An Uncommon Murder Read online

  Anabel Donald

  AN UNCOMMON

  MURDER

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  For

  Pat Caddick – at last

  and for

  Paul and Halina Mackernan

  Berny Haut, 1991

  Chapter One

  Early in life, I wanted to be a private eye. In California. Sunshine, adventure, independence, infallibility and hundreds of dollars a day plus expenses.

  Each time Mary – our thin, myopic, greasy-haired social worker – moved me from foster-home to foster-home, my private eye paperbacks were the first thing I packed. I tried to build up a collection. I begged them off second-hand market stalls, when I was still small enough to be appealing. After that, I lifted them.

  When I was youngish – around ten – Mary’d help me get my things together. ‘Do you really want all these books? We must leave room for Edward,’ she’d say, picking up the grimy teddy-bear I never had the heart to tell her wasn’t mine. It belonged to my mother, who certainly needed it more than I did in the mental hospitals Mary took her to. What did she mean, all these books – I only had about a dozen, then.

  The foster-homes were mostly in the pinched, half-respectable streets around the council estate in Fulham where my mother and I lived in a fifteenth-floor flat, when the doctors got her tablets right. Most of my foster-parents were kind enough, or meant to be. One of the men actually spent three weekends making me a bookcase. He had a heart attack and died before he finished it, though. By then I was eleven and knowing enough to suspect his motives.

  When I was thirteen, my fantasy evolved. I still wanted to be a private eye, but I also wanted to marry Lew Archer, Failing Archer, I’d have settled for Travis McGee, but I didn’t really want to leave California for Florida, especially since John D. Macdonald said development was ruining it. Realistically, even ruined it would be better than Fulham. Besides, Fulham was being ruined too. It was the affluent seventies. Yuppies and Sloanes were moving in. The streets were jammed with builders’ skips, the air full of dust and ‘listen-to-me’ voices, and the second-hand paperback stalls at the market charged ridiculous prices which the Sloanes were too stupid not to pay. Yuppies, of course, bought nothing second-hand.

  When I was fifteen the careers officer at my school told me that there were no such things as licensed private investigators in England. I knew that already, but I nodded appreciatively. That was my survival formula, an appreciative nod. When I was four and in my first foster-home, it had worked on what, looking back, was a very kind woman who managed not to look shocked when she said, ‘In this house, Alex, we generally use a toilet. It helps keep the floor clean, you see?’ Subsequently, it worked on doctors (‘I’m afraid there’s not much we can do for your mother’), on the Social Services (‘Are you sure you can manage, Alex?’), on my head teacher (‘You’re university material, Alex’). If I used it enough, they left me alone. I nodded like a cuddly car accessory until the careers officer heaped me with pamphlets on the role of a clerical officer in the Civil Service. Then I went to college, trained as a secretary, and joined the BBC.

  Now I’m twenty-eight. I’m a freelance television researcher. The mean streets I walk are usually in the Greater London area and I’ve never even handled a gun, but I am paid per day plus expenses, and last November, I investigated my first murder.

  My involvement began, I suppose, when Miss Potter was mugged.

  It was teatime on a surprisingly warm November afternoon and I was walking home from Notting Hill tube station. November 1990 was a good time for the news media. Several of my friends were with TV crews in the Gulf, waiting for the peace negotiations to fail. The lobby correspondents were creaming themselves with excitement: would Thatcher go? would Heseltine make it? I wasn’t thinking about the Gulf or the leadership crisis. I was worrying about the prospect of no work till after Christmas. I turned off my usual route home, Westbourne Park Road (smart, expensive, residential), into one of those big, wide garden squares (very smart, ridiculously expensive, stucco-fronted, residential), for reasons I’ll explain later.

  About fifty yards ahead of me two young blacks were trying to mug a neatly dressed old woman. They weren’t succeeding because she evidently didn’t understand the conventions and wasn’t letting go of her handbag. One of them tugged at it, the other swore and aimed half-hearted blows at her face.

  Don’t be ridiculous

  Fuckin cow

  This is a criminal act. You should be at school

  Fuckin old bitch

  I shall press charges

  I’ll kick you in the fuckin head

  HEEELLLLPPPP

  When she started screaming, they ran, which solved my problem. I’d cheerfully have mixed in – they were only kids – but I couldn’t chance it because I was carrying a laptop computer I’d borrowed from my friend Polly and couldn’t afford to replace. That kind of thing doesn’t happen to real private eyes. I skulked until the muggers had gone, then walked up to the old lady. She just lay on the pavement, too shocked to get up, not too shocked to pull her brown tweed skirt well down over her knees. When I reached her she was lying with her eyes closed. I guessed she was embarrassed by her scream: she looked as if she’d been brought up not to raise her voice in a public place. Her cheek was covered with blood from a cut over one eye and her shopping basket reeked of gin. She wasn’t drunk, though. She’d fought the muggers too effectively for that, she was well turned out and she didn’t have a drunk’s face. She was about seventy.

  She opened her eyes, saw me, and clutched her handbag. ‘Kick away,’ she said stubbornly, ‘I will not relinquish it.’

