Sour Grapes

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘I can’t think what’s got into you, Emma. Have you been talking to one of these trick cyclists? Or is it a bunch of feminist loonies who’ve been winding you up?’

  ‘Neither, Anthony. I’ve just got far enough away from you to see it all in perspective. I used to blame myself, but now I can see you for the revolting, cruel thug you were. It’s odd: for years I’ve been too scared to admit even to myself how much I hated what you did to me. But it doesn’t seem to matter any more. I don’t care any longer and I don’t have to have anything to do with you. Thank God.’

  ‘You’re hysterical. I can’t think what’s been giving you these stupid fantasies. Father would have been appalled. You ought to see a doctor and get yourself sorted out, Emma. And if I hear that you’ve been repeating any of this nonsense to Sarah or your mother or anyone else, I’ll—’

  Emma put a finger on the cradle of the telephone, stopping his voice in mid-flow, and realised that she was free.

  The explosive mixture of exhilaration and anger that her long-delayed rebellion had generated made it impossible for her to stay in her tiny room. She went out, not even bothering to lock the door behind her, and plunged into the darkness of the campus. As she walked, breathing deeply in the cold damp air, she realised that she was muttering aloud to herself, saying all the things she wished she had said to Anthony. It was deeply satisfying to hear the words spoken, even though he would never know what they were.

  Eventually she walked and thought herself into a kind of calm. She had said everything that had to be said, and her brain had done its work of sorting her feelings and allowing her new confidence to banish the old fears.

  Those seemed more acceptable to her than they had ever done. She had at last come to accept that the terror Anthony had induced in her throughout her childhood might have been reasonable. Even though he had never carried out any of his threats, at the time she had always believed they were real.

  Later, once she had grown up, she had criticised herself for being so gullible, for taking what was probably no more than teasing in such a tragic way, and she had blamed herself for the effect it had had on her life. At last she could allow herself to believe that it might not have been her fault that she had been so afraid.

  She also came to understand as she walked up and down the hard paths, talking to herself, why she had felt such a strong need to learn how to distinguish truth from lies. The roots of that must have lain not so much in her high-flown assumptions that she might one day save an innocent from going to prison or prevent a criminal being freed, as in the muddle of feelings in which she had found herself whenever she had attempted to complain of what Anthony had been doing to her.

  ‘Boys do that sort of thing,’ her father had told her over and over again. ‘Show you’re not afraid of him. Stand up to him and then he’ll stop. Don’t give him the satisfaction of seeing that you mind.’ Her mother’s line had been rather different. ‘Poor Anthony,’ she had always said. ‘He lost his mother. We must all do what we can for him. Be nice to him, Emma, and then he’ll be nicer to you.’

  Both lines of advice had put all the fault on to her, she realised. Her father had implied that she was failing in courage; her mother, that she was not kind enough. Both of them had obviously believed that Anthony had not been doing anything very odd. On the few occasions when he had hit her in public, he had been soundly punished for it, but Emma had not minded the occasional punches or slaps nearly as much as the private mental tortures in which he had excelled.

  She asked herself what exactly he could have been trying to achieve. Had it been the sight of her frightened eyes and trembling lips begging him to stop, or the feel of her sweaty hands as she had tried to keep him away? Or had he actually wanted her dead as she had believed at the time?

  Perhaps not with his conscious mind, she decided after a while, but at some level he probably had wanted precisely that.

  At last she turned to go back to her room. As she reached the archway that led to her building, her mind produced an extraordinarily vivid picture of Jemima Lutterworth standing between the climbing plants in the atrium of her amazing house. She was saying that she wanted to see Emma off the premises to ‘make sure that you’re not poking around the house or digging up the garden’.

  Emma repeated the phrase to herself several times, wondering whether it could be only the strange calm that had followed her own emotional storm that made it seem both so peculiar and so significant.

