An Uncommon Murder

by Anabel Donald

  ‘A dark horse?’

  ‘In the leadership race. If Thatcher goes. Clive says that’s maybe why she gave him Trade and Industry, to sink his career, since Thatcher’s policies are systematically destroying both. He’s been out in the cold for a while, about three years. He used to be in the Cabinet. Resigned on a point of principle.’

  ‘Can you remember the principle?’

  ‘Basically, he didn’t like Maggie trampling over his face in her sensible shoes.’

  ‘So you’ve met him at parties and things.’

  ‘Yes. He and Clive were on a committee together.’

  ‘Did he fancy you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not even a teentsy bit?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is he gay?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I didn’t get the impression he thought about sex much. He talked about the Common Market and his son.’

  ‘Anything else about him? Drink, drugs, whips, bribes?’ She shook her head to each one.

  ‘He’s respectably married. With a beautiful wife. Rather cool, very ambitious. I met her once.’

  ‘Know anything about his children?’

  ‘Two, I think. A very photogenic boy at Eton, the one he talks about.’

  ‘What did he say about the son?’

  ‘How clever he was, and how charming. The other child’s a girl. She was there when I met Charlotte Mayfield. They were waiting for Ludo to join them for tea on the terrace at the House. The girl was shy and not very attractive. Puppy-fat and spots. Aren’t you going to tell me why you want to know?’

  I shook my head, thinking. If Mayfield was in the running for Prime Minister, what difference did it make? None, as far as I could see. Toad had gone east months ago. She’d left long before the leadership crisis. Even if something had happened to her on her travels, that could make no difference to her father, surely?

  ‘Polly, what would it mean to the family now Ludo has his new job?’

  ‘How do you mean, what would it mean?’

  ‘Humour me. Anything you can think of. What difference would it make?’

  ‘More money, though not a lot. Higher profile. More work for Ludo, less time at home.’

  ‘And if he is in the running for the leadership?’

  ‘That’s another matter altogether. If they do chuck Thatcher they’ll be looking for a leader who’ll win them the next election, but I don’t think it’ll come to that. None of them has the nerve to oust the Iron Lady. If by any remote chance they did look for a new leader I can’t see it being Ludo, myself. The most you can say for him is there’s nothing against him. But if they have a leadership election soon his supporters will be canvassing madly and he’ll be giving lots of photo-calls with his family.’

  ‘And his family has to be whiter than white?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I clocked her information, though for the moment I could find no use for it. Except, annoyingly, it sounded as if Charlotte née Sherwin would be too busy being photographed to talk to me about her father’s murder.

  ‘I must go downstairs,’ Polly announced. ‘Clive might ring.’

  ‘It’s half-past one.’

  ‘That’s the point. He can use the downstairs phone once his wife goes to bed. It’s Tuesday and she watches the late-night movie on Tuesday. She’s got very regular habits.’ She made them sound like a disability.

  ‘Polly, do you want Clive to leave his wife? Do you want to marry him?’ I seldom ask intrusive questions – I hate people asking them of me – but I was fond of Polly and didn’t want to believe love had rendered her completely brain-dead.

  ‘Good Lord no,’ she said, and restored my faith in her. ‘I don’t want to break up a marriage, and I certainly don’t want him as the father of my children. I’m in love with him, that’s all.’

  ‘Clive Clive Clive Clive,’ I said, to please her. It didn’t, she left and I went to bed. I could have done with another hour or two organizing my notes and questions, but I was knackered.

  Chapter Five

  When I woke up next day there was frost on the inside of my bedroom window and I knew I’d have to apologize to the plumber. I’d been without central heating for a month, I’m out a lot so the fire hadn’t been on much, and the flat was damp. So I rang him up and grovelled.

  I hated to do that when I was right to shout at him in the first place, but it’s impossible to find a competent plumber in London unless you inherit one with the family silver, and next to impossible to get anyone even to make house calls and sneer at your central heating installation. Damp is bad for the flat, my only capital asset, and I was sick of lengths of copper piping as a major design feature in my living-room. He came at half-past eight and rubbed my nose in it. I had to make him three cups of real coffee before he’d pretend to fix the heating and I could get over to Barty’s and press his assistant into service.

