True Murder

by Yaba Badoe

  He was busy finishing the new herbaceous border for Isobel’s grand design: a border of purple delphiniums and hollyhocks opposite the rose bushes in the walled garden. He was spreading compost into the soil with the help of a red-haired, freckle-faced young man, his new assistant, when Polly, adopting the rather grand tone her mother often used with the gardener, said, ‘Mr Furzey, please may we have a word with you?’

  ‘I’m working, Miss.’

  ‘But this is important.’

  ‘That may be so, but unless I’m mistaken, according to your mother, this is mighty important as well.’

  Attempting to coax him into co-operation by playing good cop to Polly’s aggressive one, I said in a wheedling voice: ‘Mr Furzey, would you like a nice cup of tea?’

  ‘Now that’s what I call a sensible idea.’

  Beth and I hurried inside to make a pot, carrying it out with two mugs and a selection of Isobel’s chocolate biscuits. As he was drinking the tea, we bombarded him with questions: all in aid of our history project, of course, though why no one seemed to believe that we were serious students of the past we couldn’t quite understand. All the same, I scribbled down notes of Mr Furzey’s answers.

  He remembered the old days clearly, nostalgia warming his voice as he spoke. I recall him rubbing the knees of his corduroy trousers, brushing a wisp of white hair from his face. He quickly confirmed Miss Edith’s story of a gradual decline in Miss Fielding’s fortune, demarcating his time working at Graylings into two parts: pre-Medea days when Miss Fielding kept a stable of horses, and post-Medea days, when eventually the Bramleys, Nancy the maid, and everyone else working on the estate was dismissed. Everyone, that is, except for Miss Edith, who had remained, managing the house on her own.

  ‘It couldn’t have been easy for her,’ Mr Furzey remarked. ‘Miss Fielding wasn’t what I would call an easy woman.’

  ‘Do you reckon she was criminally insane?’ Polly enquired.

  Mr Furzey laughed. ‘It depends what you mean by criminal, Miss.’

  ‘Was she psychotic and murderous and did she tell lies all the time?’

  ‘Did she look you in the eye when she talked to you?’ I added.

  ‘Or was she cruel to animals. Did you ever see her torturing them in secret?’

  ‘Well, she liked her animals, that’s for sure. And what with her being a Justice of the Peace, I wouldn’t call her a criminal as such. Though some would say that people of her ilk are always up to something, one way or another. If you catch my meaning.’

  We didn’t catch his meaning. We stared at him mystified, until Polly, invariably emboldened by adult prevarication, asked irritably: ‘What exactly do you mean, Mr Furzey?’

  ‘No offence meant, Miss. But some things are best left unsaid. That’s what I mean.’

  Unsure how best to proceed with our line of questioning, the image of the babies sealed in Miss Fielding’s trunk prompted me to exclaim: ‘But did she like children, Mr Furzey? And did you have summer parties for them here, like Miss Edith said?’

  Taking a final sip of tea, Mr Furzey appeared to reflect deeply before nodding. ‘Yes, we did have parties for kiddies in the old days. But if you really want to know, I would say that Miss Fielding was more of a one for animals than kiddies. You see, she treated her dogs better than she did the rest of us; even Miss Edith.’

  Immediately sympathetic to the type of person he was describing, Beth smiled. Then, as if to hide her embarrassment at Mr Furzey’s disapproval of women who prioritised dogs and horses over children, she blurted out a question we all wanted answered: ‘Have they come for you yet, Mr Furzey? Have they taken you away and DNAed you?’

  To our astonishment, he answered without hesitation: ‘Indeed they have. Like I said before, I’ve got nothing to hide; nothing to be ashamed of. And they’ve tracked down the Bramleys too. Seems they were up in Northumberland somewhere. And there’s Nancy Spurrell in Exeter, they’ve found. Miss Butterworth will be next for the DNA business, and there’s talk of them digging up Miss Fielding herself. Digging her up from her grave. That’s what they’re saying.’

  ‘Jeez,’ Polly marvelled, wide-eyed. ‘That policeman guy is seriously kicking ass. I guess he’ll be swabbing everyone who ever set foot here next. Do you think they’ll want to talk to us, Mr Furzey?’