  As she hurried up the stairs to her room, she remembered Annie Frome’s description of Andrew Lutterworth sitting at his desk one morning some weeks after Pipp’s death. Andrew had been crying, Annie had said, and trying to hide his swollen eyes behind his hands, hands that were bruised and scraped, with nails torn as though he had been ripping them against a brick wall.

  Emma could not understand why it had taken her such an unconscionable time to see the significance of that. The whole idea of Andrew wrecking his hands against a wall seemed ludicrous once she applied her imagination to the scene. Likelier by far was the picture she was beginning to create for herself, a picture in which Andrew was on his knees in the dark, digging.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Back in her room Emma stripped off her clothes and went to stand under one of the showers for fifteen minutes. Later, as she lay in the dark and tried to stop thinking of Andrew Lutterworth’s damaged hands, she realised that she was going to have to see him again.

  She turned heavily over in bed and buried her face in the hard polyester pillow. The prospect of being alone with him appalled her in itself and the idea of asking him whether he had killed his mistress and carried her body in the car back to Berkshire so that he could bury it in the memorial garden seemed impossible. But she knew she would have to do it. Her need to prove that she had grit was one thing; her gratitude for the enormous amount of help she had had from her friends, another. But much more important than either was the possibility that her cowardice might allow a murder to go undiscovered and a murderer unpunished. That would be unbearable.

  Having slept only intermittently, and dreamed of prisons and flooded quarries, graves and knives and stranglings, she got out of bed at half past seven for another restorative, stinging shower and two cups of very strong coffee. She could not ring the wing governor to set up her interview with Andrew Lutterworth until after nine, which gave her another hour to decide what she was going to say.

  When her own telephone started to ring, she flinched as though the sound had triggered an electric shock against her skin. Wondering whether the caller was going to be Anthony, perhaps apologising or else trying to blackmail or bully her into keeping silent about what he had done to her in the past, she picked up the receiver and coldly said her name.

  ‘Is this too early?’ came Willow’s voice, invigoratingly alive and thoroughly welcome. ‘I wanted to find out how you are.’

  ‘No, it’s not too early at all. I’ve been wanting to talk to you, too, but I thought I’d have to wait until much later. Was everything OK yesterday? Did you meet Terry?’

  ‘Yes, we did. And I must admit that I was glad of Jag’s company. I might have found out just as much—or even more—on my own, but I might also have ended up beaten to a bloody pulp.’

  ‘Oh, don’t, Willow. Even as a joke.’

  ‘You sound a bit wobbly, Em. What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m fine. You did find Terry, then. Good. What did he say?’

  ‘Hasn’t Jag told you?’

  ‘No. I didn’t get back myself until quite late and then I had to go out again. I was going to ring him a bit later this morning. He doesn’t usually surface until about ten. So what did you discover?’

  Willow described everything they had heard from Terry Lepe, and Emma began to feel better. There was still, she realised, a possibility that her melodramatic ideas were nonsense and that Andrew had never had a mistress at all and certainly never killed her. After all, the whole idea of the mistress had come from Hal a
nd there had been no evidence to support it.

  ‘Do you think he could have been telling the truth?’ Emma asked with a new enthusiasm in her voice. ‘About having no more than a skid and then taking the car back to Holborn? Do you suppose all this time we could have been barking up the wrong tree altogether and it was Andrew who crashed? Or even Jemima?’

  ‘No. I believe Susie implicitly. I’m perfectly sure it was Terry who crashed. Anyway, it certainly couldn’t have been Jemima,’ said Willow. ‘She told me when she was walking me round that creepy garden that she had the Lord Lieutenant and his wife and sister-in-law round for supper and bridge that night. I haven’t bothered to check it, but it would be so easy to verify that I can’t imagine she’d lie about it.’

  ‘Oh. Right,’ said Emma, feeling deflated. If Jemima’s alibi was really watertight, and if Terry had said nothing to disprove Susie’s story, then the reasons for Andrew’s fear of what the forensic scientists might find in his car would have to be investigated, however much she hated the idea.

