Scold's Bridle

*10*

Ruth, summoned out of a chemistry lesson, sidled into the room set aside for Sergeant Cooper by her housemistress and stood with her back to the door. "Why did you have to come back?" she asked him. "It's embarrassing. I've told you everything I know." She was dressed in mufti and, with her hair swept back into a tight bun, she looked more than her seventeen years.

Cooper could appreciate her embarrassment. Any school was a goldfish bowl but a boarding school peculiarly so. "Police investigations are rarely tidy things," he said apologetically. "Too many loose ends for tidiness." He gestured towards a chair. "Sit down, Miss Lascelles."

With a bad grace, she did so, and he caught a brief glimpse of the gawky adolescent beneath the pseudo-sophistication of the outer shell. He lowered his stocky body on to the chair in front of her and studied her gravely but not unkindly.

"Two days ago we received a letter about you," he said. "It was anonymous. It claimed you were in Cedar House the day your grandmother died and that you stole some earrings. Are either of those facts true, Miss Lascelles?"

Her eyes widened but she didn't say anything.

"Since which time," he went on gently, "I have been told on good authority that your grandmother knew you were a thief. She accused you of stealing money from her. Is that also true?"

The colour drained from her face. "I want a solicitor."

"Why?"

"It's my right."

He stood up with a nod. "Very well. Do you have a solicitor of your own? If you do, you may give your housemistress the number and ask her to telephone him. If not, I'm sure she will be happy to call the one the school uses. Presumably they will charge it to the fees." He walked to the door. "She may even offer to sit in herself to safeguard your interests. I have no objection to either course."

"No," she said sharply, "I want the duty solicitor."

"Which duty solicitor?" He found her transparency oddly pathetic.

"The one the police provide."

He considered this during a prolonged and thoughtful silence. "Would you be referring to duty solicitors at police stations who act on behalf of persons who have no legal representation of their own?"

She nodded.

He sounded genuinely sympathetic. "With the best will in the world, Miss Lascelles, that is out of the question. These are harsh recessionary times, and you're a privileged young woman, surrounded by people only too willing to watch out for your rights. We'll ask your housemistress to contact a lawyer. She won't hesitate, I'm sure. Apart from anything else, she will want to keep the unpleasantness under wraps so to speak. After all, she does have the school's reputation to think of."

"Bastard!" she snapped. "I just won't answer your questions then."

He manufactured a look of surprise. "Do I gather you don't want a solicitor after all?"

"No. Yes." She hugged herself. "But I'm not saying anything."

Cooper returned to his seat. "That's your privilege. But if I don't get any answers from you, then I shall have to ask my questions elsewhere. In my experience, thieves do not confine themselves to stealing from just one person. I wonder what will happen if I call the rest of your house together and ask them en masse if any of their possessions have gone missing in the last year or so. The inference, surely, will be obvious because they know my only connection with the school is you."

"That's blackmail."

"Standard police procedure, Miss Lascelles. If a copper can't get his information one way, then he's duty-bound to try another."

She scowled ferociously. "I didn't kill her."

"Have I said you did?"

She couldn't resist answering, it seemed. "It's what you're thinking. If I was there I must have killed her."

"She probably died during the early half of the night, between nine o'clock and midnight, say. Were you there then?"

She looked relieved. "No. I left at five. I had to be back in time for a physics lecture. It's one of my A level subjects and I gave the vote of thanks at the end."

He took out his pad. "What time did the lecture start?"

"Seven thirty."

"And you were there for the start?"

"Yes."

"How did you manage to do that? You clearly didn't walk thirty miles in two and a half hours."

"I borrowed a bicycle."

He looked deeply sceptical. "What time did you arrive at your grandmother's, Miss Lascelles?"

"I don't know. About three thirty, I suppose."

"And what time did you leave the school?"

"After lunch."

