Scold's Bridle

*17*

Hughes, who was suffering from sleep deprivation and niggling doubts about the continued obedience of the youngsters he had so successfully controlled, was subdued when he faced Chief Inspector Charlie Jones across the table in the interview room at Freemont Road Police Station. Like Cooper, he was in pessimistic mood. "I suppose you've come to stitch me up for the old cow's murder," he said morosely. "You're all the same."

"Ah, well," said Charlie in his lugubrious fashion, "it makes the percentages look better when the league tables get published. We're into business culture in the police force these days, lad, and productivity's important."

"That stinks."

"Not to our customers it doesn't."

"What customers?"

"The law-abiding British public who pay handsomely for our services through their taxes. Business culture demands that we first identify our client base, next, assess its needs, then, finally, respond in a satisfactory and adequate manner. You already represent a handsome profit on the balance sheet. Rape, conspiracy to rape, abduction, holding without consent, conspiracy to hold without consent, assault, sexual assault, theft, conspiracy to commit theft, handling stolen goods, corruption, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice-" he broke off with a broad smile, "which brings me to Mrs. Gillespie's murder."

"I knew it," said Hughes in disgust. "You're gonna fucking frame me for it. Jesus! I'm not saying another word till my brief gets here."

"Who said anything about framing you?" demanded . Charlie plaintively. "It's a little co-operation I'm after, that's all."

Hughes eyed him suspiciously. "What do I get in return?"

"Nothing."

"Then it's no."

Charlie's eyes narrowed to thin slits. "The question you should have asked me, lad, is what do you get if you don't co-operate? I'll tell you. You get my personal assurance that not a stone will be left unturned until I see you convicted and sent down for the abduction and rape of a child."

"I don't do children," Hughes sneered. "Never have done. Never will. And you won't get me for rape neither. I've never raped a girl in my life. I've never needed to. What those other punks did is their affair. I had no idea what was going on."

"For an adult male to sleep with a thirteen-year-old girl is rape. She's under age and therefore too young to give consent for what's done to her."

"I've never slept with a thirteen-year-old."

"Sure you have, and I'll prove it. I'll work every man under me until he drops in order to turn up just one little girl, virgo intacta before you raped her, who lied to you about her age." He gave a savage grin as a flicker of doubt crossed Hughes's face. "Because there'll be one, lad, there always is. It's an idiosyncrasy of female psychology. At thirteen, they want to pass for sixteen, and they do. At forty, they want to pass for thirty, and by God they can do that, too, because the one damn thing you can be sure about the female of the species is that she never looks her age."

Hughes fingered his unshaven jaw. "What sort of cooperation are you talking about?"

"I want a complete run-down on everything you know about Cedar House and the people in it."

"That's easy enough. Fuck all's the answer. Never went in. Never met the old biddy."

"Come on, Dave, you're a pro. You sat outside in your van over the months, waiting while Ruth did her stuff inside. You were her chauffeur, remember, turned up day after day during the holidays to give her a good time. How did she know you were there if you couldn't signal to her? Don't kid me you weren't close enough to watch all the comings and goings in that place."

Hughes shrugged. "Okay, so I saw people from time to time, but if I don't know who they were, how's it gonna help you?"

"Did you ever watch the back of the house?"

The man debated with himself. "Maybe," he said guardedly.

"Where from?"

"If you're aiming to use this against me, I want my brief."

"You're in no position to argue," said Charlie impatiently. "Where were you watching it from? Outside or inside the garden?"

"I sometimes used to park the van in the housing estate at the side. Ruth reckoned it was safer, what with all the yuppies living there. Wives commuting to work along with their husbands so no one in during the day," he explained obligingly. "There's some rough ground next to the fence round Cedar House garden, easy enough to hop over and watch from the trees."

The Inspector took an ordnance survey map out of his briefcase. "The Cedar Estate?" he asked, tapping the map with his forefinger.

Hughes sniffed. "Probably. Ruth said the land once belonged to the house before the old lady sold it off for cash, though Christ knows why she didn't flog the rest while she was about it. What she want with a massive garden, when there's people living on the streets? Jesus, but she was a tight-fisted old bitch," he said unwarily. "All that frigging money and no one else got a bloody look-in. Is it true she left the lot to her doctor or was Ruth just spinning me a yarn?"

Charlie stared him down. "None of your business, lad, but I'll tell you this for free. Ruth didn't get a penny because of what you forced her to do. Her grandmother took agin her when she started stealing. But for you, she'd have had the house."

