by Sally Bayley
‘Now lift your sword … feel the valour of the moment, the valour of your mission! You are here to save England from those French varmints! Graaah!’
I lifted my sword high, but all that came out was, ‘Once more, once more, once more … unto the breach, dear ones.’ I sounded more like Mrs Tiggy-Winkle handing out treats than Henry V lunging down a breach.
‘Take some deep breaths and pull up tall … Imagine you are God-on-earth and this is your moment of heroism. All of England is watching you. You are about to make history! Murder the buggers! Do your worst! Trample them into the ground!’
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I never saw past the front door of the house on Maltravers Drive, but I imagined that the major and his wife were just like Colonel Easterbrook and his wife in A Murder is Announced, sitting at breakfast reading the papers.
‘Archie,’ said Mrs Easterbrook to her husband, ‘listen to this.’ Colonel Easterbrook paid no attention. He was busy reading The Times.
‘Archie, do listen. A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation.’ She paused. Colonel Easterbrook smiled at her affectionately.
‘It’s the Murder Game,’ he said. ‘That’s all. One person’s the murderer, but nobody knows who. The lights go out. The murderer chooses the person he’s going to murder. It’s a good game – if the person knows something about police work.’
‘Someone like you, Archie. You had to deal with all those interesting cases in India. Why didn’t Miss Blacklock ask you to help organise the game?’
It was true that Major Stapley had spent time in India, where once upon a time he had ridden elephants and met begums and baboos. That was before he met Mrs Stapley, who stopped him doing all of that. Mrs Stapley was working in a school in India teaching all the ‘dear little things in dhotis how to do their sums. But there wasn’t much point because the poor little mites had nothing to count, except grains of rice,’ she told me wearily as she sipped her tea and scoffed her scone.
‘India was the jewel in her crown,’ my aunt said loudly. ‘The Indians know how to run railways. They learnt it from the British, of course, but they know how to run a decent train service, better than we do.’
But then the major retired from India and came back to live in a small seaside town. Mrs Stapley came back with him – she’d had enough of the small brown bodies dressed in dhotis who couldn’t do their sums – and began working in a Gels’ School. Mrs Stapley – who was called Margaret – decided that she didn’t mind marrying a man ten or fifteen years older than she was, an old man who walked with a stick, if it meant she got a nice big house by the sea with mullion windows and wisteria around the walls. No, she didn’t mind one bit, she told her sister Agatha, if it meant she could order fresh fish for supper three times a week and home-made scones from the local bakery. She could even afford to hire a gel.
Mum had found the major and his wife through the local paper. She placed an advertisement in the Arun Gazette and one day they answered the advert. It was the lovely creamy writing paper that persuaded Mum. ‘Look, Dice – properly embossed.’ That and the fact he was a major, of course.
Since Fred’s Estate, Mum had spent hours looking through the personal ads column for old furniture. But people advertise in the Gazette when they want jobs done too: Handymen, Gardeners, Maids, Detectives and Tutors.
‘Private Tutor wanted to teach teens to speak Shakespeare nicely. Must like tea and scones. An Army man preferred. Will take wife.’
23
The Body in the Library
In between speaking Shakespeare, I was still reading Agatha Christie. I couldn’t give her up, not yet. I read and reread her, and then I found her short stories. So I read and reread those until I knew them off by heart.
Because when I grew up I was going to write detective stories. I would write about people who live together for years and years in the same village, sometimes in the same house, and then one day, for some reason, usually involving money or missing relatives or both, they decide to organise a cruel party. Their chief guest is Murder.
You read detective fiction because you want to be frightened. You read it because you want your flesh to crawl with ants; you want to feel the goosebumps rising. I reread A Pocket Full of Rye to frighten myself. I was terrified at the thought of poor Gladys, the maid found in the garden of Yewtree Lodge. I minded about Gladys Martin. I minded as much as Miss Marple did.
