An Uncommon Murder

by Anabel Donald

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘But you didn’t sleep.’

  ‘Not a great deal. I – I’m not sure I’m – able to help you, at present. I think I shall go to bed.’

  Whether her illness was psychosomatic or not, I couldn’t tell, but it was real. ‘Do you have a pain anywhere?’

  ‘No. I am merely feeling unwell.’

  I supposed she meant she felt nauseated. ‘Will you be all right by yourself? Should I get a doctor?’ I’d just as soon leave her alone to stew for a bit: it would short-circuit her attention-seeking game. She was just at the stage where a sudden withdrawal of attention on my part would irritate her into forcing her revelations on me when I reappeared, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell her. I’d spoken to Rosalind until she was well enough to concentrate. Her colour was worrying, though.

  ‘I would prefer to be alone. Thank you for your consideration.’

  ‘In that case I’ll get on.’

  ‘You are pursuing Toad?’

  ‘Yes, I’m hoping to talk to Lally Lambert at twelve,’ I half-lied.

  ‘And where are you going now?’

  ‘To see my policeman,’ I wholly lied. I was actually heading straight back to Barty’s.

  He’d left for court. Annabel handed me a note.

  Charlotte not keen, but will see you. She’s in the country for today, back here tomorrow. ? wrong way round. Ring her. Pick you up at 8. Barty

  ‘So he’s finally got up the nerve to ask you out,’ said Annabel.

  She was smiling, I didn’t know why. It didn’t seem gloating or smug, but how can you tell?

  I mumbled. ‘Yeah. Can you get on Lally’s case for me?’ I gave her the info. She smiled even more brightly at the prospect of something to do. She was underemployed. ‘What does Barty mean. ? wrong way round?’ I went on.

  ‘It’s Saturday tomorrow. Odd that Charlotte May-field comes up to London for the weekend. Why doesn’t her husband join her in the country for the weekend instead?’

  ‘Maybe he needs to be in London for his leadership manoeuvres.’

  ‘No one else is. Most people go to the country at weekends.’

  Our social spheres were widely different, Annabel’s and mine. Then I rang Charlotte Mayfield in Warwickshire and persuaded her to see me as soon as I could get there. She’d have preferred London, but I didn’t want to wait, plus I’d have to see Ashtons Hall some time for atmosphere and if our interview didn’t go well I might not get another chance.

  She tried to block me until I said,‘Is there any particular problem in me coming to Ashtons Hall?’ Then she backtracked.

  ‘Not at all. Just that the house is closed, at present. ‘We have builders in—’

  ‘I don’t mind at all.’

  Something was spooking her. Good. Instead of slapping me down, pointing out (as I was sure was the case) that my convenience was the least of her considerations, she gave way. I looked forward to pinning down the source of her discomfort.

  If Barty’d been there I’d have borrowed his BMW but I wasn’t (perversely) going to accept, Annabel’s offered Golf GTi. I hung on for fifteen minutes on the off-chance she managed to locate Lally quickly; no luck. I left her to it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On the train to Stratford, I sorted out my questions. Background and hunt ball, of course, then Miss Potter, Laura and the lodge. Whenever I could, slip in Toad. There were bound to be family pictures dotted about; courteous inquiries would be in order. She had something to hide, I knew it, otherwise she wouldn’t have let me bully her about the venue for our meeting.

  I felt good, every mile that choked past taking me further away from Miss Potter’s irritating combination of pathos and self-righteousness and raising my spirits a notch. I was getting on with something sensible, a task with a beginning, a middle and an end.

  I bought an individual pork pie and a not at all Cornish pasty and gnawed my way systematically through them, washing them down with gulps of diet Coke. I’d get to Ashtons Hall about lunchtime. If I was offered free food I’d eat it but I’d got the impression from Charlotte that I’d be lucky to be offered a drink of water.

  When I’d asked for directions to Ashtons Hall Charlotte had said, ‘Just give my name to the driver. Everyone knows it.’ The taxi-driver didn’t, of course. He was a Geordie come south to work in the building trade who had lingered in Stratford because, he said, most of the taxi-users there were over-tipping Americans or Japanese. His was the only taxi at the station. He really wanted to take me to Anne Hathaway’s cottage, or, failing that, Shakespeare’s birthplace. By the time I’d established the full extent of his ignorance the station was empty of passengers and the one station attendant had gone to lunch.

