True Murder

by Yaba Badoe

  Miss Edith was sitting very still on the edge of the sofa, her eyes on us. She seemed to realise what we were after. Her expression made me uncomfortable. It was as if she was looking straight through us, examining our thoughts with the ease of a photographer sifting through negatives. She was flattered by our interest none the less.

  ‘She’s sort of like a duchess, ain’t she?’ Polly remarked.

  ‘A queen, more like it!’ And then throwing us completely off track, Miss Edith slowly recited a nursery rhyme:

  The Queen of Hearts, she baked some tarts,

  All on a summer’s day;

  The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts

  And took them clean away!

  We stared at her bewildered.

  She laughed. ‘Curiosity killed the cat!’ she cried. Beth burrowed her face into the neck of a dog, trying to suppress giggles.

  Polly knew when she was being fobbed off, so she retaliated with another question. ‘You mean Miss Fielding was a knave? I thought she was your best friend.’

  ‘I was her companion,’ came the indignant reply.

  ‘You mean she played with you?’

  Miss Edith gave a sly chuckle. She was obviously enjoying playing cat-and-mouse with us. Yet the game she was playing was dangerous. She was leading us on, whetting our appetites at the same time as obstructing our hunger for information. We didn’t yet appreciate that women of her generation reveal themselves slowly, grudgingly, having established trust over a period of time. They weren’t the sort of women who would appear willingly on the Oprah Winfrey show, or sell their story to a newspaper as Isobel and Belinda had orchestrated for us. I didn’t yet know this, so I asked the first question that entered my head.

  ‘Did you love her?’

  The directness of my approach must have made her reply without thinking. ‘Love!’ she exclaimed. ‘I gave her everything.’

  Then, unwilling to say anything else, she dismissed us abruptly.

  ‘Can’t we stay longer?’ Polly pleaded.

  When she said that this was impossible, Beth asked if we could at least take the dogs out for her once in a while.

  ‘Are you Brownies?’ Miss Edith asked suspiciously. We assured her we were not and, gratified, Miss Edith accepted our offer of help. Once in a while, we could visit her at the Gatehouse and take her dogs out for a walk.

  8

  OUR FIRST ENCOUNTER with Edith Butterworth stimulated our desire to know more about Graylings while Miss Fielding was its owner. We weren’t alone in our interest. Everyone was talking about the house, even the teachers at school; and apparently lots of the younger children were spending the weekends trawling through their own attics in the hope of uncovering equally ghoulish traces from the past. After publicising our find, Belinda Bradshaw and Isobel took to having long, rambling conversations over coffee, which would end abruptly when we crept up on them. Once I overheard Belinda, determined to finish a train of thought, whisper, ‘I’m telling you, Isobel, my mother used to hunt with Olivia Fielding and she was not all that she seemed. She had a will of iron, that woman.’ The Derbys expressed their disapproval by watching over me with particular concern now that Polly and I were bosom friends. Following our attic discovery, I suspect their reservations about Polly were reinforced.

  Beth was besotted by Miss Edith’s boxers, deciding that anyone with dogs as wonderful as Candy and Fudge couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the babies in the attic. In any case, she believed that Miss Edith was gaga, completely off her rocker, her lights were on but there was nobody inside. On this point Polly was inclined to agree, although back at school, we considered the possibility that Miss Edith was leading us on, that perhaps she was trying to make us think she was mad.

  ‘That’s what witches do,’ I explained.

  We were in the Glory Hole, away from Maria’s interference, discussing our first visit to the Gatehouse. We were sitting cross-legged in the dark, our faces illuminated by torches held beneath our chins. We were half-hidden by a barrier of broken desks and chairs, and the moist earthy smell of Mrs Derby’s gardening tools crept into our nostrils. It was Polly’s idea, another of her inspired ventures.

  ‘This isn’t a game,’ Polly said, turning on me in exasperation. ‘This is for real, Aj, like Jacinth was real.’

  ‘But it’s true, Polly. Witches make you think they’re mad, and then when you’re asleep, they suck out your soul.’

  ‘Real detectives don’t believe in witches.’

