Mrs. Libby Garth has been interviewed on a number of occasions and refutes all suggestions of having any involvement in the death of Miss Butts or trying to persecute you through the making of telephone calls to your house, the writing of poison-pen letters and inflicting cruelty on animals. She denies that the various "supportive" conversations she had with you following Miss Butts's death were "fishing expeditions" to discover how much you knew and whether your husband was beginning to waver over his alibi. She further denies any knowledge of the Slaters' harassment of Miss Butts in the months prior to her death, refuting absolutely any allegation that she similarly harassed you in order: 1) to focus your suspicions on the Slaters; and 2) to drive a wedge between you and your husband.
In conclusion, the commissioner has asked me to tell you that the file on the death of Miss Butts remains open, even though, on the evidence to date, it is doubtful that the Crown Prosecution Service will agree to prosecute Mrs. Garth for Miss Butts's murder.
Yours sincerely,
Alisdair Fielding
For: the commissioner, Metropolitan Police
LEAVENHAM FARM, LEAVENHAM, NR
DORCHESTER, DORSET DT2 XXY
Alisdair Fielding
The Office of the Commissioner
London Metropolitan Police
New Scotland Yard
October 7, 1999
Dear Alisdair Fielding,
Please inform the commissioner that, not only do the charges mentioned in your letter fall short of my expectations, but 1 had already foreseen three of them when I encouraged Alan Slater and Michael Percy to be honest with the police. Both men were fourteen years old in 1978, therefore any charges now amount to little more than a technicality unless you intend to try them as adults in a juvenile court. The charge against Maureen Slater is equally valueless, as it will depend on the jeweler's identi fication of her after twenty years.
I presume the commissioner is offering these charges by way of a sop to keep me quiet for another few months while his officers continue the pretense of investigating Ann Butts's murder. If so, he has dangerously underestimated my commitment to justice for my friend. I repeat what I wrote at the beginning of the report I submitted in September: Ann Butts was murdered because a regime of racial hatred and contempt for handicap was allowed to fester unchecked in Graham Road.
I have no intention of letting this rest. Unless you come back to me within a week with more positive news, I will approach the press.
Yours sincerely,
M. Ranelagh
epilogue
It was an unsettled autumn in Dorset with southwesterly winds piling in from the channel and whipping the trees into a frenzied dance around the farmhouse. Sam and I spent days raking the leaves into russet piles, only for them to be blown away again as soon as the wind returned, but it didn't seem to matter. It was so long since we'd enjoyed the glorious turning colors of an English autumn that just being outside brought contentment.
The boys settled into local college life in order to prepare for university the following year. They were older than their contemporaries, particularly Luke, but they preferred the idea of a year's adjustment to diving in at the deep end. Sam and I appreciated it, too. None of us was quite ready to see them go their separate ways when we were still trying to put down roots. I had one or two anxieties as we signed away our fortune to buy the farmhouse. Would the roof blow off before we had time to repair it? Was the wet rot under the floorboards as bad as it looked? But Sam was indomitable and gave us all confidence.
My father took the boys to the highlands of Scotland during the half-term break to give them a taste of the true Ranelagh homeland, and in return Sam and I had my mother to stay. My father's somewhat Machiavellian intention was that we should all get to know each other a little better�and in a way we did�because Mother had a fine old time interfering with Sam's renovation work and telling me how frightful my taste in curtain material was.
It would be an exaggeration to say our relationship improved. The dynamics of competitiveness and mutual criticism had existed too long between us to vanish overnight. I was still a poor wife to Sam, ignoring his coronary, encouraging him to do too much, not cooking his meals on time ... and the boys, though absent, were still too free and easy in their manners and still needed haircuts. As for her ... well ... she would always be a control freak, offering advice that wasn't wanted and dominating everyone while pretending to play the role of martyred slave. But the sparks flew a little less regularly, so perhaps we were making progress.
She had a residual jealousy of Wendy Stanhope, whose visits had been rather more frequent than hers. I introduced them on one occasion but it was a mistake. They were too alike, both of them strong-minded women with decided views, though with little prospect of their minds ever meeting. Wendy admired youth and longed to give it space, while my mother wanted only to corral and discipline it. Wendy would never be so rude as to pass a comment afterward, but Mother, with no such restraints, told me it didn't surprise her at all that the silly woman had the habit of screaming from clifftops.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because she was unable to make friends with her own age group," was the barbed answer.
One of the reasons for Wendy's frequent trips was to visit Michael in prison and drive on to Bournemouth to see Bridget. Wendy and I made the round journey together the first time, but on subsequent occasions she went alone. In between whiles I visited Michael myself. I asked him once if he thought Wendy still wanted to adopt him. He grinned and said she only ever gave him lectures these days because she'd transferred her affections to Bridget and was acting like his mother-in-law. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Good, he told me. It would be harder to let his wife down in the future if he had a fire-breathing dragon on his back. He added somewhat wistfully that it was a pity Mrs. S. hadn't taken that tack before. And, by implication, me too.
For myself, I wondered why my more intelligent pupil had to struggle with the concept of good behavior being its own reward, while Alan, the Neanderthal, had put it into practice and accepted it. In the end I accepted Sam's analysis�a strong-minded woman is a man's best friend.