  I called Charlotte Mayfield and got detailed directions interspersed with impatient exclamations. ‘This is ridiculous! Unheard of! Where did you say this man comes from?’

  The countryside looked very unappealing in the steady rain. Ashtons Hall’s village had ancient cottages with tiny windows and climbing things (shrubs? plants?) all over them, clustered round a small patch of green with a pond in the middle, to one side was a rickety wooden village hall, a shop-cum-post office, and a pub, called rather unfortunately Lord Sherwin’s Head. The inn sign, however, showed an intact cranium, so I supposed the pub had been named before the murder. The other side of the green was a church, certainly too large for its present congregation. I’d have bet that Miss Potter was a stalwart attender though, and probably headed the flower rota.

  The village could have been used without too much trouble to film Second World War period scenes; even the aerials were discreetly positioned. If I’d been given a lodge near there I’d have sold it immediately and buggered off to London but I could see it as Miss Potter’s spiritual home. Half a mile away were the hall’s gates and the lodge itself, small, grey stone, narrow-windowed. It looked cramped, damp and outdated. Also unoccupied.

  The drive up to Ashtons Hall could also have been used without much trouble, this time as the opening of a sixties horror film. As far as a possible doco was concerned, visually so far so good. The drive was lined with huge, ponderous trees (oaks?) which cut out most of the already dim light, and it went on and on. Perhaps status in drives was measured by the mile. It was also full of potholes; not enough money was being spent on it. That made me feel even more cheerful. When the taxi’s engine died by the front door the only sound was water overflowing from a gutter, the ominous creaking of trees and the frustrated howling of a distant dog.

  It was a very big house: not in the Blenheim palace class, but a long way up from Miss Potter’s Simla. Window upon window faced me: three rows up, eight rows along. The right-hand end of the house was girdled with scaffolding. It looked grimmer, bleaker, than in the photographs on the pin-board in my kitchen.

  I paid the Geordie, entered the fare and tip in my expenses book, and looked for a doorbell. There wasn’t one. I looked for a knocker. There wasn’t one; I pushed one of the double doors; it wasn’t locked. I stepped into a porch. Beyond it were glass doors. These weren’t locked either. Beyond them was a freezing hall, mostly wooden-floored. A normal-sized carpet, worn thin and beige, was reduced to hearthrug proportions by the scale of the room. Log baskets flanked the massive, empty fireplace; a circular table, about five feet in diameter, notably failed to fill the echoing bareness.

  ‘Hello?’ I called. ‘Hello?’ The dog’s whining was getting closer, then a door opened and an elderly golden cocker spaniel waddled into the hall followed by a middle-aged woman in a baggy skirt and sweater. ‘Mrs Mayfield?’

  ‘What name is it?’

  ‘Alex Tanner, Ms.’

  She crossed to another door, opened it. ‘Miss Alex Tanner to see you,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, so you found us?’ This time it was Charlotte Mayfield, unmistakably. She looked just like a fair version of her mother back in the fifties, dressed in the current uniform of her class; good navy skirt, frill-necked striped shirt
, sweater, navy tights, navy low-heeled shoes. Her shoulder-length hair was held off her face with a velvet Alice band. She looked younger than her age – early forties – but she also looked mummified. Her skin was deeply tanned and her light blue eyes empty of all expression. ‘Come in.’ She beckoned me towards her and led me into a very large, conventional drawing-room. It had a wood fire burning in a marble fireplace and was marginally warmer than the hall. ‘Extraordinary thing about the taxi-driver,’ she went on. ‘I expect you had lunch on the train. Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Could you bring us some coffee, Kate? Do sit down. Miss Tanner. No, not there – you won’t be comfortable too near the fire.’

  I hate being bullied; I wanted to sit in that chair. ‘This’ll be fine,’ I said blandly, settling back into it and propping my damp boots on the fender.

