Scold's Bridle

*9*

Joanna showed little surprise at finding Sarah on her doorstep at noon the next day. She gave the faintest of smiles and stepped back into the hall, inviting the other woman inside. "I was reading the newspaper," she said, as if Sarah had asked her a specific question. She led the way into the drawing-room. "Do sit down. If you've come to see Jack, he's outside."

This was a very different reception from the one Keith described having the previous evening, and Sarah wondered about Joanna's motives. She doubted that it had anything to do with the drug addiction Keith had harped on about, and thought it more likely that curiosity had got the better of her. It made sense. She was Mathilda's daughter and Mathilda had been insatiably curious.

She shook her head. "No, it's you I've come to see."

Joanna resumed her own seat but made no comment.

"I always liked this room," said Sarah slowly. "I thought how comfortable it was. Your mother used to sit over there," she pointed to a high-backed chair in front of the french windows, "and when the sun shone it turned her hair into a silver halo. You're very like her to look at but I expect you know that."

Joanna fixed her with her curiously inexpressive eyes.

"Would it help, do you think, if you and I talked about her?"

Again Joanna didn't answer and to Sarah, who had rehearsed everything on the assumption that the other woman would be a willing party to their conversation, the silence was as effective as a brick wall. "I hoped," she said, "that we could try to establish some sort of common ground." She paused briefly but there was no response. "Because, frankly, I'm not happy about leaving everything in the hands of solicitors. If we do, we might just as well burn the money now and be done with it." She gave a tentative smile. "They'll pick the bones clean and leave us with a worthless carcase. Is that what you want?"

Joanna turned her face to the window and contemplated the garden. "Doesn't it make you angry that your husband's here with me, Dr. Blakeney?"

Relieved that the ice was broken, though not in a way she would have chosen herself, Sarah followed her gaze. "Whether it does or doesn't isn't terribly relevant. If we bring Jack into it, we'll get nowhere. He has a maddening habit of hi-jacking almost every conversation I'm involved in, and I really would prefer, if possible, to keep him out of this one."

"Do you think he slept with my mother?"

Sarah sighed inwardly. "Does it matter to you?"

"Yes."

"Then, no, I don't think he did. For all his sins, he never takes advantage of people."

"She might have asked him to."

"I doubt it. Mathilda had far too much dignity."

Joanna turned back to her with a frown. "I suppose you know she posed in the nude for him. I found one of his sketches in her desk. It left nothing to the imagination, I can assure you. Do you call that dignified? She was old enough to be his mother."

"It depends on your point of view. If you regard the female nude as intrinsically demeaning or deliberately provocative, then, yes, I suppose you could say it was undignified of Mathilda." She shrugged. "But that's a dangerous philosophy which belongs to the dark ages and the more intolerant religions. If, on the other hand, you see the nude figure, be it male or female, as one of nature's creations, and therefore as beautiful and as extraordinary as anything else on this planet, then I see no shame involved in allowing a painter to paint it."

"She did it because she knew it would excite him." She spoke the words with conviction and Sarah wondered about the wisdom of continuing-Joanna's prejudice against her mother was too ingrained for reasoned argument. But the offensiveness of the statement irritated her enough to defend Jack, if only because she had encountered the same sort of blinkered stupidity herself.

"Jack's seen far too many naked women to find nakedness itself a turn-on," she said dismissively. "Nudity is only erotic if you want it to be. You might just as well say that I get a thrill every time a male patient undresses for me."

"That's different. You're a doctor."

Sarah shook her head. "It's not, but I'm not going to argue the toss with you. It would be a waste of both our times." She ran her fingers through her hair. "In any case your mother was too incapacitated by her arthritis, and in too much pain from it, to want to have intercourse with a virile man thirty years her junior. It's important to keep a sense of proportion, Mrs. Lascelles. It might have been different if she had been sexually active all her life or even liked men very much, but neither was true of your mother. She once told me that the reason there were so many divorces these days was because relationships based on sex were doomed to fail. The pleasures of orgasm were too fleeting to make the remaining hours of boredom and disappointment worthwhile."

Joanna resumed her study of the garden. "Then why did she take her clothes off?" It was, it seemed, very important to her. Because she was jealous, Sarah wondered, or because she needed to go on despising Mathilda?

