The Scold's Bridle (39 page)

"I'm afraid it is." He produced a paper from his pocket with an air of apology. "We also have a warrant to search your house, but I assure you, we'll be as careful as we can." He raised his voice. "Bailey! Jenkins! Watts! Show yourselves, lads. We're ready to go."

Quite bewildered by this sudden turn of events, Violet stood meekly to one side while Jones, Cooper and three DCs filed into her hallway. Behind their backs, she crept away with the stealth of a guilty person into the kitchen.

Duncan's small eyes watched the two senior policemen closely as they eased into the cramped living-room, but otherwise he showed remarkably little concern at this sudden invasion of his privacy. "Forgive me if I don't get up," he said courteously, "but I find I'm not as mobile as I used to be." He waved towards a delicate two-seater sofa, inviting them to sit down. They declined with equal courtesy, afraid of breaking it under their combined weight. "I've met Detective Sergeant Cooper but I don't know you, sir," he said, examining Charlie with interest.

"Detective Chief Inspector Jones."

"How do you do."

Charlie inclined his head in a brief salute. He was assailed with doubt as he looked at the fat old man in the oversized armchair, his huge stomach overhanging his thighs like the meat from a split sausage skin. Could such ungainly bulk have performed the delicate artistry of Mrs. Gillespie's murder? Could he even have abstracted himself from this room without waking his wife? He listened to the shallow wheezing breaths, each one a battle against the smothering pressure of flesh, and recalled Hughes's description of the man who had used the key to open the back door.
His voice was all breathy like he had trouble with his lungs.
"Was Mrs. Gillespie aware that you knew about the key under the flowerpot?" he asked without any attempt at preamble.

Duncan looked surprised. "I don't understand you, Inspector."

"No matter. We have a witness who can identify you. He was there when you let yourself in one morning in September."

But Duncan only smiled and shook his fat cheeks in denial. "Let myself in where?" There was a sound above them as one of the DCs moved a piece of furniture across the floor, and Duncan's gaze shifted to the ceiling. "What exactly is all this in aid of?"

Charlie produced the warrant and handed it to him. "We are searching these premises for Mrs. Gillespie's diaries or, more likely, the remains of Mrs. Gillespie's diaries. We have reason to believe you stole them from the library of Cedar House."

"How very peculiar of you."

"Are you denying it?"

He gave a low chuckle. "My dear chap, of course I'm denying it. I didn't even know she kept diaries."

Charlie changed tack. "Why didh't you tell my Sergeant on the Monday after the murder that Miss Ruth Lascelles had been in Cedar House during the afternoon? Or indeed that Mrs. Jane Marriott had had a row with her in the morning?"

"How could I tell him something I didn't know myself?"

"If you were here, Mr. Orloff, you could not have avoided knowing. Jane Marriott describes her confrontation with Mrs. Gillespie as a screaming match and Ruth says she rang the doorbell because she left her key at school."

"But I wasn't here, Inspector," he said affably. "I took the opportunity of my wife's absence in Poole to go for a long walk."

There was a gasp from the doorway. "Duncan!" declared Violet. "How can you tell such lies? You
never
go for walks." She advanced into the room like a small ship under sail. "And don't think I don't know
why
you're lying. You can't be bothered to assist the police in their enquiries, just like you haven't been bothered all along. Of
course
he was here, and of
course
he will have heard Jane and Ruth. We
always
heard Ruth when she came back. She and her grandmother couldn't be in a room together without arguing, any more than she can be in a room with her mother without arguing. Not that I altogether blame her. She wants love, poor child, and neither Mathilda nor Joanna were capable of such an emotion. The only people Mathilda had any fondness for were the Blakeneys, you know, the artist and his wife. She used to laugh with
them
, and I think she even took her clothes off for
him
. I heard her in her bedroom, being very coy and silly, saying things like 'Not bad for an old woman' and 'I was beautiful once, you know. Men competed for me.' And that was true, they
did
. Even Duncan loved her when we were all much younger. He denies it now, of course, but I knew. All us girls knew we were only second best. Mathilda played so hard to get, you see, and that was a challenge." She paused for breath and Cooper, who was beside her, smelt the whisky on her lips. He had time to feel sadness for this little woman whose life had never blossomed because she had lived it always in the shade of Mathilda Gillespie.

