‘So the hunt ball wasn’t usually held at Ashtons Hall?’
‘Never. Always at a hotel. But Rollo lost patience with Laura, finally. There was talk of a divorce.’
‘This was when?’
‘Autumn 1958.’
Stephanie lit another cigarette and looked at me expectantly. ‘Did Rollo have another woman?’ I asked.
‘Must have. Rollo always had another woman. If you mean was there someone he wanted to marry, I don’t know. I never heard a name.’
I stayed another hour with Stephanie, recording all the time. Latterly I found it hard to concentrate. She was giving me too much, and I was tense in case I missed a vital question. I could listen to the tape again and again, of course, but what I didn’t ask she couldn’t tell me. In self-defence, I asked about everyone: the little girls; Rosalind’s grandfather Colonel Farrell; Dr Bloom; Miss Potter, Rollo and Laura again. Finally, I took her through the night of the ball.
As I prepared to leave, I felt uneasy. I should have been pleased, I had scads of material, but I was suspicious of her helpfulness. She wasn’t the sort of person who cared about seeing her words in print: she didn’t have time to fill: she didn’t seek attention. Did she have an axe to grind? If so, what was it?
I asked her and she answered my question with a question.
‘You haven’t talked to Charlotte Mayfield yet?’
‘Not yet.’
‘A treat in store,’ she said, and gave her snorting laugh.
‘Why is that?’
‘You’ll see,’ she said. ‘Frightful woman.’
‘You did say she was an unpleasant child.’
‘Frightful child. Pot-hunter. Always bought made ponies.’ I wrote that down for later translation by Barty: I didn’t want to remind her that we weren’t soulmates. ‘Not that I ever rode, myself. Hate horses, stupid animals, but it was the principle of the thing. Same as the tray.’
I wrote that down too, for later translation, then realized that she was waiting for me to ask. She was no longer, apparently, speaking in Pony Club code. ‘The tray?’ I said.
‘Last year. Charity do, in the country. Warwickshire Dialysis Association. Raffle. First prize, a Georgian silver tray. Worth a bit. Charlotte won it, and kept it.’
I’d have kept it. What the hell else do you do? ‘Instead of . . .’ I fished, and pretended to cough.
‘Exactly, giving it back, to be sold for the charity funds. All those dicky kidneys needing machines, and all Charlotte says is thank you very much. The local MP’s wife.’
Put like that, I could see the point. ‘Didn’t Mr Mayfield . . .?’
‘He wasn’t there. Seldom is. I wouldn’t be.’ Another snort. ‘Can’t stand the woman. No manners. She won’t like an article like this. That answer your question?’
Chapter Ten
‘What a charming car, my dear. What is it called? Is it yours?’ inquired Miss Potter, hung-over but game. Barty’s car is a top-ofthe-range BMW. The day I can afford a BMW will probably also be the day I’m appointed Director-General of the BBC, but I don’t suppose Miss P. knows how much cars cost. She was probably nervous being driven by a woman, too: that generation often are.
‘It’s a German car, a BMW,’ I said. ‘I’m a very safe driver: I’ve had a licence since 1979, and no accidents. I’ll take care of you.’
She didn’t comment on the fact that I’d arranged to see her at ten and it was now nearly one: perhaps she didn’t notice it. I didn’t mention I’d seen Stephanie. Until Miss Potter started talking sense I was operating on a need-to-know basis.
I explained I’d borrowed the car and asked for directions for her sentimental journey. She couldn’t give them so I took the address and tracked it down with the help of my A-Z. On the way, I told her about Lally. I had to give her something to keep her quiet about Toad: even through her hangover she was determined to press me, and more worried than ever. ‘Terrible things can happen to young girls,’ she said, and ‘we live in a decadent society’, and ‘I’ve heard Toad speak of Lally, of course. I understand her grandfather was a tribal chieftain in South Africa.’ In a pig’s eye, I thought, with a name like Lambert. He had to be a descendant of slaves. Not that it mattered.
Eventually I managed to reassure her. I said, as convincingly as I could manage, that I was absolutely sure Toad was safe. She believed me. I almost believed me. I couldn’t afford not to.
