There was an idyllic feel to the Rosalind and Kenya section of A Governess Looks Back, as if Miss Potter, already sensing herself to be a member of an endangered species, had briefly found an Arcadian game reserve.There was nothing about her time at Ashtons Hall, but I hadn’t really expected there to be. I was also intrigued by the Monatrea Castle section, with its glimpses of the young Barty and his really awful parents. Miss Potter never actually said people were really awful but she had a nice line in subversion. Her accounts of Barty’s father, in particular – ‘at times, an over-enthusiastic disciplinarian; Barty was attended by the family doctor twice, that week’ – went some way towards explaining why Barty had spent his life energetically thumbing his nose at authority figures.
I quite enjoyed the first book, as I say, but the second was uphill work, mostly because it was so depressing. She didn’t mean it to be; the entertaining anecdotes still came thick and fast, but they were shriller, more self-deprecating. She referred to herself more often as ‘out of date’ and as a ‘spinster’. By now she was in her mid-forties and found it difficult to get work teaching History, which was what she wanted. I suppose she’d been out of the game too long. She started out working as housemistress in a very small, ramshackle privately owned boarding school. After a year she was sacked – the Headmaster urged me to offer my resignation – for spoiling the atmosphere at Sports Day by taking up a collection to buy test tubes for the laboratory. I could no longer ignore the disgraceful neglect of basic provision for the scholastic endeavours of the girls in my care.
She went on putting the welfare of the girls first, moving from minor school to minor school. Reading not very far between the lines, it was clear that her high moral and ethical standards and sense of mission often brought her into conflict with her bosses and with parents. Her references, by now, must have characterized her as a troublemaker; she frequently applied for jobs at more established schools but her applications were always rejected. She certainly seemed to have been much readier to rock the boat as she grew older. As a governess she had had her own views on the behaviour of her employers but at the time she had kept them to herself. Not so as a housemistress, and I could quite see why her bosses found her a pain.
She was also, apparently, skint. Naturally she didn’t mention money directly, but her infrequent holidays were always ‘thanks to the kindness of an ex-pupil’. She wouldn’t have had a personal pension; governesses didn’t, and the schools she worked in didn’t sound generous or fair employers. The only comparatively cheerful thing in the last chapters of that gloomy book was that the Sherwins offered her the lodge. Kind friends, discovering that I lacked a place of my own for half-terms and school holidays, came to the rescue and I was soon established, at a peppercorn rent, in a delightful lodge just outside a quiet Warwickshire village, where I hope to finish my days when I grow too old to work. And even this pale shaft of cheer, of course, was to be blacked out by landowner Charlotte.
I finished reading at three and felt so depressed by her miserable life that I made myself a three-decker cheese, ham, pickle and mayonnaise sandwich. She’d really cocked up. At seventy she had no man, no friends, very little money, an entirely unsuccessful career full of ideological battles lost before the first shot was fired and a rented lodge torn from her when she was too old to transplant.
It would be hardly surprising if she disintegrated altogether into fantasy; the fantasy that she knew a secret that would give her power and, perhaps, money. She was beginning to give me the creeps. I hate failure and suffering and I won’t stand by to comfort people as they go down for the third time. I’ve had too much of it.
I went to bed, hoping to sleep, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d thought about Miss Potter, but it was long-ago Rosalind I couldn’t get out of my mind. That surprised me. I held no brief for Rosalind, who was as far as I knew merely one of Barty’s Sloanes with a fifties hairstyle, a nipped-in waist, a circle-stitched bra and high heels. But I knew all about relocation, being thrust into different households with different rules. I had got used to it, acquired survival techniques: it never got any easier, though, and you always trod on toes and got slapped down and pushed away for it and spent nights trying to cry in silence so that no one knew you were upset because the last thing foster-parents could bear was the failure of their kindness. If they thought you weren’t happy, most of them took it out on you. The exceptions were even worse. Some foster-parents enjoyed it.