  ‘They do in Ghana,’ I muttered. ‘And Malone and Leboeuf visit clairvoyants when they can’t crack a case. They believe in ghosts and witches too.’

  ‘Well, we’re in Devon! And they don’t have witches here. Do they, Beth?’

  ‘They do on Dartmoor,’ Beth replied. ‘At least they used to, and who knows where the Bag Lady comes from?’

  It wasn’t that I thought Miss Edith was a witch. Although I was aware that she was an unusual old woman who fitted the stereotype, my mother’s experience had taught me that it was women you least suspected of dabbling in the dark arts who used them. Attractive, nubile women who steal husbands, women such as Emily Richardson, were the worst offenders. They were the ones you had to watch out for, along with family members who might wish you harm: beautiful women, women close to you.

  Polly had brought us down to the Glory Hole in order to delve into the mind of whoever had hidden the babies in Miss Fielding’s trunk. She was using us as guinea pigs. Beth and I had to pretend to be the culprit, while Polly asked us questions.

  Beth decided to go first. My prime suspect was Mr Furzey, the gardener at Graylings; he had worked there when Miss Fielding was alive and had been kept on by the Venuses. But Beth had had the same idea, thus depriving me of my role. I stuck out my tongue at her.

  ‘How did you whack the babies?’ Polly asked.

  ‘I throttled them,’ said Beth. ‘You see I’m married and I didn’t want my wife to find out. And . . . well . . . I was having an affair with one of Miss Fielding’s maids and she had twins.’

  ‘Why didn’t she say something?’

  Beth pondered for a moment. Then she said: ‘She was really stupid, you see. Thick as two planks. She didn’t even know she was having babies. What happened was that one day she went to the loo and they both dropped out of her. And the babies drowned.’

  We laughed as Beth continued: ‘So I didn’t throttle them really. They died accidentally and I hid them. Then I gave the woman a hundred pounds to go away.’

  Believing she had exhausted Beth’s insights, Polly turned to me. ‘How about you? Who are you?’

  I said the first thing that came into my head. ‘I’m the mother of the children.’

  ‘Yeah? What sort of mother murders her kids?’

  ‘I didn’t murder them.’

  ‘As if!’ Beth exclaimed.

  I felt a spider crawling over my knee. I swept it aside. ‘I didn’t murder them,’ I replied.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I didn’t murder them,’ I repeated firmly. ‘I gave birth to them and they were dead when they came out. I kept having dead babies. Eventually I didn’t want anyone to bury them. They belonged to me, didn’t they? So I kept them. I hid them in the trunk.’

  My fellow Crimebusters were silent. Eventually, Polly asked: ‘Why did your babies keep dying?’

  ‘They cursed me. His women cursed me.’

  ‘Whose women?’ Beth demanded.

  ‘My husband’s girlfriends. So my babies came out dead. Only one lived. The first one. But I kept the others. I hid them in the trunk.’

  Beth and Polly glanced at each other, then looked at me. ‘Aj, you’re weird,’ Polly exclaimed.

  I believe she intended to pay me a compliment. She went on to take the floor herself, determined to arrive at another explanation, a rival to mine. She took on the role of Miss Fielding, and, unsure how the spinster – a pillar of the village community and a local JP – had come to have babies, she vacil
lated between a tall dark stranger from overseas or the possibility that Miss Fielding and Miss Edith had been Satanists. The latter idea won our approval, and, embellishing her theory with details that any tabloid journalist would be proud of, Polly described midnight masses at which the diabolical pair drank the blood of new-born babies.

  I listened with only half an ear. I was thinking of my mother. Alluding to her experiences had brought back memories I had tried to forget. Dead babies and miscarriages: nature’s aberrations which caused my mother such distress. Had I seen my sister before she died? I hadn’t. My mother’s ordeals had taken place in the safety of well-equipped hospitals. So where did the memory of my sister come from?

  It was the trace of a dream, perhaps: Mama calling me to her bedroom and in a small white coffin on the bed, my sister, her body covered in a kente stole. She is dead and Mama says, ‘I want you to see this and remember, Ajuba. As God is my witness, this is the work of your father’s sisters. They are witches. They kill my babies so your father will leave me. This is the work of your father’s people.’

