An Uncommon Murder

by Anabel Donald

  Something serious had happened to Toad, and I wanted to ignore it, because I was jealous of her I was always jealous of people of her background, particularly of delicately nurtured young girls. I told myself I despised them, cosseted, arrogant and naive as they were, but it wasn’t true. I appeased my guilt by telling myself there was nothing I could have done, anyway, till I heard from Lally. In a sense, that was true. But I knew what I hadn’t thought and what I hadn’t done. I should, of course, have questioned Miss Potter much more closely about Toad, what she was like, how her relationship with her parents worked, whether she was the kind of girl who would just drop out of sight for a bit. I hadn’t even asked for a photograph, which for me is always an important part of involving myself in a project. I had been much more interested in Barty’s article and securing my money.

  ‘So can we come and see you, now? What’s your address?’ Lally concluded. I gave her directions. She couldn’t have been coming far; by the time I’d washed and dressed, the doorbell rang and I let them in.

  I’d wondered about the other constituents of Lally’s ‘we’. It turned out to be one other person, in Lally’s terms probably an Older Man in his early twenties. ‘This is Toby,’ said Lally. He was about six foot, thin, with a narrow intelligent face and brown hair in a currently fashionable cut, very close at the sides, longish on the top and gelled forward in locks over his forehead. He shook my hand courteously, apologized for the intrusion and accepted coffee and a seat on the sofa, talking all the time. ‘Good place you have here. I’d like somewhere like this. OK, to business. I was rather worried, when Lally told me you were asking about Toad. She says any information we give you will be confidential. Is that right?’

  ‘Within reason. I’ll pass any information on to Miss Potter, and she’s only concerned with Toad’s safety. Otherwise, I’m not interested in scandal or whatever I’m not a journalist, you know.’

  He didn’t entirely believe me, I could see, but he decided to go on anyway. He knew he effectively had no choice, otherwise they wouldn’t have come, and he wasn’t a time-waster I began to like him. ‘So. Several of Toad’s friends planned a Gap Year visit to India, Nepal and Tibet if possible, and China. At first Toad wanted to go with them and her parents were happy with that. Then her illness got worse.’

  ‘Her illness?’

  ‘Anorexia,’ said Toby.

  ‘You know,’ Lally jumped in, ‘where you starve yourself and think you’re fat when you’re not. It’s very dangerous. Two other girls at school had it and they had to go to hospital and they weren’t allowed to wash or brush their hair until they ate something which seemed cruel to me but even so they’re not better yet—’

  ‘I’m sure Alex knows about anorexia, Lally. Hush now,’ said Toby, hugging her. ‘Let me explain.’ His mode was stern but kind; nobody his age could be as impressive as he thought he was, but he’d liked my flat and he kept to the point. A good man, I thought. ‘Lally and I have been together a year now—’ he blushed and dropped years off his apparent age – ‘and because Toad and Lally were such good friends, I heard all about it.’

  ‘It was terrible. Up to the end of the fifth year, Toad was such good fun. She was a bit overweight but she had a lovely face and she always looked good, but her mother nagged her about it and laughed at her. That was why she was called Toad, because her mother’d always said she was broader than she was tall. Then when we started our. A Levels she went on a diet and at first it was fine, because she looked great and I encouraged her, and I feel awful about that because it was the absolutely wrong thing to do, but I didn’t think of anorexia, because we were practically all on diets, except not me because I’m so lucky, I can eat and eat and I’m always like this. Toad said she was jealous of me and it wasn’t fair and I thought she was joking, but I think she meant it. Then, this is the worst bit, I went off her because she went on and on about food and her mother and having to do as well in her. A Levels as Charles—’

  ‘He’s her brother,’ said Toby. ‘He’s a year older and the family favourite.’

  ‘What’s he like?’I asked.

  Toby reflected. ‘Bit of a dickhead,’ he said finally.

  ‘Toby! He’s gorgeous-looking and he comes top in exams without doing any work and he passed his driving test high on coke!’ protested Lally.

  ‘That’s my point,’ said Toby patiently, and! nodded, with genuine appreciation. ‘Go on, Lally,’ he prompted. ‘Toad went on and on about food . . .’

