An Uncommon Murder

by Anabel Donald

  The offer hung in the air between us. I rose to it like an innocent trout. ‘Oh, yes, Mrs Mayfield.’

  ‘I think we understand each other, don’t we, Alex?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Very well. My father’s death was a tragic accident. I know all about it: I was listening outside the door. You know what children are. I’d been sent to bed with the others but I came down in my pyjamas. I didn’t want to miss the party.’

  Crowded, that night, outside the gun-room, I thought, waiting for her fiction. It would be believable, concise, and leave the family squeaky-clean.

  ‘My father and mother had a row. He told her he wanted a divorce. My father hit my mother and she picked up a gun, to defend herself. She was distraught. She knew nothing about guns. My father tried to take the gun away from her, and it went off. A terrible, terrible accident.’

  I wrote in my notebook, accident scribble scribble keep her happy.

  ‘My mother was delicate, I told you that I think, and I imagine she was too nervous, too upset, to tell the police. We never discussed it, of course. She didn’t know I knew.’

  ‘Can you remember any details, Mrs Mayfield?’

  ‘Details?’ She was impatient, but she controlled it. Condescension, she understood. Throw the Rottweiler chunks of meat, make a contribution to the policemen’s widows and orphans’ fund, kiss the electors’ babies, judge the flower show. She was estimating how much she’d have to give me. ‘What they said, for instance?’

  ‘Excellent.’ I sat, pencil poised, as if I really wanted to hear.

  ‘My father said, “You’ve never loved me,” and something about making a new life in Kenya and leaving the rabbits behind. He meant us, the children. Then I could hear my mother loading the gun. She was very angry. She spoke crudely, for her. She said something like, “You think love is rolling around on a bed with a sweaty little tart”.’

  I felt as if I’d been sandbagged. Charlotte had been there. She was reporting the same scene Miss Potter had described. Unless Charlotte had heard her mother say that on another occasion. Perhaps it was merely part of the day-to-day matrimonial exchanges chez Sherwin, which were overheard because Rollo’s voice resonant and carrying. But Laura’s wasn’t. By all Recounts Laura’s voice was ever soft, gentle and poisonous. And Laura never argued. Laura sobbed instead.

  My mind scrabbled for a foothold, my hand scrawled damn damn damn.

  ‘What happened next?’

  A shotgun went off. Not in the gun-room, outside.’ It was the same scene. Maybe Laura had told her? Not likely. Laura wouldn’t confide, not even in her daughter, not about this. It didn’t reflect well on her.

  So where had Charlotte been? The gun-room had no windows. More than one person couldn’t have listened at the door, not without knowing they had company. Either Miss Potter was lying, or Charlotte was. And if they – whichever one it was – was lying about this, then they were likely to be lying about other things.

  When Miss Potter told me her story, I’d believed it, including her claim to have murdered Rollo. But what if – what if Charlotte had been in the room, somewhere, under the sofa, behind a chair, a little girl sneaking down, prying, the same little girl who’d crept into the murder room and stolen a photograph of her shattered father, a souvenir, perhaps, because she’d heard her father dismiss her once again as a rabbit, heard her father say he’d leave her, and seized the gun and blown his head off for not acknowledging that Charlotte Sherwin was the most important person in Ashtons Hall, Warwickshire, England, Europe, the World, the Galaxy, the Universe? I could see it. God, I could see it. And I could also see Miss Potter claiming to have shot her beloved Rollo because she had lived so long and done so little.

  Charlotte was watching me. I wrote, busily, in my notebook. Let me out let me out let me out. I should ask some questions, pretend to be interested, but I wanted to get away, to get back to Miss Potter, to return with the police and a doctor Miss P. would know the local GP. She probably took bowls of broth to his poorer patients. ‘Mrs Mayfield – how amazing. Thank you so much. Perhaps we could talk further in London, when I’ve had time to tell Barty about this. He’ll want to speak to you himself.’

  ‘That would be best,’ she said. Tm rather surprised he didn’t come to see me in the first place.’ She was relieved; relaxed, I thought. Then, like a snake darting, her hand snatched my notebook and she read what I’d written.