  What I needed was to locate the missing Toad’s best friend. She’d be a much better bet than the girl’s mother, as far as uncensored information was concerned. This was a job for Annabel. It went against the grain to ask her – she thought enough of herself as it was – but her accent and contacts would save me hours of work.

  Barty wasn’t in the office yet but Annabel was, and delighted to help. She listened to my explanation in silence (she was worryingly bright), then said, ‘Shouldn’t be a problem. What school was Toad at?’

  I passed over the notes I’d taken from Miss Potter’s briefing. She found the name of the school, gave a Sloane squeal of recognition, and got on the phone. Twenty squealing minutes later she replaced the receiver in triumph. ‘Wonderful! That was Spanker Trott, my old housemistress! Terrific old thing!’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘Really cool. Didn’t mind at all when we raided her knicker drawer and draped her capacious M&S cotton numbers round the Founder’s Statue on the last night of term. I didn’t know she’d moved schools.’

  ‘Perhaps she hoped for a quieter class of girl.’

  ‘I doubt it. Frightfully rowdy lot she’s with now. Anyhow, Lally Lambert’s the girl you want. I’ve never met her but I’m sure I can drag in some mutual friends. She’s in London at the moment, putting in her Gap Year at Christie’s. She and Toad were friends from way back. Shared studies, went skiing together, the whole bit. Spanker says she’s a decent sort. Want me to fix it up with Lally?’

  I was an ace away from saying I’d do it myself, but she was right, it would come better from her. She fixed it up. Lally’d meet me after she left work at a wine bar just off Piccadilly. They knew her there: it was owned by a friend. It would be.

  I thanked Annabel as graciously as I could and let her make me a cup of coffee. Anything else I can do?’ she said, excited by her success. There was, though I hesitated to ask her. Tracing Toad was actually outside my brief, it was a favour to Miss Potter, so it was reasonable to involve Annabel. But if she did any of my work on the Sherwin murder then I really should renegotiate my seventy-five per cent deal with Barty, and I couldn’t afford to do that.

  She was watching me as I considered, her large, royal blue eyes fixed on my smaller, short-lashed green ones. ‘I needn’t mention it to the boss,’ she said. ‘I’m terribly under-employed as it is and I won’t be staying here long. I met a nice chap at a party last week and he’s trying to place me at London Weekend Television.’

  ‘What as?’

  ‘A researcher. I’m older than you think.’ I had assumed that she was like the other Sloanes, nineteen or so and just out of school, but now I looked at her she could well be post-university.

  ‘Did you go to Oxford?’ I fished.

  ‘Cambridge, actually. I read Maths. I understand about you and money.’

  ‘What about me and money?’

  ‘That you need it. Barty thinks it’s a game you play. He’s hopelessly out of date. It’s not his fault, it’s his generation. If I can help, you should let me.’

  Her shrewd kindness got right up my n
ose and I nearly refused. Then I remembered the plumber’s bill and the possible new roof, asked her to track down Rosalind Sherwin for me, passed over my notes and went for a walk round the block. It was raining, but at least I wouldn’t have to listen to the gilded connections of her old girl network by-passing my ten years of graft.

  When I got back she passed me a slip of paper with an address and telephone number. ‘She’s married to a painter – rather a good one, actually. Magnus Jennings. They live in Crete.’

  I couldn’t resist asking how she’d done it. I can’t keep my tongue out of damaged fillings, either. It served me right. ‘She and my mother came out together,’ said Annabel. I didn’t tell her what I thought: my motives would have been too transparent.

  Instead, I dialled the number. The phone was answered by a Greek woman, presumably a cleaner, though her English was unusually good. No, sorry, Mrs Jennings couldn’t be reached, not for some time. She was at the hospital with her husband. Yes, he was very sick. Yes, it was very sad. Yes, it was a bad time. Yes, it would be better if I waited a while before trying to contact the family.

  I replaced the receiver, peeved. I was counting on Rosalind; nieces are usually a good bet. They’re close enough to be informed, particularly if they’ve been living in the house, but detached enough to come across with information. She’d have been particularly detached since she’d only joined the household a few months before the murder.

