"Where would I have to prove it? In court?"
"Possibly."
His eyes gleamed as he clicked his fingers for the contract. "I'm relying on you, Sarah," he said, tucking the paper back into his pocket.
"To do what?""
"Tell the executors not to pay, of course. Say you don't think it's Mathilda. I need the publicity of a court battle."
"Don't be stupid. I know it's Mathilda. If the contract's legally binding on her estate, they'll have to pay."
But he wasn't listening. He tossed his paints, brushes and bottles of turpentine and linseed oil into a hold-all, then released the canvas of Joanna Lascelles from the easel. "I've got to go. Look, I can't take the rest of this stuff because I haven't found a studio yet, but I'll try and get back for it during the week. Is that okay? I only came for some clothes. I've been sleeping in the car and this lot's a bit rank." He padded towards the door, slinging the hold-all over his shoulder and carrying the painting in his hand.
"One moment, Mr. Blakeney." Cooper stood up to block his path. "I haven't finished with you yet. Where were you on the night Mrs. Gillespie died?"
Jack glanced at Sarah. "I was in Stratford," he said coolly, "with an actress called Sally Bennedict."
Cooper didn't look up, merely licked the point of his pencil and jotted the name on his pad. "And how can I contact her?"
"Through the RSC. She's playing Juliet in one of their productions."
"Thank you. Now, as someone with material evidence, I must warn you that if you intend to go on sleeping in your car then you will be required to present yourself at a police station every day, because if you don't I shall be forced to apply for a warrant. We also need your fingerprints so that we can isolate yours from the others we lifted in Cedar House. There will be a fingerprinting team in Fontwell Parish Hall on Wednesday morning but if you can't attend, I shall have to make arrangements for you to come to the station."
"I'll be there."
"And your whereabouts in the meantime, sir?"
"Care of Mrs. Joanna Lascelles, Cedar House, Fontwell." He booted open the door into the hall and eased through the gap. It was clearly something he had done many times before to judge by the dents and scratches on the paintwork.
"Jack!" Sarah called.
He turned to look at her. His eyebrows lifted enquiringly.
She nodded to the portrait of Mathilda. "Congratulations."
He flashed her an oddly ultimate smile before letting the door slam behind him.
The two, left behind in the studio, listened to his footsteps on the stairs as he went in search of clothes. "He's a law unto himself, isn't he?" said Cooper, drawing thoughtfully on his cigarette.
"One of life's great individuals," Sarah said, consciously echoing Jack's description of Mathilda, "and very difficult to live with."
"I can see that." He bent down to stub the butt against the rim of the wastepaper basket. "But equally difficult to live without, I should imagine. He leaves something of a vacuum in his wake."
Sarah turned away from him to look out of the window. She couldn't see anything, of course-it was now very dark outside-but the policeman could see her reflection in the glass as clearly as if it were a mirror. He would have done better, he thought, to keep his mouth shut but there was an openness about the Blakeneys that was catching.
"He's not always like that," said Sarah. "It's rare for him to be quite so forthcoming, but I'm not sure if that was for your benefit or mine." She fell silent, aware that she was speaking her thoughts aloud.
"Yours, of course."
They heard the front door open and close. "Why 'of course'?"
"I haven't hurt him."
Their reflected eyes met in the window pane.
"Life's a bugger, isn't it, Sergeant?"
Joanna's demands on my purse are becoming insatiable. She says it's my fault that she's incapable of finding a job, my fault that her life's so empty, my fault that she had to marry Steven and my fault, too, that she was saddled with a baby she didn't want. I forbore to point out that she couldn't get into the Jew's bed quick enough or that the pill had been available for years before she allowed herself to get pregnant. I was tempted to catalogue the hells I went through-the rape of my innocence, marriage to a drunken pervert, a second pregnancy when I'd barely got over the first, the courage it took to climb out of an abyss of despair that she couldn't begin to imagine. I didn't, of course. She alarms me enough, as it is, with her frigid dislike of me and Ruth. I dread to think how she would react if she ever found out that Gerald was her father.
