The Sculptress (26 page)

The kitchen looked like a scene from Beirut in the aftermath of war.

Deserted and destroyed. The table, upended, leant drunkenly against the oven, two of its legs wrenched free.

Chairs, in pieces, lay amongst shards of broken crockery and jagged glass. And the fudge, tilted forward and balanced precariously on its open door, had poured its contents across the quarry tiling in streams of milk and congealed stock. She held a trembling hand to her lips.

Here and there, splashes of bright red blood had tinged the spreading milk pink.

She looked wildly up the alleyway, but there was no one in sight. What to do?

“Hal!” she called, but her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Hal!” This time it rose out of control and, in the silence that followed, she thought she heard a sound from the other side of the swing doors into the restaurant. She stuffed the letter and the money into her pockets and reached inside the door for one of the table legs.

“I’ve called the police,” she shouted, croaky with fear.

“They’re on their way.”

The door swung open and Hal emerged with a bottle of wine.

He nodded at the table leg.

“What are you planning to do with that?”

She let her arm fall.

“Have you gone mad? Did you do all this?”

“Am I likely to have done it?”

“Olive did.” She stared about her.

“This is just what Olive did. Lost her temper and destroyed her room.

She had all her privileges taken away.”

“You’re babbling.” He found a couple of glasses in an intact wall cupboard and filled them from the bottle.

“Here.” His dark eyes watched her closely.

“Have you called the police?”

“No.” Her teeth chattered against the wine glass.

“I thought if you were a burglar you’d run away. Your hand’s bleeding.”

“I know.” He took the table leg away from her and put it on top of the oven, then pulled forward the only intact chair from behind the back door and pressed her into it.

“What were you going to do if the burglar ran out this way?”

“Hit him, I suppose.” Her fear was beginning to subside.

“Is this what you thought I’d set you up for?”

“Yes.”

“God!” She didn’t know what else to say. She watched while he found a broom and started to sweep the mess towards one corner.

“Shouldn’t you leave that?”

“What for?”

“The police.”

He eyed her curiously.

“You said you hadn’t called them.”

She digested this in silence for several seconds, then put her glass on the floor beside her.

“This is all a bit heavy for me.”

She took the twenty-pound note from her pocket, but left the letter where it was.

“I only came back to give you this.” She held it out as she stood up.

“I’m sorry,” she said with an apologetic smile.

“What for?”

“Making you angry. I seem to have a knack for making people angry at the moment.” He moved towards her to take the money, but stopped abruptly at her look of alarm.

“Goddamnit, woman, do you think I did this?”

But he was speaking to thin air. Roz had taken to her heels down the alleyway and the twenty-pound note, once again, fluttered to the ground.

Roz’s sleep that night was intermittent, fitful dozing between turbulent dreams. Olive with an axe, hacking chen tables to pieces.

I didn’t think you would… it’s not as easy as it looks on the ……… Hal’s fingers on her wrist, but his face the gleeful face of her brother as he gave her Chinese burns as a child.

Goddamnit, woman, do you think I did this… Olive hanging from the gallows, her face the slimy grey of wet day. Have you no qualms about releasing someone like her back into society… A priest with the eyes of Sister Bridget. It’s a pity you’re not a Catholic… You could go to confession and feel better immediately… You keep offering me money…

The law is an ass… Have you called the police? She woke in the morning to the sound of the phone ringing in her sitting room. Her head was splitting. She snatched up the receiver to shut off the noise.

“Who is it?”

“Well, that’s a nice welcome, I must say,” remarked Iris.

“What’s eating you?”

“Nothing. What do you want?”

“Shall I phone off,” said Iris sweetly, ‘and call you back again in half an hour when you’ve remembered that I’m your friend and not some piece of dog’s dirt that you’ve just scraped off your shoe?”

“Sorry. You woke me. I didn’t sleep very well.”

“M’m, well, I’ve just had your editor on the phone pressing me for a date and I don’t mean an invitation to dinner. He wants a rough idea of when the book will be ready.”

