Scold's Bridle

*18*

Jones drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. "You told the Sergeant you were with an actress in Stratford the night Mrs. Gillespie was murdered. You weren't. We've checked. Miss Bennedict said"-he consulted a piece of paper-"she'd see you in hell before she allowed you near her again."

"True." He gave an amiable grin. "She didn't like the portrait I did of her. She's had it in for me ever since."

"Then why give her as your alibi?"

"Because I'd already told Sarah that's where I was, and she was listening when the Sergeant asked me."

Charlie frowned but let this pass. "Where were you then, if you weren't in Stratford?"

"Cheltenham." He linked his hands behind his neck and stared at the ceiling.

"Can you prove it?"

"Yes." He reeled off a phone number. "Sarah's father's house. He will confirm that I was there from six o'clock on the Friday evening until midday on the Sunday." He flicked a lazy glance at the Inspector. "He's a JP, so you can be fairly sure he won't be lying."

"What were you doing there?"

"I went on the off-chance that he had something I could show Mathilda that would prove Sarah wasn't her daughter. I knew I could talk fairly freely without him blabbing about it. If I'd approached her mother, she'd have been on the phone to Sarah like a shot and then the cat would have been out of the bag with Sarah demanding to know why I wanted proof she wasn't adopted. By the same token, she'd have asked me why I was going to see her father, so I told her I was staying with Sally to put her off the scent." He looked suddenly pensive. "Not the most intelligent thing I've ever done."

Charlie ignored this. "Did her father give you proof?"

"No. He said he hadn't got anything and that I'd have to talk to her mother. I was planning to bite the bullet and go the next weekend, but, by the Monday, Mathilda was dead and it didn't matter any more."

"And you still haven't told your wife?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I promised Mathilda I wouldn't," he said evenly. "If she'd wanted Sarah to know what she believed, she'd have told her herself on the video."

"Any idea why she didn't?"

Jack shrugged. "Because she wasn't going to tell her in life either, I suppose. She had too many secrets which she thought would be exposed if she claimed Sarah as her own-and let's face it, she was right. Look what Tommy's unearthed already."

"It would have been unearthed anyway. People were bound to ask questions the minute they heard she'd left her money to her doctor."

"But she wouldn't have expected the police to be asking them because she didn't know she was going to be murdered. And, as far as I can make out, from what Sarah has told me of the video, she did the best she could to warn Joanna and Ruth off putting in a counterclaim by dropping enough heavy hints about their lifestyles to give Sarah's barrister a field day if the thing ever went to court." He shrugged again. "The only reason either of them feels confident about challenging it now is because Mathilda was murdered. Whatever they've done pales into insignificance beside that."

Cooper rumbled into life behind him. "But the video is full of lies, particularly in relation to her uncle and her husband. Mrs. Gillespie implies she was the victim of them both, but Mrs. Marriott tells a very different story. She describes a woman who was ruthless enough to use blackmail and murder when it suited her. So which is true?"

Jack swung round to look at him. "I don't know. Both probably. She wouldn't be the first victim to strike back."

"What about this business of her uncle's feeble-mindedness? She described him on the video as a drunken brute who raped her when she was thirteen, yet Mrs. Marriott says he was rather pathetic. Explain that."

"I can't. Mathilda never talked to me about it. All I know is that she was deeply scarred by her inability to love and when I showed her the portrait with the scarring represented by the scold's bridle, she burst into tears and said I was the first person to show her any compassion. I chose to interpret that as meaning that I was the first person to see her as a victim, but I could have been wrong. You'll have to make up your own mind."

"We wouldn't have to if we could find her diaries," said Cooper.

Jack didn't say anything and the room fell silent with only the whirr of the tape to disturb the complete bafflement that at least two of those present were experiencing. Jones, who had approached this interview in the confident expectation that Jack Blakeney would spend tonight in a police cell, was falling prey to the same crippling ambivalence that Cooper had always felt towards this man.

"Why did you tell Mrs. Lascelles this morning that you murdered her mother if you already had an alibi for the night Mrs. Gillespie died?" he asked at last, rustling the papers in front of him.

"I didn't."

"She says in this report that you did."

"I didn't."

"She says you did."

"She said what she believed. That's a different thing entirely."

