An Uncommon Murder

by Anabel Donald

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you like your cousin?’

  ‘I really can’t see . . .’

  ‘What that has to do with my researches,’ I finished the sentence for her. ‘Perhaps, Mrs Mayfield, that is why I am a researcher and you are not.’

  She gave me an extremely chilly look. I stared straight back. She was disconcerted, as if she was unused to challenge. Her look changed to one of dislike and contempt. With great self-control, I didn’t mirror it. She looked away first. ‘My cousin was five years older than I was. At that age, five years is a considerable difference. She was another person living in the house, that’s all.’

  ‘And have you seen much of her since?’

  ‘Very little. She married a painter. Quite well known, I believe. They live abroad.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Somewhere in Crete.’

  ‘Could you give me her address?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. We haven’t kept up. I have no idea how you could find her.’

  Her icy manner equipped her to be an excellent liar. Of course she knew Rosalind’s address; or if she didn’t, she certainly knew where I could get it. ‘What a pity,’ I said. ‘What can you remember about the night of the ball?’

  She thinned her lips. ‘Must we?’

  ‘If you would.’

  ‘All the children went to bed after supper, of course. Everything was absolutely normal. That’s all I have to say.’

  ‘When did you last see your father?’

  ‘He was dancing with my cousin Rosalind.’

  ‘How did he look?’

  ‘As he always looked. He was a very handsome man.’

  ‘Did he strike you as upset?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Mrs Mayfield, what were your feelings for your father? And before you answer, could I ask you not to say “absolutely normal”?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I have no idea what that is. Take my father, for instance. He was, according to my mother, a taxi-driver she met in a pub. She never could remember the name of the man or the pub. Before I was thirteen I lived in five foster-families with five sets of children who all had different relationships with their very different fathers. After that, back with my mother, I’ve lived with four different “uncles”. I’ve never lived in a house with servants, never been to a hunt ball, never had a nanny or a governess or a grand piano emasculated by a few kilos of silver frames and a vase of dying chrysanthemums. I’d be grateful for a clue. What do you call a normal family and a normal father?’

  ‘Why do you say the piano is emasculated?’ she said coolly.

  ‘Because you can’t lift the lid, so you’ve turned it from a beautiful musical instrument into a monstrously unwieldy item of furniture.’

  ‘Oh, do you play? I’m afraid it’s rather out of tune. Perhaps another time. To answer your earlier question, I was fond of my father. He was kind to me. I seldom saw him; he wasn’t specially interested in children. Perhaps, of the four of us, he was fondest of Candida. He brought us chocolates when he’d been away. When I was quite small he gave me rides on his shoulders in summer I was the only one of us who wasn’t frightened, riding on his shoulders. He called us “rabbits”, which may or may not have been an affectionate-nickname.’

  ‘You must have been very sad when he died.’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Who did you think had killed him?’

  ‘I had no idea. Mrs Crisp said the police believed my mother had killed him, as you will have gathered from Lemaire’s offensive book. That was quite impossible, of course.’

  ‘Why impossible?’

  ‘It was a passionate crime, or a clumsy one. My mother was neither.’

  ‘Couldn’t she have done it by accident? During a quarrel?’

  ‘That is remotely conceivable, but it did not happen. I was with my mother in the aftermath of the tragedy. I understood her. We were similar, in many ways. I assure you, she did not kill my father.’

  ‘If you had to take a guess at how it happened?’

  ‘I suppose, a drunken quarrel with a mistress. Impossible to establish now.’

  I had to admire her. The ice wasn’t surface; she was frozen clear through, or had pretended to be for so long that it was a distinction without a difference. By comparison, Miss Potter was passionate and human, for all her entrenchment on the moral high ground. ‘Anything else you think I should know, Mrs Mayfield?’

  ‘I would be grateful if Bartholomew could let me see the article before it is printed, but I’ll speak to him about that myself.’ Fat chance, I thought, nodding.

  If Barty ever made a doco, and if Charlotte was still co-operating, we’d want to use the murder room. So I asked to see it before I left, and Charlotte got up. I got up too, and walked over to the piano: it was Toad-time. Charlotte would be dropping her guard, thinking the interview was over.