  ‘You really do sound depressed, Emma. What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. Not really. I had a slightly bruising encounter with Jemima myself yesterday and I’m eating at myself for having been so stupid with her. Can I tell you about it? I have sort of dropped Jane in it a bit, you see, and that may redound on you. Is that the word? Redound, I mean. Or is it rebound?’

  ‘The second,’ said Willow, adding with a mock threat in her voice, ‘What have you done? You’d better confess before it’s too late.’

  Emma described everything she had said and heard, adding with a sigh, ‘And now Andrew has said he will see me after all and I’m going to have to go as soon as the governor can arrange it in the hope that I get there before Jemima’s managed to warn him off me.’

  ‘And you don’t want to go?’

  ‘No. To be honest, I hate the idea.’

  ‘But why? You went quite happily before.’

  ‘Because,’ said Emma reluctantly, ‘I have a sort of idea of what it might have all been about, and so now I can’t not tackle it, but…’

  ‘Would you like me to come with you? Moral support and all that.’

  ‘Would you, Willow? Really? Oh, that would be fantastic. But wouldn’t Tom be furious?’

  ‘No. We made peace last night; real lasting peace,’ said Willow, laughing. ‘In any case nothing’s going to happen to either you or me under the eye of a warder in a well-regulated prison.’

  ‘We don’t have an officer with us all the time. They just look in at intervals to ask if everything’s all right. If we could have one all the time, I wouldn’t mind so much. Although I don’t suppose we’d get anything useful out of Andrew if there were a warder.’

  ‘Emma,’ said Willow much more seriously, ‘you don’t have to go at all. I could perfectly well go on my own. We could ask Jag to go instead. Or we can drop the whole thing.’

  ‘No, I must go myself. Having got this far, I can’t give in now. But I don’t think any of the standard lie-detection tests is going to help much. If I knew for certain what had been done and just wanted to find out whether he had done it, then I could use a Guilty Knowledge Technique test. But since I want to make him tell me what it was he once did that makes him show signs of guilt, I’m stuck. You see, without having the knowledge myself I can’t design the questions I’d need for a Guilty Knowledge test. And I don’t think it’s worth even trying another Control Question Technique one. Perhaps I ought to abandon tests altogether in the hope that they’ll bounce him into telling us the truth. If I can. And if it doesn’t turn him violent on us.’

  ‘You’ll have to explain the difference in the tests sometime,’ said Willow soothingly, ‘but don’t worry about it now. I’m sure that between us we can manage Lutterworth, whatever he may try to do. After all, he won’t have access to any kind of weapon and, with two of us there, even if he goes berserk with rage we’ll be able to overpower him and yell for an officer. Jane said that he’s a bit of a shrimp, and only about five-foot-eleven. I think I’m just as tall and you’re young and fit. Come on, Emma, where’s your bottle?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, realising that the excited feeling of liberation she had felt the previous evening had gone completely. Her standing up to Anthony had not, after all, given her the complete confidence for which she had longed. There were some things that still scared her, and male anger was one of the worst.

  ‘What is it, Em?’ asked Willow seriously.

  ‘Nothing important.’ One day Emma thought she might be able to tell Willow about Anthony, but for the moment she had to deal with it herself. She might tell Jag, too, but on the other hand she might not. ‘But, look, if you really are prepared to come to the prison with me, I’ll fix it with the governor for as soon as possible. Are there any times and dates you can’t do in the near future?’

  Willow had a look in her diary and said that she was already booked for something else in two days’time, but that she could go with Emma to the prison on any other day. Mrs Rusham would be available to look after Lucinda, and Tom was busy at Scotland Yard, and so she would be free. Emma promised to ring her as soon as the governor had suggested an appointment.

  Putting down the receiver, Emma felt better and sat down to sort out what she had to say to Andrew. When she had got all her ideas into order and had written herself a list of questions, she rang the prison. To her amazement the wing governor said that if she were in a serious hurry the interview could be arranged for the following morning at half past ten. Seizing the opportunity, she said that would suit her and that she would like to bring an associate with her.