  Our eyes met. ‘Oh dear,’ she said.

  Round Three to her, I thought, and went for the door, my boots slipping on the quarry tiles. She had to run round the table, but god she was quick. I was through the door ahead of her, slammed it, pulled a chest across it to delay her and made for the hall, the front door I’d left the keys in the BMW. It would start. It always started. Out, and away.

  My sweaty hands were fumbling at the handle to the glass doors when I heard the feeble cry.

  ‘Help me please help me I want to have a bath . . .’ I looked up. At the bend of the stairs, clinging to the banisters, was – a naked figure. Filthy, with matted hair. A naked skeleton. No, of course not a skeleton. An emaciated girl. Toad.

  ‘I want to have a bath please,’ said the skeleton, in a skeleton’s voice, reedy, bodiless.

  What choice did I have? ‘Gordon Bennett,’ I said, ridiculously, and made for the stairs, scrunching up the carpet in my desperation. If I could get her to the car—

  By the time I reached her Charlotte was in the hall, between us and the door. She was carrying something but I didn’t, immediately, register what. I picked up the girl – she was bones, bones – and kept running, up. I knew you shouldn’t run up. Big mistake, to run up. But there had to be back stairs, didn’t there? I tried to remember the floor plan of the house – Charlotte was behind me – the girl was squeaking. ‘Mummy’s coming Mummy’s coming Mummy’s coming . . .’

  I knew sodding Mummy was coming. I could hear her Italian-shod feet nimbly outpacing my Doc Martens. If it hadn’t been for the girl I’d have turned and socked Mummy one in the jaw right after I kicked her kneecaps in, but the girl was terrified. She was so thin I was amazed she still lived. The added shock might kill her, if this didn’t. I went for the schoolroom. I could remember the schoolroom. Miss Potter’d talked about it enough. It was Toad’s room, now, and if Mummy had kept her prisoner there, I hoped for a key in the door. Lock ourselves in, go down the scaffolding. ‘It’s OK,’ I gasped to the trembling thing in my arms. ‘It’s OK.’

  Schoolroom door. No key. Charlotte must have it. Window. Schoolroom window. Bars.

  I put the girl down, pushed her behind me, turned to face Charlotte. As I turned, she hit me with the barrel of a shotgun.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  When I woke up my head felt as if the BMW had driven over it. I was still dopey and slow. It took me a while to realise that I couldn’t lift my arm to look at my watch not because I was paralysed but because my wrist was handcuffed to a brass bedstead. It took me longer still to work out that the persistent whining noise wasn’t a result of my head injury. It was a semi-human voice. Toad.

  ‘. . . and she just doesn’t understand how fat I am and how horrible it is to be so fat and she put masses of mirrors in here and I can’t bear to look at them so I broke them and she took them away but it’s the best thing for me I know it is and she’s got my best interests at heart and I’ve got to pull myself together and I do try but it’s so cold and I haven’t earned any clothes yet and I can’t wash and there’s no lavatory and it’s the system that I have to earn my privileges and it’s what the best doctors say to do in Harley Street and it’s the only hope of a cure and then I’ll have lovely clothes and someone nice will want to marry me and Charles will be best man and they won’t laugh at me because I’m fat I wish Lally was here I’ve written to Lally and she hasn’t written back and she’s supposed to be my best friend but Mummy says you can’t trust blacks but Lally’s not black I mean she is but not inside if you see what I mean and her fathe
r’s a tribal chief or he was and they’re like kings aren’t they so it’s not the same except she hasn’t written back so maybe it is the same and I’m so cold are you awake yet I do hope you are I’ve been so lonely and I can’t do things much any more and I haven’t cleaned my teeth properly for weeks and I rub them with my fingers but it isn’t the same thing and I have been eating I have but Mummy says not enough . . .’

  ‘Toad,’ I said. ‘Toad.’

  ‘Ummm? Yes?’ She turned to me with bright inquiry, a smile which was all discoloured teeth and huge, sunken eyes. She was so thin I could see the shape of her teeth when her mouth was closed. ‘Have we met?’ she asked brightly. ‘I’m sorry I don’t remember I’m forgetting things a lot recently my watch battery went and I’m not even sure what day it is . . .’