"Not that it
matters
," she went on. "Nothing matters that much. And it's years since he lost interest. You can't go on loving someone who's rude all the time, and Mathilda was always rude. She thought it was funny. She'd say the most appalling things, and
laugh
. I won't pretend we had a close relationship, but I did feel sorry for her. She should have done something with her life, something interesting, but she never did and it made her bitter." She turned a severe gaze on her husband. "I know she used to
tease
you, Duncan, and call you Mr. Toad, but that's no reason not to help find her murderer. Murder is inexcusable. And I can't help feeling, you know, that it was
particularly
inexcusable to put that beastly scold's bridle on her head. You were very upset when she put it on you." She turned back to Charlie. "It was one of her horrible jokes. She said the only way Duncan would ever lose weight was if he had his
tongue
clamped, so she crept up behind him one day when he was asleep in the garden with his mouth open and popped that horrid rusty thing over his head. He nearly
died
of shock." She paused for another breath but this time she had run out of steam and didn't go on.

There was a long silence.

"I suppose that's how you put it on her," murmured Charlie finally, "when she was already asleep, but I'd be interested to know how you gave her the barbiturates. The pathologist estimates four or five and she would never have taken that many herself."

Duncan's gaze rested briefly on his wife's shocked face, before shifting to Cooper's. "Old women have two things in common," he said with a small smile. "They drink too much and they talk too much. You'd have liked Mathilda, Sergeant, she was a very amusing woman, although the memory of her was a great deal more attractive than the real thing. It was a disappointment coming back. Age has few compensations, as I think I told you." His pleasant face beamed. "On the whole I prefer male company. Men are so much more predictable."

"Which is convenient," remarked Cooper to the Blakeneys in Mill kitchen that evening, "since he'll probably spend the rest of his life in prison."

"Assuming you can prove he did it," said Jack. "What happens if he doesn't confess? You'll be left with circumstantial evidence, and if his defence has any sense they'll go all out to convince the jury Mathilda committed suicide. You don't even know why he did it, do you?"

"Not yet."

"Doesn't Violet know?" asked Sarah.

Cooper shook his head, thinking of the wretched woman they'd abandoned at Wing Cottage, wringing her hands and protesting there must be some mistake. "Claims she doesn't."

"And you didn't find the diaries?"

"We never really expected to. He'd have destroyed them long ago."

"But there's so much unexplained," said Sarah in frustration. "How did he get her to take the sleeping pills? Why did he do it? Why didn't Violet wake up? Why didn't he tell you Ruth had been there if he wanted her implicated? And then the bit I really don't understand-why on earth did Jane have a row with Mathilda that day?"

Cooper glanced at Jack, then took out his cigarettes. "I can make a guess at some answers," he said, planting a cigarette in the side of his mouth and flicking his lighter to the tip. "Both Mathilda and Violet like a tipple in the evening and they both drank whisky. I think the chances are it was Mathilda who first introduced Violet to it, made it respectable as it were in the face of Duncan's disapproval, but in any case Violet was certainly in the habit of dozing off in her armchair. The night Mathilda died, Violet went out for the count during
Blind Date
which comes on at six thirty or thereabouts, woke up briefly some time after ten o'clock, when Duncan shook her and told her she was snoring through
Match of the Day
, went up to bed and slept like the dead for the rest of the night." He tapped ash into his cupped palm. "That was definitely no doze. That was a barbiturate-induced stupor which is why Duncan leaving the room wouldn't have wakened her. I think he greeted Violet when she got home after a tiring day in Poole with a stiff whisky, laced with sleeping tablets, waited till she fell asleep, then trotted next door and used the same concoction on Mathilda. She kept the drink in the kitchen. How simple just to say: Don't stir yourself. Let me do the honours and get you a top-up."