  I remembered. But was it a dream, or had it happened? The atmosphere in the Glory Hole was thick with our fantasies that evening, so for a few minutes my ability to distinguish what was real from what was imagined blurred. I recalled my mother’s tears after my sister’s funeral. But then I saw a child being taken away and Mama wanting to keep her, to hold her a day longer, two days; and then to go to the grave with her. ‘But, Mama, you still have me,’ I say. And she takes my hand, allowing my sister to go. What happened? Why didn’t my mother write to me? I wanted to hear her voice again in words scrawled in her round, sloping hand. I prayed, when Mrs Derby was handing out letters, that one day she would give me a letter from Mama. As yet that day hadn’t arrived.

  I put down my torch, allowing my tears to fall unseen.

  I believe it was at this point that the door of the Glory Hole opened. Someone turned on the light, and for an instant we were blinded.

  ‘Piss off, Maria,’ Beth shouted from our hiding place behind desks and chairs.

  Polly thought it was Maria as well. She started yelling ‘Sucker! Sucker! Sucker!’ I joined in, and so did Beth, until we realised that the legs standing in the doorway didn’t belong to Maria Richardson. They didn’t belong to Joshua either. It was Major Derby in a pair of long, baggy shorts.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, girls? I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Ajuba. Come out. All of you. I hope I never hear you using that sort of language again. To anyone. Am I making myself clear?’

  We apologised. Nevertheless, he confiscated our torches and, as we were walking away, he summoned me back. ‘You’ve just had a call from your father,’ he explained as I looked up at him. ‘He’s in London. He’ll be coming down to take you out on Saturday.’

  I’d seen my father twice since I’d been at school, when I’d travelled to Rome for a few days over Christmas and Easter. On both occasions, in spite of our conversations on the phone, we hadn’t been able to find the right words to talk to each other, and I hadn’t known how to broach the questions that were uppermost in my mind. Why hadn’t he told Mama where I was so that she could write to me? I wasn’t brave enough to ask him. Instead, I told him what he wanted to hear. I was doing well at school; I was very happy; I’d made lots of friends.

  Before I knew what was happening, I was crying in the corridor. I didn’t want to see my father. I wanted my mother. At the very least, I wanted her to write to me. Philip Derby, a flush of concern passing over his face, gently patted my head.

  ‘There’s no need for tears, Ajuba. You’ll have the whole day together.’ Anxious to calm my distress, he came down to my level and gripped my shoulder. ‘You’re going to have a wonderful time, sweetie. You wait and see.’

  He didn’t understand and I couldn’t explain myself to him. I didn’t want to see my father. My father was the last person in the world I wanted to be with.

  9

  POLLY WAS KNEELING on my bed, trying to pull a comb through my hair. We were preparing to go out with my father. She had agreed to come with me on condition that I considered spending the summer holidays at Graylings. I wasn’t sure if that was really what I wanted, but all the same, I appreciated her willingness to meet my father, taking it as another sign of our friendship. Tugging her comb through my tight curls, Polly yanked at my hair. The comb snagged, breaking several teeth.

  ‘Where’s your comb?’ she asked

  ‘I lost it.’

  ‘Where’d you lose it?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Disentangling the comb, Polly wrenched it through my hair again. More teeth fell out. Despite the torture I was subjecting myself to, having someone concerned about my hair, someone willing to struggle with it on my behalf, reminded me of happier times. Times when my father was my friend.

  ‘No wonder Michael changed his hair. You should change yours, Aj.’

  She was referring to Michael Jackson, of course, not Michael Benson, my father.

  ‘Sometimes it helps sprinkling water on it. It makes it easier to comb.’

  She ran out of Exe to get some water. While she was out of the room, I tried combing my hair myself. I’d left it unkempt for such a long time that it had become unmanageable. I’d decided not to do anything about it when my comb had disappeared. Now my hair was thick and impenetrable, a dark jungle of matted curls.