"I see," he said ponderously, "so you rode thirty miles in one direction in two hours, rested for an hour and a half with your grandmother and then rode thirty miles back again. You must be a very fit young woman. May I have the name of the person whose bicycle you borrowed?" He licked the point of his pencil and held it poised above the page.

"I don't know whose it was. I borrowed it without asking."

He made a note. "Shall we call a spade a spade and be done with the pretence? You mean you stole it. Like the earrings and the fifty pounds."

"I put it back. That's not stealing."

"Back where?"

"In the bike shed."

"Good, then you'll be able to identify it for me."

"I'm not sure. I just took the best one I could find. What difference does it make which bicycle it was?"

"Because you're going to hop on board again and I'm going to follow closely behind you all the way to Fontwell." He looked amused. "You see, I don't believe you're capable of riding thirty miles in two hours, Miss Lascelles, but I'm quite happy for you to prove me wrong. Then you can have an hour and a half s rest before you ride back again."

"You can't do that. That's just fucking-" she cast about for a word "-harassment."

"Of course I can do it. It's called a reconstruction. You've just put yourself at the scene of a crime on the day the crime was committed, you're a member of the victim's family with easy access to her house and you thought you were going to inherit money from her. All of which puts you high on the list of probable suspects. Either you prove to my satisfaction that you did go by bicycle, or you tell me now how you really got there. Someone drove you, didn't they?"

She sat in a sullen silence, scraping her toe back and forth across the carpet. "I hitched," she said suddenly. "I didn't want to tell you because the school would throw a fit if they knew."

"Was your grandmother alive when you left Cedar House at five o'clock?"

She looked put out by the sudden switch of direction. "She must have been, mustn't she, as I didn't kill her."

"So you spoke to her?"

Ruth eyed him warily. "Yes," she muttered. "I left my key at school and had to ring the doorbell."

"Then she'll have asked you how you got there. If you had to hitch, she won't have been expecting you."

"I said I had a lift from a friend."

"But that wasn't true, was it, and, as you knew you were going to have to hitch back to school again on a dark November evening, why didn't you ask your grandmother to drive you? She had a car and, according to you, she was fond of you. She'd have done it without a murmur, wouldn't she? Why would you do something so dangerous as hitching in the dark?"

"I didn't think about it."

He sighed. "Where did you hitch from, Miss Lascelles? Fontwell itself, or did you walk the three miles along Gazing Lane to the main road? If it was Fontwell, then we'll be able to find the person who picked you up."

"I walked along Gazing Lane," she said obligingly.

"And what sort of shoes were you wearing?"

"Trainers."

"Then they'll have mud from the lane squeezed into every seam and crevice. It was raining most of that afternoon. The boys at forensic will have a field day. Your shoes will vindicate you if you're telling the truth. And if you're not..." he smiled grimly, "I will make your life a misery, Miss Lascelles. I will interview every girl in the school, if necessary, to ask them who you consort with, who's had to cover for you when you've gone AWOL, what you steal and why you're stealing it. And if at the end of it you have an ounce of credibility left, then I'll start all over again. Is that clear? Now, who drove you to your grandmother's?"

There were tears in her eyes. "It's got nothing to do with Granny's death."

"Then what can you lose by telling me?"

"I'll be expelled."

"You'll be expelled far quicker if I have to explain why I'm carting your clothing off for forensic examination."

She buried her face in her hands. "My boyfriend," she muttered.

"Name?" her demanded relentlessly.

"Dave-Dave Hughes."

"Address?"

She shook her head. "I can't tell you. He'd kill me."

Cooper frowned at the bent head. "How did you meet him?"

She raised her tear-stained face. "He did the tarmac on the school drive." She read censure in his eyes and leapt to defend herself. "It's not like that."

"Like what?"

"I'm not a slut. We love each other."

Her sexual morality had been the last thing on his mind but it was clearly at the forefront of hers. He felt sorry for her. She was accusing herself, he thought, when she called her mother a whore. "Does he own the house?"

She shook her head. "It's a squat."