Miss Marple minded because she had trained Gladys to be a maid from an orphanage and Gladys had left and gone off to work in cafés because she had liked boys and wanted to be seen by them. But boys never took any notice of Gladys Martin because she wasn’t pretty. Gladys was spotty and plain. She wore bad clothes, or rather the clothes she wore never suited her because, truth be told, Gladys was quite fat.
‘Life is cruel,’ says Miss Marple, ‘I’m afraid. One doesn’t really know what to do with the Gladyses. They enjoy going to the pictures and all that, but they’re always thinking of impossible things that can’t possibly happen to them.’
Poor Gladys Martin, who everyone calls adenoidal because she speaks through her nose rather than her mouth. Mum hated it when we did this. She hated it so much she sometimes covered my brother’s mouth with sticking plaster. But it was my aunt who put her up to it, because in the end it was always my aunt.
How undignified! Miss Marple says it is ‘an affront to human dignity … such a cruel, contemptuous gesture’.
Gladys Martin haunted me, Gladys Martin with her squashed-pegged nose. I already knew the name Gladys because my grandmother had a sister called Gladys who was dead. I knew nothing about Gladys except that she had been silly. Gladys had been a giggly girl; Gladys liked to giggle. Gladys couldn’t help giggling.
She was always behind her hand, Maze said, full of giggles. But girls are like that. Maze must have told me that, or perhaps it was my aunt who told me that Maisie was silly and Maisie made me think of Gladys. Gladys and Maisie have blurred. My aunt didn’t think much of either, not even though Maisie was her mother. ‘Candyfloss between their ears … not a real thought in their head … such silly girls, always giggling.’
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Everything I know about Gladys comes from what Maisie knew. And now I think about it, Maze must have known more than my aunt, because she had her photograph, the one she carried in her purse, always inside her purse in the middle pocket. And Maze grew up with Gladys, who was before my aunt – before, not after.
The only picture I can hold in my head is from that photograph, the one of Maze and Gladys sitting on the pebbly beach. Maze says it’s Shoreham beach with a lighthouse, but you can’t see the lighthouse in the picture. They cut it out, whoever took the photograph. When I think of Gladys on the beach I see a girl with a big grin giggling into the back of her hand at the slightest thing. I imagine her eating sandwiches when no one was looking, Gladys with her hand in the picnic basket nibbling on the cheese and chutney sandwiches.
Gladys Turner was my great-aunt. I wonder if she was what Inspector Neele in A Pocket Full of Rye calls ‘the adenoidal type’, the sort who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Inspector Neele recognises Gladys Martin’s type when she comes into the interview room to be questioned. He knows that Gladys is frightened to death; he must be patient:
The girl who entered the room with obvious unwillingness was an unattractive, frightened looking girl, who managed to look faintly sluttish in spite of being tall and smartly dressed in a claret coloured uniform. She said at once, fixing imploring eyes upon him, ‘I didn’t do anything. I didn’t really. I don’t know anything about it.’
Gladys Martin is a frightened little child; she is a stunted child. She is a baby still. At thirteen, I was no Gladys Martin. I knew not to speak through my nose, and I wouldn’t have been frightened of talking to inspectors.
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> All crime writers have to learn to write a good plot, and most plots are like playing a board game. Murder is playing a game that goes right or wrong, depending on what side you are on; and murder can be as easy as winning a game of tiddlywinks. Tick, tick, tack and you’re gone in a second, swallowed inside that small plastic hole. Murder is a game of tiddlywinks, and at some point most people imagine murdering someone, even if it’s just for a second.
Take Aunt Reed. She’d love to strangle Jane Eyre with her bare hands, and Jane Eyre would love a turn at boxing her aunt’s ears. Once she started she wouldn’t be able to stop. Temper, temper, temper says Aunt Reed. That’s what does it. Temper is what leaves you with blood on your hands. Temper is what gets you thrown into the Red Room. Everyone has a Red Room somewhere inside them, with blood on their hands.
