Scold's Bridle

*8*

Sarah was waiting outside the doorway of Barclays Bank in Hills Street when Keith Smollett arrived. She had her coat collar pulled up around her ears and looked pale and washed out in the grey November light. He gave her a warm hug and kissed her cold cheek. "You're not much of an advertisement for a woman who's just scooped the jackpot," he remarked, holding her at arm's length and examining her face. "What's the problem?"

"There isn't one," she said shortly. "I just happen to think there's more to life than money."

He smiled, his thin face irritatingly sympathetic. "Would we be talking Jack by any chance?"

"No, we would not," she snapped. "Why does everyone assume that my equanimity depends on a shallow, two-faced skunk whose one ambition in life is to impregnate every female he meets?"

"Ah!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded.

"Just, ah!" He tucked her hand into his arm. "Things are pretty bad at the moment, then?" He gestured towards the road. "Which way to Duggan's office?"

"Up the hill. And, no, things are not pretty bad at the moment. At the moment things are pretty good. I haven't felt so calm and so in control for years." Her bleak expression belied her words. She allowed herself to be drawn out on to the pavement.

"Or so lonely, perhaps?"

"Jack's a bastard."

Keith chuckled. "Tell me something I don't know."

"He's living with Mathilda Gillespie's daughter."

Keith slowed down and eyed her thoughtfully. "Mathilda Gillespie as in the old dear who's left you her loot?"

Sarah nodded.

"Why would he want to live with her daughter?"

"It depends who you listen to. Either because he feels guilty that I, his greedy wife, have deprived poor Joanna of her birthright, or he is protecting her and himself from my murderous slashes with a Stanley knife. No one appears to give any credence to the most obvious reason."

"Which is?"

"Common-or-garden lust. Joanna Lascelles is very beautiful." She pointed to a door ten yards ahead. "That's Duggan's office."

He stopped and drew her to one side. "Let me get this straight. Are people saying you murdered the old woman for her money?"

"It's one of the theories going the rounds," she said dryly. "My patients are abandoning me in droves." Dampness sparkled along her lashes. "It's the absolute pits if you want to know. Some of them are even crossing the road to avoid me." She blew her nose aggressively. "And my partners aren't happy about it either. Their surgeries are overflowing while mine are empty. If it goes on, I'll be out of a job."

"That's absurd," he said angrily.

"No more absurd than an old woman leaving everything she had to a virtual stranger."

"I talked with Duggan on the phone yesterday. He said Mrs. Gillespie was clearly very fond of you."

"I'm very fond of you, Keith, but I don't intend to leave you all my money." She shrugged. "I probably wouldn't have been surprised if she'd left me a hundred quid or even her scold's bridle, but leaving me the whole caboodle just doesn't make sense. I didn't do anything to deserve it, except laugh at her jokes from time to time and prescribe a few pain-killers."

He shrugged in his turn. "Perhaps that was enough."

She shook her head. "People don't dispossess their families in favour of a slight acquaintance who turns up once a month for half an hour. It's completely crazy. Old men besotted with young girls might be foolish enough to do it, but not tough old boots like Mathilda. And, if she was that way inclined, then why didn't she leave it to Jack? According to him, he knew her so well she was happy to let him paint her in the nude."

Keith felt unreasonably irritated as he pushed open the door of Duggan, Smith and Drew and ushered Sarah inside. There was, he thought, something deeply offensive about Jack Blakeney persuading a wretched old woman to strip for him. And why would she want to anyway? He couldn't get to grips with that at all. But then Blakeney's attraction, if it existed at all, was entirely lost on Keith. He preferred conventional types who told amusing anecdotes, bought their own drinks and didn't rock the boat by speaking or acting out of turn. He consoled himself with the idea that the story wasn't true. But in his heart of hearts he knew it must be. The real crippler about Jack Blakeney was that women did take their clothes off for him.

The meeting dragged on interminably, bogged down in technical details about the 1975 family provision legislation, which, as Duggan had warned Mathilda, might entitle Joanna, as a dependent, to claim reasonable provision for maintenance. "She ignored my advice," he said, "and instructed me to draw up the will leaving all her assets at the time of her death to you. However, it is my considered opinion that in view of the allowance she was paying her daughter and the fact that Mrs. Lascelles does not own her own flat, Mrs. Lascelles has a good case in law for claiming maintenance. In which case a capital sum now, without prejudice, is worth consideration. I suggest we take counsel's opinion on it."