  ‘So I went off her rather though we were still good friends, of course, in fact I was still her best friend because the other girls had gone off her too. She kept losing weight in the second year sixth and I tried to stop her and she said she was eating but actually I think now she must have been throwing up what she ate, because last May, just before A Levels, it was really bad. She wouldn’t come swimming and she wore long skirts and big long sweaters even though it was hot. One day I walked into her room when she was changing and I saw how thin she was, and I was really shocked, and I tried to make her weigh herself with no clothes on in front of me but she wouldn’t. So I had to tell our housemistress. Toby made me, actually.’

  ‘So the housemistress brought in the school doctor who brought in the headmistress who brought in the parents, and Toad took her. A Levels in the San.’

  ‘Sick bay. We call it sick bay.’

  ‘Sure,’ said. Toby soothingly. ‘It wasn’t your fault. Don’t blame yourself, Lai.’

  ‘OK,’ said Lally miserably, and laid her clicking braids on his shoulder.

  ‘Then the end of term came,’ he went on. ‘She’d managed to sit her exams—’

  ‘She got two As and a B,’ said Lally proudly.

  ‘And she’d even put on a bit of weight, because Matron had made her eat. Her mother came to take her home and look after her Lally was worried by that because Toad doesn’t get on well with her mother.’

  ‘It’s not right just to say she doesn’t get on with her mother. She HATES her mother, absolutely LOATHES and DETESTS her. Her mother’s barking.’

  ‘Barking?’ I knew the word, but I thought of it as Barty’s own. I didn’t want to remember Barty; his intrusion disconcerted me.

  ‘Howling, woof-woof mad. Deranged. Off the wall, off her trolley.’

  ‘Do you know that yourself, or is that what Toad told you?’

  Lally hesitated. ‘I don’t know Mrs Mayfield well. I stayed at the house a lot when I was younger but we mostly saw au pairs and cleaners. She’s very prejudiced, I think. She didn’t like me being black.’

  ‘Do you know that, or is it what Toad told you?’ I persisted.

  ‘I suppose . . .’ began Lally reluctantly.

  ‘When she talked about how mad her mother was, what kind of examples did she give you? What stories did she tell?’

  Lally shrugged. ‘They’d sound like nothing to you. It was partly Charles, her brother. Mrs Mayfield dotes on him. She’d ignore Toad completely and she was all over Charles, and when she did say anything to Toad it was always critical, how she must do better in her exams, how she should have boyfriends, how she should be thinner or prettier. That kind of thing. Toad didn’t like to talk about it.’

  She was right, it didn’t sound much; just a run-of-the-mill, unsuccessful mother-child relationship. ‘I got the impression the family picked on Toad,’ said Toby. ‘It’s all third-hand, of course. Anyway, Lally rang her at home at the beginning of the holidays, but she was never allowed to speak to her. Someone always said Toad wasn’t there, but they never said where she was.’

  ‘I tried London, they have a flat in London, but they said she wasn’t there either. So eventually I thought, maybe she was in hospital but they didn’t want anyone to know. Then I went away to Thailand for six weeks, and when I came back I rang Toad in the country again, and Mrs Mayfield said she’d gone with the others to India. I didn’t understand how she could have got that much better so quickly, because anorexics don’t, but I suppose I wanted to
believe it. Then I got the postcard.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘I lied about that, I’m afraid,’ said Lally uncomfortably. ‘Because I thought you were interfering, and it was none of your business. I said I got one last week, and I didn’t.They both came in September, from India.’

  ‘And were they from Toad?’

  ‘Definitely. I know her writing. Here, I brought them.’ She thrust them at me.

  Hi! India is fantastic and tragic at the same time. The poverty is terrible but the people are brilliant, so kind and gentle. Lotsalove, Toad

  Hi again. Wish you were here to see all the beauty, but there’s so much hunger, lean hardly bear it. We’re trying to get visas for Nepal, spend all day queuing. Lotsalove & hugs ’n things, Toad

  ‘Um,’ I said. ‘Her mental state doesn’t sound great.’