How had the Sherwins been? Would Laura, as Revill suggested, have delighted in a sobbing niece? Did handsome Rollo’s unimaginably roving eye come to rest on toothsome Rosalind? No, that wasn’t right. I worked on an incest doco once and I can still remember one page of my notes, which just read:
IMPOTENCE = INCEST
Simplistic, but fair enough for a rule of thumb. So, no interference from Rollo, but maybe no interest either. Miss P. ignored her, for whatever high-minded reasons she gave herself. So Rosalind ended up with slimy Patrick. That could only have made her unhappy, and surely, in the fifties and delicately nurtured by moralistic Miss P., guilty.
Eventually I slept, lulled by the familiar sounds of shattering glass and fists on flesh as the local disco let out.
Chapter Nine
I woke up more convinced than ever that Miss Potter was coming unglued at the seams. Yes, she probably did know something: no, she wouldn’t tell me. She wanted me around to talk at. Even if I did produce Toad, she’d find a pretext for continuing to sort through the contents of the knitting-basket she called her head. Meanwhile, I’d have to get on as quickly as I could without her. Resigned to making the best of it, I checked the action board as I ate my breakfast toast.
Retry Rosalind
Retry Met Police
? get pic of Revill? ask Barty. Looks a wreck now,
depends on slant of piece
Pursue Lally
? Paxtons
The butter was rancid. It suited my mood when I was reminded that Lally hadn’t got in touch. More coffee, then I rang her at Christie’s. She’d called in sick but she’d left a message for me: she’d ring me soon. I didn’t have her home number and the receptionist wouldn’t divulge it.
I groaned and tried Rosalind’s number in Crete. No answer.
My next call was more successful. I got through to Ready Eddy Barstow, one of my police contacts, and faced a meet for a drink that evening. He’d help me if he could. He’s a great networker: I haven’t yet found a branch of the police where someone doesn’t owe him one, or two, or three, and all I wanted was for him to cast an eye over the Sherwin files and give me anything H. Plow-right hadn’t got.
Then I popped over to Barty’s. He was on the phone again. I sat on the pile of Sammy boxes and waited. Annabel fetched a coffee.
‘Right, Alex,’ he said finally, replacing the receiver. Annabel had remembered I take three sugars. She was looking very beautiful in the kind of skirt middle-aged women with bad legs call indecent, but Barty didn’t look up when she came in, nor did his eyes follow her to the door. No sign of a foxtrot in the offing. ‘Nice to see you, but why are you here?’
‘Two things. First, I need you to fix an appointment for me with Stephanie Paxton Forsythe.’ I gave him both numbers and reminded him who she was, and watched with a mixture of respect and irritation while he got her on the London number and went into his charm routine. After a few minutes of blag he covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘Now?’ he said. ‘OK to go straight over now?’
‘Great.’ Some more blag, then he rang off.
‘She sounds a good prospect. A natural talker. Off you go.’
‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘I want advice about Miss Potter. I’m worried that she’s not a reliable source. I spent last evening with her. She kept belting back sherry and talking about the Festival of Britain, the new Elizabethan age, the homeless on the South Bank, the betrayal of the aristocracy, the welfare state, and the plight of the unemployed. I’ve neve
r known her type to say anything about the unemployed except that they should get on their bikes and stop spending their dole money on drink. I think she’s cracking up. She’s alone in that big house that isn’t even hers, feeding someone else’s cats, surrounded by someone else’s furniture. She’s upset and she’s rambling and I’m not sure she isn’t keeping me on a string just to have someone to ramble at. You know her better than I do. How likely is she to invent secrets to make herself important?’
‘Very unlikely.’
‘How likely is she to disintegrate?’
‘Very unlikely.’
‘She’s old, homeless and lonely.’
‘Still very unlikely. She’s unimaginably honest, unimaginably tough.’
Perhaps Lemaire’s adjective was contagious, I thought, irritated, then saw I was being unreasonable. I’m often annoyed by people I like when they behave predictably, and Barty had just been too Bartyish. He exaggerates and romanticizes, and his geese are always a flight of wild swans. Still, if you extract the square root of his assessments they’re usually on target. ‘OK. She can have her head for a bit. Can I borrow your car, after I’ve seen Stephanie?’
‘Why?’
‘Miss Potter wants to visit the house where she grew up.’
‘What the hell for?’
‘Maybe because she’s jerking me about. Unimaginably.’