  My next step was Patrick Revill. I thanked Annabel again, as fulsomely as I could manage, and set off for the wrong end of the Edgware Road. It was two bus-rides, a chapter or two of Lemaire and a small profit on my expenses away, if I claimed for a taxi.

  I reached Patrick Revill’s flat forty minutes later, with a firmer grip on the Sherwin background according to H. Plowright. Rollo was only the fourth Lord Sherwin: his great-grandfather, a maverick entrepreneur from a solidly respectable, professional Warwickshire family, had started his career as a doctor, then patented and marketed a tonic which the Victorians gulped in such quantities that he could afford to buy Ashtons Hall and its estate, live in high style and do enough in the way of good works to earn his barony. His son, Rollo’s grandfather, lived on his father’s money, married more money and produced Rollo’s father. He married an impecunious Scotswoman, the only functioning descendant of an ancient and batty family. She produced two sons, Rollo and Michael.

  They married two sisters, Laura and Sophie Farrell, not for their money because they didn’t seem to have any (their father. Colonel Farrell, was living at Ashtons Hall as Rollo’s pensioner at the time of the murder) but almost certainly, judging by the photographs, for their looks. If anything, Sophie was better-looking than Laura, but even more ill-fated. Whether Laura killed her husband or not, she at least lived to a comfortable and secure old age.

  Michael and Sophie were not so lucky. Rollo, as elder son, inherited the house, the estate, the Sherwin title and, from his mother, the lairdship of a Scottish island. Michael, the younger son, was given enough money to buy land in Kenya, where during the Mau Mau rising he, Sophie and their dog Joss were hacked to pieces in the living-room of their bungalow. Their child Rosalind survived only because of the prompt and sensible action of Miss Potter, then her governess, who grabbed a revolver and bundled herself and the child into a linen chest and remained there, silent, for several hours while the Mau Mau wrecked the house.

  I was glad of the information but heartily sick of Lemaire’s censorious style. His favourite adjective was unimaginable. The death of Rosalind’s parents, Rollo’s sexual adventures, family relationships at Ashtons Hall and the savagery of the murder were all unimaginable. An odd affectation in a writer and most unhelpful for readers who presumably hoped the book would enable them to imagine it.

  I shut the book in relief and left the bus at the traffic lights. Revill’s flat was above a Pakistani newsagent and post office. The paint on the door was peeling and there were two bells, both unmarked. I rang them and waited, back on familiar territory. Eventually a window opened above me and a head looked out. Old; grey; either a long-haired man or a coarse-featured woman.

  ‘Mr Revill?’

  ‘Who wants him?’

  ‘I do. To interview.’

  The head perked up, revealing itself to be male and possessed of a professional smile. ‘Is there a fee?’

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t look as if he’d stand out for much: Barty would wear it. He threw down a key and was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, a tallish old man who would have been very tall once, grubbily dressed in flannels, a nearly white shirt and a tweed jacket. The smell of cat piss was almost excluded when he shut the flat door; we were standing close together in a tiny hall and I could see the bristles his shaving had missed. He met my eyes and smiled, and I could see that he had been – still thought he was – an attractive man, being kind to me. The look’s unmistakable: flirtatious, arrogant. Early on in my teens, maybe because I don’t have it, I started dividing people into those with or those without. One of my foster-grandmothers told me it used to be called ‘it’. Very little to do with looks, usually, though the Revill man also had the relics of those.

  His room was small; tidy, but ugly and not entirely clean. It looked as if his furniture was the discarded pieces of assorted households, perhaps several divorces in which he was, materially, the exploited party. The walls were covered with old playbills and film posters, some featuring photographs of a younger Patrick. He had been handsome in an obvious way, with a seductive, droopy-eyed smile.

  I sat on the sofa’s exhausted springs and smiled as responsively as I could. Attractive people need a response to function well, specially when they’re past it. ‘Will the photographer be joining you here, or do you want me to come down to the office?’ he said eagerly.

