I should have asked all these questions when I began the quest for Toad, of course I should. Guilt made me aggressive. ‘And you’ve seen Toad a lot, this year?’
‘Several times in the Christmas and Easter holidays. Once, as I told you, in August.’
‘How come you noticed nothing about the anorexia?’
‘I noticed she had lost weight, naturally, but she had plenty of weight to lose. I was more concerned with her tension and unhappiness. I have been retired some years, Alex. Anorexia was not so prevalent among the young in my time.’
‘OK, Miss Potter. But whatever Charlotte’s treatment was, Toad survived it. She was better enough to go to India.’
‘And ill enough to be sent back. Since that time, I have not heard from her. If we suppose that Charlotte knew Toad was returning early, we must assume that she picked a fight with me – on entirely fabricated grounds – to remove me from the scene once more.’
‘And laid off the builders. It makes sense, I suppose. Why did you agree to go so quickly? Why did you agree to leave the lodge at all? Surely if you’d got a decent solicitor he could have made a case for you as a sitting tenant, or something?’
‘At first I had intended to employ a solicitor. But then the – discussion with Charlotte was so unpleasant, I knew I couldn’t stay.’
‘But you had rights.’
‘Possibly. I would not enforce them. In any case, Penelope came to my rescue.’
‘But only till after Christmas. Only temporarily.’
‘Let us return to Toad.’
‘OK. Well then. Worst possible scenario, she’s at Ashtons Hall being looked after by her mother.’
‘That is not possible.’
‘Why?’
‘I mentioned that my cleaning woman also cleaned at the hall? Her name is Kate. Two weeks ago, I spoke to her on the telephone. She told me that Charlotte was spending much of her time in London. The house has been, effectively, closed since mid-October.’
‘But the builders haven’t returned to work?’
‘No.’
‘Wrong time of year for outside work, of course.’
‘Not all the work was outside. And the scaffolding remains idle, which I believe is expensive. Charlotte is never extravagant. Moreover, she undoubtedly footed the bill for my cruise. She must have had a very good reason.’ She looked at me expectantly. ‘We must act.’
‘What must we do?’ I was pleased. It was dealing time. I’d pursue whatever batty course of action she wanted, so long as she’d come clean with me.
‘Charlotte is in London, you say?’
‘She said she was coming up yesterday.’
‘Then we must borrow Bartholomew’s car and go to the hall.’
‘To do what, exactly?’
‘To investigate.’
‘The hall?’
‘Yes.’
‘What for?’
‘My peace of mind.’
We wouldn’t find anything, of course, but it might be a quick way to stop her fretting. ‘Will we have to break in?’
‘No. I shall borrow Kate’s keys.’
She hadn’t thought it through. If we borrowed Kate’s keys and things went wrong Kate would be in trouble. We’d probably have to make it look like a break-in anyhow. It didn’t matter to me.
‘Are you well enough?’
‘I will have to be.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’m game. But you’ll have to do something for me, in exchange.’
‘Explain.’
‘Stop messing me about. When I went down to the hall and saw Charlotte yesterday, I also saw Kate and your dog Joss, and I realized something.’
‘What was that?’
‘Hang on a minute. Don’t you want to ask me about Joss?’ I said.
‘He is well?’
‘Yes. He looked well and happy. Kate said to tell you she wasn’t forgetting his arthritis pills.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it. There isn’t much more to be said about him, is there?’ She looked at me quizzically. ‘What is your point, Alex?’
‘All those hours we talked, you never mentioned your dog.’
‘I fail to understand you.’
‘I failed to understand you,’ I said, because you misled me. I knew you were upset and confused, I knew you were deliberately giving me the runaround. I thought it was because you were desperate for someone to talk to, for human contact. In fact you were pretending to be a little old lady all alone in the world while actually you’re the Queen Mum of Warwickshire with strings of friends ready to crack a bottle of gin and hang on your lightest word.’
‘That is a flagrant exaggeration, Alex, and a cheap and flippant dismissal of a great lady.’ Glacial pause. ‘I repeat, what is your point?’