  ‘You’ll find yourself unpleasantly near the fire,’ she said, perching on a chintz-covered, sagging armchair opposite me. Her shallow eyes skipped like stones over my boots up my legs to my face. ‘It was lucky you caught me,’ she said. ‘I’m just about to leave for London, to join my husband.’

  ‘So you said on the phone.’

  ‘My husband is very busy at the moment. He’s a Cabinet minister, you know.’

  ‘Poor chap,’ I said with synthetic sympathy.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ She was startled. She couldn’t believe I meant it.

  ‘I expect you are.’ I pretended to take her literally. ‘Never mind, he’ll probably be out at the next election. There’s bound to be a swing to Labour.’

  She cleared her throat with a dismissive, dry cough. ‘Yours must be interesting work,’ she said perfunctorily. ‘A researcher, you say? Working for Bartholomew O’Neill?’

  ‘I’m a freelance. I work for Barty at the moment.’

  ‘Charming family. We’ve had his nephews to stay. They’re at school with my son. Do you know his older brother at all?’

  ‘No,’ I said, unbeguiled. Was it likely I’d know an earl? Would I want to? ‘I rather got the impression Barty was a thorn in the family flesh. With all his exposes of the upper classes.’

  ‘I suppose someone will do them, and we’re safer with him.’

  ‘I do hope not,’ I said. It wasn’t worth being polite. She’d already decided what she wanted to tell me, and I might irritate her into indiscretion. I could certainly never charm her.

  ‘The wretched murder,’ she said without any visible emotion. ‘I can’t imagine why people won’t let it go. What business is it of theirs? But as it’s Bartholomew O’Neill . . . Why did he decide to do this now? Do you know?’

  ‘I believe he has new information.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘More invention, I expect. What is this information?’

  ‘I only work for him. He doesn’t tell me everything,’ I replied. It was what she expected; she accepted it.

  ‘I’ll give him a ring,’ she said. ‘But for the moment, how can I help you? Ah – thank you, Kate. Just leave the tray here.’ Behind Kate, the spaniel hovered, expectant. It was evidently rather blind but it sniffed, eagerly, in my direction. ‘If you must bring that wretched dog here at least keep it in the kitchen, please, Kate,’ said Charlotte sharply. ‘Have you been lumbered with it permanently?’

  I’d assumed the dog belonged to the house. Charlotte’s hostility immediately endeared it to me, and I stretched out my hand. ‘Here, good dog.’ It waggled towards me, tail and rear twitching together in ecstatic greeting, then licked my hand and arm. Kate grasped it firmly by the collar and hauled it away. ‘Joss stays with me until Miss Potter can make other arrangements,’ she said, and left, stooping to drag the spaniel with her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was my Miss Potter’s dog. She hadn’t mentioned it. I could feel ideas rearranging themselves in my head and clicking in like tumblers in a lock. I had underestimated Miss Potter, or badly misunderstood her, or both. I had assumed that she was a typical, slightly garrulous, slightly pathetic, very lonely old woman, who told the chance-caught listener everything there was to know about herself that didn’t relate to the Sherwin murder. The Miss Potter I thought I knew was close to breakdown, too distraught to make decisions and much too distraught to be anything but fully communicative about herself and her feelings. That Miss Potter would certainly have told me all about her dog, how heart-breaking it was to be parted from him, how loyal and loving he was, how kind the friend or ex-cleaning woman who was looking after him now.

  But now wasn’t the time to think about Miss Potter. Charlotte was pouring coffee from a delicate, probably Georgian silver pot which Kate had brought on a silver tray, perhaps the fray from the dialysis raffle. ‘Do you take milk and sugar?’

  ‘Please. Three sugars.’

  ‘Are you sure? It’s a very small cup.’

  I hate petty interference. ‘Better make it four,’ I said, smiling.

  She didn’t smile and she gave me heaped spoonfuls with exaggerated flourishes of the wrist. ‘How exactly can I help you, Miss Tacker?’

  ‘Background material, really, Mrs Meyerfeld.’ (I could play the ‘Who on earth are you’ game, too.)