Murder is the stuff of dreams, except with murder, those bad dreams turn into something real. Then Bertha Mason really does come into your room while you’re sleeping and tear up your linen veil. Rip, rip, rip, gnash, gnash. Claw!
And then there is the silly sort of dream, pure fantasy, but with just a smack of reality to make it absolutely delicious. That is silly Dolly Bantry in The Body in the Library.
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One early morning in June, Dolly Bantry, wife of Colonel Bantry, is enjoying a lovely dream. In her dream, things are going very well: she’s just learned she’s won first prize at the flower show for her sweet peas. Dolly can see the vicar holding a splendid silver cup with her name on it. Dolly is beaming.
Just behind the vicar, she can see her old friend Miss Jane Marple looking a little bit miffed; and behind Miss Marple, she catches a glimpse of Mrs Price-Ridley looking very miffed indeed. Dolly is pleased to see this, and she beams some more.
She turns to look at her cup and sees her flushed face reflected in it. Above her head, small white clouds float by. Dolly looks up towards the blue and white sky and to her delight finds her name scrawled in the clouds. Her smile grows larger and larger. I’m grinning like the Cheshire cat, she thinks to herself in her dream.
But suddenly her dream is interrupted by the sound of squawking outside the door. How rude, Dolly thinks. I was having such a lovely time. She sighs and turns over, but she can’t block it out. There is more noise.
The squawking is followed by a clatter of teacups and a loud scream. The silver cup and the smiling vicar vanish and Dolly is forced to open her eyes. She sees that the curtains are still drawn.
Downstairs, doors are banging and Dolly can hear the sound of sobbing. What a hullabaloo! What a nuisance! She turns to her husband and gives him a jab. ‘Arthur! Arthur! Wake up. Something’s going on downstairs. I can hear all sorts of banging and screaming. Go and find out what on earth it is.’
‘Eh? What did you say?’ There is a heavy groan from the space beside her.
‘Go and see what’s going on, Arthur. There’s a terrible commotion. Something must have happened.’
‘Good God, woman! It’s Sunday morning. Leave me to my sleep, can’t you?’
‘Arthur! Please will you go and see what the noise is all about. There might be an intruder or something. He may have a weapon!’
There is a loud groan and a shake of the blankets.
‘Oh, God, Dolly! All right!’
The colonel hauls himself from his warm bedclothes and begins fishing around for his slippers on the floor. He trudges towards the door and pulls hard on the handle. The door clicks open.
He can hear voices rising up the stairs. Joseph, the butler, is standing at the bottom looking pale.
‘Good morning, Colonel. Bad news, I’m afraid. We’ve found a body in the library.’
‘What? A body? Are you sure, man?’
‘Quite sure, Colonel, I’m afraid. I think you should come and see for yourself.’
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Early one morning my brother Peter and I found a body in our front room. It was the body of a man we’d never seen before, and when we caught sight of him sprawled out across the pink chaise-longue we screamed.
Mum came running. ‘What on earth is all this racket?’ She looked pale.
‘There’s a man asleep on the sofa. Look!’
‘For goodness’ sake! That’s David.’
‘Who is David? David who?’
‘Di’s friend. He’s an old friend from the past. He’s come to visit. You do remember him, you’ve just forgotten.’ Mum looked around and sniffed. ‘It was a long time ago. I don’t suppose he’ll be staying for long.’
Mum looked down at the man, whose hair was sticking straight up into the air. She looked cross, as if she wanted to put him out with the rubbish. ‘He’s offered to do a few jobs around the house. He might as well be useful while he’s here.’
But how on earth did he get here? I looked down at the man slouched on the chaise-longue and thought that he must be an alcoholic. Men lay about like that when they had done something bad, usually a lot of drinking.
Mum said the man was David, as though we should know him. But David was from the past, and the past was too far away for us to see. I peered at the man with thin brown hair, the man who was thin all over, the man who looked like a twig snapped off a tree. Someone might scoop him up and put him out in the garden with the leaves and the worms.
‘Garden rubbish … it’ll make for some nice garden rubbish.’
