by Yaba Badoe
I woke up, my head throbbing. I had to stop the bad thing happening again. I had to prevent a deep sleep of dejection descending on Isobel as it had done on my mother. At the mere thought of Isobel, the pain of my headache intensified, and the house, sighing, carried Isobel’s sobs to my ears.
She was crying in the bathroom opposite, her lungs heaving with the pain of a traumatised child. Propelled out of bed by an overwhelming fear of the past repeating itself, I ran to the bathroom. In the gap between the floor and the door, I saw a flicker of candlelight. Seeping from the bath itself was the sharp tang of Bromley’s Herbal Essence: a scent guaranteed to soothe, relaxing the limbs. When I’d heard what I needed to, when I’d confirmed that Isobel’s tears were real and not tears streaming through my dream, I bolted to Peter’s room.
Over the weekend, he had taken to sleeping in his dressing-room, leaving Isobel alone in the marital bed. I ran into his room without knocking. He was still awake, reading in bed, a pair of half-moon glasses on his nose.
‘Help me, Peter,’ I cried. ‘My head’s hurting me and I don’t want it to happen again. I don’t want to remember. Please give me medicine for my head.’
Gathering me in his arms, he held me close, calming me with the warmth of his body and his words. I was going to be all right. I had nothing to worry about, he said. My headache would get better. It had been a difficult day for us all.
He smelt of cedar and cinnamon and a deep musky scent that men exude from their pores. I breathed it in, clinging to his neck, and as he lifted me in his arms, my headache evaporated.
‘I need medicine,’ I pleaded, determined to achieve my goal. ‘My head’s hurting.’
The medicine cupboard was in Isobel’s bathroom. Leaving me in his room, Peter went to fetch me an aspirin. He returned with Isobel and a glass of water. I swallowed the pill and he led me to bed, kissed me goodnight, then returned to his room and Isobel.
I heard them talking late into the night. They spoke of the house and Polly. They spoke without shouting at each other. And when their talking ceased, I heard them laughing shyly, conspiratorially, apparently content to be together again.
I fell asleep, delighted with what I had engineered. I sincerely believed they would be happy; and that with their happiness would come satisfaction for me, blessed relief from my mother’s eyes. I was a child, so I knew no better. I didn’t know that what consenting adults choose to do is their business and theirs alone; and that as a child, a friend of their daughter’s, my actions were peripheral to the drama unfolding in our lives. This is what I’ve been told time and time again. I am not to blame. What happened did not occur because I engineered it. But if I hadn’t brought them together, if I had adopted Polly’s sophisticated attitude of never meddling in matters pertaining to the adult heart, a decision she had reached at some cost to herself, would events have turned out differently? I shall never know.
7
TO SAY THAT our lives changed significantly after our discovery of the bones in the attic is not an exaggeration. At the outset, the three of us, Polly, Beth and I, savoured our first taste of tabloid publicity; and with that came a degree of notoriety we welcomed. We became local heroines, a trio of innocents dragging a deed that had been done in darkness into daylight. Alexander James, Crime Correspondent of the Devon Gazette, came to see us and our photograph was in the newspaper.
I’m told that the Derbys tried to stop him. It wasn’t the sort of publicity they wanted for the school. So when the reporter called Mrs Derby asking permission for an interview, she refused. But there wasn’t much they or anyone else could do to prevent the story appearing because Belinda Bradshaw alerted the Gazette to our adventure. Then, with the backing of Isobel Venus, she invited Alexander James to Graylings. He came on a Saturday morning with a photographer, and after he’d jotted down our names and ages, we had our photograph taken. Instant fame. Our fifteen minutes.
I have the clipping in front of me now; when the story came out, Polly decided we should keep a record of our exploits, a scrapbook of our True Murders. Under a bold front-page headline: BABIES’ BODIES PUZZLE – WORLD EXCLUSIVE, there is a photograph of Polly, Beth and me and an article written by Alexander James. In his usual, breathless style he described the events at Graylings a few weeks previously: our discovery of what we believed at the time were animal remains, which Mr Burroughs, finding no evidence of fur, had taken to the police. They in turn sent the remains to a Home Office pathologist for post-mortem examination. They were confirmed as human. The police took photographs of the trunk in the attic, then, they interviewed the three of us in the presence of Peter and Isobel. There was going to be an inquest.
