The Scold's Bridle

by Minette Walters

  Christ, thought Cooper in alarm, feeling the weight of the other’s gaze upon his bent head. Could the bastard read minds as well? He made a pretence of writing something on his notepad. ‘Did you explain all that as graphically to Mrs Gillespie or did you just stick with the spending of her money if you had it?’

  Jack glanced at Sarah, but she was staring at Mathilda’s portrait and didn’t look up. ‘She had great skin for her age. I expect I said I’d rather be stoned and rogering a granny.’

  Cooper, who was far more respectable than he realized, was shocked into looking up. ‘What did she say?’

  Jack was enjoying himself. ‘She asked me if I’d like to paint her in the nude. I said I would, so she took her clothes off. If it’s of any interest to you, the only thing Mathilda was wearing when I made my sketches of her was the scold’s bridle.’ He smiled, his perceptive eyes searching the policeman’s. ‘Does that excite you, Sergeant?’

  ‘It does as a matter of fact,’ said Cooper evenly. ‘Would she also have been in the bath by any chance?’

  ‘No. She was very much alive and lying on her bed in all her glory.’ He stood up and went to a chest in the corner. ‘And she looked bloody fantastic.’ He took a sketchpad from the bottom drawer. ‘There.’ He flung the pad across the room and it fluttered to the floor at the policeman’s feet. ‘Be my guest. They’re all of Mathilda. One of life’s great individuals.’

  Cooper retrieved the pad and turned the pages. They did indeed show Mrs Gillespie, nude upon her bed, but a very different Mrs Gillespie from the tragic cadaver in the bath or the bitter harridan with the cruel mouth on the television set. He laid the pad on the floor beside him. ‘Did you sleep with her, Mr Blakeney?’

  ‘No. She never asked me to.’

  ‘Would you have done if she had asked you?’ The question was out before Cooper had time to consider its wisdom.

  Jack’s expression was unreadable. ‘Does that have a bearing on your case?’

  ‘I’m interested in your character, Mr Blakeney.’

  ‘I see. And what would my accepting an elderly woman’s invitation to sleep with her tell you? That I was a pervert? Or that I was infinitely compassionate?’

  Cooper gave a small laugh. ‘I’d say it was an indication that you needed your eyes testing. Even in the dark, Mrs Gillespie could hardly have passed for a sixteen-year-old virgin.’ He fished his cigarettes from his pocket. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘Be my guest.’ He kicked the wastepaper basket across the floor.

  Cooper flicked his lighter to the cigarette. ‘Mrs Gillespie has left your wife three-quarters of a million pounds, Mr Blakeney. Did you know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Sergeant hadn’t expected that. ‘So Mrs Gillespie did tell you what her intentions were?’

  ‘No,’ said Jack, resuming his seat on the stool. ‘I’ve just spent a delightful two hours at Cedar House.’ He stared impassively at Sarah. ‘Joanna and Ruth are labouring under the misapprehension that I have some influence over my wife so they put themselves out to be charming.’

  Cooper scratched his jaw and wondered why Dr Blakeney put up with it. The man was toying with her in the way a sleek cat playfully inserts its claws into a half-mangled mouse. The mystery was not why she had decided to divorce him so suddenly, but why she had tolerated him for so long. Yet there was a sense of a challenge unmet, for a cat only remains interested while the mouse plays the game, and Cooper had the distinct impression that Jack felt Sarah was letting him down. ‘Did you know before that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do your wife’s patients often leave her money then?’

  ‘Not as far as I know.’ He grinned at the Sergeant. ‘If they have, she’s never told me.’

  ‘Then why aren’t you surprised?’

  ‘Give me a good reason why I should be. If you’d told me Mathilda had left her money to the Police Benevolent Fund or New Age Travellers, that wouldn’t have surprised me either. It was hers to do with as she liked, and good luck to her. Mind you, I’m glad it’s the wife,’ he put an offensive emphasis on the word, ‘who hit the jackpot. It’ll make things considerably easier for me. I don’t mind admitting I’m a bit short at the moment.’

  Sarah raked him from head to toe with angry eyes. ‘My God, Jack, if you knew how close I am to sinking my fist into your self-satisfied gut.’

  ‘Ah,’ he murmured, ‘passion at last.’ He stood up and approached her, spreading his hands wide in an invitation to do it. ‘Feel free. It’s all yours.’

  She took him by surprise and kneed him in the groin instead. ‘Next time,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘I’ll break Mathilda’s canvas over your head. And that would be a shame because it’s probably the best thing you’ve ever done.’

  ‘GODDAMMIT, WOMAN, THAT HURT!’ he roared, clutching his balls and collapsing back on to the stool. ‘I asked for passion not fucking castration.’

  Sarah’s eyes narrowed. ‘It was supposed to hurt, you cretin. Don’t even think about getting your hands on Mathilda’s money. You’re certainly not getting any of mine if I can help it. Fifty–fifty? Fat – bloody – chance. I’ll sell up and give it to a cats’ home before I see you living the life of Riley on the back of my hard work.’

  He poked his fingers into his Levi’s pocket and removed a folded piece of paper. ‘My contract with Mathilda,’ he said, holding it out to her with one hand while he fondled himself gingerly with the other. ‘The silly old sod snuffed it before she paid me, so I reckon her executors owe me ten thousand and her heir gets the painting. Jesus, Sarah, I feel really sick. I think you’ve done me some severe damage.’

  She ignored him to read what was on the paper. ‘This looks kosher,’ she said.

  ‘It is kosher. Keith drew it up.’

  ‘He never told me.’

  ‘Why should he? It was none of your business. I just hope I’ve got a claim on the estate. The way my luck’s running, the contract’s probably invalid because she’s dead.’

  Sarah passed the paper to DS Cooper. ‘What do you think? It would be a shame if Jack’s right. It’s his second major sale.’

  She was genuinely pleased for the bastard, Cooper thought in surprise. What a peculiar couple they were. He shrugged. ‘I’m no expert but I’ve always understood that debts have to be met out of an estate. If you’d supplied her with new carpeting, which she hadn’t paid for, the bill would presumably be honoured. I don’t see why a painting should be any different, particularly one where the subject is the deceased. It’s not as though you can sell it to anyone else, is it?’ He glanced at the canvas. ‘Bearing in mind, of course, you might have a problem proving it’s Mrs Gillespie.’

  ‘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 intimate 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 . . .’

  Seven

  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. ‘Fish-wives,’ 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 selfpreservation? ‘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.