True Murder

by Yaba Badoe

  The pearl necklace around Polly’s neck appeared to glisten like tears on the crumpled white page. Above it, Polly’s chin rose up proud and defiant, her eyes hard, angry jewels. The girl Isobel had depicted seemed possessed, brooding, with shadows beneath her eyes. The eyes themselves were dark with a corrosive glare directed hatefully at the viewer. I wanted to tear the sketch into tiny pieces or hide it where no one would ever see it. This wasn’t Polly. It was a monster, a grotesque exaggeration created in malice. Young though I was, I recognised that the emotions behind the portrayal of my friend were unseemly; disturbing.

  I looked over my shoulder. Mother and daughter were leaving the room, Polly having acknowledged that her hair was indeed getting too long, and Isobel agreeing not to cut too much off. Sensing my distress, Theo came over to me.

  ‘What’s the matter, little one?’ he asked, using the diminutive Peter had given me. I showed him Isobel’s drawing. Realising it was a sheet from the sketch pad on the windowsill, Theo picked it up, flipping through it.

  ‘There’s one of you here!’ he exclaimed, showing me.

  I glanced at the sketch. ‘That’s not me. That’s my mother.’

  ‘Then you must look like your mother.’

  Did I look like that? Did my eyes have the accusing sadness of someone badly hurt, like this woman on the page? ‘I don’t look like that. I’m not unhappy.’

  ‘You are sometimes. Everyone’s unhappy sometimes. Have you heard from your mother lately?’

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about my mother. I wanted to talk about Isobel, so I showed him the picture of Polly again. He screwed it up, tossing it into a bin with a lunge of his long arm.

  France had turned Theo a golden colour: a soft brown that gave his skin a peachy sheen. His hair was like the sun and his eyes shone. I didn’t know it then, but Sylvie had been good to him. Perhaps that’s why he was good to me. He said: ‘You shouldn’t let Polly and Isobel get to you. They were like this before you came along, you know. They’ve always been like this.’

  ‘Why don’t they like each other?’

  ‘God knows. Sometimes that’s the way it is between people. But it doesn’t mean they don’t care for each other. They just don’t get on.’ He looked at me intently, and, opening the pad, he started sketching.

  ‘What you’ve got to remember, little one, is that when Isobel and Polly are having a go at each other, it’s not your fault. You shouldn’t let the buggers get you down, kid.’

  ‘Buggers?’ I asked.

  He chose to disregard me, saying: ‘The first rule of survival in this house is: ignore them. And never, ever interfere. If you do, they’ll go for you like a pair of piranhas. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  He showed me the sketch he’d drawn. It was a cartoon of me, a grin plastered on my face. ‘Is this one more like it?’ he asked.

  I smiled in reply, and I could see he was glad he’d made me feel better. Then I remembered what Isobel had done in his absence, and I told Theo about Peter’s painting, his books and music and his clothes. That changed everything. He was horrified. So much so, that he was gone in a couple of days. He claimed he wanted to swot for his Oxbridge exams at the home of a friend who lived near his school.

  He needn’t have lied. We realised he didn’t want to be at Graylings. As it turned out, Isobel didn’t want to hear about Sylvie; and for his part, Theo didn’t want to be subjected to his mother’s contempt for his father. So Theo left as soon as he could. I wish I could have followed him. Failing that, I wish I had heeded his advice.

  16

  ONE NIGHT, ABOUT a week before the end of the holidays, I was lying on my bed listening to Polly and Isobel quarrel again over Peter’s pearls, when I came across a story in True Murder that I recognised. It was an article about the Ellbergs, Polly’s neighbours in Washington. She had told us that Mr Ellberg had murdered his family on the Fourth of July: his family and their dog, a red setter named Frisbee. Polly had said Jacinth Ellberg had been her best friend. But according to the magazine, the Ellbergs hadn’t lived in Washington. They’d lived in Chicago, in a house by a lake. And there wasn’t a Jacinth; there was a Jacob, a ten-year-old boy shot through the head with a bullet from his father’s gun.

  I closed the magazine quickly. Polly had lied. In order to claim she had touched a dead body? I curled up in bed with Miss Fielding’s shawl, sucking its fringe of tassels to help me think. If I’d been Polly I would have changed their names, so no one would ever know that I’d lied. But why had she pretended to know the Ellbergs when she couldn’t have done? As far as I knew, she had visited New York and Boston, but never Chicago. And the Ellbergs had had a son, not a daughter. If Polly had lied about Jacinth, what else had she lied about?