  ‘Well, if Inspector Roberts says he’s going to get to the bottom of it, he will, you mark my words. Even if it means prising Miss Fielding out of that walnut coffin of hers. If that’s what it takes to get to the bottom of this terrible business, I reckon he’ll do it.’

  11

  MR FURZEY’S REVELATION that Miss Edith would soon have her DNA tested precipitated a change of tack on our part. Instead of daily visits to Miss Edith, Polly decided to further our enquiries by making Beth and I stake out the Gatehouse during daylight hours. Her idea was that we should photograph Detective Inspector Roberts entering the house with his team, and then carrying Miss Edith away, screaming and kicking, in handcuffs.

  The next day, Beth and I spent the whole afternoon hiding behind the yew trees in front of the Gatehouse, the Bradshaw Polaroid at the ready. Nobody came and Beth, bored by hours of prolonged inactivity, decided that being a detective was crap if it meant hanging around doing nothing. I tried to explain that persistence, the Third Principle of Detection, requires discipline and patience, and that good detective work always takes time. But when she said that she thought that Malone and Leboeuf were crap as well, I suggested that she go home. Nevertheless, I appreciated her unhappiness at us doing all the spade work in our joint endeavour, while Polly stayed at home thinking and planning what we should do next. I decided that I wasn’t going to do any more stake-outs unless Polly was with us as well. I needn’t have worried, because a few days after Theo had gone, Peter returned and Polly wanted to be with him.

  Peter’s visit began inauspiciously. He spent the morning holed up in his study while Polly ran to and fro, lavishing attention on him. She made him cups of tea and toast, she offered him a golden apple, a mint; her endless concern for his well-being was in marked contrast to her indifference towards her mother. Polly seemed to believe that whatever was happening between her parents was her mother’s fault. I suspect Peter enjoyed being the favoured parent, for instead of having to talk to Isobel, Polly gave him someone to hide behind.

  While Polly ran in and out, pampering Peter, I helped her mother in the kitchen. I remember my confusion that morning, the sense of foreboding I struggled to define. I didn’t have the words to explain what was happening, but I remember the feelings and the atmosphere. The air bristled with static and I found that whenever I touched Isobel, a jolt of electricity ran through my fingers. So I stopped touching her.

  Isobel was as tense as a leopard stalking its prey in her hunger for Peter. Every nerve in her body seemed alert to him: to the sounds coming from his study, the food and drinks being taken in and out. She was cooking an elaborate meal for the evening, which would culminate with his favourite pudding of chocolate mousse flavoured with orange peel. Her movements were quick and skilful, and as she beat eggs into a stiff white froth then stirred it into a pool of chocolate, I sensed her stealth, her patience, her willingness to suppress her anger to achieve her aim.

  I was nervous; although Isobel seemed in control, the atmosphere in the house weighed down on me. I remember my growing apprehension as I set the table for lunch. Unwittingly, we were being dragged towards the eye of a whirlpool. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I could feel its current, strong and menacing.

  Lunch was a humble affair: bread, goat’s cheese and fruit. Isobel had made a green salad and served some to her husband. They weren’t speaking. Peter helped himself to some wine. Unlike other occasions, when we had sat down to similar lunches of bread and cheese with salami and olives, the atmosphere that afternoon was so oppressive that I had difficulty swallowing. Polly, caressing Peter, was leaning against him while she toyed with her food.

  Isobel chose t
o ignore her, instead asking me: ‘More cheese?’

  ‘She doesn’t like it,’ Polly retorted. ‘Nobody likes goat’s cheese but you, Isobel.’

  ‘Ajuba can speak for herself,’ her mother replied. But Polly, indignant, refused to be silenced.

  ‘I don’t like it, Theo doesn’t like it, and he’s swimming in cheese in France. So why do you buy it, Isobel?’

  To Polly’s fury, her mother pushed the cheese platter towards me, even though I still had some left on my plate.

  ‘Isobel, she doesn’t want it!’

  Her mother stared at her coldly. ‘Either you sit up properly, young lady, or you leave the table.’

  Cutting a slab of chevre, she put it on my plate. ‘Don’t let her bully you, pet.’

  ‘Look who’s talking! Aj, don’t eat it. You don’t have to eat it,’ Polly yelled.