Sarah lifted her head. "You're jumping the gun a little. I haven't yet said that I'm prepared to accept the bequest."

He could be very direct when he chose. "Why wouldn't you?"

"Self-preservation."

"I don't follow."

"Probably because you haven't had a policeman parked on your doorstep for the last three weeks. Mathilda died in very mysterious circumstances and I'm the only person who stands to gain by her death. I'd say that makes me rather vulnerable, wouldn't you?"

"Not if you didn't know about the bequest."

"And how do I prove that, Mr. Duggan?"

He smiled in his amiable way. "Let me put it to you another way, Dr. Blakeney, how will refusing the bequest prove that you didn't murder her? Won't everyone just say you've taken fright because your attempt to make it look like suicide didn't work?" He paused for a moment, but went on when she didn't say anything. "And no one will applaud you for your magnanimity, you know, because the money won't go to Mrs. Lascelles or her daughter but to a handful of donkeys. At least if you accept the bequest, they've a chance of a capital sum."

Sarah stared past him towards the window. "Why did she do it?"

"She said she was fond of you."

"Didn't you question that at all? I mean, do you normally have rich old ladies turning up out of the blue, saying that they want to make new, secret wills which they don't wish their families to know about? Shouldn't you have tried to persuade her out of it? It might have been a spur-of-the-moment whim which we're all saddled with because she died on us. People are saying I used undue influence."

He turned his pencil in his fingers. "It wasn't spur-of-the-moment. She first approached me about three months ago and, yes, as a matter of fact I did try to persuade her out of it. I pointed out that, as a general rule, family money is best left with families however much one individual may dislike his or her children. I argued, with no success at all, that she should not regard the Cavendish wealth as hers but as a sort of inherited trust to be passed on to succeeding generations." He shrugged. "She wouldn't have it. So I tried to persuade her to discuss it with you first, but I'm afraid she wouldn't have that either. She was quite adamant that you were to inherit but weren't to know about it in advance. For the record, and as I told the police, I was satisfied there was no question of undue influence."

Sarah was appalled. "Three months," she echoed slowly. "Have you told the police that?"

He nodded. "They were also working on the theory that it was a sudden whim."

She put unsteady fingers to her lips. "I could just about prove I couldn't have known about it if she made the will two days before she died. There is no way I can prove ignorance if she'd been planning it for three months."

John Hapgood, the bank manager, cleared his throat. "It does seem to me, Dr. Blakeney, that you are concentrating on entirely the wrong issue. The night Mrs. Gillespie died was a Saturday if I remember correctly. Where were you that night, and what were you doing? Let's establish whether you need to prove your ignorance of the bequest."

"I was at home on call. I checked when I learnt about the will."

"And did you receive any calls?"

"Only one, shortly before eight o'clock. It was nothing serious so I dealt with it over the phone."

"Was your husband with you?"

"No, he was in Stratford that weekend. No one was with me." She smiled faintly. "I'm not a complete moron, Mr. Hapgood. If I had an alibi I'd have produced it by now."

"Then I think you must have more faith in the police, Dr. Blakeney. Despite what you read in the papers, they are probably still the best in the world."

She studied him with amusement. "You may be right, Mr. Hapgood, but, personally, I have no faith at all in my ability to prove I didn't kill Mathilda for her money, and I have a nasty feeling the police know it." She held up her fingers and ticked off point after point. "I had motive, I had opportunity and I provided at least half the means." Her eyes glittered. "In case you didn't know, she was drugged with the barbiturates I prescribed for her before the incisions were made in her wrists. On top of that, I did twelve months in a pathology department because I was considering a career in forensic medicine before I became a GP, so if anyone would know how to fake a suicide it would be me. Now give me one good argument that I can quote in my defence when the police decide to arrest me."

He steepled his fingers under his chin. "It's an interesting problem, isn't it?" He beetled his white eyebrows into a ferocious scowl. "What were you doing that Saturday?"