  ‘I’m not going to go,’ Isobel was saying, ‘until you take that necklace off.’

  Since Peter’s departure, they’d quarrelled constantly about Peter’s gift to Polly. It was as if the onset of puberty in her daughter had inflamed Isobel’s sensitivity, bringing the rivalry between them to the fore. But now the rivalry was laced with venom. The argument always began in the same way. Isobel would insist that Polly remove the pearls before going to sleep, and Polly would refuse. She said she was never going to take them off, which wasn’t true, because she removed them for her bath. Isobel stood over her daughter, trying to persuade her to give her the necklace for safekeeping, while Polly stubbornly held her ground.

  ‘I’m not going to go,’ Isobel repeated, ‘till you take that necklace off. If I asked Ajuba, she’d do as she was told. I know she would, because she’s sensible.’

  ‘Leave her out of this,’ Polly retorted.

  That night, determined to break her daughter’s defiance once and for all, Isobel sat down on Polly’s bed, folding her arms. ‘I’m waiting, Polly.’

  It was going to be a long evening for all of us unless she conceded to her mother’s request. After twenty minutes’ silence, Polly slowly unfastened the necklace, dropping it in its velvet case.

  ‘Satisfied?’ she asked.

  Isobel gave a slow smile. ‘Thank you, darling. You deserve a kiss for that.’

  Polly turned away, so Isobel kissed me goodnight instead, her lips as cold as marble.

  Even after all these years, I find it hard to describe what happened that night. Although there were only three of us in the house, I became convinced that there were others among us. What I lived through was agonisingly real at the time.

  Teasing a tassel of Miss Fielding’s shawl, using it as a comforter, I heard the house stretching itself and yawning. I heard its breathing, its sighs. And at midnight, counting the chimes of the grandfather clock, I sensed ghosts from the past treading the floorboards outside. There were two of them, one with a slow dragging step, the other firmer, quicker. They walked up the corridor towards the rose room. I heard their cries and whispers. Or was it Mrs Venus again? Gathering the shawl around me, I pulled a pillow over my face.

  While Polly lay sleeping, I yearned for my mother’s arms to cradle me once again. I fondled the shawl, my fingers following the pattern of embroidered roses: Miss Fielding’s roses. They writhed beneath my fingers. Tossing from side to side, I wondered when I would see my mother again. When would I hear her laughter? I wondered how I could possibly have sensed her presence in Isobel. I thought of Isobel in the rose garden, a maggot in my mango. I thought of her tears, her face merging with my mother’s, her incandescent rage. And then I remembered the babies in Miss Fielding’s trunk.

  I found myself gasping for air. Why had Polly lied? Why had she lied to me, her best friend? Of all her friends I would have kept her secret. All the questions I wanted answered became tangled up with thoughts of my mother and Isobel, and the horror of Miss Fielding’s trunk, so that by the time the bedroom door swung open, I was in a state of acute distress.

  But I saw her. Believe me, I did. I saw Isobel step in the room and walk over to Polly’s bed. I glimpsed an expression on her face that has neve
r left me. Her eyes bright with anger, Isobel stared at her daughter. She wanted obedience and Polly’s resistance had infuriated her. I saw her holding her daughter’s necklace and, opening her mouth wide, drop the pearls inside, swallowing them completely.

  I shut my eyes. Only after hearing the rustle of Isobel’s nightdress as she closed the door did I open them again.

  Then it seemed that the room itself was alive. I heard a groan and a baby crying, a jug emptied of water, hands washed and the muffled voices of women talking. And then a scream of terror, and a sobbing I shall never forget. A woman was heartbroken, her lips wet with the bitter salt taste of surrender. The tighter I clung to the shawl, the more vivid my waking dream became. Then, gasping for breath again, for control of my senses, I flung the shawl away. Leaping out of bed, I ran over to Polly.

  She seemed impervious to any sound in this world or the next.

  ‘Polly,’ I called, shaking her. She half-opened one eye. The woman had stopped crying, and so had the baby. ‘They’ve stopped,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear them?’