"I imagine it was no big deal, one way or the other, and she was interested enough in art for art's sake to help Jack explore the unconventional side of her nature. I can't see her doing it for any other reason."

There was a brief silence while Joanna considered this. "Do you still like her now that she's dead?"

Sarah clasped her hands between her knees and stared at the carpet. "I don't know," she said honestly. "I'm so angry about the will that I can't view her objectively at the moment."

"Then say you don't want the bequest. Let me and Ruth have it."

"I wish it was that easy, believe me, but if I turn it down then you'll have to fight the donkeys' charity for it, and I honestly can't see how that will improve your chances unless, presumably, you can show that Mathilda never intended that will to be her last." She looked up to find Joanna's pale eyes studying her intently.

"You're a very peculiar woman, Dr. Blakeney," she said slowly. "You must realize that the easiest way for me to do that is to prove that my mother was murdered and that you were the one who did it. It fits so neatly, after all. You knew the will was just a threat to make me and Ruth toe the line, so you killed Mother quickly before she could change it. Once you're convicted, no court on earth will rule in favour of the donkeys."

Sarah nodded. "And if you can cajole my husband into testifying that I knew about the will in advance, then you're home and dry." She raised an eyebrow in enquiry. "But, as I suspect you're beginning to discover, Jack is neither so amenable nor so dishonest. And it wouldn't make any difference, you know, if you did manage to persuade him into bed with you. I've known him for six years and the one thing I can say about him is that he cannot be bought. He values himself far too highly to tell lies for anyone, no matter how much of an obligation they may put him under."

Joanna gave a small laugh. "You're very confident that I haven't slept with him."

Sarah felt compassion for her. "My solicitor phoned last night to say that Jack's camped out in your summer-house, but I was sure anyway. You're very vulnerable at the moment, and I do know my husband well enough to know he wouldn't exploit that."

"You sound as though you admire him."

"I could never admire him as much as he admires himself," she said dryly. "I hope he's extremely cold out there. I've suffered for his art for years."

"I gave him a paraffin heater," said Joanna with a frown. The memory obviously annoyed her.

Sarah's eyes brimmed with sudden laughter. "Was he grateful?"

"No. He told me to leave it outside the door." She gazed through the window. "He's an uncomfortable person."

"I'm afraid he is," Sarah agreed. "It never occurs to him that other people have fragile egos which need stroking from time to time. It means you have to take his love on faith if you want a relationship with him." She gave a throaty chuckle. "And faith has a nasty habit of deserting you just when you most need it."

There was a long silence. "Did you talk to my mother like this?" Joanna asked at last.

"Like what?"

Joanna sought for the right words. "So-easily."

"Do you mean did I find her easy to talk to?"

"No." There was a haunted look in the grey eyes. "I meant, weren't you afraid of her?"

Sarah stared at her hands. "I didn't need to be, Mrs. Lascelles. She couldn't hurt me, you see, because she wasn't my mother. There were no emotional strings to be arbitrarily plucked when she felt like it; no shared family secrets that would lay me open to her vituperative tongue; no weaknesses from my childhood that she could exploit into adulthood whenever she felt like belittling me. If she'd tried, of course, I'd have walked away, because I've had all that from my own mother for years and there is no way I would put up with it from a stranger."

"I didn't kill her. Is that what you came to find out?"

"I came to find out if bridges could be built."

"For your benefit or mine?"

"Both, I hoped."

Joanna's smile was apologetic. "But I've got nothing to gain by being friendly with you, Dr. Blakeney. It would be tantamount to admitting Mother was right and I can't do that, not if I want to contest the will in court."

"I hoped to persuade you there were other options."

"Every one of which is dependent on your charity."

Sarah sighed. "Is that so terrible?"

"Of course. I served forty years for my inheritance. You served one. Why should I have to beg from you?"

Why indeed? There was no justice in it that Sarah could see. "Is there any point in my coming here again?"

"No." Joanna stood up and smoothed the creases from her skirt. "It can only make matters worse."

Sarah smiled wryly. "Can they be any worse?"

"Oh, yes," she said with a twisted little smile. "I might start to like you." She waved dismissively towards the door. "You know your way out, I think."

