tattered green and white cardboard ticket, half the size of a postcard, and put it on the table with Bingley and the bear. I noticed the word ‘Sydney’ on it.

  ‘Do we need to explain?’ she said.

  ‘Oh no, I don’t think there’s any need for that,’ Grace said. ‘I think we can trust each other.’

  ‘Maybe when we know each other better,’ I said. I would have liked to talk about Bingley.

  Grace pushed the three things into the middle of the coffee table.

  ‘We promise that we will act in good faith,’ she said.

  ‘We strive to do no harm,’ said Daphne.

  That’s slightly ironic, I thought, given that we are contemplating harm indeed, although I knew what she meant. I sat still, thinking, and then I realised that they were both looking at me.

  ‘Your turn,’ Grace said.

  ‘The greatest good for the greatest number,’ I said, dredging up something I remembered from school. I held my hands out, hoping that no one was looking, and that neither of them minded. The café was quiet. The man behind the till was cashing up and he seemed totally uninterested in us anyway. It was the most anonymous place I could remember being in, no one knew us and no one was looking at three strange old women. We were almost invisible. Grace and Daphne took one hand each in theirs and joined us into a little circle. A circle of hands in varying shades like a Benetton advert.

  ‘That’s the one,’ Grace said. ‘Meg’s oath. Greatest good for the greatest number and let’s save Nina.’

  ‘To Nina,’ Daphne and I said, as if it was a toast.

  Chapter Two

  Meg

  Monday, 25 February – two days earlier

  I was not in a good place when it all started. When I first met Nina. I’m amazed that I even managed to go to Pilates that day, I hardly went anywhere any more. Since Henry died, I had often spent fifteen minutes standing looking at the door before I left the house, and sometimes I sat down again instead, made do without whatever essential item I’d been going out for. I know there are no such things as nervous breakdowns any more, but mine was one, I’m sure of that.

  I still don’t know what made me go to the class that day, or to coffee afterwards – fate or something – but I knew as soon as I saw Nina that we were going to be connected in some way. There was a thread between us and I wondered if she might be a relative, someone I had known before, or even a child I had long ago given up for adoption. I had to stop and think, do I have a small dark-haired teenaged child out there in the world somewhere, one who might run into a café in south-east London dressed in a skimpy little skirt, flip-flops and a T-shirt, with no jacket, just a towel round her shoulders? No, was the answer, no, Meg, you are far too old. This tiny, scared little bird of a girl cannot be your child. The connection must be something else. I listened as my mother had taught me, and I could just about hear it. A violin, playing off-key.

  She came straight to me. All three of us were at the table, me, Grace and Daphne, but she came straight to me as if we had a prior agreement.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘please help me.’

  She was shaking, I could see that, and I did what anyone would do, I reached out from my chair, pulled her nearer and put my arm around her waist.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘I’m here, we’re here, are you OK?’

  Nonsense, I know, not the right thing to say to a girl as upset as she was but I had to say something. The others were saying things as well, a chorus of three old ladies clucking and reaching and trying. It was heartbreaking, how much we wanted to help and how unsure we all were about how to.

  Grace was the first one to say something sensible. She is the kind of person who knows what to say – the opposite of me. She is tall and elegant and although I didn’t know her well I had been grateful that she wanted to have coffee with me that morning.

  ‘Girl,’ she said, ‘are you in danger?’

  It was such an obvious question to ask. I felt stupid that I had clucked and stared and listened and wondered, while Grace got to the heart of it straight away. Of course it was the right thing to check. If I wasn’t so busy thinking about myself, I thought, I might be able to be incisive too.

  The girl nodded, and looked at the door of the café as if a horde of soldiers wielding machine guns might burst in at any moment. Grace looked at the door in the same way and I realised that I didn’t know anything about her past. We had talked about the class and how stiff it made us, what we were going to cook for dinner and jobs we used to do or not do, but nothing personal. It was unusual for women, our silence, but I sensed then and know now that there is too much pain in sharing for women like us. Too many pitfalls, too many traps we might fall into. I didn’t know whether Grace had always lived in London, but the way she was looking at the stylish grey door of the café made me think that she might have once lived somewhere far more dangerous.r />
  ‘OK,’ Daphne said, ‘OK, everybody, calm down. Let’s see if we can work things out. I’m Daphne.’