"The usual. Gardening, housework. I think I used most of that Saturday to prune the roses."

"Did anyone see you?"

"What difference does it make whether anyone saw me or not?" She spoke with considerable irritation. "Mathilda was killed some time during the night, and I certainly wasn't gardening in the dark."

"What were you doing?"

Cursing Jack. Feeling sorry for myself. "I was painting one of the bedrooms."

"After doing the garden all day?"

"Someone had to do it," she said curtly.

There was a short silence.

"You're obviously a workaholic," said Mr. Hapgood lamely. She reminded him of his wife, always on the move, always restless, never pausing long enough to work out where she was going.

Sarah gave a slight smile. "Most women are. We can't shrug off the responsibility of the home just because we want a career. We got the worst of both worlds when we set out to storm the male bastions." She pressed her thumb and forefinger to her tired eyes. "Look, none of this is relevant to why we're here. As far as I can see Mathilda has put me in an impossible position. Whatever I do, I shall be saddled with guilt over her daughter and granddaughter. Is there no way I can simply sidestep the issue and leave them to fight it out between themselves?"

"There's nothing to stop you giving it back to them in the form of a gift," said Duggan, "once it's yours. But it would be a very inefficient use of the money. The tax liability would be colossal." He smiled apologetically. "It would also be flying in the face of Mrs. Gillespie's wishes. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, she did not want Mrs. Lascelles or Miss Lascelles to inherit her estate."

Keith reached for his briefcase. "Is there any hurry for Dr. Blakeney to make her decision," he asked reasonably, "or can I suggest we put the whole thing on a back burner for another week or two until the police resolve this one way or another? I can't help feeling Dr. Blakeney will find it easier to make her decision once the inquest has been held."

And so it was agreed, although for Sarah it was simply the postponement of a choice already made.

Keith and Sarah had lunch in a small restaurant at the bottom of the hill. Keith watched her over the rim of his wine glass. "Was that an act or are you genuinely afraid of being arrested?"

She shrugged. "Does it matter?" He thought how deeply Jack's departure had affected her. He had never encountered Sarah's bitterness before.

"Of course it matters," he said bluntly. "If you're worried, then I suggest I come with you now to sort it out with the police. Where's the sense in tearing yourself apart over something that may never happen?"

She smiled faintly. "It was an act," she said. "I got very tired of them discussing me as if I wasn't there. I might have been as dead as Mathilda. It's the money that excites them."

Unfair, he thought. Both men had gone out of their way to sympathize with the difficult situation in which Sarah found herself but she was determined to see everyone as an enemy. Including himself? Impossible to judge. He turned his glass, letting the sober wall-lights gleam through the red wine. "Do you want Jack back? Is that why you're so angry? Or are you just jealous because he's found someone else?"

"Can you be just jealous?"

"You know what I mean."

She smiled again, a bitter smile that twisted her mouth. "But I don't, Keith. I've been jealous for years. Jealous of his art, jealous of his women, jealous of his talent, jealous of him and his ability to bedazzle every damn person he meets. What I feel now is nothing like the jealousy I've felt before. Perhaps it's there but, if it is, it's overlaid with so many other emotions that it's difficult to isolate."

Keith frowned. "What do you mean, his ability to bedazzle everyone he meets? I can't stand the man, never have been able to."

"But you think about him. Mostly with irritation and anger, I expect, but you do think about him. How many other men do you dwell on with the compulsion with which you dwell on Jack? The policeman who's dogging my tracks put it rather well: he said: 'He leaves something of a vacuum in his wake.' " She held Keith's gaze. "That's one of the best descriptions I've ever heard of him, because it's true. At the moment I'm living in a vacuum and I'm not enjoying it. For the first time in my life I do not know what to do and it frightens me."

"Then cut your losses and formalize the separation. Make the decision to start again. Uncertainty is frightening. Certainty never is."

With a sigh she pushed her plate to one side. "You sound like my mother. She has a homily for every situation and it drives me mad. Try telling a condemned man that certainty isn't frightening. I doubt he'd agree with you."

