There was no butler

Last weekend, mum and I were invited to a CAATS award weekend. We've not been a part of the charity for long and it was our first opportunity to mingle with other supporters of animal rights. The weekend was to honour fundraisers such as ourselves and was to be just a bit of fun, getting to know people with common interests and eating good food and engaging in small activities.

Within a couple of hours of meeting, the weekend took a grisly turn.



The hotel was Wotton House near Didcot. Built in the 17th century, parts of it were rather grand. We gathered at 8 for a cocktail reception in the Old Library which was a fantastic room with arches almost like a chapel but with a grand fireplace in lieu of an altar. It was a cold weekend so we joined a small group huddled at the fireplace.



Mum and I met a few great people including Liz who had run around the world collecting money for CAATS- quite an impressive feat. We also met a woman called Pearl who ran an animal sanctuary in Derbyshire. Poor woman had the shock of her life when a man approached us. "You!" she shouted deafening my mother in her right ear, "What are you doing here?"

Turns out the man (30s, dressed in a manner a city type might consider casual) was her son who she hadn't seen since he left home for university. Wow. What a coincidence. The man (whose name was Evan) turned tail and left without saying a word to his mother who remained steaming by the fireplace.

It was weird and we stuck by Pearl concerned that the shock was too much for her. We were then joined by David who provided an adequate distraction with tales of his fundraising exploits as a leg of a six man pantomine cow that climbed a church spire in East Sussex. We nodded sagely but were well aware that he was a bit of a nut-job, his reputation not helped by the obviously photoshopped image of the event. CAATS attracts all types.

Fortunately we were seated at the same table as David (and Liz and a fair few others we had met) because they were all chatty types that had been to this kind of event before whereas my mum and I felt a little out of place and unsure. Pearl was on another table though we were still worried about what was going on with her and her son.

To my mother's left sat a woman called Briony who had fainted at the champagne reception and caused a bit of a stir at the other end of the Old Library. Tactful as ever, my mum asked her if she is pregnant. Still, Briony seemed forgiving of the personal question. We told her of Pearl and Evan and she explains that Evan was the event coordinator (Briony herself worked for CAATS and was at the weekend in an official capacity) and also a personal friend of the chairman, Baxter. Evan came up to the table later and it became clear that Briony meant "personal friend" euphemistically as Evan explained the full reasons behind his falling out with his mother.

As if this one accidental mother-child reunion wasn't eventful enough, a woman came up to Briony during the meal and declared herself to be Briony's presumed-dead mother. It was just insane and my poor mother caught more shouting in her ear-hole. Turned out that Lindy, this woman, left Briony and Briony's father when Briony was 17. Briony said that Lindy pushed her father down the stairs and the fall paralysed him. Lindy said that she was being physically abused and though she was there when her husband fell, she denied actually pushing him. Whatever, it wasn't our place to get involved in the family drama and I stared down at my food embarrassed for the emotional display.

Lindy tried to get reacquainted with her daughter twice during dinner but Briony just denied that Lindy was her mother at all though you could tell that she was getting worn down and coming to accept it. From across the room, a fellow fundraiser called Jessica came to Briony's aid and defused the situation by taking Briony away to her hotel room. Lindy was not happy with this particularly when Briony said that Jessica had been more like a mother to her. Lindy called Jessica jealous, trying to get between a mother and a daughter, but let them leave.

This was in between the main course and dessert and many people chose this moment to leave the dining room to go to their room or have a smoke or whatever. They nearly all came back by the time dessert arrived (David had wanted to steal Briony's chocolate mousse but was thwarted). All except Jessica. David was worried for Jess but Briony was dismissive. Jess had taken Briony to her room to have a lie down and compose herself and had then gone off, Briony did not know where, but since Jess was on a diet, Briony didn't find it odd she wasn't having dessert.

But then a man ran in. Shouting. Something had happened. It was Jess.

As a room, we got up and surged outside to the area where people had been smoking. Jess was there lying on the ground. It was hard to see in the dark with very low lighting coming in through the windows. We all hang back, unsure. Someone had a camera with them and set off the flash. In one spit second we saw everything. Jess was lying, covered in blood and surrounded by ice cubes. With a pair of scissors sticking out from her throat.

Briony screamed and ran to Jess' side.