  ‘Looking back it doesn’t, but everybody says that about the poverty in India, don’t they? And she was with some good people, I knew they’d look after her,’ said Lally, ‘I knew they would.’

  ‘And did they?’

  ‘That’s the point,’ said Toby. ‘When Lally told me you’d seen her, I was worried, as I said, so she rang round, to get feedback from the trip.’

  ‘From the parents and friends of the other people,’ said Lally, ‘to see if they mentioned Toad.’

  ‘And they had,’ said Toby. ‘According to the others, Toad flew back to England from Delhi. In early October. They made her go because she was ill. Not too ill to travel, but too ill to go to Nepal.’

  ‘And so I rang Mrs Mayfield last night,’ said Lally. ‘She hadn’t heard anything about Toad coming back. She thought she was still in Nepal or China or somewhere.’

  There was a silence. Lally waited to be reassured. Toby waited to have his suspicions confirmed.

  ‘Oh,’ I said flatly.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Toby. ‘We kept trying to get hold of Charles. He’s in Australia, I think Lally mentioned it. I thought he could do more than we could – or, forgive me, than you could – to get some sense out of Mrs Mayfield, make her go to the police or whatever. But we haven’t managed to get him.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ I said, pulling myself together. A combination of guilt about my earlier indifference to Toad and my trust in Toby’s judgement were tugging me to share his apprehension, which was irrational, on the face of it. Now I knew Toad had anorexia, the obvious solution was that Charlotte, who would probably feel that an anorexic daughter wouldn’t help her husband’s career or her own reputation, had simply tucked the girl away in a private hospital under the Supervision of a private doctor. ‘I’ll need the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the people you’ve spoken to who’ve heard from the other members of the party. The ones who have evidence that Toad came back,’ I said.

  ‘Here’s a list I prepared earlier,’ said Toby in an attempt at parody, but his heart wasn’t in it. ‘I put our last contact number for Charles on it, and my work and home numbers, in case I can help,’ he added, and they left.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Sod it,’ I said to the empty flat. ‘Sod it, sod it.’ I had to give Miss Potter the information they’d just given me. It would then take time to find the girl, if her mother was determined to hide her: meanwhile Miss Potter’s anxiety would certainly distract her from the Sherwin murder and I’d been just an inch away from pinning her down. In common decency, and I never try for the uncommon sort, I’d have to hang around helping her with the Toad question, working for nothing.

  I wasn’t going to bother to check with the people on Toby’s list. His evidence was good enough for me. I rang Miss Potter to warn her I was coming, and then went round to Penelope’s.

  It was raining again, heavily. The short walk had soaked my jeans. I stood in Penelope’s well-appointed hall shaking my leather biker’s jacket, scattering droplets of water all over the gracious wallpaper and gracious carpet. Miss Potter didn’t notice. She was listening to the news about Toad: she’d insisted I tell her straight away, soaking or not. When I’d finished she sat down abruptly on an upright chair, clutching her warm, all-enveloping blue wool dressing-gown about her. She must have been in bed when I rang: odd she hadn’t dressed before I arrived. She must have been really ill. ‘So you say Toad returned to England in early October? Oh my dear,’ she said, ‘poor Toad. How dreadful. How dreadful, to have my suspicions confirmed. What shall we do?’

  I wanted to shout ‘Bugger Toad.’ I took a pull on myself. ‘Come into the kitchen,’ I coaxed. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea.’

  She followed me into the kitchen, accepted the tea and sipped it. ‘What shall we do?’ she asked again.

  I seemed to be appointed Nanny. ‘You must ring Toad’s father, tell him what you’ve heard, ask after her. If she really is missing, he’ll have to report it to the police. It’s much more likely, you know, that she’s in hospital being treated for anorexia and Charlotte doesn’t want to admit it.’

  ‘Do you believe that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps it would make things clearer if I explained the sequence of events to you.’

  I didn’t know what events she meant, but I took out my notebook and pencil. ‘Fire away.’

  Five minutes later, I looked at the notes and saw her point.

  Early June: Builders start work on Ashtons Hall, repairing roof and dry rot on top floor. Scaffolding erected.