‘I think you’ve kept me on a string until I locate Toad. Now it’s show and tell time: I want you to answer my questions. I don’t care if you don’t know beans about the Sherwin murder I want you cleared out of the way so I can write my piece.’
‘Very well. What do you want to know?’
‘Not now. If you’re determined on a spot of breaking and entering, let’s get on with it,’ I said. ‘I’ll nip round to Barty’s and fix the car. You get dressed and ready to be honest with me on the drive down.’
She didn’t like my tone, but she could lump it. She needed me, and it was well time she stopped treating me as a pupil and started seeing me as an equal. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Kindly wash up the cups.’
Seeing that it was Saturday morning, I tried Barty’s front door first. When there was no answer I tried the basement office, half-expecting no reply. He might have gone to the country too. I certainly didn’t expect to find Annabel, but she answered the door. ‘He’s here,’ she said, ‘come through.’
After last night’s dinner, I expected seeing Barty to be awkward, but then I always underestimate the upper-class capacity to ignore embarrassment. He greeted me smilingly, embraced me ritually, and told Annabel what a lovely evening we had had. I nearly scowled and snapped. I hate other people saving my face: it’s my face, for god’s sake, to lose if I want to. Annabel watched us with a proprietorial, bawdy expression like the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet.
Barty was prepared to lend us the car but he wasn’t keen on the enterprise. ‘Sounds like trouble,’ he said. ‘Let me come with you.’
‘To look after me?’ I snapped.Annabel stood behind him, nodding encouragingly and mouthing ‘yes’.
‘I might be able to keep Miss Potter in line,’ he said, unconvincingly.
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I can look after myself Annabel was shaking her head and shrugging in despair ‘Try keeping her in line,’ I said, indicating Annabel. Barty turned round, by which time, of course, she was straight-faced. I took the keys and left Annabel to sort it out.
Chapter Twenty
Miss Potter was waiting to leave. She was sitting on the hall chair clutching her shopping basket. She was wearing trousers, a sweater, serious walker’s shoes and a green Barbour.‘My gardening trousers,’ she explained. ‘In case we have to move quickly.’
‘Ah,’ I said, trying not to smile. ‘Have you had any breakfast?’
‘A cup of tea.’
‘When did you last eat?’
‘Really, Alex, does it matter?’
‘OK. Can I use the phone for a local call?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I will make a note of it for Penelope. Use the study.’
I sat down behind the desk in the study and reached for the phone, then paused. Miss Potter had been working there: she had a small leather zip-up writing case with little pockets for stamps and a matching address book.The writing paper was white Basildon Bond. She even used the piece of paper with printed lines as a guide for her shaky but deliberate hand. I read the unfinished letter on the pad, addressed to the head of a North Kensington comprehensive. Dear Madam, I would like to apply for the post of History teacher advertised in the ‘Times Educational Supplement’ ..
.
The application was ridiculous, of course. She was much too old to go back to work and she wouldn’t last three periods in a London school. I reflected on her foolish rectitude in using her own notepaper when the study desk was full of Penelope’s expensive white Conqueror, much of it not headed, then picked up the phone and dialled Polly. Luckily, she was in, and game to prepare an extensive but ungreasy breakfast in my flat. I wanted Miss Potter in good nick for the expedition.
I glanced at her letter of application as I left the study. Was she serious?
‘Come into the kitchen,’ she called. I did. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee before we go? There you are.’ She placed a large, thick mug on the counter and filled it up to the brim.
‘A mug!’ I said.
‘I bought it for you. Yesterday.’
She had noticed I drank coffee in large quantities, and that I was irritated by the little cups. She had spent at least two pounds on the mug: two pounds she didn’t have. I refused to be touched, but there was no harm in being polite. ‘Thank you,’ I said, and gulped the coffee down. Fortunately, I can drink almost any amount at almost any temperature.
‘I expect you saw the letter I was writing. It’s quite absurd for me to expect employment, of course. I know that. I found it comforting, last night, for a short time. Don’t worry about me, Alex.’
‘Thanks very much for the mug,’ I said. ‘It’s kind of you. Shall we go? I have to drop in at home first.’