Roz made a face into the receiver.

“I haven’t started writing it yet “Then you’d better get a move on, my darling, because I’ve told him it will be finished by Christmas.”

“Oh, Iris, for Heaven’s sake. That’s only six months away and I’m no further forward than the last time I spoke to you. Olive clams up every time we get to the murders. In fact I-‘ “Seven months,” Iris cut in.

“Go and grill that dodgy policeman again. He sounds absolutely frightful and I’ll bet you anything you like he framed her. They all do it. It boosts their quotas. The buzz word is productivity, darling, something that is temporarily absent from your vocabulary.”

Mrs. Clarke listened to Roz’s introductory speech about her book on Olive with an expression of complete horror.

“How did you find us?” she asked in a quavering voice. For no particular reason, Roz had pictured her in her fifties or early sixties. She was unprepared for this old woman, closer in age to Mr.

Hayes than to the age Robert and Gwen Martin would have been if they were still alive.

“It wasn’t difficult,” she hedged.

“I’ve been so afraid.”

It was an odd reaction but Roz let it pass.

“Can I come in? I won’t take up much of your time, I promise.”

“I couldn’t possibly speak to you. I’m alone. Edward is shopping.”

“Please, Mrs. Clarke,” she begged, her voice catching under the strain of her tiredness. It had taken two and a half hours to drive to Salisbury and locate their house.

“I’ve come such a long way to see you.”

The woman smiled suddenly and held the door wide.

“Come in. Come in. Edward made some cakes specially. He’ll be so thrilled you found us.”

With a puzzled frown, Roz stepped inside.

“Thank you.”

“You remember Pussy, of course’ she waved at an ancient cat curled beneath a radiator ‘or was she after your time? I forget things, you know. We’ll sit in the lounge. Edward,” she called, “Mary’s here.”

There was no response.

“Edward’s gone shopping,” said Roz.

“Oh, yes.” She looked at Roz in confusion.

“Do I know you?”

“I’m a friend of Olive’s.”

“I’m a friend of Olive’s,” mimicked the old lady.

“I’m a friend of Olive’s.”

She lowered herself on to the sofa.

“Sit down. Edward’s made some cakes specially. I remember Olive. We were at school together. She had long pigtails which the boys used to pull. Such wicked boys. I wonder what happened to them.” She looked at Roz again.

“Do I know you?”

Roz sat awkwardly in an armchair, weighing the ethics of questioning a vulnerable old woman with senile dementia.

“I’m a friend of Olive Martin,” she prompted.

“Gwen and Robert’s daughter.” She studied the vacant blue eyes but there was no reaction. She was relieved. Ethics became irrelevant when asking questions was a nonsense. She smiled encouragingly.

“Tell me about Salisbury. Do you like living here?”

Their conversation was an exhausting one, filled with silences, chanting repetition, and strange inconsequential references that left Roz struggling to follow the thread. Twice, she had to divert Mrs.

Clarke from a sudden realisation that she was a stranger, fearing that if she left she would find it impossible to get back in to talk to Edward. With part of her mind she wondered how he coped. Could you go on loving an empty shell when your love was neither reciprocated nor appreciated? Could there ever be enough flashes of lucidity to make the loneliness of caring worthwhile?

Her eye was drawn again and again to the wedding photograph above the mantelpiece. They had married comparatively late, she thought, judging by their ages. He looked to be in his forties, with most of his hair already missing. She looked a little older. But they stood shoulder to shoulder, laughing together out of the frame, two happy, healthy people, with not a care in the world, unaware and how could they be? that she carried the seeds of dementia. It was cruel to make a comparison but Roz couldn’t help herself.

Beside the celluloid woman, so alive, so vivid, so substantial, the real Mrs. Clarke was a colourless, trembling shadow. Was this, Roz wondered, why Edward and Robert Martin had become lovers? She found the whole experience immensely depressing and when, at last, the sound of a key grated in the lock, it came like the welcome patter of rain on drought hardened earth.

