Scold's Bridle

*20*

Jane Marriott replaced the telephone receiver and held a shaking hand to her lips. She walked through to the living room where her invalid husband was dozing quietly in the bright winter sunshine which poured through the window. She sat beside him and took her hand in his. "That was Sergeant Cooper on the phone," she said. "James Gillespie was found dead in his flat this morning. A heart attack, they think."

Paul didn't say anything, only stared out across the garden.

"He says there's nothing to worry about any more, that no one need ever know. He also said"-she paused briefly-"he also said that the child was a girl. Mathilda lied about your having a son." She had told him everything after her return home from the surgery the day Sergeant Cooper had questioned her.

A tear squeezed from between his lids. "I'm so sorry."

"For James?" "

For-everything. If I'd known-" He fell silent.

"Would it have made a difference, Paul?"

"We could have shared the burden, instead of you bearing it alone."

"It would have destroyed me," she said honestly. "1 couldn't have coped with you knowing that Mathilda had had your child." She studied his face closely. "As time went by, you would have thought more of her and less of me."

"No." His marbled hand clutched at hers. "She was in every sense of the word a brief madness so, even if I'd known about the child, it wouldn't have changed anything. I have only ever loved you." His eyes grew damp. "In any case, my dear, I think your first instincts were right, and that Mathilda would have killed the baby. We can none of us put any faith in what she said. She lied more often than she told the truth."

"Except that she left her money to Sarah," said Jane in a rush, "and Sergeant Cooper said the baby was a girl. Suppose Sarah-?" She broke off and squeezed his hand encouragingly. "Nothing's ever too late, Paul. Would it do any harm, do you think, to ask a few tactful questions?"

He looked away from her eager face and, in Cooper's earlier footsteps, traced the fickleness of fate. He had lived his life believing he was childless, and now, at the age of seventy, Jane had told him he was a father. But of whom? Of a son? Of a daughter? Or had Mathilda lied about this as she had lied about so much else? For himself, it hardly mattered-he had long since come to terms with being childless-but for Jane, Mathilda would always cast a long and spiteful shadow. There were no guarantees that Sarah Blakeney was his daughter, no guarantees even that the child, if it existed at all, would welcome the intrusion of parents into its life, and he couldn't bear to see Jane's hopes dashed in this as surely as her hope in his fidelity had been dashed. In the end, wasn't it better to live with the illusion of happiness than the awful certainty of trust betrayed?

"You must promise me you will never say anything." He laid his head against the back of the chair and struggled for breath. "If I am her father, then Mathilda never told her, or I'm sure she would have come here of her own accord." His eyes filled with tears. "She has a loving father already who has done a fine job-a very fine job-in bringing her up. Don't force her to choose between us, my dearest one. Rejections are such painful things."

Jane smoothed the thinning hair from his forehead. "Perhaps, after all, some secrets are best kept secret. Shall we share this one together and dream a little from time to time?" She was a wise and generous woman who, just occasionally, acknowledged that it was Mathilda's treachery that had given her insights into herself and Paul that she hadn't had before. After all, she thought, there was less to mourn now than there was to celebrate.

Joanna sat where her mother had always sat, in the hard-backed chair beside the french windows. She tilted her head slightly to look at Sergeant Cooper. "Does Dr. Blakeney know you're telling me this?"

He shook his head. "No. I rather hope you'll make the first move by offering to drop your challenge to the will if she agrees to honour your mother's intentions as set out in her letter to Ruth. A little oil on troubled waters, Mrs. Lascelles, goes a very long way and it's in everyone's interests to put this sad affair behind you and go back to London where you belong."

"In Dr. Blakeney's certainly, not in mine."

"I was thinking more of your daughter. She's very young still, and her grandmother's death has distressed her a great deal more than you realize. It would be"-he sought for a word-"helpful if you pursued an amicable settlement rather than a continued and painful confrontation. Barristers have a nasty habit of unearthing details that are best left buried."

She stood up. "I really don't wish to discuss this any more, Sergeant. It's none of your business." The pale eyes hardened unattractively. "You've been seduced by the Blakeneys just as my mother was, and for that reason alone I will not negotiate amicably with them. I still find it incomprehensible that you haven't charged Jack Blakeney with assault, or, for that matter, Ruth with theft, and I intend to make sure my solicitor raises both those issues with your Chief Constable. It's quite clear to me that Dr. Blakeney, ably abetted by my daughter, is using her husband and you to pressure me into leaving this house so that she can gain vacant possession of it. I will not give her the satisfaction. The longer I remain, the stronger my title to it."

