The Sculptress (38 page)

The Chaplain frowned. ‘I don’t know. The
gallows?’

She set the matchstick swinging. ‘Or the sword of
Damocles. It amounts to the same thing when Lucifer
owns your soul.’

He perched on the edge of the table and offered
her a cigarette. ‘It’s not Man in general, is it?’ he said,
flicking his lighter. ‘It’s someone specific. Am I right?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Who?’

She fished a letter from her pocket and handed it
to him. He spread the single page on the table and
read it. It was a standard letter, personalized on a
word processor, and very brief.

Dear Miss Martin,

Please be advised that unforeseen
circumstances have obliged Mr Peter Crew to
take extended leave from this practice. During his
absence his clients’ affairs will be covered by
his partners. Please be assured of our continued
assistance.

Yours etc.

The Chaplain looked up. ‘I don’t understand.’

Olive inhaled deeply then blew a stream of smoke
towards the matchstick. It spiralled wildly before slipping from the noose and striking the clay forehead.
‘My solicitor’s been arrested.’

Startled, he looked at the clay figure. He didn’t
bother to ask if she was sure. He knew the efficiency
of the cell telegraph as well as she did. ‘What for?’

‘Wickedness.’ She stubbed her cigarette into the
clay. ‘MAN was born to it. Even you, Chaplain.’ She
peeped at him to watch his reaction.

He chuckled. ‘You’re probably right. But I do my
best to fight it, you know.’

She took another of his cigarettes. ‘I shall miss
you,’ she said unexpectedly.

‘When?’

‘When they let me out.’

He looked at her with a puzzled smile. ‘That’s a
long way off. We’ve years yet.’

But she shook her head and mashed the clay into
a ball with the dog end in the middle. ‘You never
asked me who Eve was.’

The game again, he thought. ‘I didn’t need to,
Olive. I knew.’

She smiled scornfully to herself. ‘Yes, you would.’
She examined him out of the corner of her eye. ‘Did
you work it out for yourself?’ she asked. ‘Or did God
tell you? Look, my son, Olive strikes her reflection in
the clay. Now help her to come to terms with her
own duplicity. Well, don’t worry, either way I shall
remember what you did for me when I get out.’

What did she want from him? Encouragement that she
would
get out, or rescuing from her lies? He
sighed inwardly. Really, it would all be so much easier
if he liked her, but he didn’t. And
that
was his wickedness.

OLIVE REGARDED ROZ
with deep suspicion. Contentment
had brought a glow to the other woman’s
usually pale cheeks. ‘You look different,’ she said in
an accusing tone as if what she saw displeased her.

Roz shook her head. ‘No. Everything’s the same.’
Lies
were
safer sometimes. She was afraid Olive would
regard her moving in with the police officer who
arrested her as a betrayal. ‘Did you get my message
last Monday night?’

Olive was at her most unattractive, unwashed hair
hanging limply about her colourless face, a smear of
tomato ketchup ground into the front of her shift,
the smell of her sweat almost unbearable in the small
room. She vibrated with irritation, her forehead set in
a permanent scowl, ready, it seemed to Roz, to reject
anything that was said to her. She didn’t answer.

‘Is something wrong?’ Roz asked evenly.

‘I don’t want to see you any more.’

Roz turned her pencil in her fingers. ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t have to give a reason.’

‘It would be polite,’ said Roz in the same even
tone. ‘I’ve invested a great deal of time, energy, and
affection in you. I thought we were friends.’

Olive’s lip curled. ‘Friends,’ she hissed scathingly.
‘We’re not friends. You’re Miss Wonderful making
money out of doing her Lady Muck bit and I’m the
poor sap who’s being exploited.’ She splayed her
hands across the table top and tried to get up. ‘I don’t
want you to write your book.’

‘Because you’d rather be treated with awe in here
than laughed at outside.’ Roz shook her head. ‘You’re
a fool, Olive. And a coward as well. I thought you
had more guts.’

Olive pursed her fat lips as she struggled to rise.
‘I’m not listening,’ she said childishly. ‘You’re trying
to make me change my mind.’

‘Of course I am.’ She rested her cheek against one
raised hand. ‘I shall write the book whether you want
me to or not. I’m not afraid of you, you see. You can
instruct a solicitor to take out an injunction to stop
me, but he won’t succeed because I shall argue that
you’re innocent, and a court will uphold my right to
publish in the interests of natural justice.’