DS Cooper was gazing thoughtfully at Sarah's car when she emerged from the front door. "Was that wise, Dr. Blakeney?" he asked as she approached.

"Was what wise?"

"Bearding the lioness in her den."

"Do lionesses have beards?" she murmured.

"It was a figure of speech."

"I gathered that." She observed him with fond amusement. "Wise or not, Sergeant, it was instructive. I've had my anxieties laid to rest and, as any doctor will tell you, that's the best panacea there is."

He looked pleased for her. "You've sorted things out with your husband?"

She shook her head. "Jack's a life sentence not an anxiety." Her dark eyes gleamed with mischief. "Perhaps I should have paid a little more attention when my mother was making her predictions for our future."

"Marry in haste, repent at leisure?" he suggested.

"More along the lines of 'She who sups with the devil needs a long spoon.' Which I, of course, countered with 'The devil has all the best tunes.' " She made a wry face. "But try forgetting 'Hey, Jude' or 'Twenty-four hours from Tulsa.' Like Jack they have a nasty habit of lingering in the memory."

He chuckled. "I'm more of a 'White Christmas' man myself, but I know what you mean." He glanced towards the house. "So, if it's not your husband who's set your mind at rest it must be Mrs. Lascelles. Does that mean she's decided to accept the terms of the will?"

Again Sarah shook her head. "No. She's convinced me she didn't kill her mother."

"And how did she manage to do that?" He looked very sceptical.

"Feminine intuition, Sergeant. You'd probably call it naivety."

"I would." He patted her arm in an avuncular way. "You really must learn not to be so patronizing, Doctor. You'll see things in a different light if you do."

"Patronizing?" echoed Sarah in surprise.

"We can always call it something else. Intellectual snobbery or self-righteousness, perhaps. They cloak themselves just as happily under the guise of naivety but, of course, naivety sounds so much less threatening. You're a very decided woman, Dr. Blakeney, and you rush in where angels fear to tread, not out of foolishness but out of an overweening confidence that you know best. I am investigating a murder here." He smiled grimly. "I don't pretend that I would ever have liked Mrs. Gillespie because I'm rather inclined to accept the established view that she was an evil-minded old bitch who got her kicks out of hurting people. However, that did not give anyone the right to strike her down prematurely. But the point I want to stress to you is that whoever killed her was clever. Mrs. Gillespie made enemies right, left and centre, and knew it; she was a bully; she was cruel; and she trod rough-shod over other people's sensibilities. Yet, someone got so close to her that they were able to deck her out in a diabolical headdress and then take her semi-conscious to the bath where they slit her wrists. Whoever this person was is not going to make you a free gift of their involvement. To the contrary, in fact, they will make you a free gift of their non-involvement, and your absurd assumption that you can tell intuitively who is or who is not guilty from a simple conversation is intellectual arrogance of the worst kind. If it was so damned easy-forgive my French-to tell murderers from the rest of society, do you not think by now that we'd have locked them up and confined unlawful killing to the oddities page of the history textbooks?"

"Oh dear," she said. "I seem to have exposed a nerve. I'm sorry."

He sighed with frustration. "You're still patronizing me."

She opened her car door. "Perhaps it would be better if I left, otherwise I might be tempted to return the insult."

He looked amused. "Water off a duck's back," he said amiably. "I've been insulted by professionals."

"I'm not surprised," she said, slipping in behind the wheel. "I can't be the only person who gets pissed off when you decide to throw your weight about. You don't even know for sure that Mathilda was murdered, but we're all supposed to wave our arms in the air and panic. What possible difference can it make to anyone if I choose to satisfy myself that Mrs. Lascelles hasn't disqualified herself from a cut of the will by topping the old lady who made it?"

"It could make a lot of difference to you," he said mildly. "You could end up dead."

She was intensely scornful. "Why?"

"Have you made a will, Dr. Blakeney?"

"Yes."

"In favour of your husband?"

She nodded.

"So, if you die tomorrow, he gets everything, including, presumably, what Mrs. Gillespie has left you."

She started the car. "Are you suggesting Jack is planning to murder me?"