  The girl looked at us all in turn, moving her gaze from one face to the next. She seemed to be weighing something up, whether she could trust us, I suppose. We were an odd crew, and I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had decided against talking to any of us. We were dressed for exercise, in a motley assortment of leggings and oversized T-shirts. Grace usually looks like an illustration of her name, but even she didn’t look so wonderful in a brown T-shirt and green baggy tracksuit pants. I know now that Daphne looks a sight even in her best clothes. Her strange combinations of things make me wonder if she’s giving all her clothes a turn of being worn so that they don’t feel left out.

  I’m hardly a style icon either. I have dumpy grandma written all over me, which is odd as I’m not actually a grandma. I’m not really anything, a widow, I suppose, although that makes me sound like I had a marriage, which I hardly did.

  She looked at the three of us and she moved a step closer to me. I hope it’s not because I’m white, I thought, and then cursed myself for over-thinking. Maybe she just liked the dumpy grandma vibe, maybe Grace seemed intimidating and Daphne bonkers, and it was nothing to do with colour.

  I don’t know how I had time for so many thoughts to go through my head while the girl moved one step closer and Grace moved between her and the door but I did. I could have counted the thoughts, that’s how clear and distinct each one was, like leaves on the ground after a rainfall.

  ‘Nina,’ she said, then she looked even more scared, as if it was not something she should have told us. She took a deep breath.

  ‘Nina,’ she said again and pointed to her chest. From the way that she said it I wondered if she had arrived from a different planet, and I suppose in a way she had.

  ‘Meg,’ I said, pointing to myself and then, Daphne, Grace. Maybe we all came from different worlds, I thought, with only names in common. Like when aliens introduce themselves in films.

  Nina kept looking at the back of the café, where there was a toilet cubicle.

  ‘Good idea, girl,’ said Grace. ‘You go in there a moment, take your time now.’

  She pointed to the toilet and Nina ran. I looked over to the counter and saw that the woman who had made our coffees was watching us. She didn’t say anything but I thought that she could sense that we were bringing trouble to her nice café.

  ‘Could we have another coffee for our friend?’ Daphne called over.

  She’s quick, Daphne, really smart. Good at knowing what to do.

  ‘Ladies, we have ourselves a situation,’ said Grace. ‘If I’m not mistaken, that girl is in one whole heap of trouble. Let’s keep together now, see if we can help. You all OK with that?’

  Daphne and I nodded and I wondered how things had changed so quickly. How we had gone from three acquaintances, bound only by a Pilates class for older women, to three co-conspirators, gearing up for trouble before our coffees had gone cold. We looked at each other, nodded, and before I had time to take another sip of my coffee the door to the café banged open and as it hit the wall a man came in.

  I sat there, cup halfway to my mouth and thinking of something, someone other than myself for the first time in weeks. Months even. I thought of that poor little girl in the toilet and hoped that she would stay there. There had to be a connection between her fear and his anger, and when I looked at Grace and Daphne I could see that they were thinking the same thing. I put my hands to my ears to stop the jangling.

  There was no one else in the coffee shop that morning. It was too early for the buggy and small dog brigade, and too late for the commuters who bought drinks on their way to the station. Just us three in there, but I was worried about the woman behind the counter. She might be our weak link, I thought. She looked tired, and she was on her own, and I wasn’t convinced she would keep quiet. The man stood inside the door and it was clear that he was used to owning spaces wherever he went.

  ‘Did a girl come in here?’ he said, with an accent I recognised but couldn’t immediately place. ‘Only my daughter has run away and I’m looking for her.’

  Daughter my foot, I thought, there’s no way that sweet little thing is related to you. One, the man had no concern or panic in his voice at all. Just a kind of bored amusement. I could hear that he didn’t care two hoots about her, in fact he sounded menacing. Two, he was old, not quite as old as us, probably in his mid-sixties, but too old to have a daughter that young. I know, I know it happens – look at Charlie Chaplin and Paul McCartney – but this man didn’t look like a silver daddy, or whatever it is they call them these days. He looked like a toad, to be honest, like a toad that has accidentally been transformed into a man but is threatening to change back at any time. I suddenly remembered what the accent was. Poirot. He was Belgian, I was sure of it. A Belgian toad.