I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy the attention. I did. We all did. And despite my initial inclination to suppress the evidence by burying it, in the aftermath of the story surfacing, I was glad that Polly got her way.
She was in her element, a diminutive Agent Starling on the trail of her very own Silence of the Lambs. After all, she had uncovered the parcel, and the babies had been hidden in her attic, so she gave us our name. We became ‘Crimebusters’, junior sleuths determined to track down whoever was responsible for the heinous crime. Though there was no proof, we were convinced the babies had been murdered. Polly was in earnest, but to begin with for Beth and me, Crimebusters was a game: a continuation of the game of mannequins we’d been playing when the bundle was first discovered. But for Maria, who hadn’t been with us, pretending to be detectives was a waste of time.
Our constant refrain was ‘Who did it?’, ‘Who did it?’ Who had hidden the babies in Miss Fielding’s trunk? I must have asked the question at least ten times as I cut the clipping out of the newspaper and started gluing it into the scrapbook.
It was evening, the curtains were drawn and we were in Exe getting ready for bed. As usual, Polly was in front of the mirror, brushing her hair.
‘Who do you think did it?’ I asked again.
Beth answered: ‘Miss Fielding? Miss Edith? Anyone could have.’
‘Naa,’ said Polly, turning around. ‘Your mom said Miss Fielding was nice. Miss Edith’s kind of weird, I guess, but she’s too ordinary.’
‘But you said murderers are often nice,’ Maria recalled. She was reading a book in bed. She put it down. ‘Don’t you remember, Polly? You said that it’s often the nicest people who end up being murderers.’
‘Maria, honey, you have no idea what it takes.’
‘What it takes to do what? To get my face in the paper?’
‘To pull a trigger. To put your hands around someone’s neck and . . .’
As she was speaking, Polly walked to where I sat on the floor. She placed her hands around my neck. ‘To put your hands around someone’s neck,’ she repeated, ‘and squeeze.’
I felt her fingers tightening. She closed her eyes. I began gasping for air. The bottle of glue tumbled from my fingers. I wanted to push her away; but for some reason, I didn’t. I must have trusted her. I must have known that she had no intention of hurting me. I was aware of Beth and Maria looking on, mesmerised by something they saw in Polly’s face. My eyes were beginning to shut and my body was drifting away when suddenly Polly relaxed her grip. I began to cough, breathing in great gusts of air.
‘You’ve got to hate someone to kill them,’ she said.
For a moment there was silence while we stared at her. Then Maria, irritated no doubt by what she saw as Polly’s attention-seeking exploits, blurted out: ‘You said that sometimes people kill just for the thrill of it.’
‘Put a sock in it, Maria!’ Beth shouted.
‘Shut up yourself, Bradshaw!’ Maria was livid. A flush of anger rose from her neck covering her face and the tip of her ears, clouding her pale grey eyes. ‘And while you’re at it, stop crowing about those bones. They’re pathetic! Utterly pathetic! It’s only Alexander James who says they’re babies’ bones. And what does he know? Mummy’s never even heard of him. He’s pathetic and so are you!’
‘As if!’ Beth scoff
ed.
Polly raised an eyebrow. ‘Is this kid for real?’ she asked, pulling a face at Maria.
I could see that Maria was close to tears. I’m sure she would have liked to have discovered the bones with us; I know she would have liked her photograph in the papers. But as chance would have it, after half term she’d spent most of her weekends with her mother in London. Anyway, Polly didn’t like her.
Beth started giggling, so did Polly. I remember Maria choking back her tears. She seemed to be weighing something up, deciding whether to inflict maximum pain, or beat a hasty retreat. I think it was when I started giggling as well that she made up her mind.
‘You think you know everything, don’t you, Polly Venus?’ she sneered, hoping to wipe the smile from Polly’s face. ‘You think you know everything, but you don’t. You’re as pathetic as your stupid father. He wants to marry my Mummy, that’s how pathetic he is.’
Maria’s raw hatred crushed the tears out of her. She wept in fury while Beth and I watched, waiting to see what Polly would do next. To our surprise she continued smiling: a world-weary smile imbued with wisdom beyond her years.