Keith beckoned for the bill. "At the risk of blotting my copybook again I suggest you go for a long walk by the sea and blow the cobwebs out of your head. You're allowing sentiment to cloud your judgement. There are only two things to remember at a time like this: one, you told Jack to leave, not he you; and two, you had good reasons for doing so. It doesn't matter how lonely, how rejected or how jealous you feel now, it cannot affect the central issue, namely that you and Jack do not get on as man and wife. My advice is to get yourself a decent husband who'll stand by you when you need him."

She laughed suddenly. "There's not much hope of that. The decent ones are all spoken for."

"And whose fault's that? You had your chance, but you chose not to take it." He handed a credit card to the waitress, watched her walk away to the counter, then transferred his gaze to Sarah. "I don't suppose you'll ever know how much you hurt me, not unless what you're feeling now is something like the hurt that I felt then."

She didn't answer immediately. "Now who's being sentimental?" she said at last, but he thought he saw dampness in her eyes again. "You've forgotten that you only found me truly desirable after you lost me, and by then it was too late." And the tragedy was, he knew she was right.

The door of Cedar House opened six inches in answer to Keith's ring. He smiled pleasantly. "Mrs. Lascelles?"

A tiny frown creased her forehead. "Yes."

"I'm Jack Blakeney's solicitor. I'm told he's staying here."

She didn't answer.

"May I come in and talk to him? I've driven all the way from London."

"He's not here at the moment."

"Do you know where I can find him? It is important."

She gave an indifferent shrug. "What's your name? I'll tell him you called."

"Keith Smollett."

She closed the door.

Violet Orloff, sheltering by the corner of the house, beckoned to him as he walked back to his car. "I do hope you won't think I'm interfering," she said breathily, "but I couldn't help overhearing what you said. She's in a funny mood at the moment, won't talk to anyone, and if you've come all the way from London..." She left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

Keith nodded. "I have, so if you can tell me where Jack is I'd be very grateful."

She cast a nervous sideways glance towards Joanna's door, then gestured rapidly to the path running round the far corner of the house. "In the garden," she whispered. "In the summer-house. He's using it as a studio." She shook her head. "But don't tell her I told you. I thought Mathilda's tongue was wicked, but Joanna's-" she cast her eyes to heaven, "she calls Mr. Blakeney a homosexual." She shooed at him. "Quickly now, or she'll see you talking to me and Duncan would be furious. He's so afraid, you know."

Somewhat bewildered by this eccentric behaviour, Keith nodded his thanks and followed the same route that Sarah had taken with Ruth. Despite the cold, the doors to the summer-house stood open and he could hear a woman singing a Cole Porter song as he approached across the lawn. The voice was unmistakable, rich and haunting, backed by a simple piano accompaniment.

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little,

Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little,

Why the gods above me, who must be in the know,

Think so little of me they allow you to go...

Keith paused in the entrance. "Since when were you a Cleo Laine fan, Jack? I thought Sarah was the aficionado." He pressed the eject button on the recorder and removed the tape to read the handwritten label on the front. "Well, well. Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is the one I made for her before you married. Does she know you've got it?"

Jack surveyed him through half-closed lids. He was on the point of telling him to put his hackles down, his customary response to Smollett's invariably critical opening remarks, when he thought better of it. For once, he was pleased to see the pompous bastard. In fact, he admitted to himself, he was so damn pleased he could be persuaded to change the habits of the last six years and greet him as a friend instead of a marriage-breaking incubus. He stuck his paintbrush in a jar of turpentine and wiped his hands down the front of his jumper, producing a huge paint-smeared palm as a peace-offering. "I suppose Sarah's sent you."

Keith pretended not to see the hand, instead eyed the sleeping-bag, abandoned in a dishevelled heap in a corner, then pulled forward a chair. "No," he said, folding himself into it. "I left her in Poole. She doesn't know I'm here. I've come to try and talk some sense into you." He studied the portrait. "Mrs. Lascelles presumably."

Jack crossed his arms. "What do you think?"

"Of her or the portrait?"

"Either."

"I only saw six inches of her through the gap in the door." He cocked his head on one side to examine the painting. "You've been pretty heavy-handed with the purples. What is she, a nymphomaniac? Or is that just wishful thinking on your part?"

Jack lowered himself gingerly into the chair opposite-the cold and the floorboards were wreaking havoc on the muscles of his back-and wondered if the gentlemanly thing was to bop Keith on the nose now or wait till the man was on guard. "Not all the time," he said, answering the question seriously, "only when she's stoned."

