The Scold's Bridle

by Minette Walters

  ‘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 lunchtime on Wednesday. ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ she said. ‘Shouldn’t you be on your way to Beeding?’

  ‘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 only 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.

  She handed him the glass. ‘Who from?’

  ‘Unsigned.’

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘That you murdered an old man called Victor Sturgis for his walnut desk.’

  Sarah pulled a wry face. ‘Actually, he did leave me a desk and it’s rather a nice one, too. The matron at the nursing home gave it to me after he died. She said he wanted me to have it. I was very touched.’ She lifted weary eyebrows. ‘Did it say how I murdered him?’

  You were seen suffocating him.’

  ‘It makes a weird sort of sense. I was trying to prise his dentures out of his throat. The poor old boy swallowed them when he dozed off in his chair.’ She sighed. ‘But he was dead before I even started. I had a vague idea of trying mouth-to-mouth if I could unblock his airway. I suppose, from a distance, it might have looked as if I were suffocating him.’

  Cooper nodded. He had checked the story alre
ady. ‘We’ve had a few letters, one way and another, and they’re not all about you.’ He took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘This is the most interesting. See what you make of it.’

  ‘Should I touch the letter?’ she asked doubtfully. ‘What about fingerprints?’

  ‘Well, that’s interesting in itself. Whoever wrote it wore gloves.’

  She took the letter from the envelope and spread it on the table. It was printed in block capitals:

  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.

  Sarah turned the envelope over to look at the frank mark. It had been posted in Learmouth. ‘And you’ve no idea who wrote it?’

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘It can’t be true. You told me yourself that Ruth was under the watchful eye of her housemistress at school.’

  He looked amused. ‘As I told you, I never set much store by alibis. If that young lady wanted to sneak out I can’t see her housemistress stopping her.’

  ‘But Southcliffe’s thirty miles away,’ Sarah protested. ‘She couldn’t have got here without a car.’

  He changed tack. ‘What about this reference to madness? Did Mrs Gillespie ever mention to you that her daughter was mad?’

  She considered this for a moment. ‘Madness is a relative term, quite meaningless out of context.’

  He was unruffled. ‘So Mrs Gillespie did mention something of the sort?’

  Sarah didn’t answer.

  ‘Come on, Dr Blakeney. Joanna’s not your patient so you’re not giving away any confidences. And let me tell you something else, she’s not doing you any favours at the moment. Her view is that you had to kill the old lady PDQ before she had time to change her will back, and she isn’t keeping those suspicions to herself.’

  Sarah fingered her wine glass. ‘The only thing Mathilda ever said on the subject was that her daughter was unstable. She said it wasn’t Joanna’s fault but was due to incompatibility between Mathilda’s genes and Joanna’s father’s genes. I told her she was talking rubbish but, at the time, I didn’t know that Joanna’s father was Mathilda’s uncle. I imagine she was concerned about the problems of recessive genes but, as we didn’t pursue it any further, I can’t say for sure.’

  ‘Inbreeding, in other words?’

  Sarah gave a small shrug of acquiescence. ‘Presumably.’

  ‘Do you like Mrs Lascelles?’

  ‘I hardly know her.’

  ‘Your husband seems to get on with her well enough.’

  ‘That’s below the belt, Sergeant.’

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re bothering to defend her. She’s got her knife into you right up to the hilt.’

  ‘Do you blame her?’ She leaned her chin on her hand. ‘How would you feel if in a few short weeks, you discovered that you were the product of an incestuous relationship, that your father killed himself with an overdose, that your mother died violently either by her own hand or someone else’s and that, to cap it all, the security you were used to was about to be snatched away and given to a stranger? She seems remarkably sane to me in the circumstances.’

  He took a drink from his glass. ‘Do you know anything about her being a prostitute?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or what she spends her money on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me. Why don’t you ask her?’

  ‘I have. She told me to mind my own business.’

  Sarah chuckled. ‘I’d have done the same.’

  He stared at her. ‘Has anyone ever told you you’re too good to be true, Dr Blakeney?’ He spoke with a touch of sarcasm.

  She held his gaze, but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Women in your position drive their husband’s car through their rival’s front door, or take a chainsaw to the rival’s furniture. At the very least, they feel acute bitterness. Why don’t you?’

  ‘I’m busy shoring up my house of cards,’ she said cryptically. ‘Have some more wine.’ She filled her own glass, then his. ‘It’s not bad, this one. Australian Shiraz and fairly inexpensive.’

  He was left with the impression that, of the two women, Joanna Lascelles was the less puzzling. ‘Would you have described yourself and Mrs Gillespie as friends?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why “of course”?’