Stephanie’s flat was enormous. Two whole floors of an Eaton Square house. The hall and drawing-room was all I saw. The drawing-room was L-shaped, interior-decorated in shades of peach and cream, with the kind of over-long curtains that follow me about the carpet and trip me up when I don’t look where I’m putting my boots. There were two huge sofas, facing each other squarely as if shaping up for a shoot-out, in front of the most hideously ornate marble mantelpiece I had ever seen. It looked like a Borgia tomb. There were plenty of antique tables and chairs, and everywhere there were photographs in silver frames. Apparently the Forsythes had lots of children, both male and female.
A natural talker, Barty’d said. He wasn’t wrong. Stephanie made Polly look like Eastwood’s Man with No Name. ‘How do you do, Miss Tanner?’ she began. ‘Coffee or tea? Magda’ll make it for us – MAGDA! Coffee, please, and lots of it, I hate London in November, don’t you? The damp soaks into the bone, what a smashing jacket though, let me hang it up, do you have a motorbike? I’ve always wanted a bike.’ She was built for leathers, broad, squat, bony. They’d have suited her much better than the wool skirt and Liberty blouse she was wearing. She had short pepper-and-salt hair and a wide face that looked as if it had endured fifty years of sunbathing, hunting, shooting, and fishing. Out of it, dark currant eyes sparkled with curiosity. ‘Lucky you caught me this morning. I’m just off to Scotland. I know, I know, Scotland in November, but there you are, my daughter’s about to have a baby.’
‘Congratulations,’ I mumbled.
‘Nothing to do with me. Right. I know nothing at all about the murder, I’m afraid, but if it’s background you want, just ask. Oh good, coffee. Have a croissant or three. Is that a tape recorder? Are you going to tape me? Why not. You won’t use my name, though, will you? A source close to the family, something like that?’
I nodded non-committally and started the tape. I was disconcerted by her readiness to co-operate, and confused by the discrepancy between the surroundings and the woman. She wasn’t a peach and cream type. ‘Charming room,’ I said.
‘Thank you. Nothing to do with me. I hate interior decorating, don’t you? So tedious, choosing patterns and colour-schemes. I just tell the chap to get on with it.’ And sign the cheque at the end, I thought. ‘So,’ she went on lighting a cigarette, ‘where shall I start? I don’t know how much you know.’
‘I’ve read Lemaire’s book, and I’ve spoken to some people. You just talk, and I’ll say if you’ve lost me. How well do you remember the summer and autumn of 1958?’
‘Frightfully well. I remember most things frightfully well. It’s probably because I don’t have much brain. Nothing going on inside, d’you see? So I notice things.’ I didn’t believe her about the brain: she had accountant’s eyes, shrewd and assessing.
‘You were a friend of Rosalind’s?’
‘In a way. I was Laura’s effort. You know who I mean by Laura?’ I nodded. ‘Even Laura knew she had to do something for Rosalind apart from lie on the sofa and weep, so I was it. A Young Person for Rosalind.’
‘Was Lady Sherwin ill?’
‘No. Spoilt, idle and vain. Nose put out of joint by Rollo, who was a bit much, I suppose. Affairs all over the place. Very attractive, of course, and rather kind, when he could be bothered. Rosalind said he Understood her. Mind you, we were at the age where one thinks people Understand one if they don’t actually leave the room when one talks. But he was kind to her, I think. Especially latterly, when she was so depressed.’
‘Why was she depressed?’
Stephanie lit another cigarette. ‘This and that,’ she said. ‘Laura was rather a bitch to her. Jealous, of course. Rosalind was lovely, have you seen photographs?’ I nodded. ‘I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘My nickname was Pudding, for obvious reasons.’
‘Was Rosalind’s depression anything to do with her affair with Patrick Revill?’
She took it in her stride. ‘Have you spoken to Rosalind?’
‘Not yet. I will be. I’ve seen Patrick Revill, though.’