Garden rubbish was orange peel and apple cores and soggy cabbage leaves and old bits of dried bread. Garden rubbish was good for the roses. But garden rubbish takes years to break down, Maze says.
Bodies decompose too; that’s why you have to bury them quickly. Colonel Bantry knows that the minute he sees the young woman with platinum-blonde hair lying sprawled out on his expensive oriental rug, the one he’d brought back from India. Colonel Bantry knows that when you find a body, you have to get it out, quick-smart. Bloody entrails seep into carpets and leave a terrible mess.
I looked down at our new velvety carpet covered with swirling blue and cream shapes and I saw figures moving around, two thin people holding hands, two people roaming round and round the garden like a teddy bear.
Two thin people are walking around in circles, chanting words and praying. Two people with brown hair are up against the garden wall where Mum grew her roses. I can see the roses bobbing in the background. On the other side is the apple tree where we threw our buckets up into the branches. But there are no buckets in the tree and no children, only two thin people with their eyes closed pressed up against a wall with the tree hanging down over them. David and Sue, Sue and David. Sue and David up a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.
David was married to Sue. Or Sue was his girlfriend. I didn’t know which. It didn’t matter. But once upon a time, David had been with Sue and they were walking around our garden holding hands. David and Sue looked as though they might be going to church. David and Sue were in love. Then something happened, but we didn’t know what, and now Sue is gone. She had never been seen again. Not since that day in the garden. Now there is only David lying slumped on the pink chaise-longue in the front room.
Once upon a time, Sue had been a name pinned to a tree. But her name had blown away. Or else someone had torn it off. And now, no one was sure what Sue’s real name was. Was it Blunt or Barnes or Baxter or Black or Blackie? Was it Bird? Sue was a little bird shot from the sky; a tiny blackbird that tumbled from the tower.
24
Bertha
I’ve always been afraid of Bertha Mason, the dark-haired woman who belongs to Mr Rochester. Bertha is the past and the past is bad, and so Bertha must be kept upstairs, out of harm’s way.
In her attic room, Bertha crawls around like a wild cat. She hisses and bites at the window; she scratches the paint off the walls with her nails; she clings to the curtains with her teeth. Poor Bertha Mason, no one would recognise her now.
‘The state she’s in. Look at her hair, all matted and messed up … just like a witch! Poor Berthy, Berthy calm d
own, calm down. We’re here to help. Here, help me pick her up, Rog. She needs a good washing down. Help me with her legs … Blimey, what dead weights they are! What’ve they been feeding her on? Can you get her ankle, David? This is a three-man job. We might need to call the others in … we need more hands on deck. Cor, did you get a whiff of that? I don’t think this lady’s had a bath for weeks. Tie her feet together, Rog, she’s kicking like a mule. She needs to go back upstairs!’
But Bertha wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time she had another life, filled with sunshine and fresh air. Once, Bertha Mason giggled and tossed back her hair. She wore white cotton dresses with lacy hems that showed off her strong brown legs. She laughed and smiled at men.
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Bertha Mason grew up in the Bahamas with a brother called James. Once upon a time they played hide-and-seek among the palm trees and ferns.
‘There you are, there you are,’ her brother said. ‘I can see your pink dress, Berthy, and your toes are peeking out! And Berthy, I can hear you sneeze! You shouldn’t hide among the flowers, silly goose, they make you sneeze! Go further back into the dark trees. Go back into the dark, Berthy, where the bark is rough and the nettles sting and the ivy covers your body in green tangles!’
In the Bahamas, Bertha Mason hid among the trees and counted to twenty. Then there was only her brother to come and find her. ‘There you are, Berthy, among the dark trees. I can still see your dress, you silly girl. Cover yourself up with ivy!’
The Bahamas are in the Caribbean. Pampas grass and coconut trees grow there. Every day is blue and green and yellow. The Bahamas are full of bright light. Once upon a time the queen of England ruled the Bahamas. She took holidays there. The queen liked the Bahamas, so she decided to stay: