‘Exactly.’
She wouldn’t be easy to deceive, but I was going to try, because if there was any real money in this for me, bugger confidentiality. I made a massive effort and produced my most honest expression. ‘I can’t give you a blanket promise. I’ll need to know, first.’
‘Last night, I considered my position. Perhaps it would be best if you read this.’ Her neck was blushing again as she thrust some pages of typescript at me. ‘Please read it now. In the other room. While I prepare the coffee.’
I went back to the other room, looking pleased, feeling pissed off. Why couldn’t she just tell me? At this rate we’d be shuffling round the dance floor together until she was carried off to the great schoolroom in the sky where a third of the globe is still marked in pink for the British Empire.
At least her manuscript wasn’t handwritten.
By the time anyone reads this, I shall be dead, beyond minding about anything, which of course includes whether I begin my story with a cliché. In my other books, I was always very careful to reshape and rework clichés, turn them sides to middle so my readers got their money’s worth. Her other books? First I’d heard. Maybe she desk-top published her own homilies.
Very important, giving value for money. Part of the standards I strove to live by and to inculcate in the many young people it was my privilege to teach and guide. Pompous old boot.
I don’t know, of course, how long I will live. As I write it is 1990 and I am seventy, in excellent health. She had arthritic hands.The whole truth, Barty? I don’t smoke or drink to excess and I have never indulged in promiscuous, or indeed any, sexual intercourse. I walk three miles a day, rain or shine, which is in my view quite adequate exercise. At the moment I am house-sitting for an ex-pupil and I managed the two flights of stairs to my bedroom carrying my suitcase without pausing for breath. With the exception of my parents, sadly killed in an air-raid in 1941, my family are uniformly long-lived.
Does it matter, you may ask, when I die? It does to me, though less as I grow older. It matters to my story a great deal. For example, if I last another twenty years my books may well still be out of print and you will have no idea who I am. Who are you? It is also remotely possible that the public will have forgotten the Sherwin murder case. That I doubt, however: unsolved murders in high life are rarely forgotten by the British and even as I write, thirty-two years after the event, I have been approached by a Sunday newspaper for help with a colour supplement article. Delightfully, the approach came from an honorary ex-pupil (I was officially responsible only for his younger sisters), now involved in the world of journalism and television. It was my trust in Bartholomew O’Neill, above all, which persuaded me to consider breaking the silence of a lifetime.
I am the possessor of important information: I have light to cast on the circumstances of the murder. That is what my story is about and I shall tell it as straightforwardly as I can, and as fairly. It is important never to judge until you have heard all the evidence, as I used to tell my young people. I always heard them out before I reprimanded them for a misdemeanour. Occasionally they had more than excuses to offer and the young feel injustice keenly. At my age, experience has taught one to expect it, and it is justice which comes as a surprise, none the less gratifying for that.
Here, the typescript finished. When I looked up, there was a still-pink Miss Potter watching me. I’m used to writers; if you don’t tell them you love their work, down to and including laundry-lists, you have to spend hours doing a body-bag job on the fragments of their personality. ‘I like it. Very good. Catches the flavour of the period.’
‘What period?’
Wrong thing to say. ‘Very convincing, very exciting, very – powerful,’ I rambled.
‘My dear, I do not believe you are telling me the truth. You are merely attempting to flatter me.’
‘That too. But it’s well expressed.’
Placated, Miss Potter brought herself to the matter in hand. ‘But do you understand?’
I understood that she wanted to write her own story, that she half-intended to publish posthumously, and that if I wasn’t careful she’d keep the best bits for herself. ‘You begin, By the time anyone reads this, I shall be dead. Do you mean that? Aren’t you going to publish in your lifetime?’
‘I haven’t yet decided. That depends.’
‘On what?’ Her meticulous preposition-juggling was contagious. ‘What on?’ I rephrased, unwilling to be brainwashed.