‘Very well.’ She took the mug from me, washed and dried it, and put it by the kettle. ‘Ready for our return,’ she said, like a talisman.
As soon as we were in the car, I started on her I wouldn’t mention, yet, that I’d spoken to Rosalind, but I wanted to give her something to think about. ‘I saw Revill again yesterday. He confirmed the affair with Rosalind.’ There was a silence so prolonged I thought she hadn’t heard. ‘He also said Rollo was threatening to divorce Laura.’ She said nothing. She didn’t even put me right on the Sherwins’ style and title. ‘Miss Potter? Did you hear me?’
‘Yes, indeed. You said Mr Revill confirmed that he had an affair with Rosalind.’ She was slurring her words like a punchy boxer or a drunk. ‘I don’t think . . .’ she tailed off.
I’d leave it to simmer, I thought, and told her. We were going to my place to have breakfast. She didn’t argue. Then I nattered on about Polly, since it was small-talk time, and when we got there she pulled herself together enough to appear a pleasant, if slightly distracted guest. You couldn’t fault her self-control, or her stamina. She picked at scrambled eggs and mushrooms, nibbled at toast, and chatted about Polly’s accountancy training and her family. I learnt more about Polly’s family in half an hour than in all the five years I’ve known her. She turned out to have a large, close family which she’d hardly mentioned to me. Perhaps because she knew it would upset me. I’ve underestimated Polly.
Breakfast was over and Polly was making ‘I’ll let you get on’ noises when Miss Potter said, ‘Don’t leave just yet, my dear. There is a difficulty I’m puzzling over and I’d like to hear your view, as well as that of Alex.’
Polly looked flattered and excited. She loves considering ‘what-ifs’ and ‘what-shoulds’. I was trying to call the shots, but beyond a conviction that we’d be talking about Rosalind I didn’t even get close. ‘You will have to use your imagination. We are considering a young girl, but not a young girl of today. A strictly brought up young girl some thirty years ago.’
‘How old?’ asked Polly.
Seventeen, I thought, but let Miss Potter say it. ‘She is fundamentally good, with sound principles, but lonely, fatherless, and plucked out of the environment she knows,’ she went on. ‘A passionate and impulsive girl. You would agree that such a girl might well enter into a liaison with an older man?’
‘Sure,’ said Polly. ‘Of course.’
‘Alex?’
‘You know what I think, Miss P.’
‘Neither of you would condemn her for that?’
‘No way,’ said Polly.
‘No,’ I said, thinking of Patrick and how sorry I felt for the long-ago Rosalind stuck with that big girl’s blouse. So far, I couldn’t see Miss Potter’s difficulty, though I could see a conflict of standards.
‘The difficulty that presents itself – My problem –’ she ground to a halt and rubbed her knuckles as if they hurt. ‘In circumstances such as I have described, can you imagine the girl involving herself with two?’
‘Two older men?’ I said, before I could stop myself. Who on earth could she mean? I ran through the cast of characters in my head.
‘No,’ said Polly. ‘Absolutely not.’ When she heard this. Miss Potter turned green and clasped her hands to hey mouth. ‘Please excuse me,’ she managed, and made a dash for the bathroom, closing the door behind her ‘It’s a small flat. We could hear the retching noises. Waste of Polly’s breakfast. Miss Potter is strong on privacy so I put Ella on the tape machine, loud. Ella loud could probably come off best against a San Francisco earthquake.
‘Ooops,’ said Polly. ‘I’ve said the wrong thing. What’s the matter with her, Alex? How could it be so important? And do you think I’m right? Older man, father figure, you don’t have two of them at a time. You might have a young guy on the side. What d’you think?’
‘I think you’re right.’ I couldn’t see the implications. I was sorting through everything I knew as quickly as I could but I still couldn’t get it.
‘I’d better go,’ said Polly, collecting her things. ‘I’ve got to meet some people at Camden Lock for lunch. I was going to cycle over but the rain isn’t going to stop, is it, and there’s no point taking the bike in this. Say goodbye to Miss Potter for me, will you? She’s great. I hope her problem sorts itself out.’