Jones pondered for a moment. He had a nasty feeling that he would receive almost as dusty an answer to his next question, but he put it anyway. "Why did you try to murder Mrs. Lascelles?"

"I didn't."

"She says, and I'm quoting, 'Jack Blakeney forced me against the wall and started to strangle me. If Violet hadn't interrupted him, he'd have killed me.' Is she lying?"

"No. She's telling you what she believes."

"But it's not true."

"No."

"You weren't trying to strangle her?"

"No."

"I have to tell you, Mr. Blakeney, that according to this report she had the marks of a stranglehold on her neck when the car that answered the nine-nine-nine call arrived at Cedar House. Therefore someone did try to strangle her, and she says that someone was you." He paused, inviting Jack to answer. When he didn't, he tried a different approach. "Were you in Cedar House at approximately ten thirty this morning?"

"Yes."

"Did you put your hand about Mrs. Joanna Lascelles's throat?"

"Yes."

"Is she justified in believing that you were trying to strangle her?"

"Yes."

"Were you trying to strangle her?"

"No."

"Then explain it to me. What the hell were you doing?"

"Showing you lot where you've been going wrong again. Mind you, it's not the most sensible thing I've done, and I wouldn't have done it at all if I hadn't been so pissed off by that jerk of an Inspector last night." His eyes narrowed angrily at the memory. "I don't give a toss about myself, matter of fact I rather hope he decides to prosecute and give me my day in court, but I do care about Sarah and I care very much indeed at the moment about Ruth. He treated them both like shit and I made up my mind then that enough was enough. Joanna's past saving, I suspect, but her daughter isn't, and I want the poor kid free to put this bloody awful mess behind her." He took a deep angry breath. "So I sat up last night and did what you should have done, worked out who killed Mathilda and why. And believe me it wasn't difficult."

Charlie did believe him. Like Cooper, he was beginning to find Jack irresistible. "Mrs. Lascelles," he said with conviction. "She's always been top of the list."

"No, and I satisfied myself of that this morning. I agree she's quite capable of it. She has an almost identical personality to her mother, and if Mathilda could murder to get what she wanted, then Joanna could, too. You don't grow up in an atmosphere of extreme dysfunction and emerge normal at the end of it. But Joanna's relationship with Mathilda was very ambivalent. Despite everything, I suspect they were actually rather fond of each other. Perhaps, quite simply, their fondness was based on mutual understanding, the devil you know being more acceptable than the devil you don't."

"All right," said Charlie patiently. "Then who did kill Mrs. Gillespie?"

"I can't prove it, that's your job. All I can do is take you through what I worked out last night." He took a moment to organize his thoughts. "You've concentrated entirely on Sarah, me, Joanna and Ruth," he said, "and all because of the will. Not unreasonable in the circumstances-but if you take us out of the equation then the balance of probability shifts. So let's assume she wasn't killed for money and take it from there. Okay, I don't believe she was killed in anger either. Anger is a violent, hot-blooded emotion and her death was too well planned and too meticulous. Too symbolic. Whoever murdered her may well have been angry with her, but it wasn't done because someone's patience had finally run out." He glanced at Jones who nodded. "Which leaves what? Hatred? She was certainly disliked by a lot of people but as none of them had killed her before, why decide to do it then? Jealousy?" He shrugged eloquently. "What was there to be jealous of? She was a virtual recluse, and I can't believe Jane Marriott stored her jealousy for years to have it erupt suddenly in November. So, at the risk of stating the obvious, Mathilda must have been murdered because someone wanted her out of the way."

Jones had difficulty keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. "I think we can agree on that," he said.

Jack stared at him for a moment. "Yes, but why? Why did someone want her out of the way? What had she done or what was she going to do that meant she had to be killed? That's the question you've never asked, not outside the context of the will at least."

"Because I don't find it quite so easy, as you apparently do, to ignore it."

"But it is just a will. Thousands of people make them every week and thousands of people die every week. The fact that Mathilda's was unusually radical becomes completely irrelevant if you absolve Joanna, Ruth, Sarah and me of her death. No one else is directly affected by the way she chose to leave her money."

Cooper cleared his throat. "It's a good point, Charlie."

"All right," he conceded. "Why was she killed then?"

"I don't know."

Charlie raised his eyes to heaven. "God give me strength!" he growled savagely.