"But where did he get the sleeping pills from? He's on my list and I've never prescribed any for him or Violet."

"Presumably he used the ones you prescribed for Mrs. Gillespie."

Sarah looked doubtful. "When could he have taken them, though? Surely she'd have noticed if any were missing."

"If she did," he said dryly, "then she probably assumed it was her own daughter who was responsible. With Mrs. Lascelles's sort of dependence she must have been raiding her mother's drug cupboard for years."

Jack looked thoughtful. "Who told you?"

"As a matter of fact, you did, Jack. But I wasn't too sure what she was on until we searched the house yesterday for the diaries. She's not very good at hiding things, but then she's damn lucky she hasn't fallen foul of the police before. She will, though, now that the money's dried up."

"I didn't tell you anything."

Cooper tut-tutted. "You've told me everything you know about Mrs. Lascelles, right down to the fact that you, personally, despise her. I stood and looked at her portrait while we were discussing Othello and Iago, and all I could see was a desperately weak and fragmented character whose existence-" he used his hands to depict a border "-depends on external stimulation. I compared the pallid colours and the distorted shapes of Joanna's portrait with the vigour of Mathilda's and Sarah's and I thought, you've painted a woman without substance. The only reality you perceive is a reflected reality, in other words, a personality that can only express itself artificially. I guessed it had to be drink or drugs."

"You're lying through your teeth," said Jack bluntly. "That bastard Smollett told you. Dammit, Cooper, even I didn't see all that and I painted the bloody picture."

Cooper gave a deep chuckle. "It's all there, my friend, believe me. Mr. Smollett told me nothing." His face sobered. "But you had no business withholding that information, either of you, not in a murder enquiry." He looked at Sarah. "And you should never have confronted her with it the other afternoon, if you don't mind me saying so, Doctor. People like that are shockingly unpredictable and you were alone in the house with her."

"She's not on LSD, Cooper, she's on Valium. Anyway, how do you know I confronted her with it?"

"Because I'm a policeman, Dr. Blakeney, and you were looking guilty. What makes you think she's on Valium?"

"She told me she was."

Cooper raised his eyes to heaven. "One day, Dr. Blakeney, you will learn not to be so gullible."

"Well, what is she on then?" demanded Jack. "I guessed tranquillizers, too. She's not injecting. I sketched her in the nude and there wasn't a mark on her."

"It depends what you were looking for. She's rich enough to do the thing cleanly. It's dirty needles and dirty lavatories that cause most of the problems. Where did you look anyway? Arms and legs?" Jack nodded. "The veins around her groin?"

"No," he admitted. "I was having enough trouble as it was, I didn't want to encourage her by staring at the damn thing."

Cooper nodded. "I found half a pharmacy under her floorboards, including tranquillizers, barbiturates, amphetamines and sizeable quantities of heroin and syringes. She's chronically addicted, I'd say, presumably has been for years. And, I'll tell you this for free, her mother's allowance alone couldn't possibly have funded what she'd got stashed away, and nor could fancy flower arranging. I think Duncan and Violet's anonymous letter said it all, Joanna is a high-class prostitute turning tricks to fund a very expensive habit, begun, I would guess, when she married Steven Lascelles."

"But she looks so..." Sarah sought for the right word, "unsullied."

"Not for much longer," said Cooper cynically. "She's about to discover what it's like to live in the real world where there's no Mathilda to keep the coffers topped up. It's when you get desperate that you start getting careless." He patted Sarah's hand. "Don't waste your sympathy on her. She's been a taker all her life and, rather belatedly, her mother has forced her to face up to it."