"Not necessarily." He looked thoughtful. "I'm rather more interested in the fact that he is-potentially-a very eligible husband. Assuming, of course, you die before you can change your will. It's worth considering, don't you think?"

Sarah glared at him through the window. "And you say Mathilda was evil-minded?" Furiously, she ground into gear. "Compared with you she was a novice. Juliet to your lago. And if you don't understand the analogy, then I suggest you bone up on some Shakespeare." She released the clutch with a jerk and showered his legs with gravel as she drove away.

"Are you busy, Mr. Blakeney, or can you spare me a few minutes?" Cooper propped himself against the door-jamb of the summer-house and lit a cigarette.

Jack eyed him for a moment, then went back to his painting. "If I said I was busy would you go away?"

"No."

With a shrug, Jack clamped the brush between his teeth and took a coarser one from the jar on the easel, using it to create texture in the soft paint he had just applied. Cooper smoked in silence, watching him. "Okay," said Jack at last, flipping the brushes into turpentine and swinging round to face the Sergeant. "What's up?"

"Who was lago?"

Jack grinned. "You didn't come here to ask me that."

"You're quite right, but I'd still like to know."

"He's a character from Othello. A Machiavelli who manipulated people's emotions in order to destroy them."

"Was Othello the black bloke?"

Jack nodded. "lago drove him into such a frenzy of jealousy that Othello murdered his wife Desdemona and then killed himself when he learnt that everything lago had said about her was a lie. It's a story of obsessive passion and trusts betrayed. You should read it."

"Maybe I will. What did lago do to make Othello jealous?"

"He exploited Othello's emotional insecurity by telling him Desdemona was having an affair with a younger, more attractive man. Othello believed him because it was what he was most afraid of." He stretched his long legs in front of him. "Before Othello fell on his sword he described himself as 'one that lov'd not wisely but too well.' It gets misused these days by people who know the quote but don't know the story. They interpret 'lov'd not wisely' as referring to a poor choice of companion, but Othello was actually acknowledging his own foolishness in not trusting the woman he adored. He just couldn't believe the adoration was mutual."

Cooper ground his cigarette under the heel of his shoe. "Topical stuff then," he murmured, glancing towards the sleeping-bag. "Your wife's not loving too wisely at the moment, but then you're hardly encouraging her to do anything else. You're being a little cruel, aren't you, sir?"

Jack's liking for the man grew. "Not half as cruel as I ought to be. Why did you want to know about lago?"

"Your wife mentioned him, said I was lago to Mrs. Gillespie's Juliet." He smiled his amiable smile. "Mind, I'd just suggested that if she were to die an untimely death you would make an eligible catch for someone else." He took out another cigarette, examined it then put it back again. "But I don't see Mrs. Gillespie as Juliet. King Lear, perhaps, assuming I'm right and King Lear was the one whose daughter turned on him."

"Daughters," Jack corrected him. "There were two of them, or two who turned on him, at least. The third tried to save him." He rubbed his unshaven jaw. "So you've got your knife into Joanna, have you? Assuming I've followed your reasoning correctly, then Joanna killed her mother to inherit the funds, found to her horror that Mathilda had changed her will in the meantime, so immediately made eyes at me to get me away from Sarah with a view to topping Sarah at the first opportune moment and then hitching herself to me." He chuckled. "Or perhaps you think we're in it together. That's one hell of a conspiracy theory."

"Stranger things have happened, sir."

He eased his stiff shoulders. "On the whole I prefer Joanna's interpretation. It's more rational."

"She's accusing your wife."

"I know. It's a neat little package, too. The only flaw in it is that Sarah would never have done it, but I can't blame Joanna for getting that wrong. She can't see past her own jealousy."

Cooper frowned. "Jealousy over you?"

"God no." Jack gave a rumble of laughter. "She doesn't even like me very much. She thinks I'm a homosexual because she can't account for my irreverence in any other way." His eyes gleamed at Cooper's expression, but he didn't elaborate. "Jealousy over her mother, of course. She was quite happy loathing and being loathed by Mathilda until she discovered she had a rival. Jealousy has far more to do with ownership than it has with love."

"Are you saying she knew about your wife's relationship with her mother before her mother died?"