  Many of the photographs were of familiar faces in dated studio poses. Rollo, Laura, the Sherwin girls. No Rosalind. Adult Charlotte, impressive Ludovic Mayfield in penguin suit. More modem, though still formal shots of a boy and a girl, from early childhood to teens. That must be Toad and the brother Polly had mentioned. He had his parents’ looks: she was dumpy and puddingy, with sad, anxious eyes. Guilt stirred in me. Get on with it, Lally, I thought. ‘Your children?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. Shall we go?’

  I stood my ground. ‘How old are they now?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  That was openly rude, which she hadn’t been till then. ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Just general interest. They look mid-teens.’

  ‘That was some years ago.’

  ‘And what do they do?’

  ‘They’re both going to Oxford.’

  ‘So they’re up at Oxford now?’

  ‘Not exactly. Do you want to see the gun-room. Miss Tanner?’

  ‘Having a year off before they go?’ I persisted. ‘Having fun abroad? Isn’t that what you do, before going up to Oxford? A Gap Year, they call it, don’t they?’

  She stood in the doorway, willing me to follow her, as edgy as she’d been since I arrived. She wasn’t going to give me a proud, maternal update. She looked as if she wanted to put my head in the heavy door and shut it. ‘Something like that,’ she said, and walked away. I followed. She crossed the hall at a good pace and seemed to relax when we reached a corridor at the other side. I looked back at the hall but could see nothing remarkable, nothing that she’d want to hide.

  She was proud of the house. As we went, she talked about plans for redecoration, about improvements she had made. I nodded and smiled. It just seemed to me cold, pretentious and impossibly big. As with most privately owned big houses I had seen, it had many corners of dirt and shabbiness, things that couldn’t be overlooked in a small suburban house or my little Lon4on flat but were accepted in the grander environment of the country house. Grubby curtains, pockets of dust, carpets worn as thin as tablecloths and loose floorboards. Above all, it was cold. The central heating wasn’t on; the log fire in the drawing-room was the only source of heat I’d seen. Odd. Even if she was about to leave for London, the house must be kept reasonably warm some of the time, surely, otherwise damp would spoil the furniture. She was proud of the furniture, too.

  Then I stopped thinking about that; we’d reached the gun-room. It was a surprise because it hadn’t changed. It looked, thirty years on, exactly the same as it had in H. Plowright’s blurred photographs of the murder scene. It was about twelve feet square; two of the walls were covered with glass-fronted cupboards, one still containing guns; the other walls displayed decaying trophy heads, stuffed and mounted fish, photographs. An ancient, cracked leather sofa and two assorted armchairs took up the floor-space that wasn’t occupied by baskets and piles of sporting equipment. I didn’t bother with an inventory but a glance took in tennis and badminton rackets, cricket bats, croquet mallets and hoops.

  I knew from photographs and plans that Rollo’s body h
ad fallen on to the sofa and that the sofa had caught most of the remains of his head. I tried to feel myself into the atmosphere of the room; I sat on the sofa while Charlotte stood aloofly by the door, shut my eyes and tried to go back, but it was useless. The room was just a room, smelling of damp and leather, wellington boots and gun oil.

  Chapter Sixteen

  On the train back to London I burnt my tongue on British Rail coffee while I rearranged my thoughts about Miss Potter. She was, of course, still homeless, impoverished and seventy; but not lonely. Not according to Kate, who did turn out to be her ex-cleaning woman. She gave me a lift to the station. Kate’s Miss Potter was an important figure in the village, columnist in the local paper, chairwoman of the Women’s Institute, member of the Parish Council, centre of a social vortex of bridge parties, coffee mornings and teas with the vicar. ‘She’s very popular hereabouts. There was a lot of ill-feeling when Mrs Mayfield put her out of the cottage, and talk of a petition. The ladies who clean at the hall were all for giving in their notice, but Miss Potter wouldn’t have it. She said she’d look after herself and I’ll be bound she will. I’m just taking care of Joss till she comes back. Plenty of people hereabouts would’ve taken him, but we understand each other. He’s getting on and needs a bit of fussing and minced chicken.’