  ‘Want some help?’ I said. I must have looked like another mugger, to her. She didn’t look as if many of her mates wore jeans and Doc Martens.

  ‘I have not been drinking,’ she said. ‘I’ve had enough. The country’s disintegrating. It’s all gone too far. I blame the upper classes.’

  ‘Let’s get you home,’ I said grabbing her under the arms and pulling her up. She was very light: I had no problem lifting her, still holding the computer. ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Here. I’m staying just here.’

  ‘In this house?’ I was surprised, and pleased, but the old woman didn’t notice; she was still rabbiting on.

  ‘Harrods is a circus, the buses are filthy, the streets are a disgrace, everything in the shops is shoddy and grossly overpriced and they’ve evicted me. I only wanted a day’s shopping. That was all I wanted. It’s not much to ask. You’re very kind, my dear, here’s the key. Thank you. Please do not accompany me inside. I must insist you do not accompany me inside. This is not my house, I am responsible for protecting the property.’ She tried to close the door against me but was too shaken to stand by herself.

  ‘Let me take you into the ki
tchen. You could do with a sit-down and a cup of tea.’

  ‘I really must sit down, but I warn you, I can identify you and I am perfectly prepared to give evidence in a court of law. There is no valuable portable property here. Are you going to rob me? What’s your name?’

  ‘Alex Tanner. I’ll make a cup of tea. Don’t worry – tell you what, I’ll give you my driver’s licence and my wallet, OK? Put those in your bag till I go. Like a deposit. I’m not a mugger or a robber I’m a very ordinary working girl. I earn plenty, I don’t need to rob people.’

  ‘How do you do, my dear. I am Sarah Potter,’ she said shaking my hand, and I thought she was beginning to get a grip on herself, but then she was off again. ‘I read London Fields but I didn’t believe it. Artistic licence, I thought. It’s not my house, I’m looking after it for an ex-pupil. They’ve evicted me. All my things are in’ storage. I like to read travel books, I like to be informed. I haven’t been in London since 1958. I left it in good order. Harvey Nichols, Swan and Edgar’s, the Chelsea Flower Show.’

  ‘Not in November,’ I said. ‘The Chelsea Flower Show is in the summer.’

  ‘The Royal Academy, theatres, women correctly dressed in hats and gloves. My head’s bleeding. I only bought half a bottle of gin and it’s broken, but they didn’t take my bag. Oh dear, I think I’m in shock.’ She took the mug of tea and sipped it.

  I wiped the blood from her face with moistened kitchen paper. ‘The cut isn’t too bad. You don’t need stitches. Is there anyone I can call?’ While I was talking I’d looked round the immaculate, expensive, fitted kitchen, confirmed the owner’s name in the notes on the bulletin board by the wall phone, and realized my luck. I cleaned her face with renewed enthusiasm. If she was the Sarah Potter I thought she was, I’d have washed her feet, because through blood, gin and the delicate lavender toilet water she wore, I smelt work.

  ‘No. I’ve made up my mind. I don’t owe them anything. They’re supposed to be running the country. For hundreds of years, they’ve run the country, and they can’t even police the streets of London. Pax Britannica! Fine words. Democracy! Education! A new examination which awards certificates for a study of history which does not concern itself with facts! Neglected children! Selling arms to Saddam Hussein! It’s chaos, futile chaos. There’s no loyalty, no sense of obligation, not even common courtesy.’

  ‘I don’t want to leave you alone,’ I said, peering into her handbag which was lying open on the table. She snapped it shut.

  ‘Leave me, my dear. You owe me nothing. I’m perfectly well. I have plans to make. I won’t let Charlotte get away with any of this. I may be old but I am still – still – to be reckoned with.’

  It wasn’t just luck, my finding Miss Potter in the street, unless you define luck as preparation finding opportunity. I was there because, as always, I was looking for work. As a freelance I have to snap up a job before the other scavengers come sniffing round, so I keep my eyes and ears open all the time, particularly in producers’ offices. In the past three years, I’ve done a lot for Barty O’Neill. The last time I was in his office dropping off an invoice, he’d left me alone for a moment. I went through the papers on his desk. Most of them were irrelevant but there was a promising list of names and addresses, headed ‘Sherwin Murder.’ One of the addresses was quite close to where I live. The name written beside it was ‘Penelope Lucas.’ Of course I had no idea who Penelope was, but it was evidently work not play, so when he came back, I fished. ‘Anything in the pipeline?’ I said.

  He looked down at his list and up at me. ‘Not worth your while,’ he said. ‘I’m dragging my heels on a colour supplement piece.’

  ‘Who for?’

  ‘Observer.’

  ‘Any chance for a doco?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  I couldn’t pursue it without pushing, so I didn’t, but I wasn’t convinced. He didn’t usually waste time on one-off pieces. He was an independent producer who specialized in high-minded exposes of the British government and Establishment. He exposed corruption if he could find it, bumbling bureaucracy if he couldn’t. He made documentary films for television and when the doco was shown he’d plug it by writing a companion piece for a quality Sunday. If he was working on a doco without using me it was very bad news because he was my most regular employer. I didn’t want to sound desperate so I let him put me off and changed the subject, but I’d memorized the names and addresses on his list and as soon as I could, I wrote them down.