Olive slumped back on to her chair. ‘I’ll write to a
Civil Liberties group. They’ll support me.’

‘Not when they find out I’m trying to get you
released, they won’t. They’ll support
me.’

‘The Court of Human Rights, then. I’ll say what
you’re doing is an invasion of my privacy.’

‘Go ahead. You’ll make me a fortune. Everyone
will buy the book to find out what the fuss is all
about. And if it’s argued in a court, whichever one it
is, I shall make damn sure this time that the evidence
is heard.’

‘What evidence?’

‘The evidence that proves you didn’t do it.’

Olive slammed a meaty fist on to the table. ‘I did
do it.’

‘No, you didn’t.’

‘I
did!
’ roared the fat woman.

‘You did not,’ said Roz, her eyes flashing with
anger. ‘When will you face up to the fact that your
mother is dead, you silly woman.’ She banged the
table in her turn. ‘She’s not there for you any more,
Olive, and she never will be, however long you hide
in here.’

Two fat tears rolled down Olive’s cheeks. ‘I don’t
like you.’

Roz continued brutally. ‘You came home, saw what
your precious lover had done, and went into shock.
And God knows, I don’t blame you.’ She took the
mortuary photographs of Gwen and Amber from her
bag and slapped them on the table in front of Olive.
‘You adored your mother, didn’t you? You always
adore the people who need you.’

Olive’s anger was enormous. ‘That’s
crap
, bloody
fucking
crap
!’

Roz shook her head. ‘I needed you. That’s how I
know.’

Olive’s lip trembled. ‘You wanted to know how it
felt to kill someone, that’s all you needed me for.’

‘No.’ Roz reached across and took a large, soft
hand in hers. ‘I needed someone to love. You’re very
easy to love, Olive.’

The woman tore the hand away and clamped it
across her face. ‘No one loves me,’ she whispered.
‘No one’s ever loved me.’

‘You’re wrong,’ said Roz firmly. ‘I love you. Sister
Bridget loves you. And we are not going to abandon
you the minute you get out. You must trust us.’ She
closed her mind on the insidious voice that murmured
warnings against a long-term commitment she could
never keep and against well-meant lies that could so
easily rebound on her. ‘Tell me about Amber,’ she
went on gently. ‘Tell me why your mother needed
you.’

A sigh of surrender shuddered through the huge
frame. ‘She wanted her own way all the time, and if
she didn’t get it she made life hell for everyone. She
told lies about things people did to her, spread awful
stories, even hurt people sometimes. She poured boiling
water down my mother’s arm once to punish her,
so we used to give in just to make life easy. She was
as nice as pie as long as everyone did what she wanted.’ She licked the tears from her lips. ‘She never
took responsibility, you see, but it got worse after the
baby was born. Mum said she stopped maturing.’

‘To compensate herself?’

‘No, to excuse herself.’ She twined her fingers in
the front of her dress. ‘Children get away with behaving
badly so Amber went on behaving like a child.
She was never told off for getting pregnant. We were
too afraid of how she would react.’ She wiped her
nose with the back of her hand. ‘Mum had made up
her mind to take her to a psychiatrist. She thought
Amber had schizophrenia.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Then
they were killed and it didn’t matter any more.’

Roz passed her a Kleenex and waited while she
blew her nose. ‘Why did she never behave badly at
school?’

‘She did,’ said Olive flatly, ‘if people teased her or
took her things without asking. I used to have to get
quite angry to stop them doing it, but most of the
time I made sure no one got on her bad side. She
was a lovely person as long as she wasn’t crossed.
Really,’ she insisted, ‘a lovely person.’

‘The two faces of Eve.’

‘Mum certainly thought so.’ She took the cigarette
packet out of Roz’s open briefcase and stripped away
the cellophane. ‘I used to keep her with me when she
wasn’t in class. She didn’t mind that. The older girls
treated her like a pet and that made her feel special. She had no friends of her own age.’ She pulled some
cigarettes on to the table and selected one.

‘How did she hold down a job? You weren’t there
to protect her then.’

‘She didn’t. She never lasted anywhere longer than
a month. Most of the time she stayed at home with
Mum. She made Mum’s life a misery.’

‘What about Glitzy?’