"No. If she had, she would probably have done something about it." He scraped his stubble again, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully. "But it's too late now, and that can only make the jealousy worse. She'll start to forget her mother's faults, fantasize about the relationship she imagines Sarah had with Mathilda and torment herself over her own missed opportunities. Let's face it, we all want to believe that our mothers love us. It's supposed to be the one relationship we can depend on."

Cooper lit another cigarette and stared thoughtfully at the glowing tip. "You say Mrs. Lascelles is jealous of your wife's intimacy with Mrs. Gillespie. Why isn't she jealous of her daughter? According to the young lady herself she got on with her grandmother like a house on fire."

"Do you believe her?"

"There's no evidence to the contrary. The housemistress at her boarding school says Mrs. Gillespie wrote regularly and always seemed very affectionate whenever she went there. Far more affectionate and interested, apparently, than Mrs. Lascelles who puts in infrequent appearances and shows little or no interest in how her daughter's doing."

"All that says to me is that Mathilda was a magnificent hypocrite. You can't ignore her snobbery, you know, not without distorting the picture. Southcliffe is an expensive girls' boarding school. Mathilda would never have let the side down in a place like that. She always talked about 'people of her sort' and regretted the lack of them in Fontwell."

The Sergeant shook his head in disbelief. "That doesn't square with what you told me before. You called her one of life's great individuals. Now you're saying she was pandering to the upper classes in order to make herself socially acceptable."

"Hardly. She was a Cavendish and inordinately proud of the fact. They were bigwigs round here for years. Her father, Sir William Cavendish, bought his knighthood by doing a stint as the local MP. She was already socially acceptable, as you put it, and didn't need to pander to anyone." He frowned in recollection. "No, what made her extraordinary, despite all the trappings of class and respectability which she played up to and tossed about in public to keep the proles in their place, was that privately she seethed with contradictions. Perhaps her uncle's sexual abuse had something to do with it, but I think the truth is she was born into the wrong generation and lived the wrong life. She had the intellectual capacity to do anything she wanted, but her social conditioning was such that she allowed herself to be confined in the one role she wasn't suited for, namely marriage and motherhood. It's tragic really. She spent most of her life at war with herself and crippled her daughter and granddaughter in the process. She couldn't bear to see their rebellions succeed where hers hadn't."

"Did she tell you all this?"

"Not in so many words. I gleaned it from things she said and then put it into the portrait. But it's all true. She wanted a complete explanation of that painting, down to the last colour nuance and the last brush stroke, so"-he shrugged-"I gave her one, much along the lines of what I've just told you, and at the end she said there was only one thing wrong, and it was wrong because it was missing. But she wouldn't tell me what it was." He paused in reflection. "Presumably it had something to do with her uncle's abuse of her. I didn't know about that. I only knew of her father's abuse with the scold's bridle."

But Cooper was more interested in something he had said before. "You can't call Mrs. Lascelle's rebellion a success. She lumbered herself with a worthless heroin addict who then died and left her penniless." His gaze lingered on the portrait.

Jack's dark face split into another grin. "You've led a very sheltered life if you think rebellion is about achieving happiness. It's about anger and resistance and inflicting maximum damage on a hated authority." He lifted a sardonic eyebrow. "On that basis, I'd say Joanna scored a spectacular success. If you're calling her husband worthless now, what on earth do you imagine Mathilda's peers said about him at the time? Don't forget she was a very proud woman."

Cooper drew heavily on his cigarette and looked up towards the house. "Your wife's just been to see Mrs. Lascelles. Did you know?"

Jack shook his head.

"I met her as she was leaving. She told me she's convinced Mrs. Lascelles didn't kill her mother. Would you agree with that?"

"Probably."

"Yet you just told me that Mrs. Lascelles's rebellion was to inflict maximum damage on the object of her hatred. Isn't death the ultimate damage?"

"I was talking about twenty-odd years ago. You're talking about now. Rebellion belongs to the young, Sergeant, not to the middle-aged. It's the middle-aged who're rebelled against because they're the ones who compromise their principles."

"So how is Ruth rebelling?"

Jack studied him lazily from beneath his hooded eyelids. "Why don't you ask her?"

"Because she's not here," said Cooper reasonably, "and you are."

"Ask her mother then. You're being paid to meddle," he cocked his irritating eyebrow again, "and I'm not."