Then we talked about cars, my not being able to afford one and her conviction that in any case I would be better off on a bicycle. ‘Healthy exercise, Alex. I have always urged my pupils to ride bicycles as much as possible. The Sherwin children were particularly keen. We used to ride our bicycles to church every Sunday, for instance. The elder ones and. Candida was too young.’ Since she was hung-over I did not tell her that riding a bicycle in London was a short-cut to death by accident or asphyxia.
Blenheim Road was tucked away off Putney Hill, quiet, tree-lined, improved, insured, neighbourhood-watched, semi-detached. The houses would cost over two hundred thousand, even now with the housing market so depressed that my flat is actually worth less than the mortgage I’m struggling to pay.
‘What number?’
‘We never used the number. My mother called it Simla. The house on the left, with the red door.’ I parked as close as possible; curtains twitched. It was the kind of street where people reckoned they owned the pavement and the road. Pretty soon, someone would come out and ask, rudely in a polite tone, if they could help us. Miss Potter looked green; she had hardly spoken on the way over. I thought she might be sick. ‘It’s still called Simla,’ I said to distract her. The sign looked new and too bright, like a Heritage version of a 1920s original.
‘It’s the same sign repainted,’ said Miss Potter, trying ineffectually to open the window on her side. I pressed buttons at random – I don’t borrow the BMW very often – and managed to find the right one. She gulped the cold, damp air with relief. ‘My mother was very attached to it.’
‘The house? I can see why.’
‘No, my dear. The sign. Do you mind if we just sit here for a moment or two? I feel a little unwell.’
‘Have a barley sugar.’ She accepted it with delight, even from the crumpled bag I extracted from a pocket of my jeans.
‘The familiar companion of many a long-ago journey,’ she said. ‘I always used to carry them. I suffer from motion sickness; barley sugar was my standby, even in the Bay of Biscay.’ She breathed deeply and looked less green. ‘My mother treasured the sign, as I said. She had it specially made at Mr Brown’s hardware shop would come out on the Hill. I noticed as we passed that it is now a takeaway restaurant called the Laughing Potato. She chose the name Simla; her father was in the Indian Civil Service and she had happy memories of her stay in the hill station. They used to go up to the hills in the summer, you see, because of the heat. Europeans, particularly women, found the heat most trying. My mother had several proposals of marriage in Simla.’
‘Is that where she met your father?’
‘I had a very happy childhood. My father was in the Navy, so he was often away, sometimes for years at a time, but my mother and I were happy alone. We could have a light supper on trays. I loved my father, but the household was happier when he was not there. He made things uncomfortable, somehow. My mother behaved differently, more stiffly, perhaps. I thought that that was because men were so important, and because he was such an important man. I had no idea that there were difficulties . . .’
‘But there were?’
‘So I was told. Much later. In the summer of 1958, my Aunt Anna, my mother’s sister, invited me to stay m her house in Tunbridge Wells. By then my parents had been dead for nearly twenty years. It was a most difficult visit. She was a widow. She drank gin and smoked cigarettes incessantly, and she said my father had been – no good in bed, that he had been a snobbish, pretentious, paranoid tyrant, and my mother had been in love with the vicar.’
‘Umm,’ I said. ‘Was she?
’
‘Perhaps infatuated. She always said he was wise and good. He had freckles, and damp hands, and he used to lead us in prayer after tea. Alex? Are you all right?’
‘Barley sugar stuck in my throat. Miss Potter.’
She thumped me on the back and I nearly, really, choked.
‘Aunt Anna also told me that my life’s work in education had been a narrow, fruitless self-delusion bred of fear and that Rosalind was a spoiled brat who needed a good spanking. I found the breadand-butter letter for that visit hard to write . . . It was a particularly hard time for me to discover that my childhood view of my parents had been entirely misconceived.’
I shifted in the driving seat. How much more rope should I allow her? I couldn’t see the relevance of anything she said, but that might merely be because I didn’t know enough yet, and at least I wasn’t getting a polished, self-indulgent official version. She seemed genuinely upset, and her memories were jerking out like rusty water from a disused pump, as if for the first time. I’d go with it a little longer. ‘Do you think your aunt was right?’ I said.
‘Have you read the writings of Freud and his disciples?’
‘Not Freud himself I’ve read about him.’