‘Ghastly man. I wouldn’t know anything about an affair, you’ll have to talk to Rosalind about that. Actually I think she was depressed by a combination of Laura, the weather and the defection of her governess. Odd woman. After Rosalind’s parents were murdered by Mau Mau, she looked after her, and ran the Kenya house. They were very close. Then, back in England, the governess devoted herself to the children, the four little girls. Would hardly speak to Rosalind. Rosalind took it badly. She was very much Miss – Potter, was it? Miss Potter’s product. Frightfully high-minded. Determined to get her A Levels, go to medical school and be part of the reconstruction of England. I said, why bother, she’d only get married, and she said, she actually said, Noblesse oblige. I thought that was a bit much, frankly, specially since she wasn’t strictly speaking noblesse at all. Her father was a second son, to start with, and it was only a recent barony, bought with money from that disgusting tonic stuff all the Victorians drank. Her great-grandfather’s invention. Imperial Tonic, solid alcohol I expect. They mostly were. Alcohol and iron. The Victorians belted it back by the gallon, it probably blurred their sorrows, and they needed that, poor things. But it was trade, there’s no getting away from it, not noblesse at all.’
The point was evidently close to Stephanie’s heart. I agreed, as fervently as I could manage, that indeed it was trade, wishing as I spoke that I had been born to it. Then I would have a trust fund and top quality beige Wilton throughout my flat.
‘So I told her to abandon high-mindedness and marry a duke. She could have. She was pretty enough. But surely that’s nothing to do with the murder?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘The better the background, the better the piece.’
‘You know your business, I suppose. Have another croissant.’
I did. ‘So she was rather unusual?’
‘Who?’
‘The governess, Miss Potter. She saved Rosalind’s life in Kenya, didn’t she?’
‘Bundled her into a cupboard or something, while her parents were being chopped up. Mind you, that’s what they were used to, governesses, poor things. Keeping themselves quiet in a restricted space.’ Stephanie gave a snort that made me jump, then I realized she was laughing. ‘And dissimulation, of course, and tightrope walking. Ghastly job. Neither one thing nor the other. Living in the rift between Us and Them.’
As one of Them, I was unmoved by this description of the governess’s plight. Don’t tell me it wouldn’t have been a sight harder being a scullery-maid. ‘Did Rosalind miss Kenya? You say she didn’t like the weather in England?’
‘She missed it dr
eadfully. She talked about it all the time. She called it “home”, and she kept telling me about the rainy season and her dog and her friend Fiona. August that year, she and Laura and the little girls came to stay with us at the seaside in Wales, and Rosalind was particularly mizz. There were lots of young people, we’d known each other for years, and she felt left out. I think she’d been a bit of a star at home, popular, no party complete without her, you know the sort of thing. She had the wrong swimsuit.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘You know what it’s like at that age, you have to have exactly the right clothes, what everyone else is wearing. Like a uniform. She had the wrong swimsuit and she complained about the rain and the sand in the sandwiches. She talked about Kenya and the beach parties she’d been to at – is it Malindi? She kept saying all those names, like a nun with the rosary.’
‘Names?’
‘Places in Kenya. Naivasha and Muthaiga and the Aberdares. And she kept trailing off to the telephone—’
Stephanie checked herself too late. ‘To ring Patrick Revill?’ I said.
‘You’ll have to ask Rosalind about that,’ she repeated. ‘She could have been ringing her grandfather, she was fond of him, Laura bitched at her non-stop, I remember. The telephone kiosk was next to the ice-cream stall. Rosalind pretended she was buying ice-cream and Laura kept saying she’d get fat. “Poor Rosalind, you’ll look like Moby Dick,” and so on. Nonsense, of course. Rosalind had a beautiful figure.’
‘Rollo didn’t help?’
Another snort. ‘He wasn’t there. He never came to Wales. As that housekeeper would have said, he had Better Fish to Fry.’
‘The housekeeper?’
‘The Sherwins’ housekeeper. Name like Crimp. Frightful woman, completely out of hand. Gossiped all the time. Laura made no attempt to keep her in order, or her husband, the smug and incompetent Mr Whatsit. Laura was too idle, she was terrified they’d leave, and she’d have to get off the sofa and run the house. Not that she could’ve, mind you. When Rollo finally put his foot down over the hunt ball, she could no more have organized it than fly in the air. Mummy had to do it.’
An Uncommon Murder Page 7