  ‘Hear what?’ Making a space for me in her bed, Polly allowed me to get in.

  ‘I heard a baby and a woman crying,’ I told her. ‘And I saw things.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said turning over. ‘Freddy Kruger lives.’

  She was on the verge of falling asleep again when I decided to ask her about Jacinth. I didn’t want to be the only one awake. I didn’t want the shadows to reappear.

  ‘Polly, why did you lie about Jacinth?’

  She was immediately alert. ‘Who says I lied?’

  ‘True Murder says there wasn’t a Jacinth. She was Jacob Ellberg from Chicago, and you’ve never been to Chicago.’ I was beginning to feel better, talking about facts recorded in print for the world to see.

  ‘So I’m a liar, am I?’ In the darkness I could feel Polly’s eyes cutting into me.

  ‘You could have told me. I wouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘Aj, why don’t you go sleep in your own bed?’ She might as well have suggested that I buy a one-way ticket to hell. I was too frightened to sleep on my own.

  ‘I won’t tell, Polly,’ I pleaded. ‘I promise I won’t tell.’

  ‘Well, shut up then!’ With that, she turned over and pretended to sleep.

  In the morning, when she discovered her necklace gone, I told her what I had seen.

  Isobel was at the dressing-table mirror when Polly ran into her bedroom. I hesitated by the door. Standing behind her, Polly scowled at her mother’s reflection. ‘Where is it?’ she demanded, holding the empty necklace case in her hand.

  Isobel smiled. She knew her daughter well. She must have been waiting for Polly’s entrance. I heard her say in her clear, distinctive voice: ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Polly? You should knock before you come in here.’

  ‘I want it back!’

  ‘I told you –’ Isobel began in an all-knowing tone.

  ‘I haven’t lost it. You’ve stolen it.’ Polly flung the velvet case at her mother’s feet. ‘You always want what I’ve got,’ she cried, ‘but you can’t have it. He gave it to me, not to you. And it’s you he’s leaving. He’s not leaving me.’

  ‘Polly, please calm down.’ Isobel swung round to face her daughter.

  ‘You can’t take him from me!’ Polly shouted.

  ‘I’m not trying to. Let’s try and discuss this sensibly, shall we?’

  But Polly was in no mood for discussion. Something vital was at stake, something to do with her father. She retorted: ‘Daddy says I’m wonderful!’

  Turning to the mirror again, Isobel started brushing her hair with quick strokes. Her voice remained steady. ‘Of course you’re wonderful,’ she affirmed. Catching Polly’s eye in the looking-glass, she continued smoothly: ‘Have you asked Ajuba about your necklace?’

  Polly hesitated. She stood very still. ‘Peter says I’m nothing like you.’

  ‘Ajuba may have borrowed it, you know, darling. I’d ask her if I were you.’

  Incredulous at her mother’s suggestion, Polly stared at her wide-eyed. ‘No wonder he hates you. Peter’s right. You’re a bitch. You’re a bloody, fucking bitch!’

  Turning quickly, Isobel struck her daughter. I ran back to our bedroom, hearing Polly close behind me. Isobel, immediately sorry, ran after Polly. But Polly bolted the door.

  I sat quietly on the firm wooden bed beside hers. When I saw Polly’s face, I was glad that in a few days’ time we’d be back at school again. She held a hand against her cheek and wept with fractured sobs that seemed to tear her apart. I couldn’t keep the sympathy out of my eyes. She greeted it with anger.

  ‘She says you took it.’

  ‘I didn’t take them. I didn’t take them!’ I cried.

  ‘Promise?’ Did she really doubt me? A hint of cunning crept into her eyes.

  I crossed my heart, saying the words: ‘Cross my heart and hope to die!’

  ‘You’ve got to promise something else,’ she said in a tone suggesting that if I dared cross her, I’d live to regret it. ‘I want you to promise not to tell about Jacinth.’

  There it was. She didn’t trust me. She didn’t believe I could be loyal of my own volition, unless she had something against me: the necklace she knew I hadn’t taken.

  ‘I promise not to tell about Jacinth,’ I agreed.

  ‘So we’re best friends again?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, remembering Theo’s advice. ‘Of course we’re best friends.’

  I was a fly caught between mother and daughter. They had me in their web.