She says I'm a miser. Well, perhaps I am. Money has been a good friend to me and I guard it as jealously as others guard their secrets. God knows, I've had to use every ounce of cunning I possess to acquire it. If shrouds had pockets, I'd take it with me and "to hell, allegiance!" It is not we who owe our children but they who owe us. The only regret I have about dying is that I won't see Sarah's face when she learns what I've left her. That would, I think, be amusing.
Old Howard quoted Hamlet at me today: "We go to gain a little patch of ground that hath no profit but the name." I laughed-he is a most entertaining old brute at times--and answered from
The Merchant
"He is well paid who is well satisfied..."
*7*
"Violet Orloff sought out her husband in the sitting-room, where he was watching the early evening news on the television. She turned down the volume and placed her angular body in front of the screen.
"I was watching that," he said in mild reproof.
She took no notice. "Those awful women next door have been screaming at each other like a couple of fishwives, and I could hear every word. We should have taken the surveyor's advice and insisted on a double skin with soundproofing. What's going to happen if it's sold to hippies or people with young children? We'll be driven mad with their row."
"Wait and see," Duncan said, folding his plump hands in his ample lap. He could never understand how it was that old age, which had brought him serenity, had brought Violet only an aggressive frustration. He felt guilty about it. He knew he should never have brought her back to live in such close proximity with Mathilda. It was like placing a daisy beside an orchid and inviting comparisons.
She scowled at him. "You can be so infuriating at times. If we wait and see, it'll be too late to do anything. I think we should demand that something be done before it's sold."
"Have you forgotten," he reminded her gently, "that we were only able to afford this house in the first place precisely because there was no soundproofing and Mathilda agreed to a five thousand pound discount when the surveyor pointed out the deficiency? We're hardly in a position to demand anything."
But Violet hadn't come in to discuss demands. "Fishwives," she said again, "screaming at each other. The police now think Mathilda was murdered, apparently. And do you know what Ruth called her mother? A whore. She said she knew her mother was a whore in London. Rather worse, in fact. She said Joanna was," her voice dropped to a whisper while her lips, in exaggerated movement, mouthed the words, "a fucking whore."
"Good lord," said Duncan Orloff, startled out of his serenity.
"Quite. And Mathilda thought Joanna was mad, and she tried to murder Ruth, and she's spending her money on something she shouldn't and, worst of all, Ruth was in the house the night Mathilda died and she took Mathilda's earrings. And," she said with particular emphasis, as if she hadn't already said "and" several times, "Ruth has stolen other things as well. They obviously haven't told the police any of it. I think we should report it."
He looked slightly alarmed. "Is it really any of our business, dear? We do have to go on living here, after all. I should hate any more unpleasantness." What Duncan called serenity, others called apathy, and the hornets' nest stirred up two weeks ago by Jenny Spede's screams had been extremely unsettling.
She stared at him with shrewd little eyes.'"You've known it was murder all along, haven't you? And you know who did it."
>
"Don't be absurd," he said, an edge of anger in his voice.
She stamped her foot angrily on the floor. "Why do you insist on treating me like a child? Do you think I didn't know? I've known for forty years, you silly man. Poor Violet. Only second best. Always second best. What did she tell you, Duncan?" Her eyes narrowed to slits. "She told you something. I know she did."
"You've been drinking again," he said coldly.
"You never accused Mathilda of drinking, but then she was perfect. Even drunk, Mathilda was perfect." She tottered very slightly. "Are you going to report what I heard? Or will I have to do it? If Joanna or Ruth murdered her they don't deserve to get away with it. You're not going to tell me you don't care, I hope. I know you do."