‘Wise up, Maria,’ she said. ‘Balling someone means zit nowadays. Fucking is no big deal at all. This is the nineties, kiddo.’
Polly tucked a strand of hair behind an ear and began laughing again. Beth and I followed her example, though we had no idea what we were laughing about. I felt a sudden release of tension that made me laugh louder. Clutching her stomach, Beth rolled onto her bed, shaking her legs in the air. Polly grabbed hold of me and we collapsed on the floor together. We laughed, while Maria, crying, ran from the room to find her brother.
Following Polly’s lead, we chose to ignore Maria’s revelation that her mother was having an affair with Peter Venus. Uppermost in our minds was what we should do as Crimebusters to solve the mystery of the bones in Miss Fielding’s trunk. The sexual antics of adults were insipid in comparison to our obsession with how the dead babies had ended up at Graylings. Walking arm in arm along the Bottom Lawn, as confident in our notoriety as the Three Musketeers, we discussed our next move. It was break time and some children in Juniors, spilling out of a classroom, careered across the lawn, chasing one another. Ordinarily, they would have bumped into us, sidling up to Beth to glean scraps of information. But that afternoon, an air of cocky invincibility shielded us and they kept their distance. Perhaps they were in awe of Polly, who was in favour of conducting a full-blown investigation into our discovery. She wanted action.
‘The Bag Lady down the road’s got to know something,’ she said.
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her yet.’
I noted the ‘yet’ with a tremor of apprehension. ‘The police are investigating, Polly. Let’s see what they find out.’
‘Crimebusters don’t wait,’ she retorted, sucking hard on a blackjack before passing it on to Beth. ‘Crimebusters do things. They solve crimes, they stop murders from happening.’
‘A bit like Crimewatch on television,’ Beth added enthusiastically. ‘Do you think they’ll invite us on Crimewatch?’
‘I hope not!’ Having my photograph in the paper was quite enough for me, yet I had an inkling of the direction Polly was heading. Miss Edith Butterworth had lived for years with Miss Fielding. She had been her companion. She might give us some answers.
‘Know what we got to do?’ Polly said.
‘You’re not going to get us into trouble again?’
‘Naa . . .’ she assured me. ‘If we want to find out what happened, we’ve got to pay the Bag Lady a visit.’
‘OK,’ I replied tentatively. ‘But if we’re going to do it, we’ve got to do it properly. We’ve got to follow the Basic Principles.’
‘What are you on about, Aj?’ Beth, temperamentally light of spirit, was always taken aback by my seriousness.
‘Malone and Leboeuf’s Basic Principles of Detection: observation, interrogation, persistence and intuition – give or take a lucky break or two. You know, Eugene Malone and Beau Leboeuf, the detectives in True Murder? The ones who work for the NYPD?’
‘Jeez, Aj, they’re not real. They’re made up.’
‘They’re real, Polly! They’ve solved more homicides than anyone in New York. They’re world famous,’ I added. Indeed, Malone and Leboeuf had become so real to me that they sometimes walked either side of me, reaffirming my feelings by whispering in my ear.
‘She may have a point.’ Removing a wafer-thin slab of the blackjack from the tip of her tongue, Beth returned it to Polly, who was staring into the middle distance, gazing dreamily at a pair of children rolling on the grass without a care in the world.
‘Yeah, Venus, Benson and Bradshaw! We should make diamanté Crimebuster badges with our initials on them. Aj, I think you’re on to something. If we use the principles, we’ll crack the case wide open. Good thinking, kiddo!’
Before I could reply, Polly had slipped what was left of the blackjack into my open mouth and I was sucking it.
Our first visit to Miss Edith Butterworth was on a warm Saturday afternoon towards the end of term. With the sun bright in a sailor-blue sky, we arrived at the Gatehouse as Venus, Benson and Bradshaw of Crimebusters Incorporated: the most successful detective agency in Devon. Polly, our leader, knocked vigorously on the door.
After what seemed an eternity of barking and muffled, hesitant movement, the door opened a few inches. It was held in place by a chain. Our first close encounter with Miss Edith was with an anxious old woman, half-hidden by a door, wielding an umbrella. She was taking no chances.