Cooper chuckled quietly to himself. "Get on with it, Jack, before you give the poor man apoplexy," he suggested. "We're all running out of patience on this one. Let's take it as read that the will wasn't the motive and that neither the Lascelles women nor you and your wife were involved. Where does that leave us?"

"With Mathilda wearing the scold's bridle. Why? And why did it have half a hedgerow carefully entwined through it? Isn't that what persuaded you it wasn't suicide?"

Cooper nodded.

"Then the logical conclusion has to be that the murderer never intended you to think it was suicide. I mean we're not talking about a moron here, we're talking finesse and careful planning. My guess is that someone knew Mathilda thought Sarah was her daughter, knew that both Mathilda and Joanna had been conditioned by the scold's bridle in their childhoods, knew that Joanna was a florist and knew, too, that 'scold's bridle' was Mathilda's nickname for Sarah. Hence the contraption on her head and the King Lear imagery. If you put all that together with the fact that Ruth was in the house that day, then the aim must surely have been to focus your attention on Sarah, Joanna and Ruth-Lear's three daughters in other words. And that's exactly what happened, even if it was the will that set you thinking along those lines because you mistook the symbolism for Ophelia's coronet weeds. You mustn't forget how close Mathilda played the will to her chest. As far as anyone knew, Joanna and Ruth were going to share the estate between them. Sarah's possible claim as the long-lost daughter was nothing but a wild card when the murder took place so, for the murderer, it came as a sort of bonus."

Charlie frowned. "I still don't understand. Were we supposed to arrest one of them? And which one? I mean, was your wife indicated because of the scold's bridle, was Joanna indicated because of the flowers, or was Ruth indicated because she was there?"

Jack shrugged. "I'd say that's the whole point. It doesn't matter a damn, just so long as you focus your attention on them."

"But why?" snarled Charlie through gritted teeth.

Jack looked helplessly from him to Cooper. "There's only one reason that I can see, but maybe I've got it all wrong. Hell dammit!" he exploded angrily. "I'm not an expert."

"Confusion," said Cooper stoutly, a man ever to be relied upon. "The murderer wanted Mrs. Gillespie dead and confusion to follow. And why would they want confusion to follow? Because it would be much harder to proceed with any kind of normality if the mess surrounding Mrs. Gillespie's death wasn't sorted out."

Jack nodded. "Sounds logical to me."

It was Charlie's turn to be lost in Cooper's flights of fancy. "What normality?"

"The normality that follows death," he said ponderously. "Wills in other words. Someone wanted the settling of Mrs. Gillespie's estate delayed." He thought for a moment. "Let's say she was about to embark on something that someone else didn't like, so they stopped her before she could do it. But let's say, too, that whatever it was could be pursued by her beneficiary the minute that beneficiary came into the estate. With a little ingenuity, you throw a spanner in the works by pointing a finger at the more obvious legatees and grind the process to a halt. How does that sound?"

"Complicated," said Charlie tartly.

"But the pressure was to stop Mathilda," said Jack. "The rest was imaginative flair which might or might not work. Think of it as a speculative venture that could, with a little bit of luck, produce the goods."

"But that brings us right back to square one," said Cooper slowly. "Whoever killed her knew her very well and, if we jettison the four who knew her best, then we're left with-" he pressed his fingers to his eyes in deep concentration, "Mr. and Mrs. Spede, Mr. and Mrs. Marriott, and James Gillespie."

"You can do better than that, Cooper," said Jack impatiently. "The Spedes are simple souls who could never have dreamt up the Lear symbolism in a million years; Paul and Jane Marriott have avoided Mathilda like the plague for years so probably couldn't have found their way around her house, let alone known where she kept the Stanley knife; and, as far as I understand it, if what Duggan told Sarah is true, rather than trying to delay the processing of the will, James Gillespie is doing the exact opposite and pressing for the controversy to be settled so that he can lay claim to the clocks."

"But there isn't anyone else."

"There is, and I proved it this morning." He hammered his fist on the table. "It's Ruth's involvement that should have alerted you. Someone knew she was in the house that day and could therefore figure as a suspect. You've been chasing around in circles since you found out about it, but Sarah says you only learnt she was there because you received an anonymous letter. So who sent it?" He slammed his palm on the table at Cooper's blank expression. "Who tried to rescue Joanna this morning?"