"But he must have a telephone or you wouldn't be able to contact him."

"It's a mobile."

"May I have the number?"

She looked alarmed. "He'd be furious."

You bet your life he would, thought Cooper. He wondered what Hughes was involved in. Drugs? Under-age sex? Pornography? Expulsion was the least of Ruth's problems if any of these were true. He showed no impatience for the address or phone number. "Tell me about him," he invited instead. "How long have you known him? How old is he?"

He had to prise the information from her with patient cajoling and, as she spoke and listened to herself, he saw the dawning confirmation of her worst fears: that this was not a story of Montagues and Capulets thwarting innocent love but, rather, a seedy log of sweaty half-hours in the back of a white Ford transit. Told baldly, of course, it lacked even the saving attraction of eroticism and Cooper, like Ruth, found the telling uncomfortable. He did his best to make it easy for her but her embarrassment was contagious and they looked away from each other more often than their eyes met.

It had been going on for six months since the tarmac crew had relaid the drive, and the details of how it began were commonplace. A school full of girls; Dave with an eye for the most likely; she flattered by his obvious admiration, more so when the other girls noticed he only had eyes for her; a wistful regret when the tarmac was done and the crew departed; followed by an apparently chance meeting when she was walking alone; he, streetwise and twenty-eight; she, a lonely seventeen-year-old with dreams of romance. He respected her, he loved her, he'd wait forever for her, but (how big a word "but" was in people's lives, thought Cooper) he had her in the back of his transit within a week. If she could forget the squalor of a blanket on a tarpaulin, then she could remember the fun and the excitement. She had crept out of a downstairs window at two o'clock in the morning to be enveloped in her lover's arms. They had smoked and drunk and talked by candlelight in the privacy of the parked van and, yes, all right, he wasn't particularly well educated or even very articulate, but that didn't matter. And if what happened afterwards had not been part of her gameplan, then that didn't matter either because, when it came to it (her eyes belied the words) she had wanted sex as much as he had.

Cooper longed to ask her, why? Why she valued herself so cheaply? Why she was the only girl in the school who fell for it? Why she would want a relationship with an illiterate labourer? Why, ultimately, she was so gullible as to imagine that he wanted anything more than free sex with a clean virgin? He didn't ask, of course. He wasn't so cruel.

The affair might have ended there had she not met him by sheer mischance (Cooper's interpretation, not hers) one day during the holidays. She had heard nothing from him since the night in the van, and hope had given way to depression. She was spending Easter with her grandmother at Fontwell (she usually went to Fontwell, she told Cooper, because she got on better with her grandmother), and caught the bus to Bournemouth to go shopping. And suddenly there was Dave, and he was so pleased to see her, but angry, too, because she hadn't answered his letter. (Sourly, Cooper imagined the touching scene. What letter? Why, the one that had got lost in the post, of course.) After which they had fallen into each other's arms in the back of the Ford, before Dave had driven her home and realized (Cooper reading between the lines again) that Ruth might be good for a little more than a quick tumble on a blanket when he felt horny.

"He took me everywhere that holidays. It was wonderful. The best time I've ever had." But she spoke the words flatly, as if even the memory lacked sparkle.

She was too canny to tell her grandmother what she was doing-even in her wildest dreams she didn't think Mathilda would approve of Dave-so, instead, like a two-timing spouse, she invented excuses for her absences.

"And your grandmother believed you?"

"I think her arthritis was really bad about then. I used to say I was going somewhere, but in the evening she'd have forgotten where."

"Did Dave take you to his home?"

"Once. I didn't like it much."

"Did he suggest you steal from your grandmother? Or was that your idea?"

"It wasn't like that," she said unhappily. "We ran out of money, so I borrowed some from her bag one day."

"And couldn't pay it back?"

"No." She fell silent.

"What did you do?"

"There was so much stuff there. Jewellery. Ornaments. Bits of silver. She didn't even like most of it. And she was so mean. She could have given me a better allowance, but she never did."