  I sat on an orange plastic seat in the grubby buffet car on the train, nodded occasionally at the Irish drunk opposite who was telling me the story of his life, watched the sodden countryside swish greyly past, and tried to work out the motives for Miss Potter’s behaviour. If she had plenty of resources, if she didn’t need to fabricate information about the Sherwin murder to keep my attention or my company, she had been deliberately misleading me.

  Why? I boiled it down to two possibilities; one, she actually had information which she felt to be so significant, or so damaging to someone she cared about, that she was genuinely hesitant about revealing it; two, she had no information at all but was stringing me along until I sorted out the Toad question.

  Of course, I hoped it was the first, but I feared it was the second, partly because I believed she had reason to worry about Toad. Charlotte had certainly been evasive about her – about both her children, come to that.

  In either case, I felt decidedly better about Miss P. If she was playing with a full deck, then I’d enjoy the game. She’d manipulated me for the last time. Next time we met, I’d go in with my boots on.

  That decided, I fetched another coffee, logged the expense and readjusted the drunk, who had passed out with his face in my notebook. Where had I got with Charlotte? She hadn’t minded talking about the Sherwin murder. She didn’t think her mother had murdered her father – I believed her about that – but, more significantly, she didn’t appear to mind one way or another Like Rosalind, she wasn’t jumpy about it. Was that odd? It had been a long time ago, granted. She’d had plenty of time to get used to it. At the same time, surely a little curiosity would have been in order. Unless she already thought she knew the identity of the murderer, or unless she was really as cold as she appeared.

  She was, however, jumpy about Toad. Or her son; she wouldn’t talk about him either. She also hadn’t wanted me in the house to start with, and in the hall particularly. I could make no sense of that anxiety but I didn’t like it.

  When I was standing at the bus stop at Euston I realized my neck muscles were knotted. I was nervous about the dinner with Barty. I tried deep relaxation breathing; consequently I stood like a nerd while people trampled each other to squeeze themselves on the bus. I missed two. The third smelt of warm wet clothes. I hadn’t listened to the early morning news on the radio – I usually did – so I tried to make up for it by reading newspapers over people’s shoulders. Iraq was simmering along: Tony Benn, a peace-rallying Labour politician, had been advised not to pay a visit to Saddam Hussein. I could see why. First because Benn was such small potatoes it was inappropriate for him to muscle in, secondly because his mad staring eyes would alienate a listener immediately. Except, come to think of it, Hussein also had mad staring eyes. Heseltine was stepping up his anti-Thatcher campaign, but there was no mention of Mayfield as a possible successor.

  Back at my flat about five, I turned on the answering machine and listened to Annabel’s message while I wrestled off my sodden boots.

  Hello, Alex. I’ve got Lally’s home number but she’s been out all day. Her flatmate says she’s rushing round seeing people. Something to do with Toad, she says, so I’m sure Lally will be back to you soon. She ended by giving me the number. I dialled it, on the off-chance. No answer. Not even a flatmate. At five on Friday, probably the flatmates had gone to the country. They were welcome to it.

  I made myself a cup of coffee but I couldn’t settle. I didn’t want to see Miss Potter until I had plenty of time to spend on her, so I put on a dry pair of boots, went out and grabbed a taxi. Patrick Revill would do to fill in the time.

  He still kept powdered coffee in a Gold Blend jar and his combined need for a further fee and an audience easily outweighed his distrust. ‘I’m rather glad you’ve come back,’ he said. ‘Always a treat to see a fan.’ I’d forgotten I was a fan. ‘Plus I’ve been thinking about that time. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Several things. We could start with the details of your affair with Rosalind.’

  ‘No gentleman gives details of that kind of thing,’ he said, pleased with himself.