Hughes was unmoved. "Shouldn't have been so quick to open her legs then, should she?"

Charlie looked at the map again, fighting an urge to hit him. "Did you ever see anyone go in through the back door?"

"The cleaner used to sweep the step now and again. Saw the woman from next door pottering about in her bit and the old boy sunning himself on his patio."

"I mean strangers. Someone you wouldn't have expected."

"I never saw anyone." He put unnatural emphasis on the verb.

"Heard then?"

"Maybe."

"Where were you? What did you hear?"

"I watched Mrs. Gillespie go out in her car one day. Thought I'd take a look through the windows, see what was there."

"Was Ruth with you?"

He shook his head. "Back at school."

"Refusing to co-operate, presumably, so you had to find out for yourself what was worth stealing. You were casing the place."

Hughes didn't answer.

"Okay, what happened?"

"I heard the old lady coming round the path so I dived behind the coal bunker by the kitchen door."

"Go on."

"It wasn't her. It was some other bastard who was nosing around like me."

"Male? Female?"

"An old man. He knocked on the back door and waited for a bit, then let himself in with a key." Hughes pulled a face. "So I legged it." He saw the triumph on Jones's face. "That what you wanted?"

"Could be. Did he have the key in his hand?"

"I wasn't looking."

"Did you hear anything?"

"The knocking."

"Anything else?"

"I heard a stone being moved after the knocking."

The flowerpot. "How do you know it was a man if you weren't looking?"

"He called out. 'Jenny, Ruth, Mathilda, are you there?' It was a man all right."

"Describe his voice."

"Posh."

"Old? Young? Forceful? Weak? Drunk? Sober? Pull your finger out, lad. What sort of impression did you get of him?"

"I already told you. I reckoned it was an old man. That's why I thought it was her coming back. He was really slow and his voice was all breathy, like he had trouble with his lungs. Or was very unfit." He thought for a moment. "He might have been drunk, though," he added. "He had real trouble getting the words out."

"Did you go round the front afterwards?"

Dave shook his head. "Hopped over the fence and went back to the van."

"So you don't know if he came by car?"

"No." A flash of something-indecision?-crossed his face.

"Go on," prompted Jones.

"I'd never swear to it, so it's not evidence."

"What isn't?"

"I was listening, if you get my meaning. He gave me a hell of a shock when I heard him coming so I reckon I'd've heard a car if there'd been one. That gravel at the front makes a hell of a row."

"When was this?"

"Middle of September. Thereabouts."

"Okay. Anything else?"

"Yeah." He fingered his shoulder gingerly where Jack's car door had slammed into it. "If you want to know who killed the old biddy then you should talk to the bastard who dislocated my fucking arm last night. I sussed him the minute I saw his face in the light. He was forever sniffing round her, in and out that place like he owned it, but he made damn sure Ruth wasn't there at the time. I spotted him two or three times up by the church, waiting till the coast was clear. Reckon he's the one you should be interested in if it's right what Ruth told me, that the old woman's wrists were slit with a Stanley knife."

Charlie eyed him curiously. "Why do you say that?"

"He cleaned one of the gravestones while he was waiting, scraped the dirt out of the words written on it. And not just the once neither. He was really fascinated by that stone." He looked smug. "Used a Stanley knife to do it, too, didn't he? I went and read it afterwards ... "Did I deserve to be despised, By my creator, good and wise? Since you it was who made me be, Then part of you must die with me." Some bloke called Fitzgibbon who snuffed it in 1833. Thought I'd use it myself when the time came. Kind of hits the nail on the head, wouldn't you say?"

"You won't be given the chance. They censor epitaphs these days. Religion takes itself seriously now the congregations have started to vanish." He stood up. "A pity, really. Humour never harmed anyone."

"You interested in him now then?"

"I've always been interested in him, lad." Charlie smiled mournfully. "Mrs. Gillespie's death was very artistic."

Cooper found the Inspector enjoying a late pint over cheese and onion sandwiches at the Dog and Bottle in Learmouth. He lowered himself with a sigh on to the seat beside him. "Feet playing you up again?" asked Charlie sympathetically through a mouthful of bread.

"I wouldn't mind so much," Cooper grumbled, "if my inside had aged at the same rate as my outside. If I felt fifty-six, it probably wouldn't bug me." He rubbed his calves to restore the circulation. "I promised the wife we'd take up dancing again when I retired, but at this rate we'll be doing it with Zimmer frames."

Charlie grinned. "So there's no truth in the saying: you're as old as you feel?"