Violet Orloff opened her front door and stared at the piece of polythene-encased paper that Detective Sergeant Cooper was holding in front of him. He turned it round to read it aloud. " 'Ruth Lascelles was in Cedar House the day Mrs. Gillespie died. She stole some earrings. Joanna knows she took them. Joanna Lascelles is a prostitute in London. Ask her what she spends her money on. Ask her why she tried to kill her daughter. Ask her why Mrs. Gillespie thought she was mad.' Would we be right in assuming you wrote this, Mrs. Orloff?" he enquired in his friendly way.

"Duncan did, but we were only trying to help," she said breathily, looking from him to the tall figure of Charlie Jones behind him, the collar of whose thick sheepskin jacket was pulled up about his comfortably sad face. She took heart from their mutual lack of hostility. "I know we probably ought to have come in person, but it's so difficult." She gestured vaguely in the direction of the other part of the house. "We are neighbours, after all, and Duncan does so hate unpleasantness." She smiled tentatively. "But when a murder's been committed-I mean, one can't expect the police to solve it if people who know things stay quiet. It seemed more tactful, somehow, not to get involved personally. You do understand, don't you?"

"Perfectly," said Charlie with an encouraging smile, "and we're very grateful to you for the trouble you took."

"That's all right then. I told Duncan it was important."

"Didn't he agree with you?"

She glanced cautiously over her shoulder, then pulled the door to behind her. "I wouldn't put it quite like that," she said. "He's grown so lazy since we came here, won't stir himself, won't have his routines upset, can't bear what he calls aggravations. He says he's earned a peaceful retirement and doesn't want it upset by lots of bother. He's very unfit, of course, which doesn't help, but I can't help feeling that it isn't good to be so"-she struggled for the right word-"unenterprising."

"Mrs. Gillespie's death must have been a shock then, what with the police tramping about the house, and Mrs. Lascelles and her daughter coming back."

"He hasn't enjoyed it," she admitted, "but he did see there was nothing we could do about it. Don't get so het up, he told me. A little patience and it will all blow over."

"Still, it must be very unsettling," said Cooper, "worrying about what's going to happen to Cedar House now that Mrs. Gillespie's dead. Presumably it will be sold, but you won't have any control over who it's sold to."

"That's just what I said. Duncan would go mad with noisy children next door." She lowered her voice. "I know one shouldn't take pleasure in other people's misfortune, but I can't deny it's a relief to have Joanna and Dr. Blakeney at loggerheads over the will. They're going to court about it, you know, and as Duncan said, that sort of thing takes years."

"And in the meantime the house will stand empty?"

"Well, exactly."

"So it's definite that Mrs. Lascelles intends to contest the will?"

"Oh, yes."

"She told you that?"

She looked guilty again. "I heard her and the doctor talking in the drawing-room. I don't make a habit of listening, not as a general rule, but..." She left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

"You've been worried and you needed to know what's going on," suggested Charlie helpfully.

"Well, exactly," she said again. "Someone has to take an interest. If it's left to Duncan, we'll only know what sort of neighbours we've got when they're living next to us."

"Like Mrs. Gillespie, you mean. I suppose you knew a lot about her one way and another."

Violet's mouth pinched disapprovingly. "Not through choice. I don't think she ever realized just how piercing her voice was. Very strident, you know, and she was so convinced that her opinions mattered. 1 never really listened, to tell you the truth, but Duncan found her amusing from time to time, particularly when she was being rude on the telephone, which she was, often. She took people to task about the most trivial things and she thought they couldn't hear her, you know, unless she shouted. She was a very silly woman."

Charlie nodded, as if in agreement. "Then I'm surprised you didn't hear anything the night she died. She must have spoken to her murderer, surely?"

Violet's face flushed a dull red. "She didn't, you know. Duncan never heard a sound."

He pretended not to notice her embarrassment. "And what about you, Mrs. Orloff? Did you hear anything?"

"Oh, dear," she wailed, "it's not as though it's a crime though you'd think it was the way Duncan carries on. I have a tot or two of whisky of an evening, really nothing very much. Duncan's a teetotaller and doesn't approve, but as I always say, where's the harm in it? Mathilda's done it for years-it's unnatural not to, she always said-and she drank far more than I do." She dropped her voice again. "It's not as though I'm an alcoholic."

