Page 89 of Marble Hall Murders

EC:

Well, that’s one word for it, Samira. I was born in Marble Hall – well, in a hospital near Marble Hall – and I was there until my grandmother died and my parents moved to a place in London. To be honest, we couldn’t wait to get out of there. By ‘we’, I mean my brother and sister and me – and everyone else, really.

SA:

Miriam was born in 1920 and was home-schooled by her father, who was a deacon in the town of Ilminster, Somerset. For several years, she was the church organist. Apparently, she got the idea for the Little People from an image in a stained-glass window, and many of her books have connections with the church calendar. She was married to Kenneth Rivers, a junior civil servant in the Department of Agriculture – although due to the success of her books, she preferred to keep her maiden name. He was, of course, your grandfather. Do you have any memories of him, Eliot?

EC:

We never saw very much of Grandpa. He sort of kept himself to himself. He was interested in taxidermy and he used to spend hours in a room in one of the towers, fiddling about with stuffed animals. I remember one in particular – a kingfisher. He hadn’t actually stuffed that one himself. He’d bought it in a shop in Islington. It was Victorian and you always think of kingfishers as being such beautiful birds, but this one was evil. It sat in its own glass case, which was kept locked. It used to scare the hell out of me when I was a kid. I was frightened it was going to escape.

Anyway, Grandpa stayed in the house after Grandma died, but he didn’t last long without her. My last memories of him are … he was an old man in his eighties, but he seemed older, living on his own in an enormous house, although he had a nurse to look after him. My grandfather was always complaining about her. He didn’t like her. I think she reminded him of my grandmother … My grandparents had separate rooms and I never saw them together.

SA:

Still, it must have been exciting for you, growing up in Marble Hall. Your grandmother was one of the most famous writers in the world. The Little People brought happiness to millions and you were right at the heart of it all.

EC:

I was at school. I used to get bullied because I was her grandson. My cousin, Jasmine, hated the Little People. She was named after one of them and … I mean, can you imagine? There was no escape for her … not until she died. But Grandma didn’t care. She was out there, travelling all over the place, meeting famous people, going to parties and film premieres and cruises and fancy hotels, and we were all stuck at home, waiting for her to come back. None of us wanted to be at Marble Hall and she didn’t want us there either. Not really. She just wanted to control us.

SA:

Did you tell her you wanted to be a writer?

EC:

Yeah. I once showed her a story I’d written. It was about a boy who travelled into outer space, which was something I’d always dreamed about doing. It was as far away from Marble Hall as I could go. So he builds himself a space rocket using stuff that he’s found at school andaround the house – like dustbins and sticky tape and iron filings and all these chemicals that he’s nicked from the chemist in the village. The book was called ‘Space Boy’ and I showed it to her. She said it was no good at all. She laughed at me. She said I had no imagination and no idea how to tell a story. I was ten years old.