  17

  POLLY AND I spent the last day of the holiday with Miss Edith at the Gatehouse. Her home, filled with curios and memorabilia of a bygone age, had become a haven from the endless manoeuvring of Graylings. I still wanted to solve the mystery of the babies in Miss Fielding’s trunk, but Polly’s interest in the case had waned. Apparently, Miss Fielding’s coffin wasn’t going to be dug up after all, so Polly decided, unilaterally, that playing detectives was childish. She no longer wanted Beth around, and she said she couldn’t understand why I continued poring over the notes of our interviews, when it was so obviously a waste of time.

  Though I didn’t yet realise it, our agreement not to question Miss Edith about her life with Miss Fielding paid dividends. The former companion, released from the onslaught of our investigation, became almost protective of us.

  It was the beginning of September, and though there was a hint of autumn in the air, it was still warm enough to play outside. We were sitting at a card table in the patio garden, learning how to gamble with Miss Edith. She had already taught us how to play poker, which Polly was exceptionally good at, and we’d just finished a set of Racing Demon, which I had won.

  Miss Edith shuffled the pack to begin another game. Although arthritis restricted her flexibility, she was still adept at handling cards. She was about to teach us how to play Gin Rummy when Polly yawned and asked: ‘Did people divorce when you were young?’

  Without waiting for an answer, I said: ‘They didn’t, did they? Not in the Olden Days.’

  Miss Edith laid out the cards for a solitary game of Patience. ‘We were brought up to stick together,’ Miss Edith explained, turning over a card. ‘Which means that in my day there were some very miserable people around.’

  ‘Everybody divorces nowadays. They divorce even in Ghana. Don’t they, Aj?’

  I nodded. I watched Miss Edith turn over a series of cards ending with the Queen of Hearts.

  ‘Not everybody divorces,’ Miss Edith replied.

  ‘Everybody divorces more or less.’ Regret had given way to exaggeration in Polly’s voice; pain was visible in her eyes. She wanted Peter at home again.

  I think Miss Edith felt sorry for us, Polly especially. ‘I like to think of it this way,’ she began. ‘Being unhappy is one of the hazards of loving someone, because we usually want things to stay the same. But they change. You can�
��t stop them from changing. So you can only hope for the best.’

  Miss Edith turned over the Jack of Hearts, and, placing it beneath the Queen of Clubs, she flipped over the next card. It was the Queen of Spades.

  ‘And while you’re hoping for the best,’ she continued, ‘you have to pray that love, being what it is, doesn’t lock you up and throw the keys away.’

  Despite our stint as the crime-busting trio of Venus, Benson and Bradshaw, neither Polly nor I had the experience, as yet, to understand what Miss Edith was talking about. However, an image of Rapunzel locked up in her tower caught in my mind. ‘You mean like in a fairytale?’ I asked.

  ‘Exactly. Like in a fairytale,’ Miss Edith confirmed.

  ‘If only it had been like that, Ajuba,’ Miss Edith reflected, when she thought me old enough to hear her account of events. I was eighteen, a suitable age, in her opinion, to be told the elemental facts of her life: the story of her friendship with Olivia Fielding. Miss Edith was in her eighties by then, and I’d cycled from the Bradshaws’ farm to the Gatehouse to say goodbye.

  I had finished my secondary school education at Sherborne Girls’, which I attended with Beth. I was about to start a foundation course at the Slade and I must have appeared nervous of the transition from boarding school to college. My relations with my father’s new family, which never fully recovered from my anger towards Nina, had reached a tentative state of accommodation. At best, Nina tolerated me. It is the lot of stepmothers, I suspect, to experience the worst of other people’s children, and after what had transpired, Nina wasn’t able to forgive me. I can’t say I blame her. There are some deeds, apparently, which are beyond rehabilitation.

  When I arrived at the Gatehouse I probably seemed a little fragile. Miss Edith, believing that my obsession with the past would be my undoing, derailing me once again, decided to take me in hand. In a gesture of generosity that I appreciate to this day, she managed to persuade me that what happened to Polly was not my fault, but rather a coincidence: a collision of random events.

  ‘You see, it’s never quite like what they say in fairytales, is it, dear? People grow tired of each other; they feel the urge to try out new things. But in the end, I stuck to Olivia like a limpet. And somehow we survived my adventure in the Lakes.’