"Good lord no," said Charlie effusively, picking up the loaded speech patterns. "If I didn't drink enough to send myself to sleep every night, I'd be a nervous wreck come the morning."

"Well, exactly," came the repetitive refrain. "But I do nod off in front of the television, and, of course, I did the night Mathilda died. Hardly surprising really since I spent the day in Poole with my sister, and I find that very tiring now. You see, I'm not as young as I used to be, and I won't deny I've been worrying ever since, did Mathilda call for help? Duncan swears she didn't but, you know, he's so anti getting involved in anything that he'd have persuaded himself it was just Mathilda being irritating."

"Any idea what time you nodded off?" asked Cooper, showing more interest in the state of his shoes than in her answer.

"Very early," she said in a whisper. "We'd just finished supper and sat down to watch Blind Date, and the next thing I knew Duncan was shaking me and telling me I was snoring and it was annoying him because it was spoiling Match of the Day. Goodness, but I was tired. I went to bed and slept like a log till the morning, and I can't help feeling that if I'd only stayed awake, I might have been able to do something for poor Mathilda."

And that of course was true.

Charlie gestured towards the door. "May we talk to your husband now, Mrs. Orloff?"

"Is that necessary? He won't be able to tell you anything and it'll just make him grumpy for the rest of the day."

"I'm afraid it is." He produced a paper from his pocket with an air of apology. "We also have a warrant to search your house, but I assure you, we'll be as careful as we can." He raised his voice. "Bailey! Jenkins! Watts! Show yourselves, lads. We're ready to go."

Quite bewildered by this sudden turn of events, Violet stood meekly to one side while Jones, Cooper and three DCs filed into her hallway. Behind their backs, she crept away with the stealth of a guilty person into the kitchen.

Duncan's small eyes watched the two senior policemen closely as they eased into the cramped living-room, but otherwise he showed remarkably little concern at this sudden invasion of his privacy. "Forgive me if I don't get up," he said courteously, "but I find I'm not as mobile as I used to be." He waved towards a delicate two-seater sofa, inviting them to sit down. They declined with equal courtesy, afraid of breaking it under their combined weight. "I've met Detective Sergeant Cooper but I don't know you, sir," he said, examining Charlie with interest.

"Detective Chief Inspector Jones."

"How do you do."

Charlie inclined his head in a brief salute. He was assailed with doubt as he looked at the fat old man in the oversized armchair, his huge stomach overhanging his thighs like the meat from a split sausage skin. Could such ungainly bulk have performed the delicate artistry of Mrs. Gillespie's murder? Could he even have abstracted himself from this room without waking his wife? He listened to the shallow wheezing breaths, each one a battle against the smothering pressure of flesh, and recalled Hughes's description of the man who had used the key to open the back door. His voice was all breathy like he had trouble with his lungs. "Was Mrs. Gillespie aware that you knew about the key under the flowerpot?" he asked without any attempt at preamble.

Duncan looked surprised. "I don't understand you, Inspector."

"No matter. We have a witness who can identify you. He was there when you let yourself in one morning in September."

But Duncan only smiled and shook his fat cheeks in denial. "Let myself in where?" There was a sound above them as one of the DCs moved a piece of furniture across the floor, and Duncan's gaze shifted to the ceiling. "What exactly is all this in aid of?"

Charlie produced the warrant and handed it to him. "We are searching these premises for Mrs. Gillespie's diaries or, more likely, the remains of Mrs. Gillespie's diaries. We have reason to believe you stole them from the library of Cedar House."

"How very peculiar of you."

"Are you denying it?"

He gave a low chuckle. "My dear chap, of course I'm denying it. I didn't even know she kept diaries."

Charlie changed tack. "Why didh't you tell my Sergeant on the Monday after the murder that Miss Ruth Lascelles had been in Cedar House during the afternoon? Or indeed that Mrs. Jane Marriott had had a row with her in the morning?"

"How could I tell him something I didn't know myself?"

"If you were here, Mr. Orloff, you could not have avoided knowing. Jane Marriott describes her confrontation with Mrs. Gillespie as a screaming match and Ruth says she rang the doorbell because she left her key at school."

"But I wasn't here, Inspector," he said affably. "I took the opportunity of my wife's absence in Poole to go for a long walk."