  Peter took a sip of wine. He appeared bored by the fracas, but addressing his daughter in a quiet voice, he said: ‘There’s really no need to shout, you know, Polly.’

  I didn’t know what to do; whatever I did, I would displease one of them. It seems odd that I didn’t ask to leave the table, which was what I wanted. Instead, I allowed Polly to speak for me, in a manner I found offensive. I fumbled with the food on my plate. Isobel urged me to eat.

  ‘Leave her alone!’ Polly screamed. By now she was trembling.

  I nibbled at the bread and cheese. I felt my mouth go dry, my throat tighten. I put the food down again. ‘I’m not hungry any more.’

  ‘Happy now?’ Polly asked her mother. Then, her eyes filling with tears, she bellowed: ‘You make me want to puke!’ In a gesture of utter frustration, she picked up the bread from her plate and flung it at Isobel, hitting her on the head. At last, Peter was stirred into action.

  ‘Polly! Don’t ever do that again!’

  Unused to him raising his voice to anyone but Isobel, Polly froze, her tears falling silently. I’d never seen her crying before, and as she struggled to retain control, sitting upright in her chair, she seemed angrier at her own fragility than at Isobel. Under the table, I inched my hand toward Polly’s, clasping her fingers.

  ‘You know, when I was your age,’ Peter said, his voice calm again, ‘your grandfather told me something I’ve never forgotten. He caught me fighting with a friend over a comic. I had given the boy a bloody nose by the time he pulled us apart, so he tore the comic up and sent me to my room. That evening, he sat me down and said: always remember, Peter, it’s people that matter in life, not things.’

  ‘Sure,’ Polly sobbed. ‘It wasn’t his comic, was it? He had no right to tear it up.’

  ‘He was my father,’ Peter stressed. ‘He had every right to stop me hurting myself and other people. You see, kitten, what you think about goat’s cheese is irrelevant. What matters is that you listen to your mother and that Ajuba feels at home with us.’

  At the mention of my name, Polly reciprocated my touch with a squeeze as Peter, warming to his theme, continued: ‘And you should try and be kind to Isobel as well. To everybody, in fact. But to your mother especially.’

  With a clarity that was unnerving, Polly replied: ‘Why should I be kind to her, if you’re not?’

  ‘Well, she’s your mother for a start. And she’s going through a tough time. We both are.’

  ‘So? What’s new?’

  ‘Don’t be a smart-arse with me, Polly. I want you to behave yourself. I don’t want you making a martyr of your mother when I’m gone. Promise me you won’t?’

  I wasn’t aware that Peter was saying anything out of the ordinary. He was always going away; he was usually absent. Though I believed that I knew them well, I was an outsider in the Venus family, a favoured guest unable to decipher the secret code and signals family members sometimes use. Whether it was the severity of Peter’s tone, or the words themselves which alerted Polly to a change in the family’s circumstances, I shall never know. What I remember is my friend staring at Peter with a scrutiny that seemed to tear open his heart. After what seemed a long time, she whispered in a small voice untypical of her: ‘Daddy, are you going to leave me?’

  ‘No, kitten. I’m never going to leave you. I’m separating from your mother.’

  ‘No!’ Polly wailed, dropping my hand and any pretence of adult composure. ‘No! You can’t. I can’t live here without you, Daddy. I can’t stand her!’ she screamed. ‘It’s your fault, Isobel! You’ve made him run away.’

  ‘Now you see what happens when you’re not around,’ Isobel said icily. ‘Now you see what I have to put up with. If it’s not bed-wetting it’s those bloody babies in the attic. We need you at home, Peter! Polly needs a full-time father.’

  ‘Don’t do this to me, Mommy! Please don’t do this to me!’

  As his women started yelling abuse at each other, Peter grabbed Polly by the arm and dragged her, kicking and screaming, from the room.

  After clearing up the wreckage of lunch, I followed Isobel into the rose garden. I hadn’t fully grasped the repercussions of all that had been said over lunch. As far as I could see, Isobel and Peter led separate lives already. Unaware that separation is often a precursor of divorce, I believed that even if they were living apart, they still might come together again.