Cooper chuckled. "Do you even have a solicitor, Mrs. Lascelles? I hope you don't because you're wasting your money if that's the sort of advice he's giving you." He pointed to the chair. "Sit down," he ordered her, "and thank your daughter and the Blakeneys for the fact that I am not going to arrest you now for the illegal possession of heroin. I'd like to, make no mistake about that, but as I said before it's in everyone's interests, not least your own, if Dorset is shot of you. I should, by rights, pass on what I know to the Metropolitan Police but I won't. They'll find out anyway soon enough because, even with the capital sum Dr. Blakeney pays you, you'll be quite incapable of managing. There'll be no more monthly cheques, Mrs. Lascelles, because there's no old lady left to terrorize. What did you do to her to make her pay?"

She was staring out of the window but it was a long time before she answered. "I didn't have to do anything, except be her daughter. She assumed I was like her, and that made her afraid of me."

"I don't understand."

She turned round to fix him with her strangely penetrating gaze. "I watched her murder her father. She was terrified I was going to do the same to her."

"Would you have done?"

She smiled suddenly and her beauty dazzled him. "I'm like Hamlet, Sergeant, 'but mad north-north west.' You probably won't believe me but I was always more frightened that she would kill me. I've been sleeping quite well recently."

"Will you go back to London?"

She shrugged. "Of course. 'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.' Have you read Samuel Johnson, Sergeant? He was a great deal wittier than Shakespeare."

"I will now, Mrs. Lascelles."

She turned back to the window and its wonderful view of the cedar of Lebanon that dominated the garden. "I suppose if I fight Dr. Blakeney you'll pass on what you know about me to the Metropolitan Police."

"I'm afraid I will."

She gave a low laugh. "Mother was always very good at blackmail. It's a pity you never met her. Will the Blakeneys look after Ruth, Sergeant? I wouldn't want her to starve."

Which was, thought Cooper, the closest she would ever come to expressing affection for her daughter. "They certainly plan to keep her with them in the short term," he told her.

("Ruth will need all our emotional support," Sarah had said, "and that includes yours, Cooper, if she's to get through the abortion and Dave Hughes's trial." "And if Hughes is acquitted?" Cooper asked. "He won't be," said Sarah firmly. "Three more girls have agreed to testify against him. Women have plenty of courage, you know, when they're not pinned to the ground with knives held to their throats.")

"And in the long term?" Joanna asked him.

"Assuming the will isn't challenged, then Dr. Blakeney will set up a trust fund for Ruth at the same time as she makes you a gift of the money your mother intended you to have."

"Will she sell off the garden to do it?"

"I don't know. She told me this morning that Cedar House would make rather a fine nursing home."

Joanna gripped her arms angrily. "Mother must be turning in her grave to think the old ladies of Fontwell will be looked after at her expense. She couldn't stand any of them."

Cooper smiled to himself. There really was a beautiful irony about it all, particularly as the first customer would probably be poor, bewildered Violet Orloff.

Jack watched Sarah out of the corner of his eye as he sat at his easel putting the finishing touches to the portrait of Joanna. She was staring aimlessly out of the window towards the wooded horizon, her forehead pressed against the cool glass. "Penny for them," he said at last.

"Sorry?" She turned to glance at him.

"What were you thinking about?"

"Oh, nothing, just-" she shook her head-"nothing."

"Babies?" he suggested, without the usual trace of irony.

She moved into the centre of the room and stared at the painting of Mathilda. "All right, yes, I was, but you needn't worry. It wasn't in hopeful anticipation. I was thinking that you've been right all along and that having babies is a mug's game. They bring you nothing but heartache and, frankly, I'd as soon play it safe and spare myself the anguish."

"Pity," he murmured, rinsing his brush in turpentine and wiping it on the kitchen roll, "I was just getting acclimatized to the whole idea."

She kept her voice deliberately light. "I can take your jokes on most things, Jack, but not where babies are concerned. Sally Bennedict destroyed any credibility you might have on the subject the day she destroyed your little mistake."

He looked very thoughtful. "As a matter of interest, am I being singled out because I'm a man or are you planning to lay that same guilt-trip on Ruth in years to come?"

"That's different."