"None whatsoever. You're as old as your body tells you you are. I'll still feel eighteen when I'm a bedridden ninety-year-old and I still won't be able to play football for England. I only ever wanted to be Stanley Matthews," he said wistfully. "My dad took me to watch him and Blackpool win the FA cup in 1953 as a sixteenth birthday present. It was pure magic. I've never forgotten it."

"I wanted to be Tom Kelley," said Charlie.

"Who's he?"

The Inspector chuckled as he wiped his fingers on a napkin. "The photographer who persuaded Marilyn Monroe to pose nude for him. Imagine it. Marilyn Monroe entirely naked and you on the other side of the lens. Now, that really would have been magic."

"We're in the wrong business, Charlie. There's no charm in what we do."

"Mrs. Marriott hasn't raised your spirits then?"

"No." He sighed again. "I made a promise to her, said we wouldn't use what she told me unless we had to, but I can't see at the moment how we can avoid it. If it doesn't have a bearing on the case, then I'm a monkey's uncle. First, Joanna Lascelles was not Mrs. Gillespie's only child. She had another one thirteen, fourteen months later by Mrs. Marriott's husband." He ran through the background for Charlie's benefit. "Mrs. Marriott believed Mrs. Gillespie killed the baby when it was born, but on the morning of the sixth, Mrs. Gillespie told her it had been a boy and that she'd put it up for adoption when it was born."

Charlie leaned forward, his eyes bright with curiosity. "Does she know what happened to him?"

Cooper shook his head. "They were screaming at each other, apparently, and that little tit-bit was tossed out by Mrs. Gillespie as she closed the door. Mrs. Marriott says Mathilda wanted to hurt her, so it might not even be true."

"Okay. Go on."

"Second, and this is the real shocker, Mrs. Marriott stole some barbiturates from her father's dispensary which she says Mathilda used to murder Gerald Cavendish." He detailed what Jane had told him, shaking his head from time to time whenever he touched on James Gillespie's part in the tragedy. "He's evil, that one, blackmails everyone as far as I can judge. The wretched woman's terrified he's going to broadcast what he knows."

"Serves her right," said Charlie unsympathetically. "What a corrupt lot they all were, and they say it's only recently the country started going to pot. You say she went to see Mrs. Gillespie on the morning of the murder. What else did Mrs. Gillespie tell her?"

"Murder?" queried Cooper with a touch of irony. "Don't tell me you agree with me at last?"

"Get on with it, you old rogue," said Jones impatiently. "I'm on the edge of my seat here."

"Mrs. Gillespie began by being very cool and composed, told Mrs. Marriott that the whole matter was out of her hands and that she wasn't prepared to pay the sort of money James was demanding from her. As far as she was concerned she didn't care any more what people said or thought about her. There had never been any doubt that Gerald committed suicide and if Jane wanted to own up to stealing drugs from her father, that was her affair. Mathilda would deny knowing anything about them." He opened his notebook. "I'm more sinned against than sinning,' " she said and advised Mrs. Marriott that, in the matter of the baby, things would get worse before they got better. She went on to say that Mrs. Marriott was a fool for keeping her husband in the dark all these years. They had a terrible row during which Mrs. Marriott accused Mrs. Gillespie of ruining the lives of everyone she had ever had contact with, at which point Mrs. Gillespie ordered her out of the house with the words: "James has been reading my private papers and knows where the child is. It's quite pointless to keep quiet any longer." She then told Mrs. Marriott it was a boy and that she'd put it up for adoption." He closed the notebook. "My bet is the 'private papers' were the diaries and things were going to get worse because Mrs. Gillespie had made up her mind to acknowledge her illegitimate child and spike James's guns." He rubbed his jaw wearily. "Not that that scenario really makes a great deal more sense than it did before. We'd more or less decided that whoever was reading the diaries was the same person who stole them and murdered the old lady, and I still say James Gillespie wouldn't have drawn our attention to the diaries if he was the guilty party. The psychology's all wrong. And what motive did he have for killing her? She was far more valuable alive as a blackmail victim. Let's face it, it wasn't just the business of the baby he could hold over her, it was her uncle's murder as well."

"But he probably couldn't prove that, not so long afterwards, and you're making too many assumptions," said Charlie slowly. " 'I'm more sinned against than sinning,' " he echoed. "That's a line from King Lear."

"So?"

"King Lear went mad and took to wandering in the fields near Dover with a crown of weeds on his head because his daughters had deprived him of his kingdom and his authority."