"So you stole her things and Dave sold them."

She didn't answer.

"What happened to Dave's job with the tarmac crew?"

"No work." She shrugged. "It's not his fault. He'd work if he could."

Did she really believe that? "So you went on stealing from your grandmother through the summer term and the summer holidays?"

"It wasn't stealing. I was going to get it anyway."

Dave had indoctrinated her well-or was this Ruth herself speaking? "Except that you didn't."

"The doctor's no right to it. She's not even related."

"Dave's address, please, Miss Lascelles."

"I can't," she said with genuine fear. "He'll kill me."

He was out of patience with her. "Well, let's face it, it won't be much of a loss whichever way you look at it. Your mother won't grieve for you, and to the rest of society you'll be a statistic. Just another young girl who allowed a man to use and abuse her." He shook his head contemptuously. "I think the most depressing aspect of it all is how much money has been wasted on your education." He looked around the room. "My kids would have given their eye-teeth to have had your opportunities, but then they're a good deal brighter than you, of course." He waited for a moment then shut his notebook and stood up with a sigh. "You're forcing me to do it the hard way, through your headmistress."

Ruth hugged herself again. "She doesn't know anything. How could she?"

"She'll know the name of the firm that was employed to do the drive. I'll track him down that way."

She wiped her damp nose on her sleeve. "But, you don't understand, I have to get to university."

"Why?" he demanded. "So that you and your boyfriend can have a field day with gullible students? What does he deal in? Drugs?"

Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. "I don't know how else to get away from him. I've told him I'm going to Exeter, but I'm not, I'm trying for universities in the north because they're the farthest away."

Cooper was strangely moved. It occurred to him that this was very likely true. She did see running away as the only option open to her. He wondered what Dave had done to make her so afraid of him. Grown impatient, perhaps, and killed Mrs. Gillespie to hasten Ruth's inheritance? He resumed his seat. "You never knew your father, of course. I suppose it's natural you should have looked for someone to take his place. But university isn't going to solve anything, Miss Lascelles. You may have a term or two of peace before Dave finds you, but no more. How did you plan to keep it a secret? Were you going to tell the school that they were never to reveal which university you'd gone to? Were you going to tell your mother and your friends the same thing? Sooner or later there'd be a plausible telephone call and someone would oblige with the information."

She seemed to shrink in front of his eyes. "Then there's nothing I can do."

He frowned. "You can start by telling me where to find him."

"Are you going to arrest him?"

"For what?"

"Stealing from Granny. You'll have to arrest me, too."

He shrugged. "I'll need to talk to your grandmother's executors about that. They may decide to let sleeping dogs lie."

"Then you're just going to ask him questions about the day Granny died?"

"Yes," he agreed, assuming it was what she wanted to hear.

She shook her head. "He does terrible things to me when he's angry." Her eyes flooded again. "If you don't put him in prison then I can't tell you where to find him. You just don't understand what he's like. He'll punish me."

"How?"

But she shook her head again, more violently. "I can't tell you that."

"You're protected here."

"He said he'd come and make a scene in the middle of the school if I ever did anything he didn't like. They'll expel me."

Cooper was perplexed. "If you're so worried about expulsion, why did you ever go out and meet him in the first place? You'd have been expelled on the spot if you'd been caught doing that."

She twisted her fingers in the hem of her jumper. "I didn't know then how much I wanted to go to university," she whispered.

He nodded. "There's an old saying about that. You never miss the water till the well runs dry." He smiled without hostility. "But all of us take things for granted so you're not alone in that. Try this one: desperate diseases call for desperate remedies. I suggest you make a clean breast of all this to your headmistress, throw yourself on her mercy, so to speak, before she finds out from me or Hughes. She might be sympathetic. You never know."

"She'll go mad."

"Do you have a choice?"

"I could kill myself," she said in a tight little voice.