  Next day, I was in a library on a German TV company’s time and I started running Barty’s names through the computer. Bingo with the first one, Rollo Sherwin. There was a whole book about Rollo, Lord Sherwin, by H. Plowright Lemaire, published in the late sixties. It was on the shelves: it had last been checked out in June 1981. I hoped H. Plowright wasn’t holding his breath for Public Lending Right income because I didn’t have my reader’s ticket with me so I lifted it.

  Back at home, on the sofa under a duvet to keep out the chill, I skimmed through what turned out to be an account of the unsolved murder of Rollo Sherwin at a hunt ball in Warwickshire in the late nineteen-fifties. I had never heard of the man, or the case. Of course it happened before I was born, but real-life murders have always been an interest of mine and I was surprised not to have come across rehashes of it. That probably meant it wasn’t really unsolved, merely not brought to trial, with the obvious suspect still alive and in a position to sue. It looked tailor-made for a colour supplement piece: the book had plenty of photos of good-looking, glamorous people and with an aristocratic lot like that the chances were the contemporary snaps would still be knocking about.

  According to H. Plowright Lemaire, Rollo Sherwin had been a bit of a goer and the ball where he met his death in a shotgun blast had been well attended by his ex-mistresses and their husbands. The police’s main suspect was his delicately beautiful wife (see Plate 3) who was also possibly having a thing on the side with the local doctor (see Plate 4d), whom she subsequently married. At this point I reckoned the chances were the wife had recently died and that was why the Observer was interested in it: not only the police but also H. Plowright seemed to have no doubt, within the constraints of libel, that she had done it. Just another domestic murder. The up-market trimmings and the period charm might sell it, but I couldn’t see Barty’s interest. Lord Sherwin had apparently failed to distinguish himself from cradle to family tomb. Only sexual scandal, no political activity. If H. Plowright was anywhere near right in his estimate of Sherwin’s sexual affairs, he wouldn’t have had time.

  I wasn’t going to spend too long messing about until I could see my way to getting paid. I did check through H. Plowright’s index to identify the names on Barty’s list: most of them were there. Penelope, the one with the local address, was one of Rollo’s four daughters. She’d be in her early forties and long married by now, and the surname on Barty’s list must be her husband’s.

  I put the Sherwin murder behind my ear to pursue when I next saw Barty, and that was why I was walking past Penelope’s house on my way home from Notting Hill tube, to suss it out. In November, darkness falls early, and plenty of people don’t draw their curtains. I like looking in to watch households at play. No luck, however, with Penelope’s household. I’d been past twice and each time the curtains had been firmly drawn, with very little light leaking out and no chinks to give clues to a working girl. The third time it’d been afternoon, and I picked up Miss Potter.

  She really was a find. She was also on Barty’s list and according to the Lemaire book she’d actually been living in Rollo’s house at the time of the murder – the children’s governess. I was delighted to have picked her up and after I’d made tea and soothed her a bit I stayed around, listening. She was very shaken and I calculated the odds: should I take advantage of the coincidence now?

  I decided not to. I might have got something out of her, but then again when she recovered I might have lost her as a source. Even more important, I wasn’t yet cut
in on the deal. I was on my best behaviour, though, to keep her sweet. When she thanked me for helping I was all ready to refuse her offer of compensation for my time and trouble but she didn’t even offer me a fiver. I kept smiling anyway, as an investment. If she thought of me as the only remaining selfless member of the younger generation, all the better. It would give me moral leverage.

  Chapter Two

  I rang Barty as soon as I got home. He said if I came over and joined him while he finished up, he’d take me out to dinner. It would be one of his friendly little Italian restaurant dinners, of course, not a posh place he’d take a girlfriend or an important client, but it would be free food and several hours that I wouldn’t have to pay for the electric fire in my flat. Besides, I enjoy his company. He’s quick-witted. My neighbour Polly says I fancy him, but that’s not quite true. He’s not very tasty: in his forties, tall, thin, bony, with an Irish jaw. It’s more that he pretends he fancies me, which spices up our dealings.

  It stands to reason my childhood scarred me, as everyone’s does, in all kinds of ways I don’t recognize, but I do recognize one – a seething lava of impatience. I dragged through most of my early years being forced to do, slowly, things which in my view need not have been done at all. With my mother, when the tablets weren’t adjusted, listening to her account of instructions she received from her voices (Winston Churchill, the Pope, Clark Gable). With one set of foster-parents, scouring an already immaculate flat. With another set, playing board-games of nerve-grating tedium. Nearly always, being chatted to, advised and understood, by foster-parents, teachers and social workers who seemed to me hard-pushed to understand that they had nails at the end of their fingers.

  As a child, I thought all this would stop when I grew up. Not long into my BBC training I discovered it went on everywhere, between apparently consenting adults, most of whom had the mental turn-around time of a giant oil tanker. Barty doesn’t. I’ve had telephone conversations with him that lasted under thirty seconds. Naturally, I enjoy his company.