Cooper groaned. "I thought it was Ophelia who had the crown of weeds."

"Hers were coronet weeds," corrected Jones with idle pedantry. "It was Lear who wore the crown." He thought of the epitaph on the Fontwell tombstone. "By God, Tommy, there's a lovely symmetry about this case. Jack Blakeney's been using a Stanley knife to clean inscriptions in Fontwell."

Cooper scowled at him. "How many pints have you had?"

Charlie leaned forward again, his keen eyes scouring Cooper's face. "I studied King Lear at school. It's a hell of a play. All about the nature of love, the abuse of power, and the ultimate frailties of the human spirit."

"Just like Hamlet then," said Cooper sourly. "Othello, too, if it comes to that."

"Of course. They were all tragedies with death the inevitable consequence. King Lear's mistake was to misinterpret the nature of love. He gave more weight to words than to deeds and partitioned his kingdom between two of his daughters, Goneril and Regan, whom he believed loved him but who, in reality, despised him. He was a tired old man who wanted to relinquish the burdens of state and live the rest of his life in peace and tranquility. But he was also extremely arrogant and contemptuous of anyone's opinions but his own. His rash assumption that he knew what love was sowed the seeds of his family's destruction." He grinned. "Not bad, eh? Damn nearly verbatim from an essay I wrote in the sixth form. And I loathed the flaming play at the time. It's taken me thirty years to see its merits."

"I came up with King Lear a few days ago," remarked Cooper, "but I still don't see a connection. If she'd divided her estate between Mrs. Lascelles and Miss Lascelles there'd have been a parallel then."

"You're missing the point, Tommy. King Lear was the most tragic of all Shakespeare's plays and Mrs. Gillespie knew her Shakespeare. Dammit, man, she thought everything he wrote was gospel. There was a third child, don't forget, who was turned off without a penny." He surged to his feet. "I want Jack Blakeney in the nick in half an hour. Be a good fellow and bring him in. Tell him your boss wants to talk to him about Mrs. Gillespie's adopted son."

What neither of them knew was that Jack Blakeney had been arrested at Mill House, half an hour previously, following the Orloffs' 999 call and Joanna Lascelles's hysterical assertions that he had not only tried to kill her but had admitted killing her mother.

The Inspector learnt of it as soon as he arrived back from lunch. Cooper was informed by radio and ordered to return post haste. He took time out, however, to sit for five minutes in depressed disillusion in a deserted country lane. His hands were shaking too much to drive with any competence, and he knew, with the awful certainty of defeat, that his time was over. He had lost whatever it was that had made him a good policeman. Oh, he had always known what his superiors said about him, but he had also known they were wrong. His forte had been his ability to make accurate judgements about the people he dealt with, and whatever anyone said to the contrary, he was usually right. But he had never allowed his sympathies for an offender and an offender's family to stand in the way of an arrest. Nor had he seen any validity in allowing police work to dehumanize him or destroy the tolerance that he, privately, believed was the one thing that set man above the animals.

With a heavy heart, he fired the engine and set off back to Learmouth. He had misjudged both the Blakeneys. Worse, he simply couldn't begin to follow Charlie Jones's flights of fancy over King Lear or comprehend the awful symmetry behind inscriptions and Stanley knives. Hadn't Mr. Spede told him that the Stanley knife on the bathroom floor was the one from the kitchen drawer? The crown he thought he understood. Whoever had decked out Mrs. Gillespie in nettles had seen the symbolic connection between her and King Lear. How then had Ophelia come to lead them up the garden path? Coronet weeds, he recalled, and Dr. Blakeney's reference to them in the bathroom.

An intense sadness squeezed about his heart. Poor Tommy Cooper. He was, after all, just an absurd and rather dirty old man, entertaining fantasies about a woman who was young enough to be his daughter.

An hour later, Inspector Jones pulled out the chair opposite Jack and sat down, switching on the tape recorder and registering date, time and who was present. He rubbed his hands in anticipation of a challenge. "Well, well, Mr. Blakeney, I've been looking forward to this." He beamed across at Cooper who was sitting with his back to the wall, staring at the floor. "The Sergeant's whetted my appetite with what he's told me about you, not to mention the reports of your contretemps with the police in Bournemouth and this latest little fracas at Cedar House."

Jack linked his hands behind his head and smiled wolfishly. "Then I hope you won't be disappointed, Inspector."