"Is it? Can't see it myself."

"Ruth wasn't two-timing her husband," she muttered through gritted teeth.

"Then we aren't talking about babies, Sarah, and whether or not I have the right to change my mind, we are talking about infidelity. Two different things entirely."

"In your book, maybe. Not in mine. Committing yourself to a person is no different from committing yourself to a belief. Why, if you couldn't bear to impregnate your wife, were you so unconcerned about impregnating your mistress?" Two spots of colour flared high on her cheekbones, and she turned away abruptly. "Let bygones be bygones. I don't want to talk about it any more."

"Why not?" he said. "I'm having a hell of a good time." He linked his hands behind his head and grinned at her rigid back. "You've put me through hell these last twelve months. You yank me out of London without a 'by your leave' or a 'do you mind?'. Stick me in the middle of nowhere with a 'take it or leave it, Jack, you're only my shit of a husband.' " His eyes narrowed. "I've put up with Cock Robin Hewitt strutting his stuff about my kitchen, leering at you and treating me like something the dog threw up. I've smiled while mental midgets pissed on my work, because I'm just the bum who likes nothing better than scrounging off his wife. And on top of all that I've had to listen to Keith Smollett lecturing me on your virtues. In all that time only one person, and this includes you, ever treated me as if I were human-and that was Mathilda. But for her, I'd have walked out in September and left you to stew in your own complacent juice."

She kept her back towards him. "Why didn't you?"

"Because, as she kept reminding me, I'm your husband," he growled. "Jesus, Sarah, if I didn't think what we had was worth something, why would I have married you in the first place? I didn't have to, for Christ's sake. No one held a gun to my head. I wanted to."

"Then why-?" She didn't go on.

"Why did I get Sally pregnant? I didn't. I never even slept with the horrible little bitch. I painted her portrait because she thought I was going places after the Bond Street dealer clinched my one and only sale." He gave a hollow laugh. "She wanted to hitch her wagon to a rising star, the way she's hitched it to every other rising star she's ever met. Which is what I painted, of course-a lazy parasite with pretensions to greatness. She has hated me ever since. If you'd told me she was claiming me as the father of her unwanted baby I'd have set you straight, but you didn't trust me enough to tell me." His voice hardened. "You sure as hell trusted her, though, and you didn't even like the bloody woman."

"She was very plausible."

"Of course she was plausible!" he roared. "She's a fucking actress, and I use the word advisedly. When are you going to open your eyes, woman, and see people in the round, their dark sides, their bright sides, their strengths, their weaknesses? Dammit, you should have let your passions go, clawed my miserable eyes out, slashed my balls-anything-if you thought I'd two-timed you." His voice softened. "Don't you love me enough to hate me, Sarah?"

"You bastard, Blakeney," she said, turning round and raking him from head to toe with glittering eyes. "You will never know how unhappy I've been."

"And you have the nerve to accuse me of being self-centred. What about my unhappiness?"

"Yours is easily cured," she said.

"It damn well isn't."

"It damn well is."

"How?"

"A little massage to ease the stiffness and then a kiss to make it better."

"Ah," he said thoughtfully, "well, it's certainly a start. But bear in mind the condition's chronic and needs repeated applications. I do not want a relapse."

"It'll cost you, though."

He eyed her through half-closed lids. "I thought it sounded too good to be true." He dug in his pocket. "How much?"

She cuffed him lightly across the head. "Information only. Why did Mathilda have a row with Jane Marriott on the morning she died? Why did Mathilda cry when you showed her your painting? And why did Mathilda leave me her money? I know they're all related, Jack, and I know Cooper knows the answer. I saw it in his eyes last night."

"No massage if you don't get the answer, I suppose."

"Not for you. I'll offer it to Cooper instead. One of you is bound to tell me in the end."

"You'd kill the poor old chap. He goes into spasms if you touch his hand." He drew her down on to his lap. "It won't make it any easier if I tell you," he warned. "In fact it'll make it harder. I know you too well." Whatever guilt she felt now, he thought, would be nothing compared with the agonies of wondering if she had unwittingly conned Mathilda into believing she was adopted. And what would it do to her relationship with Jane Marriott? Knowing Sarah, she would feel duty-bound to tell Jane the truth, and push the poor woman away with a surfeit of honesty. "I made Mathilda a promise, Sarah. I really don't want to break it."