  Late June: Builders laid off for six weeks. Village gossip thinks it odd.

  Late June: Laura gives Miss Potter two last-minute, free tickets for Mediterranean Culture Cruise, July-Aug. Miss Potter goes, taking friend.

  Early Aug: Miss Potter returns, sees Toad who seems tense, unhappy. Promises postcards.

  Mid-Aug: Laura dies, Charlotte inherits. Builders restart work.

  Late Aug: Toad leaves for East, Charlotte gives Miss P. two months’ notice to quit the lodge.

  Very early Oct: Charlotte inspects the lodge, says Miss P. hasn’t kept it in satisfactory condition, picks a fight with Miss P. – effectively throws her out. Orders removal van for two days later.

  Early Oct: Miss P. goes. Builders laid off again.

  Give Miss P. her due, she could keep to the point when she wanted to, and string facts together to tell a story. I looked at my notes again, to talk her through it and test her conclusions. ‘You think Charlotte took Toad home from school at the end of June and kept her at Ashtons?’

  ‘I know she did that. I saw Toad in August, remember. She said she’d been ill and her mother was looking after her. Most uncharacteristic of Charlotte, I thought at the time.’

  ‘And you think the freebie trip Laura sent you on was to get you out of the way while Charlotte was dealing with Toad? Why would she need to?’

  ‘Perhaps because of the harshness of her planned regime,’ said Miss Potter quietly. Her understatement was menacing.

  I tried to dismiss it. ‘Come on. Miss P. She probably just made her repeat “Anorexia won’t help Daddy’s career” while eating country-house breakfasts four times a day.’

  ‘Flippancy won’t help. And I must say, Alex, I am becoming increasingly irritated by your affectation of class-consciousness. You cannot seriously believe that a young girl’s background disqualifies her from simple human consideration. Why do you pretend you do?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. It was. That was the nearest to an apology she’d get, and she knew it. If I had felt the justice other reproach less, I might have acknowledged it more.

  ‘Continue, please,’ she said.

  ‘And you think Charlotte asked Laura to get you out of the way? Were they close enough for that?’

  ‘They were very similar “Close” is too warm a word. They would act in concert when their interests coincided.’

  ‘And you didn’t suspect anything when Laura gave you the trip?’

  ‘No. She claimed that an acquaintance of hers had won it in a draw for which she was not even aware she had entered. That happens increas
ingly, nowadays. The acquaintance had already made holiday arrangements and would not, in any case, have enjoyed the cultural aspects of the cruise.’

  ‘And you think the builders were laid off to keep strangers out of the place?’

  ‘Toad’s room, once the night nursery, is on the top floor of Ashtons Hall.’

  ‘So you think she was locked in her room?’

  ‘Possibly. In any case, the builders would have been witnesses.’

  ‘But there must have been other people about in a house like that. The cleaners, for instance.’

  ‘We are dealing with a very large house. Once the bviilders started work on the top floor, the cleaning women were instructed to leave it. Kate, who helps – helped – me once a week, was also employed at the hall. She tends to gossip.’

  ‘What about the husband? What about Ludovic Mayfield? Surely he must go to Ashtons sometimes? Don’t he and Charlotte get on? Doesn’t he care about his daughter?’

  ‘He is conventionally fond of Toad, I believe, but no more. Toad frequently complained to me that her father was always too busy to visit her at school or attend school functions, whereas he often found time for Charles. Charles is the favoured child of both parents. As to the relationship between Charlotte and her husband, I would describe it as an alliance. They are both ambitious, with high hopes for his career. He works very hard and is seldom in the country, even at weekends. The family time at Ashtons has always been the Christmas and summer holidays. Mr Mayfield would certainly regard the care of Toad and decisions about her health as lying within Charlotte’s province.’

  I remembered Charlotte’s answer to my question about her childhood and whether the Sherwins were a close family. ‘Not particularly,’ she’d said, or something like it. ‘We didn’t have to be. It’s a big house.’ It was still a big house and there was the flat in London too: plenty of long dining-tables for the Mayfields to sit around and semaphore courteous platitudes to each other.