  The walled garden was a pleasant sanctuary on cool evenings, when the scent of roses filled the air. Polly and I sometimes played Scrabble on one of the benches after supper. But on a hot, humid afternoon with the sun beating down, it was not a place for the faint-hearted. I think that after the debacle of lunch, Isobel wanted to vent her anger on something, and, unlike her daughter, the plants couldn’t talk back. Armed with a pair of secateurs and wearing a sun hat, she attacked the rose bushes with the ruthlessness of a house-frau gutting fish. I carried a basket for the cut flowers, their delicate heads bleeding over the edge.

  Isobel struggled with a blossom, severed it and threw it on top of the others: ‘She shouldn’t take advantage of you,’ she kept saying of her daughter. ‘You ought to stand up to her more, Ajuba. We can’t have her getting her way all the time, can we?’

  I didn’t reply, so she turned from the task in hand to me. The secateurs looked vicious. ‘She’s my best friend,’ I explained.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her impatience forcing her to stress the word, transforming what was meant to be acquiescence into a hiss of denial. ‘I know Polly’s your best friend, dear, but that doesn’t make you her slave.’

  ‘I’m not her slave. I’m her best friend.’

  She decided to change tack, and, severing a rose the colour of her hair, she held it seductively beneath my chin. ‘You’re better than butter, you are,’ she whispered. ‘You deserve better than Polly.’

  She held me with those brown eyes of hers in a lingering, complicit gaze. I was out of my depth, drowning in the sensuous warmth of her eyes, when a pebble landed at my feet. I tore myself free and saw Polly, half hidden behind a shrub, beckoning. I handed the basket of roses to Isobel. ‘I’m sorry. I’m supposed to . . . we’re . . .’ Polly and I were meeting Beth to stake out the Gatehouse that afternoon. However, Isobel had left me dazed, tongue-tied. There was a maggot in my mango and I didn’t like the taste of it. As if sensing my unease, Polly’s mother smiled at me.

  ‘You’re on holiday, pet,’ she murmured. ‘You can do whatever you want.’

  I took a backward step, then I ran to Polly. As soon as we were out of the walled garden and out of hearing range, Polly asked, ‘What was she saying?’ Red-eyed and deflated, she was holding a carrier bag.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked, as we walked past Peter’s Renault.

  ‘I’m waiting for you to tell me what Isobel was saying.’

  ‘She wasn’t saying anything.’

  ‘She sure as hell was saying something.’

  ‘It was nothing much.’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  ‘Bullshit to you!’ I shouted.

  Polly threw down the carrier bag and, grabbing me by the shoulders, shoved me against the garage
door. In a single movement she had me pinned by the throat, depriving me of air.

  ‘Out with it. Tell me what she said.’ She slackened her arm to give me air enough to speak. ‘Are you my best friend or not?’ She was crying, and the absurdity of such a question when she was squeezing the breath out of me gave me the strength to kick her on the shins. Polly fell to the ground, weeping.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Polly?’

  ‘You’ve got to tell me what Isobel was saying. If you were my best friend, you’d tell me. I know you’d tell me.’

  So I lied to her. My excuse is that I was trying to protect my friend. I was trying to placate both mother and daughter by lying to one about the other. ‘She said . . . she said she’s always thinking of you. And she said that she loves you. Then, she begged me to be your friend, for ever and ever. Amen.’

  Polly, however, was still suspicious. Experience had taught her that Isobel was adept at manipulation and capable of making mincemeat of the gullible. ‘Isobel said that?’

  I crossed my heart, and, licking my forefinger, stuck it in the warm afternoon air. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ I said, expecting to be struck dead in an instant. Nothing happened and although suspicion still lingered on Polly’s face she didn’t say anything. She couldn’t, because just then Beth appeared on her bicycle, peddling furiously. When she was almost on top of us, she squeezed the hand brakes, dropping her legs to the side.

  ‘I haven’t missed anything have I?’

  Polly and I shook our heads at the same time.

  ‘Well,’ she chuckled, unable to contain her glee, ‘you’ve missed something absolutely stupendous! I was outside the Gatehouse waiting for you guys when Detective Inspector Roberts, of all people, turns up. He goes into the Gatehouse and – hey presto! – I take his photograph.’