  Disconsolate, I spat on my hands, attempting to change the colour of my shins by gliding my damp palms over them. I never used to look like this, I reflected, recalling my earlier incarnation in Ghana when I had felt differently about myself: when I was tidy and at ease with my father. Mama used to smooth my skin with cocoa butter, moisturising my hair with oils of coconut and shea nut. Once upon a time, I remembered, I’d shone like polished, black coral.

  I was beginning to wonder if I should run and hide from the disappointment I was sure to see in my father’s eyes, when Polly returned with a beaker of water. I dabbed some of it into my hair. She sprinkled a bit more, and then, wielding the comb once again, she forced it through. I screamed. Mercifully, the comb broke in two.

  ‘I wish I had one of my mother’s wigs,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Me too. Perhaps he won’t notice.’

  ‘He notices everything.’

  ‘I’m glad he’s not my father.’

  ‘I wish he wasn’t mine as well.’

  Polly folded her arms, stood back, looked me up and down and said: ‘I guess putting on a hat would help.’

  ‘If I wear one, will you wear yours? And will you put on school uniform as well, so I don’t look weird?’ My own clothes no longer fitted me properly, and, unless I was with Polly at Graylings wearing her clothes, I preferred to remain in school uniform.

  Polly appeared doubtful.

  ‘Please, Polly. I’ll ask him to take us to McDonald’s.’

  ‘Followed by cream tea at Ford Abbey?’

  I nodded.

  ‘It’s a deal!’ she said.

  Rummaging through her bottom drawer, Polly extracted the straw hat that we were required to wear for church on Sundays. She put it on. Out of the same drawer she retrieved another. Polly and I had recently pooled our resources, to prevent me losing things. It seemed to help. Like her mother, Polly was careful with her possessions; meticulous.

  She placed the hat on my head, stepping back to examine her handiwork. While she fussed over the angle of the brim, pushing it one way and then the other, I remembered my mother. I used to believe that I looked after Mama, yet it was she who’d taken care of my hair: plaiting it, nurturing it as tenderly as a nursery of orchids. She knew what to do. I couldn’t help wishing that I did as well.

  Satisfied at last, Polly stood to one side: ‘Yeah, it helps. It makes you look snappier somehow.’

  I wasn’t convinced. Once we’d changed into uniform, I followed her downstairs to wait for my father. Together, we clambered on to the windowsill of the school pantry, where the silver a
nd crockery were kept in glass cabinets. We positioned ourselves so we could watch cars arriving down the school drive. I was determined to catch sight of my father before he saw me.

  It was Saturday afternoon and the school was silent; expectant. All the boarders were out shopping. Beth was at home, Maria in London. Isobel was in London as well, for a weekend with Peter on his houseboat. According to Polly they were going to thrash things out. ‘I don’t know why they bother,’ Polly had said, swearing me to secrecy.

  Once we were settled on the windowsill, I followed Polly’s example, pulling my blue candy-striped dress down over my knees. Trying to emulate her pre-teen grooming skills, I struggled to imitate her composure but was unable to do so. I began nibbling the elastic of my hat while Polly stared vacantly out of the pantry window, her hands clasped around her knees.

  Her hands reminded me of Peter’s: she had the same long fingers with large moons. Looking out onto the front lawn, she appeared as distant as only Peter could be: lost in a desolate canvas of her own creation. Even though she often shared my bed at night and took as much care of my possessions as she did her own, I was perplexed by her apparent indifference to Maria’s revelation about Peter. To the child I was back then, her lack of concern seemed even more bizarre than her defiant separation from Isobel. I remember wondering, as I sat watching her, why she couldn’t admit that her father’s adultery hurt her.

  ‘Why do you pretend you don’t care when Peter has girlfriends?’ I asked eventually.

  Surveying a cluster of flowers coming into bloom, Polly said nothing before slowly turning her head towards me: ‘Because his girlfriends don’t matter. He always comes back because of me. That’s why they had me.’

  I didn’t understand what she meant, so she said very deliberately, as if explaining the alphabet to a simpleton: ‘They wanted to make things better between them, so they had me.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Theo told me. Isobel tells him things.’

  ‘Then why does Peter still have girlfriends?’