his wife Romy and his children, Drummond and Poppy, he was fed up with the rat race and his sister’s success. Poised to leave the City and switch to fundraising, with a caring celebrity bias, he was much in need of capital.
Martin’s wife Romy was a beauty, with large brown eyes, lustrous dark hair and a full, deceptively generous mouth. Her athletic big-breasted figure and clear tawny skin needed little upkeep. She and Martin, who insisted on jogging hand in hand, resembled one of those bouncy couples on the label of a multi-vitamin container.
Romy, like her husband, was intensely smug and self-regarding. Unlike her sister-in-law Carrie, she was also into creative child-rearing and when asked if she worked, would reply: ‘Yes, extremely hard as the mother of two little people.’
Five-year-old Drummond, the stairlift wrecker, was an over-indulged fiend. Poppy, a four-year-old applause junkie, would interrupt any adult conversation to demand an audience for a handstand or ‘Alla Turca’ thumped out on the piano. Both children lived on absurdly healthy food. Juice was a rarity, chocolate or a grain of salt had never passed their lips.
Martin had a handsome oblong face, dark hair slicked back from a smooth, untroubled forehead, and a loud, hearty laugh instead of a sense of humour.
Both he and Carrie had houses in London and adjoining barns in the Cotswold village of Willowwood, some eighty miles from Bluebell Hill. Sampson had bought these barns through his property company and, in some tax dodge and possibly as an act of sadism, had gifted them to Martin and Carrie knowing they disliked each other intensely.
Arriving at Bluebell Hill the morning after his father’s death, delighted to pre-empt his sister Carrie, who was hammering out some deal in the Far East, Martin found his mother ashen, staring-eyed, jersey on inside out and in total shock. Even the doctor’s reassurance that there was nothing she could have done and the heart attack must have been a complete whiteout could not comfort her.
Etta’s own heart sank when she saw Martin had brought Romy and the children, who whooped off round the house.
‘We thought you’d need your family round you, Mother,’ said Martin. ‘Tell us what happened.’
‘And left Dad by himself!’ cried Romy in horror a minute later. ‘But he was supposed never to be unattended.’
‘I know,’ whispered Etta, ‘but Blanche and Basil stayed so late, and I had to get Bartlett out before dark.’
Etta started in terror at the imperious bleep of the stairlift.
‘Sampson,’ she gasped, darting towards the door, ‘you mustn’t use it on your own. It’s simply not safe.’
Outside she found Drummond sailing calmly up the stairs.
‘How did Grampy get up to heaven without his stairlift?’ he asked.
Martin immediately commandeered the telephone: ‘Yes, it’s Father, I’m afraid – a massive cardiac arrest.’
Having rung lawyers and financial advisers and ascertained there was nothing they could do, even though Sampson would only have had to live another year, Martin and Romy’s resentment hardened towards Etta.
They also spent a lot of time blocking calls of sympathy. ‘I’m afraid Mother’s too much in shock to talk.’
Ably assisted by Drummond, they then wandered round Bluebell Hill, tempering their grief as they assessed the value of pictures and furniture and, while claiming to be searching for ‘mementos of Dad’ to put in their funeral orations, decided what pieces they wanted. Their barn in Willowwood cried out for large furniture.
Bartlett, who picked up vibes, was desperately concerned about Etta. When Ruthie, Etta’s daily, gave her the lamb bone from yesterday’s lunch, Bartlett left it in her basket and came back to comfort Etta, nudging her and laying a soft golden paw on her knee.
Bartlett had also been fond of Sampson. As soon as the men in black suits took his body away in a zipped-up bag, she had heaved herself on to Sampson’s bed and growled at Romy when she tried to shoo her off.
Drummond proceeded to tease Bartlett, plunging fingers like four-point plugs into her eyes and nose, trying to tug her off by her arthritic legs until Bartlett bit him, drawing blood. Whereupon Romy, who believed any atrocity on animals was permissible if it benefited mankind, made a fearful scene and demanded Bartlett be put down.
4
Carrie Bancroft, square-jawed and hefty like Sampson, was not as good-looking as her brother Martin. Tough and aggressive, having witnessed her father bullying her mother, she herself bullied people, particularly women. In the office, she was known as ‘Carrie On Bitching’,