‘On what you discover in the course of your researches,’ she said briskly. ‘My proposal is this. I will give you practical assistance over such matters as names and addresses. I have already given you the valuable information that Mr Lemaire’s book, deplorable as it is, can be substantially relied upon as far as the facts are concerned. In return for my help, you will do some research for me. I may then, in addition, supply you with further information that I am the only living person to possess.’
‘Research for you?’ I was gob-smacked. Surely she must have grasped that I’d already be working thirty-six hours a day to get Barty’s piece to the starting-gate? If she thought that I’d also wade around looking up references for her on crab-apple bottling or the effect of the National Curriculum on Swan and Edgar’s, she could stuff it.
‘I’m concerned about a missing girl. Charlotte Sherwin’s daughter Zara, always known as Toad. She’s only eighteen.’
‘Charlotte Sherwin’s daughter – Rollo’s granddaughter?’
‘Quite so, Toad Mayfield. Charlotte’s husband is Ludovic Mayfield.’
‘The politician?’
‘Quite.’
Ludovic Mayfield was a familiar name, but the face was more elusive, though I had seen pix in the papers. He was a Cabinet Minister with some thankless job: Northern Ireland? ‘The police will fall over themselves to find a Cabinet Minister’s daughter,’ I said blankly. ‘I’d be useless. They’ve got the resources.’
‘You don’t understand. Her parents do not accept that she is missing. Her mother claims she is in Nepal.’
‘The Foreign Office—’
‘I do not believe she ever went to Nepal.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she has not sent me a postcard. I particularly asked her to send me a postcard. Nepal has long held a fascination for me, as she well knows. She promised to send me postcards. She is not a girl who would lightly abandon such a promise.’
Her naïveté took my breath away. In my view, once any red-blooded eighteen-year-old, even one who still allowed herself to be known as Toad, had escaped from Miss Potter’s clutches. Miss P. could whistle for her postcard.
‘I expect the postal service isn’t great,’ I temporized.
‘She has been away for three months.’
‘Our postal service isn’t great either.’
‘She promised me several.’ Her face was set. She was not to be distracted. And come to think of it, three months was a long time.
‘Surely her family has heard from her?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you. Unfortunately, I have had a – disagreement – with Charlotte, her mother. As you realize, she is the eldest daughter of Rollo, Lord Sherwin. She was already living in the family house, but she inherited it and the bulk of the estate when her mother died.That was immediately before Toad’s supposed departure for the East.’ I made a note of it as Miss Potter went on. ‘We are no longer on speaking terms. If you would be so good as to set my mind at rest in this matter, I am prepared to co-operate with you over the article. I assure you, my information is worth having.’
I agreed, of course. I had no choice. My impulse was to grasp her by the throat and shake the self-important old trout until her secrets rattled, but I believed that she knew something about the Sherwin murder, though it probably wasn’t as crucial as she made out. I expressed courteous rapture at her offer, scribbled down some facts about Toad, extracted a half-permission to use Miss Potter’s photographs and took her through Barty’s list at high speed.
; ‘Dr Bloom?’
‘Laura’s husband. The family doctor. Sadly, now dead.’
‘Charlotte, Helena, Penelope, Candida?’
‘The daughters of Rollo, Lord Sherwin. I believe Charlotte is at present in London. The Warwickshire address on your list is correct: I will add the London address and telephone number. The other girls are on holiday in St Lucia. Penelope has a house there. They are due to return in December.’ Too late for me, damn. Barty wouldn’t stand the airfare, even if I’d had the time.
‘Rosalind Sherwin? Who was she?’
‘The niece of Lord and Lady Sherwin. Previously a pupil of mine, in Kenya, for several years. She was living in Ashtons Hall at the time.’
‘How old was she in 1958?’
‘Seventeen.’
‘Good. What’s her address?’
‘I haven’t kept in touch with Rosalind,’ said Miss Potter, and alarm bells rang in my head. I had Miss Potter pegged as Queen Keep-in-Touch, a mistress of punctilio, a persistent, guilt-inducing sender of Christmas and birthday cards.
‘Is she married?’ I pressed.
‘I’m afraid I have no idea. As I said, I haven’t kept in touch.’