  ‘Sorry?’ Grace said with a question in her voice. She drawled it out in a way that made it clear that not only did she not have a clue what he was talking about, but that he was beneath her contempt anyway. I felt proud to be with her.

  ‘Sorry also,’ he said, smooth as you like. ‘I may have been a tad abrupt. I was just wondering if any of you fair maidens had seen my daughter, about yay high,’ he gestured with his hand, ‘and terribly wilful. We had a bit of a spat, and I think she may have come in here.’

  If he hadn’t said ‘fair maidens’ things might have been different. I doubt it, but they might have. But he did, and we bristled, and I don’t think there’s a group of women aged seventy or thereabouts in the world who wouldn’t take exception to being called fair maidens. It’s condescending and it’s spiteful, and it’s a measure of how stupid he was that he didn’t even realise that he would be putting our backs up.

  ‘No,’ said Grace.

  She didn’t look at the woman behind the counter as she said it, and I admired her for that, I’m not sure I could have been so bold.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe we have, it’s just us in here.’

  She made a little shrugging movement and picked up her coffee, cool as a cucumber. Daphne and I followed suit.

  ‘You won’t mind then,’ he said, turning his back on us and speaking only to the woman who was serving, ‘if I search the place, to put my mind at rest?’

  That’s done it, I thought, he’ll find her now, and it’ll be clear that we knew, and everything will be terrible, and that poor girl.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said the woman. She was older than I’d thought at first, probably nearer sixty than fifty, and out of nowhere I thought, I bet this café is her retirement thing. ‘That’s not going to happen. You heard the lady, and unless you come back here with police and a search warrant you’re not searching anywhere. I never heard of anything like it. Do you not understand about private property? This is a café, not a free-for-all. Now, if you’d like a drink or something to eat there’s a menu on the blackboard over my head, and if not I’d like you to leave, now. Thank you.’

  She looked surprised when she’d finished. It was clear that those weren’t the words she had been expecting to say. I wanted to smile at her in gratitude, but I kept my eyes on my coffee. Stay in the toilet, stay in the toilet, I thought, trying to send the thought through to Nina. If she came out now, I knew there would be no chance of helping her. I wanted to look over in that direction so badly but I forced myself to keep my eyes on my cup.

  The man made an exaggerated bow, and doffed an imaginary cap.

  ‘My mistake,’ he said, ‘I thought we were living in a free country. Good day, ladies, I’m sure we’ll meet again soon. I’m looking forward to it already.’

  I looked up, but Grace looked at me in a way I immediately knew meant ‘stay down, as you were, wait a moment’. I stirred my coffee again and looked up in time to see him outside the window, staring in as if he might have missed something.

  ‘He’s still there,’ Daphne said very quietly, ‘he’s still there.’ />
  Ages went past while we sat there waiting, but it probably wasn’t more than a couple of minutes. That’s a thing I’ve found out about time as I have grown older. You can’t trust it. It slips and slides like a slippery fish. We sat there, not talking, almost holding our breath.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said the woman behind the counter. ‘So if you can finish up and go too I’d be grateful. I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t want to know, but I’ve got a café to run.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I started to say, ‘but that was nothing to do with us.’

  Grace looked at me and I stopped talking.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said to the woman. ‘I’m sorry that trouble came walking in here this morning. I want you to know that you did good, you did just fine, you were great not to bring the extra coffee and to speak up to him like that. We’re grateful. Aren’t we?’

  She looked at Daphne.

  ‘Yes,’ Daphne said, ‘thank you.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. I didn’t want to be left out. ‘What about…’ I said, looking over towards the toilets.

  I cared about her even after five minutes and that was surprising because I hadn’t really cared about anything for a long time. It hurt, caring again. Like walking on a foot that’s been asleep.

  ‘OK, this is what I’ve been thinking,’ Grace said. ‘Which of us lives the nearest to the café?’

  I realised that I had no idea where the others lived, and I was sure they didn’t know about me either.

  ‘I’m just round the corner,’ I said, ‘little cul de sac, you’ve probably walked past it.’

  ‘Can you get there going round the back way, so that you’re off the main road?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, thinking fast. I’ve never been good at directions but I was sure there was a way, even if it took a little longer.

  ‘I’m a bit further, over past the park,’ Daphne said.

  ‘Me too,’ said Grace. She looked over to the woman behind the counter.