Cooper beamed at him. "I like you, Mr. Blakeney, though God alone knows why. I like your wife, too, if it's of any interest. You're straightforward types who look me in the eye when you talk to me and, believe it or not, that warms my heart because I'm trying to do a job that the people have asked me to do but for which, most of the time, I get called a pig. Now, for all I know, one or other, or both of you together, killed that poor old woman up there, and if I have to arrest you I'll do it, and I shan't let my liking get in the way because I'm an old-fashioned sod who believes that society only works if it's bolstered by rules and regulations which give more freedom than they take away. By the same token, I don't like Mrs. Lascelles or her daughter, and if I was the sort to arrest people I didn't like, I'd have banged them up a couple of weeks ago. They're equally malicious. The one directs her malice against your wife, the other directs hers against her mother, but neither of them has said anything worth listening to. Their accusations are vague and without substance. Ruth says her mother's a whore without principles, and Mrs. Lascelles says your wife's a murderess but when I ask them to prove it, they can't" He tossed his dog-end on to the grass. "The odd thing is that you and Dr. Blakeney, between you, appear to know more about these two women and their relationship with Mrs. Gillespie than they do themselves, but out of some kind of misguided altruism you don't want to talk about it. Perhaps it's not politically correct amongst gilded intellectuals to dabble their fingers in the seamy side of life, but make no mistake, without something more to go on, Mrs. Gillespie's death will remain an unsolved mystery and the only person who will suffer will be Dr. Blakeney because she is the only person who had a known motive. If she is innocent of the murder of her patient, her innocence can only be proved if someone else is charged. Now, tell me honestly, do you think so little of your wife that you'd let her reputation be trampled in the mud for the sake of not wanting to assist the police?"

"My God!" said Jack with genuine enthusiasm. "You're going to have to let me do this portrait of you. Two thousand. Is that what we agreed?"

"You haven't answered my question," said the policeman patiently.

Jack reached for his sketchpad and flicked through to a clean page. "Just stand there for a moment," he murmured, taking a piece of charcoal and making swift lines on the paper. "That was some speech. Is your wife as decent and honourable as you are?"

"You're taking the mickey."

"Actually, I'm not." Jack squinted at him briefly before returning to his drawing. "I happen to think the relationship between the police and society is drifting out of balance. The police have forgotten that they are there only by invitation; while society has forgotten that, because it chooses the laws which regulate it, it has a responsibility to uphold them. The relationship should be a mutually supportive one; instead, it is mutually suspicious and mutually antagonistic." He threw Cooper a disarmingly sweet smile. "I am thoroughly enchanted to meet a policeman who seems to share my point of view. And, no, of course I don't think so little of Sarah that I'd allow her reputation to suffer. Is that really likely?"

"You've not been out and about much since you moved in here."

"I never do when I'm working."

"Then perhaps it's time you left. There's a kangaroo court operating in Fontwell and your wife is their favourite target. She's the newcomer, after all, and you've done her no favours by shacking up with the opposition. She's lost a goodly number of patients already."

Jack held the sketchpad at arm's length to look at it. "Yes," he said, "I'm going to enjoy doing you." He started to pack his hold-all. "It's too damn cold here anyway, and I've got enough on Joanna to finish her at home. Will Sarah have me back?"

"I suggest you ask her. I'm not paid to meddle in domestic disputes."

Jack tipped a finger in acknowledgement. "Okay," he said, "the only thing I know about Ruth is what Mathilda told me. I can't vouch for its accuracy, so you'll have to check that for yourself. Mathilda kept a float of fifty pounds locked in a cash-box in her bedside table and opened it up one day because she wanted me to go to the shop and buy some groceries for her. It was empty. I said, perhaps she'd already spent the money and forgotten. She said, no, it's what came of having a thief for a granddaughter." He shrugged. "For all I know she may have been excusing her own memory lapse by slandering Ruth, but she didn't elaborate and I didn't ask. More than that I can't tell you."

"What a disappointing family," said the Sergeant. "No wonder she chose to leave her money elsewhere."

"That's where we part company," said Jack, standing up and stretching towards the ceiling. "They are Mathilda's creations. She had no business passing the buck to Sarah."