Rosalind was even more of a must. I smelt dissension and disapproval, a fertile ground for information.
‘Mr and Mrs Crisp?’
‘The butler and housekeeper. Unfortunately, both dead.’
Apart from Miss Potter herself, that was the list. I had additions of my own: the Scotland Yard man in charge of the case and H. Plowright, if either of them survived. ‘Who else should I see? Who was about the house, before the murder? Who were Laura’s friends?’
‘Lady Sherwin had many acquaintances but few friends. Katrina, Lady Paxton, was perhaps closest to her, as her daughter Stephanie was to Rosalind. She lives in Warwickshire. Debrett will yield the address.’
‘You don’t think she’ll have moved?’
‘The Paxtons haven’t moved for four hundred years.’ Miss Potter sat, composed, her hands folded in her lap, smiling as if she drew justification and reassurance from an inner vision of the Paxtons swelling in Warwickshire soil like a prize-winning root vegetable.
‘Anyone else? Rollo’s friends?’
‘I’m afraid I have no idea. Lord Sherwin was much away from home.’
‘Anyone else at all, living on the estate?’
‘The estate manager, now dead. Some farm workers, in tied cottages. The actor who rented my lodge at that time.’
‘Who was that?’
‘I believe his name was Revill.’ She spelt it. ‘A famous actor, then. Employed at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.’
‘Still alive?’
‘I have no idea, and I cannot imagine how he could help you. He had very few dealings with us.’
Chapter Four
So far, that was all I wanted from Miss Potter. I headed for home and the telephone as soon as I could without losing her goodwill. I was happy and excited, for two reasons.
The first is that I like being in my flat during working hours, when I’m not unemployed. That’s partly why I’m a freelance. My flat is very important to me. It’s the only place that’s ever been absolutely and completely mine. The bank owns more than half of it, of course, but they’re not about to move in, arrange washing-up rotas and suggest a nice game of Cluedo. When I close the door behind me, that’s it. Everything the eye can see, so long as it doesn’t look out of the window, is mine. Chosen by me and paid for by me from money I’ve earned.
It’s on two floors, the top two floors of a double-fronted but shallow house shoddily built on what, in Victorian times, used to be the winning-post of the old racecourse. You approach it up crumbling steps, through the battle-scarred front door (crimes against property are endemic in Ladbroke Grove) and a narrow hall. On your right is the door to the other flat. You go straight through the hall, not far as the house is only one room deep, and turn left up one flight of stairs to a small landing. Then you’re facing my door. Open the door and you’re in my living-room, sixteen by twelve, not bad at all for London, with a small room beyond which the estate agent’s particulars listed as a second bedroom. It’s seven by twelve and I haven’t furnished it yet, though it is carpeted: the whole flat has fitted carpet, the best quality I could afford. Not good enough; it’s already felting in places. The kitchen is off the other end of the living-room, big enough for a sink, cooker, fridge, washing-machine, built-in cupboards, a small table and four stools.
Up another flight of stairs (lined with bookshelves I put up myself for all my Ross Macdonalds, John D. Macdonalds, Elmore Leonards, Robert B. Parkers, Loren Estlemans, Howard Engels, Mickey Spillanes, Raymond Chandlers) you’ll find my bedroom (with windows north and south, thirteen by twelve) and my bathroom big enough to keep clean in. It has a window, too. When I have hot water I lie in the bath with the window open. There’s no heating or hot water at the moment because I’m in an on-going confrontation situation with my useless plumber.
Once at home, I took off my jacket and boots and got to work. The prospect of the task ahead was the other reason I was so happy. Finding things out is my purest and most reliable pleasure. First you watch, listen, read; then you pierce, cajole, bully, whatever it takes; then, you peel back the artichoke leaves to find the heart. In the process, for a week or a month, you become a citizen of someone else’s country.
I didn’t yet care about Sherwin the man, or the rights and wrongs of it. For all I knew, Laura had been provoked beyond endurance. I’d lived in enough families in my time to know the tension and the hatred and the passion they generated. Nor did I care about bringing a murderer to justice. What I wanted was to find out what Miss Potter knew or thought she knew, to find out how and why Sherwin died, and to earn my fee with a decent piece.