Olive struck a match and lit the cigarette. ‘The
same. She’d only done three weeks and she was
already talking about leaving. There was some trouble
with the other girls. Amber got one of them sacked
or something. I can’t remember now. Anyway, that’s
when Mum said enough was enough, and she’d have
to see a psychiatrist.’

Roz sat in thoughtful silence for some moments.
‘I know who your lover was,’ she said abruptly. ‘I
know that you spent Sundays at the Belvedere in
Farraday Street and that you signed in as Mr and Mrs
Lewis. I’ve had his photograph identified by the
owner of the Belvedere and by the receptionist at
Wells-Fargo. I think he abandoned you in a hotel the
night of your birthday when you told him you had
aborted his baby, and that he went straight to Leven
Road to have it out with Amber and your mother
whom he regarded as jointly responsible for the
murder of the son or daughter he had always wanted.
I think your father was out of the house that night
and that the whole thing got out of hand. I think you came home a long time afterwards, discovered the
bodies, and went to pieces because you thought it
was all your fault.’ She took one of Olive’s hands in
hers again and squeezed it tightly.

Olive closed her eyes and wept quietly, her soft skin
caressing Roz’s fingers. ‘No,’ she said at last, releasing
the hand. ‘It didn’t happen like that. I wish it had.
At least I’d know then why I did what I did.’ Her
eyes were curiously unfocused as if they were turned
inwards upon herself. ‘We didn’t plan anything for
my birthday,’ she said. ‘We couldn’t. It wasn’t a
Sunday and Sundays were the only days we could ever
be together. That was when his sister-in-law came
over to give him some time away from his wife. They
both thought he spent the day at the British Legion.’
She smiled but there was no humour in it. ‘Poor
Edward. He was so afraid they’d find out and turn
him off without a penny. It was her house and her
money and it made him miserable. Puddleglum was
such a good name for him, especially when he wore
his silly wig. He looked just like a marshwiggle out of
Narnia, tall and skinny and hairy.’ She sighed. ‘It was
supposed to be a disguise, you know, in case anyone
saw him. To me, it just looked funny. I liked him
much better bald.’ She sighed again. ‘
The Silver Chair
was Amber’s and my favourite book when we were
children.’

Roz had guessed. ‘And you signed in as Mr and
Mrs Lewis because it was C. S. Lewis who wrote it. Were you afraid of Mrs Clarke finding out, or your
parents?’

‘We were afraid of everyone but mostly of Amber.
Jealousy was a disease with her.’

‘Did she know about your abortion?’

Olive shook her head. ‘Only my mother knew. I
never told Edward and I certainly didn’t tell Amber.
She
was the only one who was allowed to have sex in
our house. She did, too. All the time. Mum had to
force her to take the pill every night so she didn’t get
pregnant again.’ She pulled a long face. ‘Mum was
furious when I fell. We both knew Amber would go
mad.’

‘Is that why you had the abortion?’

‘Probably. It seemed the only sensible solution at
the time. I regret it now.’

‘You’ll have other chances.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘So what did happen that night?’ asked Roz after a
moment or two.

Olive stared at her unblinkingly through the smoke
from her cigarette. ‘Amber found the birthday present
Edward had given me. It was well hidden but she
used to pry into everything.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘I
was always having to put things back that she’d taken.
People thought I was the snooper.’ She encircled her
wrist with finger and thumb. ‘It was an identity bracelet
with a tiny silver-chair charm on it. He’d had the
tag inscribed: u.r.n.a.r.n.i.a. Do you get it? You are Narnia, Narnia being heaven.’ She smiled self-consciously.
‘I thought it was wonderful.’

‘He was very fond of you.’ It was a statement, not
a question.

‘I made him feel young again.’ Tears squeezed from
between the bald lids. ‘We really didn’t harm anyone,
just conducted a quiet little affair now and then on
Sundays which gave us both something to look forward
to.’ The tears flowed down her cheeks. ‘I wish
I hadn’t done it now but it was nice to feel special. I
never had before and I was so jealous of Amber. She
had a lot of boyfriends. She used to take them upstairs.
Mum was too frightened of her to say anything.’ She
sobbed loudly. ‘They always laughed at me. I hate
being laughed at.’

What a dreadful household it must have been,
thought Roz, with each one desperately seeking love
but never finding it. Would they have recognized it,
anyway, if they had? She waited until Olive had composed
herself a little. ‘Did your mother know it was
Edward?’