‘Long experience with children has convinced me that there is much to be said for his views. Not, perhaps, in their entirety, but nevertheless . . . Children invent their own world. I was no exception.’
‘Right,’ I encouraged meaninglessly.
‘Forgive me, my dear. It’s too much, all at once. I can’t . . . put my thoughts in order.’
‘Don’t try,’ I said as reassuringly as I could. ‘Have another barley sugar. There’s plenty of time.’
She patted my knee with a gloved hand. I nearly jumped. She wasn’t a natural toucher.‘You’re a remarkably kind young woman,’ she said. ‘A remarkable young woman in many ways.’
‘I’m very ordinary,’ I said. Sometimes I’m startled into truth.
‘But you’ll allow me my own opinion.’ She had beautiful, bright blue eyes which glinted when she smiled, I noticed for the first time. Perhaps it was the first time she had smiled. I smiled back. ‘I have a confession to make,’ she went on. ‘I had drunk rather a lot of sherry last night. I expect you noticed. I’m not used to sherry. I talked a great deal of nonsense.’
‘Not nonsense.’
‘Bear with me. It must have sounded like nonsense. I am, at present, very confused, never a happy state. I can’t remember exactly why I asked you to bring me here this morning; I can only suppose I thought I would find it comforting to see the house again.’
‘And it isn’t comforting?’
‘It isn’t – anything. I can remember living here, of course, but only as if – as if someone I knew well had grown up here and described it to me.’
‘Has the house changed much?’ It was tarted-up, with those swagged curtains that look like Shirley H Temple’s knickers, a polished brass door-knocker and a bright pillar-box door guarded by two bay-trees.
‘Yes. And no. It looks much brighter, like a house in a television advertisement. It looks – smart. My mother wouldn’t have liked it, I think. It stands out. My mother always said that no lady should draw attention to herself.’ She sat in silence for a while.
‘And that’s partly what’s worrying you?’ I suggested finally. She looked blank.‘I know you’re concerned about Toad, but the Sherwin murder upsets you as well, doesn’t it? You may get plenty of attention when the piece is published. Does that worry you?’
‘I haven’t even considered that aspect of the matter.’
‘Then tell me what you’re really worried about. What is the worst thing you can think of that will happen? It won’t seem so bad if you talk about it.’
‘That is the modern theory. I have no reason to suppose it correct. Discussing something unpleasant can’t change it but it can cause a great deal of unhappiness, to oneself and to others.’
‘Most of the people concerned are dead,’ I said. ‘I expect the murderer’s dead, isn’t she? Or he? And it was all a terribly long time ago.’
‘I am not concerned about the – murderer.’ She found the word difficult to say. I gave her another barley sugar.
‘Try to put me in the picture,’ I said. ‘Tell me what’s upsetting you.’
‘I failed in my duty,’ she said. I kept quiet, willing her on. She was silent. A clumsy prompt would derail her: I shut my eyes and tried to transmit waves of uncritical sympathy. Nothing. Finally, I had to speak.
‘Your duty to . . .’
Half her answer surprised me. ‘To Rosalind. And to Colonel Farrell.’
And that was it. She wouldn’t explain, expand, or do anything except make general conversation.
The visit to Simla got me bloody nowhere, which is what I’d expected. We were back at Penelope’s by three. I parked and waited for her to get out. I was itching to get home, to see if there was a message from Lally and to try Rosalind in Crete again, and to get on with it, if Miss Potter wouldn’t come through. ‘Here we are,’ I said heartily. ‘Back home.’
‘I can see that, my dear.’ She sat on. ‘I don’t want to be alone.’
‘I have a job to do. Miss Potter.’
‘Your task is research, is it not? About the Sherwin tragedy?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then your place is with me. I have the information you seek.’
‘So tell me,’ I said. ‘You’re stringing me along.’
‘No. Not deliberately, I assure you. It is not easy for me.’ She was trembling. ‘I have never spoken about that time. I have tried not even to think of it. I only met you the day before yesterday.’
‘Would you prefer to talk to Barty?’
‘Certainly not. He is a man.’ I sighed. ‘I can see you find me annoying, Alex. However, it has long been a principle of mine to take no action when I don’t know what action to take. More importantly, I need to get to know you.’
‘Don’t you know me well enough yet?’
‘Not quite.’