‘What do you want?’
Polly gave the old woman her most winning smile, holding up a carrier bag. ‘My mom asked me to give you this.’
The three of us had decided to arrive bearing gifts of strawberries and peaches to ensure easy entry into the house. Miss Edith appeared puzzled. Perhaps she imagined at first that we were trick-or-treating out of season. We were wearing what might have looked to anyone else like fancy dress. Polly had started lending me her clothes and I was in a pair of turquoise pantaloons from Thailand and a fuchsia pink puffa jacket. Polly was going through a lime-green phase and everything she had on sparkled an acidic, brilliant green, while Beth, in faded jeans, was wearing Miss Fielding’s own riding jacket. Adding to our unusual appearance were our Crimebuster badges pinned to our chests: our initials in glitter glued to cardboard.
Miss Edith opened the door wider to receive the parcel. It was then that she must have recognised us from our photograph in the paper and her daily walks around the Gatehouse.
‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ she said.
Polly stepped inside, followed by Beth and me. I was nervous of dogs and clung on to Beth’s jacket.
‘There’s no need to worry, dear,’ said Miss Edith, holding a boxer by the collar as I sidled down the corridor. ‘They won’t hurt you, you know. They’ve eaten already.’
She led us along the narrow corridor into a cluttered kitchen. There were unwashed pots soaking in a stone sink, and on the floor two bowls spattered with minced meat and biscuits. Unwrapping the contents of the carrier bag, Miss Edith lifted a peach to her nose, inhaling its scent with almost mystical glee. ‘Ah,’ she sighed. ‘Nothing gives me greater satisfaction than a whiff of the Mediterranean. The Promenade des Anglais, a piazza in Florence, figs and Greek yoghurt. Please thank your mother. It’s very kind of her to think of me.’
For such a small woman she had a strong, melodious voice. She was untidy: her clothes, a faded summer dress and a bedraggled cardigan, were thrown together in a haphazard manner. Petite, with cropped iron-grey hair pulled away from her face with a large grip, she made bird-like, almost flighty movements. Her face was weather-beaten and covered in a mass of fine wrinkles. Her eyes were a light hazel colour, and when Miss Edith smiled, as she did when talking of her adventures abroad, they suggested a lively sense of humour and warmth. As we discovered later, she had needed both qualiti
es during her years with Olivia Fielding.
Quickly making us a jug of lemonade, Miss Edith ushered us into her sitting-room, a salon with french windows that opened out to a patio. I noticed a pack of cards spread on a table wedged between pots of geraniums and stock. Even though the french windows were wide open, letting in the sun and a light summer breeze, a heavy odour of dank musk hovered in the room: an unsettling clammy scent masked by a sprinkling of vetivert.
The plan we had agreed on before entering the Gatehouse was that Polly would lead the interrogation. I was to ask follow-up questions and Beth and I would observe the suspect’s habitat for potential clues.
The room was crowded with memorabilia: photographs and furnishings accumulated over fifty years at Graylings. Against one wall was a bookcase crammed with poetry as yet unfamiliar to me: the complete works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband, Hardy’s love poems, Shakespeare. Beside the bookcase was a Regency writing-desk with a matching chair.
At either end of the mantelpiece were portraits of a woman I assumed was Miss Fielding. On the left was a studio photograph of a young woman in a lace blouse, a cascade of pearls around her neck. Her black hair was swept up in a dark crown. Her eyes, equally dark, appeared intense, and her straight nose gave a regal aspect to her bearing. Sipping lemonade, I looked from the portrait on the left to the one on the right. It was of the same woman many years later, striking a pose in a loose velvet dress, a Spanish shawl around her shoulders. I recognised the shawl as the one I had played with in the attic. It was now mine, spread on my bed at the house. The woman’s hair was still swept up from her face, but her expression had changed: the friendliness had disappeared, replaced by a commanding stare, although her mouth was still soft, still tender.
While Beth fondled the dozing dogs, Polly gazed at the photographs, overcome by curiosity. ‘Is that Miss Fielding?’ she asked, nodding at the portraits.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Kind of grand, ain’t she?’
The old woman chuckled. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’