"It's a very weak spirit," he said gently, "that sees cutting off the head as the only solution to a headache." He slapped his hands against his knees. "Find a bit of courage, girl. Give me Dave's address and then sort things out with your headmistress."

Her lip wobbled. "Will you come with me if I do?"

Oh, good grief, he thought, hadn't he had to hold his own children's hands often enough? "All right," he agreed, "but if she asks me to leave I shall have to. I've no authority here as your guardian, remember."

"Twenty-three, Palace Road, Bournemouth," she whispered. "It was my mother who told you I was a thief, wasn't it?" She sounded desperately forlorn, as if she realized that, for her, there was no one left.

"No," said Cooper compassionately. "More's the pity, but your mother hasn't told me anything."

When Sarah pulled into her driveway later that Friday afternoon, she was greeted by the unexpected sight of Jack's car and Cooper's car nestling side by side against the wall in cosy intimacy. Her first inclination was to turn round and drive away again. She hadn't the stomach for a confrontation with either of them, even less for another baring of her soul in front of Cooper while her husband severed his remaining ties. But second thoughts prevailed. Dammit all-she banged her fist angrily against the steering wheel-it was her house. She was buggered if she was going to drive around for hours just to avoid her scumbag of a husband and a pompous policeman.

Quietly, she let herself in through the front door, half-thinking that if she tiptoed past the studio, she could possess herself of the kitchen before they knew she was there. As her mother had once said, slamming the kitchen door on Sarah's father: "An Englishman's home may be his castle, but an Englishwoman's kitchen is where he eats his humble pie." The sound of voices drifted down the corridor, however, and she knew they had possessed it before her. With a sigh, she fastened her dignity about her like armour plating, and advanced.

Jack, DS Cooper and Ruth Lascelles looked up from their glasses of wine with differing shades of alarm and embarrassment colouring their faces.

"Hi," said Sarah into the silence. "You found the '83 Cheval Blanc with no trouble then."

"Have some," said Jack, reaching for a clean glass off the draining board. "It's good."

"It should be," she said. "It's a St. Emilion, Premier Grand Cru Class6, and it cost me a small fortune when I laid it down."

"Don't be so stuffy, woman. You've got to try them from time to time, otherwise you'll end up with a collector's item that's totally undrinkable." He filled the glass and pushed it across the table, his eyes bright with mischief. She felt a surge of affection for the randy bastard-love, she thought, was the most stubborn of all the diseases-but hid it under a ferocious glare. "The consensus view amongst the three of us," he went on cheerfully, "is dark ruby colour, brilliant legs, and a very exotic nose-curranty fruit, cigar box and hints of herbs and spices."

"It's a vintage wine, you moron. It's supposed to be savoured and appreciated, not drunk at five o'clock in the afternoon round the kitchen table. I bet you didn't let it breathe. I bet you just poured it out like Lucozade."

Cooper cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Dr. Blakeney. We did say we'd be happier with tea."

"You pusillanimous rat," said Jack with imperturbable good humour. "You drooled when I waved the bottle under your nose. Well, come on, old thing, you might as well try it. We're all dying for second helpings but we thought it would be tactful to wait till you arrived before we opened another one."

"Your life expectancy would be nil if you had," she said, dropping her handbag and shrugging her coat to the floor. "All right. Give it here, but I can tell you now it won't be drinkable. It needs another three years at least." She sat in the vacant chair and drew the glass towards her, covering it with one hand and swirling it gently to release the bouquet. She sniffed appreciatively. "Who smelt cigar boxes?"

"I did," said Cooper nervously.

"That's good. The book says the bouquet should be smoky oak and cedar. Curranty fruit?"

Cooper indicated himself again. "Me."

"Have you done this before?" He shook his head. "You should take it up. You've obviously got a nose for it."

"Ruth and I sussed the herbs and spices," said Jack. "What's the verdict?"

Sarah took a sip and let the flavours play across her tongue. "Spectacular," she said finally, "but you're bloody well not opening another bottle. The book says another three years, and I'm going by the book. You can use the wine box for refills. What are you all doing here anyway?" Her eyes rested on Ruth. "Shouldn't you be at school?"