  ‘I’m Alex,’ I said. ‘Alex Tanner. We haven’t met. I’m a friend of Miss Potter’s.’

  ‘Are you really?’ For the first time, she sounded normal. ‘Oh, good. Is Miss Potter coming? Everything’s all right when Miss Potter’s there, don’t you find?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. By now I was conscious enough to take in my surroundings, to weigh up the good news and the bad news.

  The bad news was that I was handcuffed to a huge bedstead evidently constructed in the heyday of British craftsmanship. The handcuffs, too, were well made. The room reminded me of home, and my mother, before the social workers came. It was freezing cold, damp, indescribably dirty, with faeces piled in a corner, a tangle of filthy blankets, and a decomposing dog.

  The good news was that Toad and I were alone.

  ‘Is the door locked?’ I asked.

  She nodded, a death’s-head. A perky death’s-head. If only she’d stop being so bloody sparky. ‘Oh yes. Mummy always keeps it locked to protect me you see it’s part of the treatment but when she heard the car I suppose it was you arriving she went downstairs without locking it and I thought oh good I’ll get out because I really want to get out of this room but then when I did I didn’t really want to and now I’m back I’m rather relieved specially since you’re here . . . have you ever been to India? I was there this summer and it was so beautiful but there were so many people and lots of them were living on the streets and some of them were djdng there and they didn’t have any money at all and I suppose they don’t have overdrafts there I’m not sure they even have banks because if you have no money in this country I mean really no money you can always get an overdraft but in India you beg in the streets instead that’s why it’s called an underdeveloped country I suppose . . . so I was really quite glad to come back because it made me cry and the food from street stalls upset my stomach as well so the others were right I should have come back but I did want to go to Nepal because Miss Potter always told me it was beautiful and high and pure and clear and not dirty because India was very dirty and I wanted to see somewhere clean and I was going to send her a postcard . . .’

  ‘You must be cold, Toad,’ I said, to stop the voice. ‘Why don’t you cover yourself in a blanket?’ I couldn’t bear to look at her.

  ‘Oh no, I can’t do that, the blankets are dirty.’

  So was she. Filthy. I remembered how it felt. Odd, really. Until my first foster-mother taught me hygiene, I hadn’t minded being dirty. It had been cosy, comfortable, familiar I remembered my mother taking me to church on Christmas Eve when I was four I’d liked the Nativity scene, all the animals and the holy family in the stable together I hadn’t noticed other church-goers moving away from us, as, looking back, they must have done, to avoid the smell. We must have smelt. I liked our smell.

  Toad would mind, though. ‘We’ll get you to a hot bath soon. Miss Potter and me,’ I said. ‘Meanwhile, Miss Potter would want you to wrap yourself in a blanket.’

  ‘Would she? Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ I said, and she obediently huddled herself into a blanket. It had always worked with my mother, too. She did whatever I said Clark Gable would have wanted.

  While she was wrapping up I did a time check. Damn. I hadn’t been unconscious long. It was six o’clock: only an hour had passed since I left Miss Potter. She wouldn’t have started worrying about me yet, wouldn’t have raised the alarm. I liked those words, raised the alarm, with their comforting vision of fat policemen on bicycles saying ‘now then now then what’s all this’. Then I remembered. She’d hesitate to call policemen, fat or thin. I was supposed to be breaking and entering. She’d do something, certainly; but how long would she wait?

  I wrestled with the handcuffs. No chance of slipping my wrist out: I have sturdy bones. Charlotte had fastened my right wrist, so even if I’d had something to pick the lock with, I probably couldn’t manage. I’m hopeless with my left hand.

  I didn’t know what Charlotte intended, but it wouldn’t be pleasant. I’d been in trouble when she’d taken my notebook, in worse trouble once I’d seen Toad, but the real decider had been Charlotte’s attack on me. Now she’d knocked me out and cuffed me up, she’d gone beyond explanation, excuse and the protection of privilege. Unless, of course, she cleaned up Toad’s room, then called the police and claimed she thought I was an intruder. She might risk that. It would be my word against hers . . .