  He was gloating again. Whatever a gentleman is, if anybody still cares, Patrick Revill didn’t measure up. Poor Rosalind. When I was seventeen I’d just started at the Beeb and I was going out with Eddy’s son Peter I’d thought I was really in love, partly with Peter and partly with his leather jacket and Harley Electraglide. We had some good laughs and I learnt a bit about boys, sex and motorbikes. He was always nice to my mum. He fixed the mixer taps in the kitchen which hadn’t worked right for years. I went on liking him even after he ditched me for a blonde graduate trainee who fancied a bit of rough. I still see him off and on; he’s a freelance cameraman now, doing well.

  I suppressed my dislike and smiled encouragingly. Patrick would talk if I let him. He was lonely and he was vain.

  ‘She ran after me. She arranged for me to rent the lodge, she threw herself at me. I – had reservations, of course, strong reservations.’ You were scared shitless, I paraphrased. ‘But what can a man do? She was young and beautiful. I was flattered. I felt sorry for her. She was very unhappy, and very – highly sexed. Her stepmother didn’t like her, the governess wouldn’t talk to her, the Sherwins’ marriage was very rocky. There was a bad atmosphere in the house.’

  ‘You got the impression the marriage was actually breaking up?’

  ‘Oh yes. In early November, Rosalind told me her uncle definitely wanted a divorce. She overheard them fighting. Her room was above Lady Sherwin’s, at the back of the house overlooking the terrace gardens.’ I wondered why he remembered that so well. From what Rosalind had said? Or from personal experience? The night of the ball, or before? I tucked the thought behind my ear. He was still talking. ‘She guessed it from things her uncle let drop, as well. She liked her uncle. They went riding together.’

  ‘Surely somebody must have known about your relationship with Rosalind? What about Mrs Crisp?’

  ‘I think we got away with it, though I had a few bad moments after the murder, I can tell you. She was usually very discreet and we didn’t meet all that often. I tried to soft-pedal the whole thing.’

  ‘When wasn’t she discreet?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You said usually, she was usually discreet.’

  ‘Slip of the tongue.’ He tried to catch my eye with a roguish twinkle. I did my best to twinkle back.

  ‘I got the idea you’d been in Ashtons Hall before the night of the hunt ball,’ I said, at random.

  ‘You did, eh?’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘Now where can you have got that idea from?’

  ‘It could have been from something Rosalind said.’r />
  ‘You’ve spoken to Rosalind?’

  ‘This morning. She was most communicative.’

  ‘It was very – difficult. She was a very young girl, with a young girl’s ideas.’ And a young girl’s body, I thought, which you didn’t complain about when her legs were wrapped around your vain old ears.

  ‘She was reticent about that particular episode,’ I went on. She’d had to have been since I knew sod-all about it. ‘But she told me one or two – rather unusual things.’

  He looked even more uncomfortable. ‘It was a flight of fancy. On her part. I made sure there was no one in the house, of course.’

  ‘That must have been difficult.’

  ‘They were all at church.’

  ‘Even the Crisps?’

  ‘Sunday was the Crisps’ day off, that week. They’d gone over to relations at Oxford, leaving a cold collation for the family lunch.’

  I peered at my notes, pretending not to be able to read my writing. ‘When was this? It says here, October, I think.’

  ‘No, no, no. Later. November. Not long before the ball. I only did it for Rosalind. She was stage-struck, you know, she wanted to – er, visit me, in my dressing-room. I couldn’t have that, of course, there was her reputation to think of. She was a determined little thing, though, and a bit unpredictable, by then. You know what young girls are like, you can’t trust them to be sensible. She wanted – a bit of fun, something different.’

  What could that have been? I raked through my memories of Peter, trying to imagine myself seventeen again. The sex itself had been enough, I remembered, any time, any place, anywhere. It was great on the back of his bike, though I’d got bruised to pieces once when the Harley fell over. ‘It’s like that, when you’re seventeen,’ I plugged on. ‘Taking a bit of a risk, playing games really, odd places, odd circumstances.’

  ‘I felt very uncomfortable. Abusing Lord Sherwin’s hospitality.’

  ‘Where were you exactly?’ I pretended to peer at my notes again.

  ‘I made sure to put her towel over the sheet, and the kilt was entirely undamaged,’ he said urgently.‘I’ve always been very careful with costumes. I replaced it in his dressing-room wardrobe, punctiliously, and remade the bed.’