  ‘I don’t know yet if we want a pic. It depends how much useful material you give me.’ His smile slipped, and I caught it. ‘Oh, Mr Revill, I must tell you how honoured I am to get this chance to meet you. I’m a fan, but I won’t take up your time with that. Shall we discuss a fee?’ We discussed a fee. He must have been very strapped because he accepted even less than I expected and he didn’t ask what information we were talking about. When I told him, he wasn’t keen.

  ‘I know nothing about the Sherwin murder. Would you like a coffee?’

  I followed him towards the cupboard he was using as a kitchen. His hands shook as he filled the kettle, but perhaps they always did.

  ‘It’s background I’m after. You were renting a lodge on the estate at the time, and for some months before? You must have got an impression of the people, and you did actually attend the hunt ball on the night of the murder, so you can tell me about that.’ He gave me a mug of coffee. He had used the cheapest instant powder which he had decanted into a Gold Blend jar, one of the most small-time, incompetent pretensions I’ve ever encountered. Or perhaps it was to comfort himself, not deceive visitors.

  ‘I did rather get to know Lord Sherwin. Charming chap.’ His voice was basically flat London, with actorish consonants, but the last sentence had moved dramatically up-market, suggesting companionship on the grouse moors followed by a whisky in the library. I nodded encouragingly and returned to the sofa. He stood by the window, looking out. He had a good profile. ‘Bit of a one for the ladies, alas. That’s what did for him.’

  ‘You mean, somebody’s husband . . .’ I trailed off expectantly.

  ‘Not necessarily a husband. Female of the species is deadlier than the male. Cherchez la femme. Stands to reason. Oldest motive there is, jealousy. Look at Othello. Shakespeare knew the human heart. Lord Sherwin’s lady had plenty to put up with. I expect she was driven to it.’ So he was another supporter of the Laura theory.

  ‘That’s very interesting. I’ll make a note of that.’ I wrote Laura scribble scribble keep him happy. ‘Did you see or hear anything to back up your idea?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said coyly. ‘Just that – someone told me a bit of background.’
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  ‘Someone in the house?’

  ‘Hang on a jiffy. Who did you say you were working for? Who wants to know this?’

  ‘I’m researching for Barty O’Neill. He’s doing a piece for the Observer.’

  ‘Who else have you seen?’

  ‘Miss Potter.’ I wanted to see how much he remembered, and from whom, so I didn’t give him any clues.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The governess. Looking after the Sherwins’ daughters.’

  ‘The virtuous Miss Potter! I’d forgotten all about her. Don’t think I ever saw her, actually.’

  ‘What do you mean, virtuous?’

  ‘Always prating on about duty and honour.’

  ‘Who told you about Miss Potter?’

  He began to speak, checked himself, sipped coffee. ‘I read it. In one of the articles about the murder I kept up with the case in the papers. Being there, so to speak, not because I knew anything about it. Fascinating. The chap had so much. Everything, really. Land, money, position, pretty wife, children. Never had to do a hand’s turn. Then gets his head blown off. Terrible thing.’ He didn’t think it terrible; he was pleased. I understood why and disliked him, and myself for understanding so readily. ‘I was in the middle of a messy divorce, at the time. My first. You never get rid of first wives, you know. Not ever. It’s the only marriage that takes, in my experience. I still think about her. Don’t love her, but think about her, remember what we did together. The children, being young, getting my first part, that kind of thing. Never goes. I couldn’t even tell you my third wife’s name, off-hand. Mind you that’s partly because she kept changing it. What’s your favourite film?’

  I nearly said Death in Venice, then clicked. He meant one of his. I was supposed to be a fan. I named his most successful film. He was gratified. I hadn’t seen it, but that didn’t matter; by the time he stopped reminiscing I could have written a dissertation on it.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Goodness, tell me more.’ He did, then felt much better and leant over trying to read my notes, which read boring war film stiff upper lip vain old bugger. I covered them.‘Shorthand,’ I said. ‘Did you meet any of the young people in Ashtons Hall? There were three small girls, I think.’ (One of my basic techniques: I invite interviewees to spot the deliberate mistake. Most people love putting you right on small points of fact; then they go on to tell you more than they intended.)