I said yes, of course I would, thanks very much, see you later, before I’d really heard her words, the way you do. She’d gone before I heard them. Then, as Ella launched into a new number, I clicked. I heard ‘cycle’, and bit by bit, the Sherwin murder fell into place, and as it fell I watched it crack Miss Potter’s life into the sharp pointed shards Ella wasn’t letting me hear Miss P. try to vomit into my lavatory.
Chapter Twenty-One
Miss Potter couldn’t face me. She wouldn’t meet my eyes after she emerged, shaking and weak, from my bathroom. She refused offers of tea, dry toast, a glass of water. She sat down at the kitchen table and waited for me to speak.
I prepared to wait her out. Ella was still singing, this time about Paris. I turned her down, then sat opposite the hunched and shaking Miss P. at the table. She had her back to the project board. Behind her, another Miss Potter smiled at me, separated from her present self by thirty years and a shotgun blast. Barty would be pleased: we had an angle.
I sat nursing my coffee mug, looking at the sepia faces. I had hardly even considered Miss Potter as murderer, because of the lodge question. I still had to sort that out: I made a note.
Looking back, I also hadn’t seriously considered Miss Potter because I hadn’t seen a motive. Now I could guess at a motive, I still couldn’t think of her as a murderer. She had shot him, but she wasn’t a murderer. The word had implications that didn’t apply to her. She had been catastrophically mistaken. She had come back early from church the day of Patrick Revill’s guest performance, on her bicycle, perhaps with the children. She had caught a glimpse of Patrick in Rollo’s clothes, in Rollo’s bed, with Rosalind, and a few days later, she had killed the wrong man. To protect, or avenge, Rosalind.
I didn’t know the details. I couldn’t imagine, for instance, why she hadn’t simply taxed Rosalind with it. An affair with Patrick Revill would have been mildly shocking, but surely Rosalind would have ’fessed up, if only to stop Miss P. doing her nut about incest. Failing Rosalind, of course Rollo would have denied it, and of course she wouldn’t have believed him.
I tried to think my way into Miss P.’s head. Disappointed by Rosalind’s behaviour, certainly: appalled, betrayed by Rollo�
�s, certainly. Noblesse not obliging. But shooting him? She must have done, though, otherwise she wouldn’t be so devastated by her mistake over Revill. If there hadn’t been major consequences, it would merely have been a slightly bizarre misunderstanding. She’d claimed to have important information and by god she had. No wonder she was writing her memoirs; no wonder also she wouldn’t publish before: she died. She’d been stringing Barty along, and me too. Manipulative old banana. Poor old banana. She must be feeling like hell now her suspicions were confirmed. ‘I killed my employer to protect my pupil’ had a ring to it. ‘I killed my employer because I got the wrong end of the stick’ – it made even me wriggle with embarrassment, and it wasn’t my faux pas.
I don’t like waiting, but I can. I trained for it in a fairly hard school. I kept still and concentrated on the music. Ten tracks later Ella had joined Ray Charles: they both agreed it was cold outside. I wondered if my chosen tape had any significance. It was a compilation Barty had made for me. One drunken evening last year, in a second-rate hotel in Blackpool – it was only the two of us crewing a doco shoot of his, Barty directing, interviewing, lighting and camera, me on sound and everything else (don’t tell the union: we were doing two and a half people’s jobs each, and I’m not ticketed for sound) – I’d annoyed him by not picking up any of his music references. Next day he’d put together a golden oldies tape for me. This was it. When I played it, of course, it reminded me of Barty. Presumably I’d put it on because I wanted to think about him.
Miss Potter still hadn’t spoken. She looked better, though, and she was beginning to tap her fingers on the table. ‘Had we better be going?’ she said.
‘Not for a minute or two.’
‘Why?’
‘I want information. I want to talk about the murder I know you did it.’
‘How – can you know that?’
‘I worked it out.’
She sighed, a deep sigh that went all the way down her gardening trousers to her sturdy walking-shoes.
‘I suppose there is no point in denial.’
‘None at all. I’d like to hear the details, though, and I’d like to see your memoirs. Let’s go back to your place and pick them up.’
An Uncommon Murder Page 15