Keith digested this in silence for a moment or two. "Have you told the police?"

"What?"

"That she's a user."

"No."

"Then I think it's better all round if you never told me and I never heard it."

"Why?"

"Because I'm on the side of law and order and I don't have your freedom to behave as I like."

"Don't blame your profession for your lack of freedom, Smollett," Jack growled, "blame yourself for selling out to it." He nodded towards the house. "She needs help and the best person to give it to her is the one she won't see. Sarah, in other words. What good would a policeman be to her?"

"He could prevent her murdering someone else."

Thoughtfully, Jack rubbed his unshaven jaw. "Meaning that because she's degenerate enough to use drugs, she's ipso facto degenerate enough to kill her mother. That's crap, and you know it."

"It gives her a damn sight better motive than the one Sarah's been saddled with. It's expensive to feed a habit, not to mention the effect it has on the personality. If she didn't kill the old woman for money, then she's probably unpredictable enough to have done it out of sudden fury."

"You'd have no qualms about briefing a barrister with that codswallop either, would you?" murmured Jack.

"No qualms at all, particularly if it's Sarah's neck that ends up on the line." Keith turned the cassette in his fingers, then reached out to put it beside the recorder. "You do know she's worried sick about losing her patients and being arrested for murder, I suppose, while you're here mooning over a drug-addicted nymphomaniac? Where's your loyalty, man?"

Was this Sarah talking? Jack wondered. He hoped not. "Mooning" was not a word he recognized as part of her vocabulary. She had too much self-respect. He gave a prodigious yawn. "Does Sarah want me back. Is that why you're here? I don't mind admitting I'm pretty fed up with freezing my balls off in this miserable dump."

Keith breathed deeply through his nose. "I don't know what she wants," he said, bunching his fists in his lap. "I came because I had an absurd idea that you and I could discuss this mess in an adult way without either of us needling the other. I should have known it was impossible."

Jack squinted at the bunched fists, while doubting that Keith could ever be provoked into using them. "Did she tell you why she wanted a divorce?"

"Not precisely."

He linked his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. "She took against me when she had to arrange an abortion for my lover. It's been downhill ever since."

Keith was genuinely shocked. That explained Sarah's bitterness all right. With a shake of his head, he pushed himself out of his chair and stood by the door, gazing out across the garden. "If I wasn't so sure I'd lose, I'd invite you out there for a thrashing. You're a shit, Jack. JE-SUS!" he said, as the full import of what the man had said slowly dawned. "You had the bloody nerve to make Sarah murder your baby. That is so damn sick I can hardly believe it. She's your wife, for God's sake, not some sleazy back-street abortionist slaughtering wholesale for money. No wonder she wants a divorce. Don't you have any sensibilities at all?"

"Clearly not," said Jack impassively.

"I warned her not to marry you." He turned back bludgeoning the air with his finger because he hadn't the courage to bludgeon Jack with a fist. "I knew it wouldn't last, told her exactly what to expect, what sort of a man you were, how many women you'd used and discarded. But not this. Never this. How could you do such a thing?" He was almost in tears. "Dammit, I wouldn't even turn my back on the baby, but to make your own wife responsible for its murder. You're sick! Do you know that? You're a sick man."

"Put like that, I rather agree with you."

"If I have my way you won't get a penny out of this divorce," he said ferociously. "You do realize I'm going to report this back to her, and make sure she uses it in court?"

"I'm relying on you."

Keith's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, Smollett, that I expect you to repeat every word of this conversation verbatim." His expression was unreadable. "Now do me a favour and take yourself off before I do something I might regret. Sarah's friendships are entirely her concern, of course, but I admit I've never understood why she always attracts domineering little men who think she's vulnerable." He flipped the tape, pushed it back into the recorder and pressed the "play" button. This time it was Richard Rodney Bennett's "I never went away" that drifted in melancholy splendour upon the air.

No matter where I travelled to,

I never went away from you...

I never went away...

Jack closed his eyes. "Now bugger off," he murmured, "before I rip your arms off. And don't forget to mention the sleeping-bag, there's a good chap."