  ‘I describe everyone I know well as a friend.’

  ‘Including Mrs Lascelles.’

  ‘No. I’ve only met her twice.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it to listen to you.’

  She grinned. ‘I have a fellow-feeling with her, Sergeant, just as I have with Ruth and Jack. You don’t feel comfortable with any of us. Joanna or Ruth might have done it if they didn’t know the will had been changed, Jack or I might have done it if we did. On the face of it, Joanna appears the most likely which is why you keep asking me questions about her. I imagine you’ve quizzed her pretty thoroughly about when she first learnt who her father was, so you’ll know that she threatened her mother with exposure?’ She looked at him enquiringly, and he nodded. ‘At which point, you’re thinking, Mathilda turned round and said, any more threats like this and I’ll cut you out altogether. So, in desperation, Joanna dosed her mother with barbiturates and slit the old lady’s wrists, unaware that Mathilda had altered the will already.’

  ‘What makes you think I don’t feel comfortable with that scenario?’

  ‘You told me Joanna was in London that night.’

  He shrugged. ‘Her alibi is very shaky. The concert ended at nine thirty which meant she had plenty of time to drive down here and kill her mother. The pathologist puts the time of death somewhere between nine p.m. on the Saturday night and three a.m. the following morning.’

  ‘Which does he favour?’

  ‘Before midnight,’ Cooper admitted.

  ‘Then her defence barrister will tear your case to shreds. In any case, Mathilda wouldn’t have bothered with pretence. She’d have told Joanna straight out she’d changed the will.’

  ‘Perhaps Mrs Lascelles didn’t believe her.’

  Sarah dismissed this with a smile. ‘Mathilda always told the truth. That’s why everyone loathed her.’

  ‘Perhaps Mrs Lascelles just suspected that her mother might change the will.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference as far as Joanna was concerned. She was preparing to use her father’s codicil to fight her mother in court. At that stage, it didn’t matter a twopenny damn who Mathilda left the money to, not if Joanna could prove she had no right to it in the first place.’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t done for money. You keep wondering about the significance of the scold’s bridle. Perhaps Mrs Lascelles was revenging herself.’

  But Sarah shook her head. ‘She hardly ever saw her mother. I think Mathilda mentioned that she came down once in the last twelve months. It would be a remarkable anger that could sustain itself at fever pitch over such a lengthy cooling period.’

  ‘Not if Mrs Lascelles is unstable,’ murmured Cooper.

  ‘Mathilda wasn’t killed in a mad frenzy,’ said Sarah slowly. ‘It was all done with such meticulous care, even down to the flowers. You said yourself the arrangement was difficult to reproduce without help.’

  The Sergeant drained his glass and stood up. ‘Mrs Lascelles works freelance for a London florist. She specializes in bridal bouquets and wreaths. I can’t see her finding a few nettles and daisies a problem.’ He walked to the door. ‘Good night, Dr Blakeney. I’ll see myself out.’

  Sarah stared into her wine glass as she listened to his footsteps echoing down the hall. She felt like screaming, but was too afraid to do it.
Her house of cards had never seemed so fragile.

  There was a conscious eroticism to every movement Joanna made and Jack guessed she had posed before, probably for photographs. For money or for self-gratification? The latter, he thought. Her vanity was huge.

  She was obsessed with Mathilda’s bed and Mathilda’s bedroom, aping her mother’s posture against the piled pillows. Yet the contrast between the two women could not have been greater. Mathilda’s sexuality had been a gentle, understated thing, largely because she had no interest in it; Joanna’s was mechanical and obtrusive, as if the same visual stimuli could arouse all men in the same way on every occasion. Jack found it impossible to decide whether she was acting out of contempt for him or out of contempt for men in general.

  ‘Is your wife a prude?’ she demanded abruptly after a long period of silent sketching.

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because what I’m doing shocks you.’

  He was amused. ‘Sarah has a very open and healthy libido and far from shocking me, what you’re doing offends me. I resent being categorized as the sort of man who can be turned on by cheap pornographic posturing.’

  She looked away from him towards the window and sat in strange self-absorption, her pale eyes unfocused. ‘Then tell me what Sarah does to excite you,’ she said finally.

  He studied her for a moment, his expression unreadable. ‘She’s interested in what I’m trying to achieve in my work. That excites me.’

  ‘I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about sex.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said apologetically, ‘we’re at cross purposes then. I was talking about love.’

  ‘How very twee.’ She gave a small laugh. ‘You ought to hate her, Jack. She must have found someone else or she wouldn’t have kicked you out.’