"I'm sure I won't." He steepled his fingers on the table in front of him. "We'll leave Mrs. Lascelles and the Bournemouth incident to one side for the moment because I'm more interested in your relationship with Mrs. Gillespie." He looked very pleased with himself. "I've deciphered the floral crown that she was wearing in her bath. Not Ophelia at all, but King Lear. I've just been looking it up. Act IV, Scene IV where Cordelia describes him as 'Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow weeds, With burdocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flow'rs.' And then Scene VI, a stage direction. 'Enter Lear, fantastically dressed with weeds.' Am I right, Mr. Blakeney?"

"It did occur to me that Ophelia was a very unlikely interpretation. I guessed Lear when Sarah described the scene to me."

"And Lear certainly makes more sense."

Jack cocked his irritating eyebrow. "Does it?"

"Oh, yes." He rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation. "It goes something like this, I think. Lear had two vile daughters, Goneril and Regan, and one loving daughter, Cordelia. Cordelia he banished because she refused to flatter him with hollow words; Goneril and Regan he rewarded because they were deceitful enough to tell lies in order to get their share of his wealth. For Goneril and Regan, read Joanna and Ruth Lascelles. For Cordelia, read the son Mrs. Gillespie put up for adoption, i.e. the one she banished who never received a penny from her." He held Jack's gaze. "Now, in the play, Cordelia comes back to rescue her father from the brutality her sisters are inflicting upon him, and I think it happened in real life, too, though purely figuratively speaking of course. Neither Joanna nor Ruth were brutal to Mrs. Gillespie, merely desperately disappointing." He tapped his forefingers together. "Cordelia, the adopted son whom Mathilda had long since given up on, reappears miraculously to remind her that love does still exist for her, that she is not as embittered as she thought she was and that, ultimately, she has produced at least one person who has qualities she could be proud of. How am I doing, Mr. Blakeney?"

"Imaginatively."

Charlie gave a low laugh. "The only question is, who is Cordelia?"

Jack didn't answer.

"And did he come looking for his mother or was it pure chance that brought him here? Who recognized whom, I wonder?"

Again Jack didn't answer, and Charlie's brows snapped together ferociously. "You are not obliged to answer my questions, Mr. Blakeney, but you would be very unwise to forget that I am investigating murder and attempted murder here. Silence won't help you, you know."

Jack shrugged, apparently unmoved by threats. "Even if any of this were true, what does it have to do with Mathilda's death?"

"Dave Hughes told me an interesting story today. He says he watched you clean a gravestone in the cemetery at Fontwell, claims you were obviously so fascinated by it that he went and read it after you'd gone. Do you remember what it says?"

" 'George Fitzgibbon 1789-1833. Did I deserve to be despised, By my creator, good and wise? Since you it was who made me be, Then part of you must die with me.' I looked him up in the parish records. He succumbed to syphilis as a result of loose living. Maria, his wretched wife, died of the same thing four years later and was popped into the ground alongside George, but she didn't get a tombstone because her children refused to pay for one. There's a written epitaph in the record instead and hers is even better. 'George was lusty, coarse and evil, He gave me pox, he's with the devil.' Short, and to the point. George's was ridiculously hypocritical by contrast."

"It all depends who George thought his creator was," said Charlie. "Perhaps it was his mother he wanted to take to hell with him."

Idly Jack traced a triangle on the surface of the table. "Who told you Mathilda had an adopted son? Someone reliable, I hope, because you're building a hell of a castle on their information."

Jones caught Cooper's eye, but ignored the warning frown. As Cooper said, their chances of respecting Jane Mariott's confidences were thin. "Mrs. Jane Marriott, whose husband was the boy's father."

"Ah, well, a very reliable source then." He saw the gleam of excitement in the Inspector's eyes and smiled with genuine amusement. "Mathilda was not my mother, Inspector. If she had been I'd have been thrilled. I loved the woman."

Charlie shrugged. "Then Mrs. Gillespie lied about having a son, and it's your wife who's Cordelia. It has to be one or other of you or she wouldn't have made that will. She wasn't going to make Lear's mistake and bequeath her estate to the undeserving daughters."