I sighed again. ‘You’ll have to excuse me now, Miss Potter. Why don’t you come to supper tonight? Nothing fancy, I don’t cook, but I might have some news for you about Toad by then.’
No message from Lally: no answer from Rosalind’s number in Crete. I settled myself at the kitchen table with my notes, the Lemaire book and my tape of Stephanie. It was time I got a mental picture of Oliver Farrell. I could see why Miss Potter felt guilty about Rosalind, but couldn’t see where Farrell came in.
Lemaire had liked him, which put me off at the start. He referred to him several times as a simple, upstanding soldier. Simplicity has never seemed to me an asset, except in animals and children. Adults should know better. And in my experience upstanding means too stupid or stubborn to see that now is the time for all sane men to press themselves to the earth while heavy artillery, literal or figurative, whistles overhead. Lemaire’s description of Farrell’s achievements in the army confirmed my intuition. He had gone in at Gallipoli leading 240 men and four officers and come out with eleven men, one officer, and a horse. Lemaire didn’t say whether it was a liberated Turkish horse, or Farrell’s own. His own, I decided, and he’d gone into action upsitting on it.
His incompetence extended into civilian life, judging from Stephanie’s description, which I hunted through the tape to find. It was tucked away after Magda’s arrival with further supplies of coffee and croissants and before Stephanie described the night of the ball. ‘Rosalind adored him – when she first arrived he was her only ally in the house. Not much use, though, ’cos everyone bullied him, especially the Crimps. He had no money at all, I don’t think, and he was frightfully anxious not to get in anyone’s way and to earn his keep. He haunted the stables and looked after the children’s ponies. But he doted on Rosalind. He organized a kind of reception committee for her, apparently. When Rollo fetched her from the station. He’d made a banner – something like WELCOME DARLING ROSALIND – but it was to
o big and he got tangled in it, and Laura fainted, or pretended to. She wasn’t a welcoming person, she was probably bored. Rosalind never forgot it, though. She always took his side against Laura. He felt very ill at ease at Ashtons. Anyone could see that. Rosalind said he was constantly making financial calculations in a Wool worth’s notebook, trying to work out how he could afford a place of his own, but he was completely skint. He’d had enough to live on after his wife died but he invested it all in some scheme organized by an “absolutely reliable” old friend. The old friend skipped to Spain with Oliver’s money, as they reliably do.’
‘How did Rollo feel about him?’
‘Quite liked him, I think. He was good with horses. But Laura sniped at him in her quiet, sweetly bitchy way.’
‘So there’d be no motive for him to kill Rollo?’
‘Good God, no. He wouldn’t have killed anything.’
‘But he was a soldier?’
‘Not a soldier. An officer.’ Snort. ‘He was very sweet.’
There was silence, and then a slurping sound as I drank coffee. I hadn’t then, and I couldn’t now, think of anything else to ask about Farrell. Instead, I called Barty. ‘Hi, it’s Alex. What’s a made pony?’
‘Give me a context.’
‘Charlotte Sherwin as a child.’
‘A “made” pony is already schooled. You don’t have to work with it, you just win prizes – at shows or gym-khanas, whatever – straight away. Considered rather bad form, because you’re using money to avoid doing the work. Bypassing the sweaty effort. Frowned on by genuine pony devotees, and ambitious mothers who would buy made ponies for their offspring if they could.’
‘And a pot-hunter?’
‘One who wants to win prizes, in any way they can. Probably a bad loser, whipping the pony who fails, stamping of feet and swinging of pigtails.’
‘Thanks. Bye.’
‘Take care.’
Ready Eddy was early. He sat at the usual table at my local, sinking a pint of Newcastle Brown and ignoring the pharmaceutical transactions at the bar I’ve known him nearly ten years, ever since I went for a spin round the block with his youngest son Peter. He gets shorter and fatter but not older, though he must be coming up for retirement soon, and he’s a superintendent now. He wears hideous light grey synthetic suits. His face is round, red, genial, his hands and neck hairy, his eyes piggy and sharp. Right now, they were eyeing up a tarty middle-aged blonde. He has astonishing success with women, hence, I suppose, the nickname. I fetched a lager and joined him. ‘Hi, Eddy. What is it with you and sex?’
An Uncommon Murder Page 8