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Ruth's been expelled," said Jack. "We're all wondering if she can live here with you and me until something more permanent is sorted out."

Sarah took another sip of her wine and eyed him thoughtfully. "You and me?" she queried silkily. "Does that mean you intend to inflict your company on me again?"

The dark face softened. "That rather depends, my angel."

"On whether or not I'm prepared to have you back?"

"No. On whether I come back on my terms or your terms."

"My terms," she said bluntly, "or not at all."

He gave a ghost of a smile. "Shame," he murmured.

Sarah held his gaze for a moment, then transferred her attention to Ruth. "So why were you expelled?"

Ruth, who had been staring at her hands since Sarah came in, flicked a sideways glance at Cooper. "The Sergeant knows. He can tell you."

"I'd rather hear it from you."

"I broke the school rules." She resumed her study of her hands.

"All of them or one in particular?"

"Leaving school without permission."

"Times haven't changed then. A friend of mine was expelled for sneaking down the fire escape and talking to some boys at the bottom of it. She was only caught because the rest of us were hanging out of the windows giggling. We were making such a row the housemistress heard us and expelled her on the spot. She's a barrister now. Rather a good one, too."

"I've been sleeping with someone," Ruth whispered, "and the headmistress said I was a bad influence on the others. She said I was immoral."

Sarah raised enquiring eyebrows at Cooper, who nodded. "Ah, well, perhaps times have changed, after all," she said matter-of-factly. "I can't imagine any of us having the courage to do anything so daring, not after we'd had it firmly dinned into us that a prospective husband could always tell if a girl wasn't a virgin." She gave a throaty chuckle. "We knew a great deal about love bites and the bruising effects of frantic French kissing, and absolutely nothing about anything else. We were convinced we'd turn green or break out in pustules if we let a man loose below the neckline. It came as something of a shock to discover we'd been sold a lie." She took another sip of her wine. "Was it worth getting expelled for?"

"No." A tear raa down the girl's face and on to the table. "I don't know what to do. I want to go to university."

"Surely the most sensible thing would be to go back to Cedar House and your mother. She'll have to find you another school." Why had Cooper brought her here anyway? Or was it Jack who'd brought her?

Cooper rumbled into life. "Her boyfriend's liable to cut up rough, once I've had a word with him, and Cedar House will be the first place he goes looking. It's an imposition, I know, but off-hand I couldn't think of anywhere else, not after the way the school dealt with her." He looked quite put out. "She was told to pack a suitcase while they ordered a taxi to take her home, so I said, forget the taxi, I'll take her. I've never seen the like of it. You'd think she'd committed a hanging offence the way they carried on. And the worst of it was, they wouldn't have known anything about it if I hadn't persuaded her to tell them herself. I feel responsible, I really do, but then I thought they'd give her some credit for being honest and let her off with a caution. It's what I would have done."

"Does your mother know?" Sarah asked Ruth.

"Jack let me phone."

"Is she happy about you staying here?"

"I don't know. All she said was she'd heard from Miss Harris and then hung up. She sounded furious." Ruth kept her head down and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

Sarah made a wry face at Jack. "You'll have to be the one to tell her then. I'm not exactly flavour of the month at the moment, and I can't see her being very pleased about it."

"I've already tried. She hung up on me too."

It was on the tip of Sarah's tongue to ask why, before she thought better of it. Knowing Jack, the answer would be as teasingly illusive as the answer to life itself. What puzzled her more was the speed with which events, like the ball in a pinball machine, had taken such an unpredictable course. This morning she'd had only another solitary weekend to look forward to-and now?

"Well, someone's got to tell her," she said irritably, isolating the one fact she could get to grips with. She looked at the Sergeant. "You'll have to do it. I'm quite happy for Ruth to stay but only if her mother knows where she is."