Jack looked as if he were about to deny it, then shrugged. "I imagine Mathilda told Jane Marriott it was a boy out of spite. She never referred to her by name, always called her that 'prissy creature at the surgery.' It was cruel of her, but then Mathilda was usually cruel. She was a deeply unhappy woman." He paused to collect his thoughts. "She told me about her affair with Paul after I'd finished her portrait. She said there was something missing from the painting, and that that something was guilt. She was absolutely racked with it. Guilt for having given up the baby, guilt for not being able to cope, guilt for blaming the second baby's adoption on Joanna's crying, ultimately, I suppose, guilt for her inability to feel affection." Briefly he fell silent again. "Then Sarah turned up out of the blue and Mathilda recognized her." He saw the look of incredulity on Charlie Jone's face. "Not immediately and not as the baby she'd given away, but gradually as the months went by. There were so many things that matched. Sarah was the right age, her birthday was the same day as the baby's birthday, her parents had lived in the same borough in London where Mathilda's flat was. Most importantly she thought she detected a likeness in Sarah's and Joanna's mannerisms. She said they had the same smile, the same way of inclining their heads, the same trick of looking at you intently while you speak. And from the start Sarah took Mathilda as she found her, of course, the way she takes everyone, and for the first time in years Mathilda felt valued. It was a very potent cocktail. Mathilda was so convinced she'd found her lost daughter that she approached me and commissioned me to paint the portrait." He smiled ruefully. "I thought my luck had changed but all she wanted, of course, was an excuse to find out more about Sarah from the only person available who knew anything of value."

"But you didn't know that while you were painting her?"

"No. I did wonder why she was so interested in us both, what our parents were like, where they came from, if we had brothers and sisters, whether or not I got on with my in-laws. She didn't confine herself to Sarah, you see. If she had, I might have been suspicious. As it was, when she finally told me that Sarah was her lost child, I was appalled." He shrugged helplessly. "I knew she couldn't be because Sarah wasn't adopted."

"Surely that was the first thing Mrs. Gillespie asked you?"

"Not in so many words, no. She never put anything as directly as that." He shrugged again in the face of the Inspector's scepticism. "You're forgetting that no one in Fontwell knew about this child, except Jane Marriott, and Mathilda was far too proud to give the rest of the village a glimpse of her clay feet. She was looking for a private atonement, not a public one. The closest we ever came to it was when she asked me if Sarah had a good relationship with her mother and I said, no, because they had nothing in common. I can even remember the words I used. I said: 'I've often wondered if Sarah was adopted because the only explanation for the disparity between the two of them in looks, words and deeds is that they aren't related.' I was being flippant, but Mathilda used it to build castles in the air. Rather as you're doing at the moment, Inspector."

"But she'd made up her mind before you started painting that portrait, Mr. Blakeney. If I remember correctly she began consulting Mr. Duggan about the will in August."

"It was like a faith," said Jack simply. "I can't explain it any other way. She needed to make amends to the child who'd had nothing, and Sarah had to be that child. The fact that the ages, birthdays and mannerisms were pure coincidence was neither here nor there. Mathilda had made up her mind and all she wanted from me was the gaps filled in." He ran his fingers through his hair. "If I'd known sooner, then I'd have disabused her, but I didn't know, and all I achieved, quite unwittingly, was to fuel the belief."

"Does Dr. Blakeney know any of this?"

"No. Mathilda was adamant she never should. She made me promise to keep it to myself-she was terrified Sarah would treat her differently, stop liking her, even reject her completely-and I thought, thank God, because this way no one gets hurt." He rubbed a hand across his face. "I didn't know what to do, you see, and I needed time to work out how to let Mathilda down gently. If I'd told her the truth, there and then, it would have been like taking the baby away from her all over again."

"When was this, Mr. Blakeney?" asked Charlie.

"About two weeks before she died."

"Why did she tell you, if she didn't want anyone to know?"

Jack didn't answer immediately. "It was the portrait," he said after a moment. "I took it round to show it to her. I still had some work to do on it but I wanted to see what her reaction was so that I could paint that into the picture. I've had some amazing responses in the past: anger, shock, vanity, irritation, disappointment. I record them all beneath my signature so that anyone who understands the code will know what the subject thought about my treatment of his or her personality. It's a sort of visual joke. Mathilda's reaction was intense grief. I've never seen anyone so upset."

"She didn't like it?" suggested Charlie.

"The exact opposite. She was weeping for the woman she might have been." His eyes clouded in reflection. "She said I was the first person who had ever shown her compassion."

"I don't understand."

Jack glanced across at the Sergeant who was still sitting staring at the floor. "Tommy does," he said. "Don't you, my old friend?"

There was a brief pause before Cooper raised his head. "The gold at the heart of the picture," he murmured. "That was Mathilda as she was in the beginning before events took over and destroyed her."

Jack's dark eyes rested on him with affection. "Goddammit, Tommy," he said, "how come I'm the only one to appreciate your qualities? Does anything escape you?"