The Shape of Snakes [antikvár]

OneI could never decide whether 'Mad Annie' was murdered because she was mad or because she was black. We were living in south-west London at the time and I remember my shock when I came home from work one wet November evening to find her collapsed in the gutter outside our house. It was 1978 - the winter of discontent - when the government lost control of the trade unions, strikes were an everyday occurrence, hospitals ceased to cater for the sick and uncollected rubbish lay in heaps along the pavements. If I hadn't recognized her old plaid coat I might have ignored her, thinking the bundle in the gutter was a heap of discarded clothes.Her real name was Ann Butts and she was the only black person in our road. She was a well-built woman with a closed expression and a strong aversion to social contact who was known to enjoy a drink, particularly Caribbean rum, and was often to be found sitting on the pavement in the summer singing gospel hymns. She had acquired the 'Mad' label because she pujled strange faces and muttered to herself as she scurried along in a bizarre dot-and-carry trot that suggested a child playing 'Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross*.little was known about her circumstances except that she had inherited her house and a small independent income on her mother's death and, apart from a menagerie1