Cooper looked wretched. "Perhaps it would be better if we involved social services," he suggested, "asked a third party to intercede, as it were."

Sarah's eyes narrowed. "I'm an extremely amenable woman on the whole but I do resent my good nature being taken advantage of. There is no such thing as a free lunch, Sergeant, and I'd like to remind you that you have just drunk some very expensive St. Emilion of mine which, at a conservative estimate and allowing for inflation, costs well over seven pounds per glass. In other words, you owe me one, so you will not shuffle your responsibility and this child's future on to some overworked and underpaid social worker whose only solution to the problem will be to place her in a hostel full of disturbed adolescents."

Cooper's wretchedness grew.

"You have also, by underestimating the old-fashioned ethics that still exist within girls' boarding schools, caused a young woman approaching the most important exams of her life to be expelled. Now, in a world where the renting out of a woman's womb is still the only reliable method that men have discovered to replicate themselves, the very least they can do in return is to allow their women enough education to make the life sentence of child-rearing endurable. To sit and stare at an empty wall is one thing; to have the inner resources, the knowledge and the confidence to turn that wall into a source of endless stimulation is another. And that's ignoring the positive influence that educated and intelligent women have on succeeding generations. Ruth wants to go to university. To do so, she must pass her A levels. It is imperative that Joanna finds another school to accept her PDQ. Which means someone"-she cocked her finger at him-"namely you, must explain to her that Ruth is here, that she is here for a good reason, and that Joanna must come and talk it through before Ruth loses her opportunity to take her education as far as it can go." She turned her gaze on the girl. "And if you dare tell me now, Ruth, that you've given up on your future, then I'll put you through the first mangle I can find and, I promise you, the experience will not be a pleasant one."

There was a long silence.

Finally, Jack stirred. "Now you begin to see what Sarah's terms consist of. There's no allowing for human frailty. I grant you, there are pages of subtext and small print dealing with the awful imperfections that most of us suffer from-namely, inadequacy, lack of confidence, seeing both sides and sitting on fences-but they are grey areas which she treats with insufferable patience. And, take it from me, you allow her to do that at your peril. It undermines what little self-respect you have left." He beamed fondly at Cooper. "I sympathize with you, old son, but Sarah's right as usual. Someone's got to talk to Joanna and you're the one who's run up the most debts. After all, you did get Ruth expelled and you did drink a glass of wine that cost over seven quid."

Cooper shook his head. "I hope Miss Lascelles can put up with the pair of you. I know I couldn't. You'd have me climbing the walls before you could say knife."

The "pair" wasn't lost on Sarah. "How come you know so much more about my domestic arrangements than I do, Sergeant?" she asked casually.

He chuckled amiably, pushing himself to his feet. "Because I never say never, Doctor." He winked at her. "As someone once told me, life's a bugger. It creeps up behind you and gets you where you least expect it every time."

Sarah felt the girl start to tremble as she pushed open the door of the spare room and switched on the light. "What's the matter?" she asked.

"It's downstairs," she blurted out. "If Dave comes, he could get in."

"Not my choice. Geoffrey Freeling's. He turned the house upside down so that the reception rooms would have the best views. We're slowly turning it back again, but it takes time." She pushed open a communicating door. "It has its own bathroom." She glanced back at the girl, saw the pinched look to her face. "You're frightened, aren't you? Would you rather sleep upstairs in my room?"

Ruth burst into tears. "I'm so sorry," she wept. "I don't know what to do. Dave will kill me. I was all right at school. He couldn't have got in there."

Sarah put her arms about the other's thin shoulders and clasped them tightly. "Come upstairs," she said gently. "You'll be safe with me. Jack can sleep in here."

And serve the bastard right, she thought. Ho, ho! For once, sod's law was on the side of the angels. She had been toying with the ethics of medical castration but was prepared to compromise on a cold bed and a grovelling apology. It was a very partial compromise. She was so damn glad to have him back she felt like doing handsprings.