  ‘Ah, I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ said the governor, sounding genuinely regretful.

  ‘But why not?’ asked Emma. ‘She’s entirely respectable, and will be there only to help me gather data. What possible objection could you have?’

  ‘Our security procedures mean that we could never admit someone so quickly. It normally takes at least three or four days to vet possible visitors.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Emma, rushing to explain. ‘But look, she’s Willow Worth, the wife of Superintendent Worth of the Met. Wouldn’t that make it easier for you to speed up your vetting? I imagine she must already have been checked out through all sorts of Scotland Yard routines.’

  ‘That might make a difference. If it’s really so urgent I suppose I could phone … Very well. Let me know where I can get in touch with you this afternoon, and I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Emma, wishing that she could ask him to see that Tom was not involved in Willow’s vetting. Even if she had made peace with him, it would be silly to rub his nose in her detecting if it was not necessary. ‘If you say when you’re likely to ring, I’ll make sure I’m here.’

  ‘It’ll probably be between five and five thirty this afternoon, then.’

  ‘Great. That’s marvellous. Thank you.’

  ‘Hold on to your gratitude until I’ve got Mrs Worth admitted,’ said the governor with a faint laugh in his voice. ‘I won’t see you tomorrow, I’m afraid, but no doubt we will meet again in due course. Don’t forget to bring your documents and ask her to come with her passport. I’ll leave a letter for you both at the security desk.’

  ‘I won’t forget. Thank you.’

  He was as good as his word and rang Emma at twenty past five to say that Willow had been cleared to enter the prison, on the same research basis as Emma. Like Emma, she would have to provide identification and submit to a search at the gate, as well as to observe the various rules and restrictions Emma had learned. On Willow’s behalf, Emma accepted them all.

  The following morning she was standing outside Willow’s neat cream-painted house at half past eight. Mrs Rusham admitted her and begged her to have some breakfast while Willow finished dressing. Superintendent Worth had already left for Scotland Yard, she said, but there was plenty of breakfast left and she had only recently made a fresh pot of coffe
e.

  Emma declined the offer, far too impatient to sit down to eat. Instead she stood waiting in the hall until Willow appeared in a surprisingly dull-looking suit of smooth navy-blue cloth. She had Lucinda in her arms and the child shrieked with pleasure at the sight of Emma.

  In spite of her fear of being late at the prison, Emma held out her arms and took the child for a moment’s bonding romp before handing her over to Mrs Rusham.

  ‘We’d better go, Em. The traffic may be pretty awful, although we will be going against it most of the way.’

  ‘OK.’ Emma kissed Lucinda and said goodbye to Mrs Rusham.

  ‘Be good, Lucinda,’ said Willow, blowing her a kiss. ‘Mrs Rusham, I won’t see you again until this evening, but I should be back easily in time for her bath. Come on, Emma, let’s go.’

  As they drove out through south London, Willow pointed out the street that led to the flat where she had once lived, and Emma smiled at the incongruity between it and the Mews.

  ‘Isn’t it odd how one has no idea how life is going to turn out?’ said Willow vaguely, apparently looking at Clapham Common. ‘Or what one wants of it.’

  ‘I thought that was only me,’ said Emma, feeling encouraged.

  ‘Far from it. By the way, I meant to say that I’m coming to like Jag more and more,’ Willow went on, still in that unpushy voice, ‘but I’m not sure that he likes me much.’

  ‘I don’t think he understands you,’ said Emma, smiling fully at last. ‘He’s noticed your strength of character and your establishmentness, but none of your anarchic tendencies. If he had, he’d think differently.’

  Willow laughed. ‘Anarchic tendencies. What a splendid notion! I’m not sure I’d have admitted to those, but now you come to mention them, I suppose they are one of the things you and I share.’

  ‘Me?’ said Emma, suddenly remembering Jag’s analysis of her predilection for outsiders and his suggestion that once Willow had been one. Before she could stop herself, she suddenly asked, ‘Were you ever lonely, Willow, while you lived round here?’