Of course he cared-it was only Violet for whom he felt a numbing indifference-but had she no sense of self-preservation? "I don't imagine Mathilda was killed for fun," he said, holding her gaze for a moment, "so I do urge you to be very cautious in what you say and how you say it. On the whole I think it would be better if you left it to me." He reached past her to switch up the volume on the television set. "It's the weather forecast," he pointed out, gesturing her gravely to one side, as if tomorrow's atmospheric pressures across the United Kingdom were of any interest to a fat, flabby old man who never stirred out of his armchair if he could possibly avoid it.
Ruth opened the door to Jack with a sullen expression in her dark eyes. "I hoped you wouldn't come back," she said bluntly. "She always gets what she wants."
He grinned at her. "So do I."
"Does your wife know you're here?"
He pushed past her into the hall, propping the canvas of Joanna against a wall and lowering the hold-all to the floor. "Is that any of your business?"
She shrugged. "She's the one with the money. We'll all lose out if you and Mum put her nose out of joint. You must be mad."
He was amused. "Are you expecting me to lick Sarah's arse so that you can live in clover for the rest of your life? Forget it, sweetheart. The only person I lick arse for is myself."
"Don't call me sweetheart," she snapped.
His eyes narrowed. "Then don't judge me by your own standards. My best advice to you, Ruth, is to learn a little subtlety. There is no bigger turn-off than a blatant woman."
For all her outward maturity, she was still a child. Her eyes filled. "I hate you."
He studied her curiously for a moment, then moved off in search of Joanna.
No one could accuse Joanna of being unsubtle. She was a woman of understatement, in words, dress and action. She sat now in the dimly lit drawing-room, a book open on her lap, face impassive, hair a silver halo in the light from the table lamp. Her eyes flickered in Jack's direction as he entered the room, but she didn't say anything, only gestured towards the sofa for him to sit down. He chose to stand by the mantelpiece and watch her. He thought of her in terms of ice. Glacial. Dazzling. Static.
"What are you thinking?" she asked after several moments of silence.
"That Mathilda was right about you."
There was no expression in her grey eyes. "In which particular respect?"
"She said you were a mystery."
She gave a faint smile but didn't say anything.
"I liked her, you know," Jack went on after a moment.
"You would. She despised women but looked up to men."
There was a lot of truth in that, thought Jack. "She liked Sarah well enough."
"Do you think so?"
"She left her three-quarters of a million pounds. I'd say that was a pretty good indication she liked her."
Joanna leant her head against the back of the sofa and stared at him with a disconcertingly penetrating gaze. "I assumed you knew Mother better than that. She didn't like anyone. And why ascribe such a mundane motive to her? She would have viewed a bequest of three-quarters of a million pounds in terms of the power it could buy her, not as a sentimental hand-out to someone who had done her a small kindness. Mother never intended that will to be her last. It was a piece of theatre, made for Ruth and me to find. Money buys power just as effectively if you threaten to withhold it."
Thoughtfully, Jack rubbed his jaw. Sarah had said something very similar. "But why Sarah? Why not leave it to a dogs' home? It would have achieved the same purpose."
"I've wondered about that," she murmured, her eyes straying towards the window. "I think perhaps she disliked your wife even more than she disliked me. Do you imagine Ruth and I would have kept quiet if we'd seen that video while Mother was alive?" She stroked her hand rhythmically up and down her arm as she spoke. It was an extraordinarily sensuous action but she seemed unaware that she was doing it. She brought her head round to look at Jack again. Her eyes were strangely glassy. "Your wife's position would have become untenable."
"What would you have done?" asked Jack curiously.
Joanna smiled. "Nothing very much. Your wife would have lost all her patients within six months once it got out that she had persuaded a rich patient to make over her entire estate. She'll lose them anyway."
"Why?"
"Mother died in suspicious circumstances and your wife is the only person to benefit from her death."
"Sarah didn't kill Mathilda."
Joanna smiled to herself. "Tell that to the people of Fontwell." She stood up and smoothed her black dress over her flat stomach. "I'm ready," she said.