I had an angry letter from Beth Slater midway through September in response to one from me, which had set out to explain how committed I was to Annie's cause and why it was necessary to involve Alan. But she couldn't be persuaded, and her anger saddened me. She hated people who pretended one thing and did another. She hated the police, who had stripped their house of everything, even the things Alan could prove he'd bought himself. She hated Derek, who was a bastard, and Maureen, who was a bitch. And was it surprising Alan had gone off the rails when he had been so abused as a child? But nothing could excuse what I had done. Did I not realize that by destroying Alan I'd destroyed Danny as well? She ended by saying she never wanted to hear from me again. However, I remained optimistic because I'd learned a great deal about the healing powers of time�and I was sure she knew how much I admired her.
To my relief, Danny turned up like a bad penny toward the end of October. He had a filthy hangover. He was irritable and tetchy, and laid down rules and regulations about his private space and what he was allowed to do in it. "Like what?" asked Sam.
"Chill out ... smoke a joint now and then..." He needed peace and quiet to get his head straight, and we owed him that much for setting his family at each other's throats.
Sam, equally relieved, backed him against a wall. "What about my wife's head?" he demanded. Didn't his family owe me something for what his father and brother had done to me? Danny was scornful. How could the Slaters compensate his missus? What did they have that she wanted? Hell, she was in a different league. That's why he'd come. He reckoned she could teach him a thing or two ... about internalized pain ... and how he could use it to exploit his genius.
Sheila Arnold and I remained friends, but at a distance. We greeted each other warmly when we met in the street but recognized we had little in common. In the end I p
referred the anarchy of clifftop screaming to the elegant conformity of matching panama hats. She agreed grudgingly to allow me to use parts of her correspondence in press releases, but insisted that I make it clear she was unavailable for interviews. "Larry would never approve," she said.
Jock arrived for a long weekend in November and helped us re-felt and re-tile the western end of the roof above the attic. He and I did most of the heaving of materials while Sam straddled the gable and shouted orders. Then, come the evenings, we dropped into armchairs and threw cushions at Sam until he agreed to pour us enormous glasses of wine and make our supper. I came to wonder why I had ever disliked Jock, and what had persuaded me that Sam might choose his friends unwisely.
Jock disappeared into the barn every so often to share spliffs with Danny and give him the benefit of his wisdom on money and women but, fortunately, most of it went in one ear and out the other. More sensibly, he bought the first, and rather fine, sculpture that Danny carved at Leavenham Farm. It was a folded figure of a woman with her head resting on her knees, entitled Contemplation, and was a huge leap forward from the Gandhi on my terrace. But I wouldn't have swapped Gandhi for the world.
On his first evening, Jock produced a copy of Richmond's local newspaper, featuring an article on Annie's death with the headline: "Accident or murder?" He asked us if we'd seen it, and showered me with new respect when Sam laughed and said I'd written it. Of course it had been heavily edited, but I'd tried to re-create the atmosphere in London during 1978's winter of discontent when society was at war with itself in the months leading up to a vote of no confidence in Parliament and the dramatic fall of the Labor government. I asked how in such a climate there could be any certainty that the death of a black woman had been properly investigated. I went on to describe the racial hatred that had been allowed to flourish in Graham Road, citing the catalogue of unsubstantiated complaints against Annie by "benefit scroungers" which went unchallenged by the authorities, and the vicious bullying and harassment of a vulnerable woman by a "hate group" that was never questioned by the white policeman in charge of the investigation. They allowed his name to stand, Sergeant James Drury, together with his subsequent "forced retirement" for a racist assault on an Asian youth. Publish and be damned, they said! But, for me, the most satisfying part of the article was an unflattering photograph of Maureen Slater, caught in the act of closing her front door, with the caption: "Benefit recipient denies orchestrating hate campaign." They've done me proud. I thought.
I made Sam swear he wouldn't mention Libby. There was too much pain involved. Jock had lingering sympathies for her because he felt himself partly to blame ... Sam had lingering guilt for the same reason ... while I swung between a sense of triumph at my vindication, and an ongoing sadness for what I was doing to her children. But somewhere along the line I was outvoted and, at Sam's instigation, Jock brought me up-to-date over the dinner table on the last night of his stay.
The word from "mutual friends," he told me, was that Libby's husband had kicked her out and imposed a restraining order to prevent her having access to her children. Apparently her fuse was so short these days�"too many police asking too many questions"�that she'd taken a steel rod to her eldest daughter and the child had ended up in hospital. More disturbingly, the girls had revealed that beatings had been commonplace whenever Libby's frustrations had reached the boiling point, and now she faced prosecution for child abuse and the inevitable loss of her teaching job.
Jock said she was showing her true colors and he wouldn't blame me for crowing. But Sam just reached for my hand under the table and held it companionably while I pictured myself beside a river ... watching the bodies of Annie's enemies float by...
Note from Ann Butts, which was pushed through the
Ranelaghs' letterbox at number 5 Graham Road the day
before she died. It was addressed to the "Pretty Lady."
30 Graham Road
Richmond
Surrey
November 13, 1978
Dear Pretty Lady (I'm afraid I don't know your name),
I am sorry for calling you honky. I get troubled sometimes and say things I shouldn't. People think it means I'm not a nice person, but the doctor would tell you I can't help myself. I only have cats for friends because they know I don't mean to be rude.
I have tried to talk to you but my tongue gets twisted when I'm nervous. If you come to my house I will let you in, but please forgive me in advance if I call you honky again. It will just mean I'm troubled. (I'm troubled quite a lot at the moment.) I would like a friend very much.
Yours hopefully,
Annie
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The Shape of Snakes Page 33