  ‘Mrs Mayfield,’ she corrected me, and lost the rally, I thought.

  ‘Mrs Mayfield, of course. How much do you remember about that time?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘For example, what was the atmosphere like in the house that summer?’

  ‘What summer?’

  ‘Before your father died.’

  ‘My father died in November. Thirty-two years ago today.’

  Anniversary. I paused, to feel the ghost. No ghost; plenty of draughts. Silver-framed photographs on the grand piano. From where I sat, gently roasting by the fire, I could see Rollo twelve inches by eight, absurdly but attractively dressed in full Highland kit. He was looking the camera in the eye, which became my eyes. He didn’t seem interested in me. He wouldn’t have been.

  I checked my notes. ‘It’s background I’m after, from before the murder. Starting – say – in June.’

  ‘Why June?’

  ‘That was what Barty told me to do,’ I said, draining my cup.

  ‘Ah.’ She understood, and respected, ‘just following orders.’ ‘The atmosphere in the house. Perfectly normal.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘What was what?’

  ‘The normal atmosphere. Who was living here, for instance?’

  ‘My mother and father, of course. Myself and my three sisters. My grandfather. My cousin Rosalind, from Kenya.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘I don’t think so. My mother didn’t entertain much. She wasn’t well.’

  ‘What was wrong with her?’

  ‘She was delicate. Some more coffee?’

  ‘Please. Was there no one else living in the house?’

  ‘You mean the servants? There was a governess, a butler and his wife, the housekeeper/cook.’

  ‘And the atmosphere? Was it happy?’

  ‘Perfectly happy.’

  ‘Were you a close family?’

  ‘Not particularly. We didn’t have to be. It’s quite a big house. We didn’t live on top of each other.’

  She appeared unmoved; I didn’t think she was concealing anything deliberately. I decided to needle her and see. ‘Would you agree that your mother was having an affair with the doctor?’

  ‘I don’t think so. She married him later, of course, and he was a comfort to her in her illness. But an affair is very unlikely. She hardly ever went out.’

  ‘But he visited here.’

  ‘Very public visits. Mrs Crisp would have known.’

  ‘Mrs Crisp being the housekeeper?’

  ‘Yes. She was a terrific gossip. If she’d known, I’d have heard.’

  She was still unmoved. ‘So presumably you knew all about your father’s affairs,’ I pressed on.

  ‘In broa
d outline, yes. From Mrs Crisp. I’m afraid the ,coffee may be a little cold. Shall I order some more?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ She pressed the bell anyway, and I thought of the poor woman who had to come all the way, surely a considerable distance, from the kitchen to fetch more coffee I wasn’t going to give Charlotte the satisfaction of seeing me drink. ‘And it didn’t upset you?’ I plugged on.

  ‘It wasn’t my business.’

  ‘Some children might find a father’s affairs very upsetting, whether it was any of their business or not.’

  ‘That’s possible,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t that sort of child.’

  ‘What sort of child were you?’

  She showed the first sign of emotion since my arrival, and it was, predictably, impatience. ‘I really can’t see what that has to do with your researches.’

  ‘Just trying to get the picture,’ I said. ‘I suppose your governess was very important to you?’

  ‘Why should you suppose that?’

  ‘If your mother was ill and your father was otherwise engaged, you must have been lonely.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite in those terms. She was one of many governesses we had. Rather old-fashioned. More competent than most.’

  ‘Is that why you rented her the lodge?’

  ‘That was much later, and that was my mother’s doing. She was inclined to be over-generous to dependants.’

  ‘How many other cottages did she rent to ex-governesses?’

  Charlotte glared at me. I smiled back, feeling better now I’d needled her. ‘And you repossessed the lodge, shortly after your mother’s death?’

  ‘Naturally. It is a valuable property.’

  ‘What about the governess?’

  ‘She must make her own arrangements.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll find it easy?’

  She arched her eyebrows. ‘I really have no idea.’

  Silence. Nothing more for me to say, here and now. I shifted ground. ‘Tell me about your cousin. How did she fit into the household?’

  ‘Perfectly normally.’

  ‘The governess came from Kenya with her, didn’t she?’