No one knew what to do, it was clear. I assume someone went off to call for an ambulance and the police. I felt useless as did most people in the crowd. Some even took photos of the scene. To my horror, and I wish I could say "to my relief" but this was not the case, Jess was still alive. She was confused and only vaguely conscious and, devastatingly, groping at her throat. Briony batted her hands away, begging Jess not to touch anything or even look. But Jess did look and when she saw the scissors sticking out of her, she screamed. It was awful to watch a woman die before our eyes and I have to say I was relieved when the police came and cleared us all away.

We all returned to the dining room and callously got on with our evening. There was nothing we could do really. We even played a couple of games. They were competitive games with teams being our tables. Our table was incredibly intent upon winning and so we concentrated on that rather than the disturbing events of the evening. The first game, we came second but then we played charades where we excelled and won. My mum was particularly pleased at getting the lewdest charade of the night.

We learnt that Jess died before the ambulance arrived. Briony returned to play charades with us despite her grief at losing a close friend. Bizarre but people are robust like that.



The next morning we got down to breakfast before 9. It was this amazing buffet. I helped myself to a bowl of fresh fruit and then a small portion of fry-up with many cups of tea. Mum and I sat on a table with Pearl and Lindy and we chatted away about the strange events of the night before. One of the police detectives came to our table to inform us that there was an evidence room and if we wanted to see what they had collected so far that pertained to the case, we were welcome to have a look. It seemed that the police wanted our cooperation in figuring out what happened last night.

There wasn't much there when we had a look. We talked with Evan about his mother and their falling out. It was clear that it wasn't just Pearl hating Evan for being gay. Evan hated Pearl just as much for being a hypocrite (he accused her of being lazy and as a result being more cruel than kind to the animals in her sanctuary). Plus he accused her of killing his father (who died of lung cancer passive smoking). Did I mention that Pearl was in the room at the time? Some people have no sense of propriety.

We had a little foray into the grounds of the hotel in the late-morning, meeting with David and Jan and Liz and people whose names I have forgotten. There was a lot of cooing over Evan and words like "what a shame, such a waste!" were uttered by the women. No one really had much to say about the events of the previous night, it was all too baffling.

As it started to rain, we came back inside and killed time in our hotel room before lunch. Lunch was a great buffet (so great my mum came back to the table with two main dishes on her plate) and would have been very enjoyable if not for further drama. It was all coming out of the woodwork this weekend.

Gwen was another person that worked for CAATS. She was very keen to make the point that she was the one that made all the games (Gwen's Games we called them, patronisingly). Her insistence on recognition and praise was quite wearying and we didn't really talk to her much over the weekend. Anyway, she strode in just as lunch was wrapping up and had a go at Briony who was obviously still in shock from losing someone close to her the previous night. Apparently Gwen had just discovered that Briony had had an affair with Gwen's late husband. Sheesh.

Pearl was kind of spooked by this revelation and stood up and tried to leave but we were all on lock-down by the police who were okay with us wandering the hotel but we weren't allowed to check-out. So Pearl sat back down again clearly not happy. David asked her what the problem was and Pearl was cagey. I don't know what David was thinking next but he speculated that Pearl might know something about Gwen's husband's death and then he warned Pearl to make sure she spoke to the police straight away or wrote what she suspected down. David seemed quite agitated but I am not sure Pearl was listening.

We were also treated to another blow-up between Briony and Lindy as Briony caught on to the fact that Lindy was in financial troubles and was just hitting her daughter up for cash. Mum and I were ever so grateful that we could at least claim to be a functioning parent-child relationship.

After lunch was cleared, we had more of Gwen's Games (and Gwen was getting a bit annoyed with how we were patronising her by cheering every time her name was spoken but she asked for it with her desperate need to be appreciated). We did the first one in groups of our own choosing so my mum and I just stuck together. We didn't do too badly (it required knowing phrases) but we didn't win or even come close. We had to go around the hotel following a trail of questions but they had lost question 23 (someone had removed it). They knew what the question should have been though and told it to use orally instead (the answer was snake).