"You broke it when you told Cooper," she pointed out.

"I know, and I'm not happy about it, any more than I was happy about breaking my promise to Ruth." He sighed. "But I really did have no option. He and the Inspector were convinced the will was the motive for Mathilda's murder and I had to explain why she made it."

Sarah stared at Mathilda's portrait. "She made it because she was buying her rite of passage into immortality and she didn't trust Joanna or Ruth to deliver the goods for her. They would have squandered the money while she trusted me to build the "something worthwhile in her memory.'" She sounded bitter, Jack thought. "She knew me well enough to know I wouldn't spend a bequest on myself, particularly one to which I felt I had no right."

"She wasn't that cynical, Sarah. She made no secret of her fondness for you."

But Sarah was still absorbed in the portrait. "You haven't explained," she said suddenly, "why you went to stay with Sally that weekend?" She turned to look at him. "But that was a lie, wasn't it? You went somewhere else." She put her small hands on his shoulders. "Where, Jack?" She shook him when he didn't answer. "It had something to do with Mathilda's weeping and, presumably, her will, too, though you didn't know it at the time." He could almost hear her mind working. "And whatever it was required your absence for that weekend without my knowing where you were going." She searched his face. "But for all she knew she would live for another twenty years, so why tell you something now that wouldn't have any real impact until after she was dead?"

"She didn't intend to tell me. I was a very reluctant recipient of her confession." He sighed. Sooner or later, he realized, Sarah would find out that he had stayed with her father and why he had gone there. "A year or so after Joanna was born, she had a second daughter by Paul Marriott, whom she put up for adoption. For all sorts of reasons she persuaded herself that you were her lost daughter, and she told me she'd changed her will in your favour." He gave a wry smile. "I was so shocked that I didn't know what to do. Say nothing and let you inherit under false pretences? Tell her the truth and shatter her illusions? I decided to put the decision on hold while I went to see if your father had something I could show her." He shook his head ironically. "But when I got back Mathilda was dead, the police were searching around for a murder motive, and I was the only person who knew Mathilda had left you a fortune. It was a nightmare. All I could see was that you and I would be arrested for conspiracy unless I kept my mouth shut. We couldn't prove I hadn't told you about the will, and you had no alibi." He gave a low laugh. "Then out of the blue you offered me my marching orders and I realized the best thing I could do was grab them with both hands and leave you thinking I was a miserable bastard. You were so hurt and angry that, for once in your life, you didn't try to hide your emotions, and Cooper received a hefty dose of transparent honesty. You showed him everything from shock about the will to complete bewilderment that I'd been able to paint Mathilda's portrait without your knowing." He laughed again. "You got us both off the hook without even realizing what you were doing."

"Thanks very much," she said tartly. "And what would have happened if I'd been overjoyed to see the back of you?"

His face split into an evil grin. "Well, just in case, 1 took out an insurance policy by moving in with Joanna. She's better-looking than you so you were bound to be jealous."

"Bollocks." But she didn't elaborate on whether it was the looks or the jealousy that was evoking her scorn, "Did Mathilda tell Jane she'd had Paul's child? Was that what the row was about?"

He nodded. "But she told her it was a boy."

It was Sarah's turn to sigh. "Then I doubt it's even true. She could have fantasized a baby just as easily as she fantasized her uncle's suicide"-she shrugged-"or had an abortion or smothered the poor little thing at birth. I think it just suited her to resurrect the fantasy in order to create a thoroughly guilty and embarrassed legatee whose strings she could pull after she was dead.'! She turned back to examine the portrait again. "She used and abused us all, one way and another, and I'm not sure I want to be manipulated by her any more. What do I say to Jane and Paul if they ask me why she left me her money?"

"Nothing," he said simply. "Because it's not your secret, Sarah, it's mine. Duncan did her one good service by destroying her diaries. It leaves you free to build a memorial to her in any shape or form you like. In ten years, Fontwell will see her only as a generous benefactress because there'll be no evidence to prove otherwise." He cupped her face in his hands. "Don't abandon her now, sweetheart. Whatever her motives were and whatever she did, she entrusted you with her redemption."

"She should have entrusted it to you, Jack. I think she probably loved you more than anyone in her whole life." Dampness glistened along her lashes. "Does she deserve to have people think well of her?"

He touched her tears with the tip of his finger. "She deserves a little pity, Sarah. In the end that's all any of us deserve."