There was a gasp from the doorway. "Duncan!" declared Violet. "How can you tell such lies? You never go for walks." She advanced into the room like a small ship under sail. "And don't think I don't know why you're lying. You can't be bothered to assist the police in their enquiries, just like you haven't been bothered all along. Of course he was here, and of course he will have heard Jane and Ruth. We always heard Ruth when she came back. She and her grandmother couldn't be in a room together without arguing, any more than she can be in a room with her mother without arguing. Not that I altogether blame her. She wants love, poor child, and neither Mathilda nor Joanna were capable of such an emotion. The only people Mathilda had any fondness for were the Blakeneys, you know, the artist and his wife. She used to laugh with them, and I think she even took her clothes off for him. I heard her in her bedroom, being very coy and silly, saying things like 'Not bad for an old woman' and 'I was beautiful once, you know. Men competed for me.' And that was true, they did. Even Duncan loved her when we were all much younger. He denies it now, of course, but I knew. All us girls knew we were only second best. Mathilda played so hard to get, you see, and that was a challenge." She paused for breath and Cooper, who was beside her, smelt the whisky on her lips. He had time to feel sadness for this little woman whose life had never blossomed because she had lived it always in the shade of Mathilda Gillespie.

"Not that it matters," she went on. "Nothing matters that much. And it's years since he lost interest. You can't go on loving someone who's rude all the time, and Mathilda was always rude. She thought it was funny. She'd say the most appalling things, and laugh. I won't pretend we had a close relationship, but I did feel sorry for her. She should have done something with her life, something interesting, but she never did and it made her bitter." She turned a severe gaze on her husband. "I know she used to tease you, Duncan, and call you Mr. Toad, but that's no reason not to help find her murderer. Murder is inexcusable. And I can't help feeling, you know, that it was particularly inexcusable to put that beastly scold's bridle on her head. You were very upset when she put it on you." She turned back to Charlie. "It was one of her horrible jokes. She said the only way Duncan would ever lose weight was if he had his tongue clamped, so she crept up behind him one day when he was asleep in the garden with his mouth open and popped that horrid rusty thing over his head. He nearly died of shock." She paused for another breath but this time she had run out of steam and didn't go on.

There was a long silence.

"I suppose that's how you put it on her," murmured Charlie finally, "when she was already asleep, but I'd be interested to know how you gave her the barbiturates. The pathologist estimates four or five and she would never have taken that many herself."

Duncan's gaze rested briefly on his wife's shocked face, before shifting to Cooper's. "Old women have two things in common," he said with a small smile. "They drink too much and they talk too much. You'd have liked Mathilda, Sergeant, she was a very amusing woman, although the memory of her was a great deal more attractive than the real thing. It was a disappointment coming back. Age has few compensations, as I think I told you." His pleasant face beamed. "On the whole I prefer male company. Men are so much more predictable."

"Which is convenient," remarked Cooper to the Blakeneys in Mill kitchen that evening, "since he'll probably spend the rest of his life in prison."

"Assuming you can prove he did it," said Jack. "What happens if he doesn't confess? You'll be left with circumstantial evidence, and if his defence has any sense they'll go all out to convince the jury Mathilda committed suicide. You don't even know why he did it, do you?"

"Not yet."

"Doesn't Violet know?" asked Sarah.

Cooper shook his head, thinking of the wretched woman they'd abandoned at Wing Cottage, wringing her hands and protesting there must be some mistake. "Claims she doesn't."

"And you didn't find the diaries?"

"We never really expected to. He'd have destroyed them long ago."

"But there's so much unexplained," said Sarah in frustration. "How did he get her to take the sleeping pills? Why did he do it? Why didn't Violet wake up? Why didn't he tell you Ruth had been there if he wanted her implicated? And then the bit I really don't understand-why on earth did Jane have a row with Mathilda that day?"