  Then I realized. That plan would work even better if I was dead. Alone with her tragically ill daughter, she hears an intruder, runs to the gun-room, then blam! exit Alex.

  Not if I could help it. I’d despised her to start with and our relationship had gone downhill from there. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of killing me. Apart from anything else, where would that leave Toad, the witness?

  The room. I must check the room, for possible exits, for weapons. It was about fourteen feet by twelve, with a high ceiling and a fitted, beige carpet. In one long wall, the door to the corridor outside. Opposite it, barred sash window, large for a third floor window, the sill three feet from the floor. On one of the shorter grails was an empty fireplace, surrounded by built-in cupboards, floor to ceiling. The top of the cupboards opened separately, presumably for long-term storage. Against the other shorter wall, my bedstead. No mattress. Each side of the door, two sturdy chests of drawers. In the middle of the floor, the pile of stinking blankets. On the right of the window, a radiator. Tied to it, the body of a dog. Beyond the dog, in the corner, Toad’s waste pile: probably the dog’s too. Toad had done what she could, to clear up. Beside that, a reeking bucket.

  Between the dog and the blankets, Toad.

  Nothing else. No supply of drinking water: Charlotte must have brought it in by the cupful. No washbasin, no food, no other objects at all. She’d been here over a month. She hadn’t managed to earn many privileges.

  My head hurt and I felt sick, but it was only like a medium-awful hangover I tried to stand up. I was cuffed about two feet from the floor: I could stand if I bent over. The bed was on rusty castors. I could tug it about the room, very slowly. I tried moving towards the door, hoping to hide behind it and ambush Charlotte when she came in, but the chests of drawers were too heavy to shift and I couldn’t get the bed close enough. Wherever I put myself, I was in plain view.

  I tugged the bed towards the window. That was better I could just see out. Darkness. Rain. Scaffolding. Scaffolding, easy to climb down. Not so easy to get through the bars. Not even Toad could: her head was too big.

  She was talking. ‘And I thought I’d go to see Daddy when I got back to England they said I wasn’t well enough to go on to Nepal but I was actually but they didn’t realize and they made me come back and I went to see Daddy in London and get him to tell them I was well enough to go to Nepal but Daddy didn’t look at me even ...’

  ‘Toad? Hey, Toad?’

  ‘I saw what he was looking at I could see he was looking at a photograph of Charles if I get as slim as Charles Daddy will look at me then I know he will I know he will I know he will I thought he would when I got my results two As and a B but Charles got three As I expect that’s why Daddy didn’t look at me and he said Mummy knew best and Mummy
would look after me and she has she has looked after me it’s the treatment you see it’s what the best doctors do in Harley Street but Mummy and I have never got on really because I’m so difficult I suppose but I didn’t want to be difficult I wanted to be a good girl I wanted to be a really good girl and slim and pretty so she would love me I wanted her to love me ...’

  ‘Toad! Miss Potter would like you to talk to me.’

  ‘Yes, Alex?’ Radiant smile, head cocked on one side.

  ‘That dog over there—’ I pointed with my free hand at the stinking, oozing mass.

  ‘That’s Tigger,’ she said buoyantly. ‘My dog Tigger.’

  ‘That was your dog Tigger.’

  ‘I know. He’s dead.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘It’s part of the treatment you see Mummy tied him up there and said she wouldn’t feed him or take him for walks till I ate something and I tried I tried I tried but I’m so fat she wanted to make me fat she said I hadn’t eaten and I had and he stopped breathing he was quite old anyway I think perhaps he had a heart attack he whimpered then he stopped whimpering I don’t remember when it was but after a bit I took his blankets because I didn’t think he’d mind Mummy’d left him blankets because she said it wasn’t fair for him to be sold but I didn’t haves any and I didn’t think he’d mind but actually he was dead and so I took them but they’re very dirty and they smelt of dog but then dog blankets do ...’

  It was then, I think, that I began to hate Charlotte Mayfield. I don’t usually waste time hating people, it eats you up and doesn’t hurt them, but I’d make an exception for rotten, sadistic, self-satisfied Charlotte.