My first telephone calls were dead ends. Neither Barty nor Annabel was in the office. The answering machine message said, ‘We’re in the cutting-room.’ I was annoyed. I wanted Annabel to help me clear up the Toad question because I didn’t believe the girl was missing. The sooner I could prove it to Miss Potter, the sooner she’d come across with her Very Important Information. It could save me a lot of time.
I swore a bit and flicked through my 1972 edition of the Writers’ and Artists’ Year Book. Several phone calls later, it turned out that H. Plowright Lemaire had P.Assed Over; his woolly-headed daughter had destroyed all his notes; she couldn’t remember anything Daddy had said while he was working on the book. She wasn’t much for books or murders, really. She’d just tried to make a happy home for him, and after he’d gone, it was a relief to be able to keep a clean and tidy house without all those messy papers everywhere. The Scotland Yard man had also died, without leaving memoirs. Neither of my two police contacts could be reached to be pumped about the Sherwin file.
The Paxtons next. I’d dropped in to the library on the way home and checked Debrett: Lord Paxton was dead, and Rosalind’s friend Stephanie was now The Honourable Mrs David Forsythe. Better than Featherstonhaugh: at least I could pronounce it. I dialled old Lady Paxton’s number at the family house in Warwickshire, the only one I had. A cleaning woman answered, and readily gave me Stephanie’s addresses and telephone numbers. One in Warwickshire, one in London. The London one was Eaton Square, even smarter than Penelope’s: Stephanie had done well for herself. I didn’t pursue it. Barty would be a much better bet to fix up an appointment there.
Finally, Patrick Revill. According to Miss Potter, he’d been a famous actor. According to Equity, he was still alive. According to his agent, he wasn’t working any more. After a bit of chit-chat the agent gave me his address, a flat in Kilburn, and a telephone number. I tried the number: the phone had been cut off. I’d go round there tomorrow. That gave me the evening free to squeeze the last pip from H. Plowright.
I put on an extra sweater and settled to work. Some time later (two hours? three?) Polly came up from her flat (the other one in the building: ground floor and basement, bigger than mine but not
, I think, nearly as nice) to cadge some coffee and talk about her lover, Clive. She had nothing much to say but she’s still at the stage where speaking his name is enough, even after a year, presumably because she hardly ever sees him. He’s a back-bench Labour MP, married and balding. He orders, from catalogues, objects that not only break immediately, sometimes in the post or even before they leave the factory, but which have no conceivable use in the first place, like a battery-powered egg-timer with a three-egg facility. I gave her coffee and screened out her conversation by putting on a Victoria Wood video.
Polly’s my age but she’s retired. She was a model, made a pile of money, never spent any of it, retired at twenty-five to live off her investments and train as an accountant. Her legs are longer than Hadrian’s Wall, her eyes wide, brown and deep enough to drown in. I’d be jealous of her if she wasn’t so gentle and kind. She’s far too good for the pathetic Clive. She yattered at me for a while: I kept working.
Eventually, I made us more coffee and asked her about Ludovic Mayfield: she was the nearest thing I had to a contact in Westminster, because last year Clive had fixed her up with some work as a researcher in the House of Commons. She could be sticky, though: her niceness prevented her enjoying gossip like a normal person, and her own experiences with the media had taught her to keep everything so far off the record it wasn’t even in the studio.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Not for scandal. Background research.’
‘Promise?’
‘Double promise, scout’s honour.’ I threw my appreciative nod in for good measure.
‘He’s got Trade and Industry, I expect you know that. Since last Saturday.’
‘Last Saturday?’
‘You remember, the Cabinet reshuffle! Because Howe resigned! You must remember!’
Politicians, their wives and mistresses, and lobby correspondents take politics seriously. You have to humour them. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t concentrating.’
‘And he’s a dark horse. Well, some people think he is.’
An Uncommon Murder Page 3