Cooper glanced at Jack, then took out his cigarettes. "I can make a guess at some answers," he said, planting a cigarette in the side of his mouth and flicking his lighter to the tip. "Both Mathilda and Violet like a tipple in the evening and they both drank whisky. I think the chances are it was Mathilda who first introduced Violet to it, made it respectable as it were in the face of Duncan's disapproval, but in any case Violet was certainly in the habit of dozing off in her armchair. The night Mathilda died, Violet went out for the count during Blind Date which comes on at six thirty or thereabouts, woke up briefly some time after ten o'clock, when Duncan shook her and told her she was snoring through Match of the Day, went up to bed and slept like the dead for the rest of the night." He tapped ash into his cupped palm. "That was definitely no doze. That was a barbiturate-induced stupor which is why Duncan leaving the room wouldn't have wakened her. I think he greeted Violet when she got home after a tiring day in Poole with a stiff whisky, laced with sleeping tablets, waited till she fell asleep, then trotted next door and used the same concoction on Mathilda. She kept the drink in the kitchen. How simple just to say: Don't stir yourself. Let me do the honours and get you a top-up."

"But where did he get the sleeping pills from? He's on my list and I've never prescribed any for him or Violet."

"Presumably he used the ones you prescribed for Mrs. Gillespie."

Sarah looked doubtful. "When could he have taken them, though? Surely she'd have noticed if any were missing."

"If she did," he said dryly, "then she probably assumed it was her own daughter who was responsible. With Mrs. Lascelles's sort of dependence she must have been raiding her mother's drug cupboard for years."

Jack looked thoughtful. "Who told you?"

"As a matter of fact, you did, Jack. But I wasn't too sure what she was on until we searched the house yesterday for the diaries. She's not very good at hiding things, but then she's damn lucky she hasn't fallen foul of the police before. She will, though, now that the money's dried up."

"I didn't tell you anything."

Cooper tut-tutted. "You've told me everything you know about Mrs. Lascelles, right down to the fact that you, personally, despise her. I stood and looked at her portrait while we were discussing Othello and Iago, and all I could see was a desperately weak and fragmented character whose existence-" he used his hands to depict a border "-depends on external stimulation. I compared the pallid colours and the distorted shapes of Joanna's portrait with the vigour of Mathilda's and Sarah's and I thought, you've painted a woman without substance. The only reality you perceive is a reflected reality, in other words, a personality that can only express itself artificially. I guessed it had to be drink or drugs."

"You're lying through your teeth," said Jack bluntly. "That bastard Smollett told you. Dammit, Cooper, even I didn't see all that and I painted the bloody picture."

Cooper gave a deep chuckle. "It's all there, my friend, believe me. Mr. Smollett told me nothing." His face sobered. "But you had no business withholding that information, either of you, not in a murder enquiry." He looked at Sarah. "And you should never have confronted her with it the other afternoon, if you don't mind me saying so, Doctor. People like that are shockingly unpredictable and you were alone in the house with her."

"She's not on LSD, Cooper, she's on Valium. Anyway, how do you know I confronted her with it?"

"Because I'm a policeman, Dr. Blakeney, and you were looking guilty. What makes you think she's on Valium?"

"She told me she was."

Cooper raised his eyes to heaven. "One day, Dr. Blakeney, you will learn not to be so gullible."

"Well, what is she on then?" demanded Jack. "I guessed tranquillizers, too. She's not injecting. I sketched her in the nude and there wasn't a mark on her."

"It depends what you were looking for. She's rich enough to do the thing cleanly. It's dirty needles and dirty lavatories that cause most of the problems. Where did you look anyway? Arms and legs?" Jack nodded. "The veins around her groin?"

"No," he admitted. "I was having enough trouble as it was, I didn't want to encourage her by staring at the damn thing."

Cooper nodded. "I found half a pharmacy under her floorboards, including tranquillizers, barbiturates, amphetamines and sizeable quantities of heroin and syringes. She's chronically addicted, I'd say, presumably has been for years. And, I'll tell you this for free, her mother's allowance alone couldn't possibly have funded what she'd got stashed away, and nor could fancy flower arranging. I think Duncan and Violet's anonymous letter said it all, Joanna is a high-class prostitute turning tricks to fund a very expensive habit, begun, I would guess, when she married Steven Lascelles."

"But she looks so..." Sarah sought for the right word, "unsullied."

"Not for much longer," said Cooper cynically. "She's about to discover what it's like to live in the real world where there's no Mathilda to keep the coffers topped up. It's when you get desperate that you start getting careless." He patted Sarah's hand. "Don't waste your sympathy on her. She's been a taker all her life and, rather belatedly, her mother has forced her to face up to it."