We gathered for the answers but during the course of the game, some people had gone awol. Evan came into the room seemingly furious and panicked. He demanded to know Briony's room number for some reason, got it and left again, heading for it. We were all kind of bored (and needed Evan to give out the answers anyway) so decided to follow him. We had to go right to the other side of the hotel and by the time we got there, Evan had already been there for a while but was still shouting. We pressed forward, a crowd of about 40? 50? of us (with some actual hotel guests not a part of the CAATS weekend caught up in the scrum) to find out what was going on and ploughing right into us came Baxter. He emerged from Briony's room and caused us all to move back, repelled like equal sign charges. He wasn't wearing very much. Not very much at all. I am not an expert in male underwear but I am sure the small strip of black material that was his only item of clothing couldn't be standard issue.

There was much shouting and whooping and many people whipped out their cameras to catch Baxter's shame. But then there was a ping as a lift door opened. And a scream.

Amongst all this hysteria, there was another dying body. Pearl was lying in the lift, exposed as the door opened. She was covered in blood with a knife going straight into her chest, the missing card from Gwen's Game between the hilt and her body.

The police, never far from us now, elbowed through and shouted at us until we dispersed. We returned to the dining room, hushed. An awkward number of minutes later, Evan returned, distraught from discovering his boyfriend in a compromising position with Briony. Hurt but professional, he carried on wrapping up the game. Afternoon tea was then served during which Baxter and Briony returned, hand in hand. Turns out, they had been together behind Evan's back for a while. They joined our table and no one was all that pleased at that.

We had another game (kind of a silly relay race during which I ran into a man and hurt my nose, oomph). We then all returned to our rooms to relax some more. On the way, mum and I returned to the evidence room to see how the case was going. The police had been busy putting clues together. It made little sense to us. We did learn that Pearl had had trouble with the RSPCA though- turned out Evan was right about her sanctuary not being all that. We also found out how Gwen's husband died. He burnt to death in an animal lab that had been targetted by activists. Ouch. Some people lead eventful lives.

We rested until dinner. Again, we gathered at 8. There was a loose costume theme to it of "animal phrases" and mum and I joined in with the motifs of "butterflies in one's stomach" and "a bee in one's bonnet". Other people were "raining cats and dogs" or indeed "reigning cats and dogs", "rat race" and, my favourite, "lazy cow" (she didn't dress up at all). This time we were on a table with Evan and I was seated right next to him. I didn't know what to say about what had happened. He lost his boyfriend (of three years! Evan even wanted to get married) and his mother in the space of a few minutes. He hated his mother and so I didn't know what to make of that and stayed clear of the topic, just offering sympathies about Baxter instead.

Baxter really didn't make the evening any easier. He came over to Evan and kind of sort of apologised but not very well. In fact, it turned into a marriage proposal... to Briony. I don't think he planned that and Briony certainly wasn't pleased by it. Gwen too had a go at Baxter, defending Evan (quite surprisingly since Gwen resented Evan stealing her thunder with the organisation of the weekend). Gwen was quite angry with Baxter. By this point, we had become used to the drama that surrounded these people's lives and as they all scattered in various states of emotion, we started to worry for Baxter's life.

Fortunately, Baxter returned as did Briony and Evan and Lindy. Gwen did not. Someone came in and called for the police detectives to come and so they did and we all followed. In the evidence room, lay Gwen. Sticking out of her back, was a kitchen knife. She was alive and talking but didn't respond to questions of who did this.



We knew the drill by now and were quite hardened to such spectacles. As soon as the police detective started to shout, we returned to the dining room. He joined us shortly after and told us that Gwen had died, unsurprisingly. Pearl's torn up membership card to CAATS had been found stuffed down the front of her dress.

There was a game to play and dancing to be done. Mum and I called it a night though and didn't boogie on the dance floor (how anyone could is beyond me). We took a few moments to acquaint ourselves with the latest evidence in the evidence room and then retired.


Sunday was our final day. We had breakfast but I didn't eat much. Instead I got to the evidence room as quickly as possible to put the pieces together. They didn't really click properly. I made notes on what I could but many articles seemed wholly unrelated to the events that had taken place. Why was there a piece about Jordan laying down the "seven deadly sins" and strangely religious diary entries and police reports about people dying all around the world? Some things were clear though. The police had found evidence linking Jess and Pearl and Gwen to animal rights activism and the murder of Gwen's husband. Still, that didn't quite explain everything so we went to the meeting called by the police detective still quite baffled.

The detective sat us all down and made everything clear.