He frowned. "What for?"
"Sex," she said matter-of-factly. "It's what you came for, isn't it? We'll use Mother's room. I want you to make love to me the way you made love to her." Her strange eyes rested on him. "You'll enjoy it far more with me, you know. Mother didn't like sex, but then I presume you discovered that for yourself. She never did it for pleasure, only for gain. A man's humping disgusted her. She said it reminded her of dogs."
Jack found the remark fascinating. "I thought you said she looked up to men?"
Joanna smiled. "Only because she knew how to manipulate them."
The news that Mathilda Gillespie had left Dr. Blakeney three-quarters of a million pounds spread through the village like wildfire. The information surfaced after matins on Sunday, but precisely who started the fire remained a mystery. There was no doubt, however, that it was Violet Orloff who let slip the interesting snippet that Jack Blakeney had taken up residence at Cedar House. His car had remained on the gravel drive all Saturday night and looked like remaining there indefinitely. Tongues began to wag.
Jane Marriott was careful to keep her expression neutral when Sarah put in a surprise appearance at lunch-time on Wednesday. "I wasn't expecting you," she said. "Shouldn't you be on your way to Seeding?"
"I had to give my fingerprints in the parish hall."
"Coffee?"
"I suppose you've heard. Everyone else has."
Jane switched on the kettle. "About the money or about Jack?"
Sarah gave a humourless laugh. "That makes life a lot easier. I've just spent an hour in a queue outside the hall, listening to heavy-handed hints from people who should have been diagnosed brain-dead years ago. Shall I tell you what the current thinking seems to be? Jack has left me to live with Joanna because he is as shocked as everyone else that I used my position as Mathilda's GP to persuade her to forget her duty to her family in favour of me. This being the same Jack Blakeney who, only last week, everyone loved to hate because he was living off his wretched wife."
"Oh dear," said Jane.
"They'll be saying next that I killed the old witch before she could change the will back."
"You'd better believe it," said Jane dispassionately. "There's no point burying your head in the sand."
"You're joking."
Jane handed her a cup of black coffee. "I'm serious, dear. There were two of them discussing it here in the waiting-room this morning. It goes something like this: none of the locals had reason to hate Mathilda more than usual in the last twelve months so none of them is likely to have murdered her. Therefore it has to be a newcomer, and you're the on
ly newcomer with a motive who had access to her. Your husband, afraid for himself and Mrs. Lascelles, has moved in to protect her. Ruth is safe because she's at school. And last, but by no means least, why did Victor Sturgis die in such peculiar circumstances?"
Sarah stared at her. "You are serious, aren't you?"
"Fraid so."
"Do I gather I'm supposed to have killed Victor as well?"
Jane nodded.
"How? By suffocating him with his own false teeth?"
"That seems to be the general view." Jane's eyes brimmed with laughter suddenly. "Oh dear, I shouldn't laugh, really I shouldn't. Poor old soul, it was bad enough that he swallowed them himself, but the idea of you wrestling with a ninety-three-year-old in order to ram his dentures down his throat"-she broke off to mop her eyes-"it doesn't bear thinking about. The world is full of very foolish and very envious people, Sarah. They resent your good fortune."
Sarah mulled this over. "Do you think I'm fortunate?"
"Good lord, yes. It's like winning the pools."
"What would you do with the money if Mathilda had left it to you?"
"Go on a cruise. See the world before it sinks under the weight of its own pollution."
"That seems to be the most popular choice. It must be something to do with the fact that we're an island. Everyone wants to get off it." She stirred her coffee then licked the spoon absent-mindedly.
Jane was dying of curiosity. "What are you going to do with it?"
Sarah sighed. "Use it to pay for a decent barrister, I should think."
DS Cooper stopped at Mill House on his way home that evening. Sarah offered him a glass of wine which he accepted. "We've had a letter about you," he told her while she was pouring it.
Scold's Bridle Page 10