“Mary’s come to see us,” said Mrs. Clarke brightly as her husband entered the room.

“We’ve been waiting for cakes.”

Roz stood up and handed Mr. Clarke one of her cards.

“I did tell her who I was,” she said quietly, ‘but it seemed kinder tobeMary.”

He was old, like his wife, and entirely bald, but he still carried himself erect with shoulders squared. He towered above the woman on the sofa who shrank away from him in sudden fear, muttering to herself.

Roz wondered if he ever lost his temper with her.

“I really don’t leave her alone very often,” he answered defensively, as if she had accused him of it, ‘but the shopping has to be done.

Everyone’s so busy and it’s not fair to keep asking the neighbours.” He ran a hand across his bald head and read the card.

“I thought you were Social Services,” he said, this time accusing her.

“Author? We don’t want an author. What good would an author be to us?”

“I was hoping you could help me.”

“I don’t know the first thing about writing. Who gave you my name?”

“Olive did,” said Mrs. Clarke.

“She’s a friend of Olive’s.”

He was shocked.

“Oh, no!” he said.

“No, no, no! You’ll have to leave. I’m not having that dragged up again. It’s an outrage.

How did you get hold of this address?”

“No, no, no!” chanted his wife.

“It’s an outrage. No, no, no!”

Roz held her breath and counted to ten, not sure if her sanity or her control would slip first.

“How on earth do you cope?” The words tumbled out as involuntarily as Mrs. Clarke’s did.

“I’m sorry.” She saw the strain in his face.

“That was unforgivably rude.”

“It’s not so bad when we’re alone. I just switch off.” He sighed.

“Why have you come? I thought we’d put all that behind us. There’s nothing I can do for Olive. Robert tried to help her at the time but it was all thrown back in his face. Why has she sent you here?”

“It’s an outrage,” muttered the old woman.

“She hasn’t. I’m here off my own bat. Look,” she said, glancing at Mrs. Clarke, ‘is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“But there is,” she said.

“You were a friend of Robert’s. You must have known the family better than anyone. I’m writing a book’ she remembered belatedly that her explanations had been given to Mrs. Clarke ‘and I can’t do it if no one will tell me about Gwen and Robert.”

She had shocked him again.

“Gutter journalism,” he spat.

“I won’t have anything to do with it. Leave now, or I shall call the police.”

Mrs. Clarke gave a whimper of fear.

“Not the police. No, no, no. I’m afraid of the police.” She peered at the stranger.

“I’m afraid of the police.”

With reason, thought Roz, wondering if the shock of the murders had brought on the dementia. Was that why they had moved away? She picked up her briefcase and handbag.

“I’m no gutter journalist, Mr. Clarke. I’m trying to help Olive.”

“She’s beyond help. We all are.” He glanced at his wife.

“Olive destroyed everything.”

“I disagree.”

“Please go.” The thin reedy voice of the old woman broke in on them.

“I never saw Gwen and Amber that day,” she cried plaintively.

“I lied. I lied, Edward.”

He closed his eyes.

“Oh, God,” he murmured, ‘what did I ever do to deserve this?” His voice vibrated with repressed dislike.

“Which day?” Roz pressed.

But the moment of lucidity, if that is what it was, had passed.

“We’ve been waiting for cakes.”

Irritation and something else relief? passed across his face.

“She’s senile,” he told Roz.

“Her mind’s gone. You can’t rely on anything she says. I’ll show you out.”

Roz didn’t move.

“Which day, Mrs. Clarke?” she asked gently.

“The day the police came. I said I saw them but I didn’t.” She furrowed her brow in perplexity.

“Do I know you?”

Mr. Clarke seized Roz roughly by the arm and manhandled her towards the front door.

“Get out of my house!” he stormed.

“Haven’t we suffered enough at the hands of that family?” He thrust her into the street and slammed the door.

Roz rubbed her arm reflectively. Edward Clarke, in spite of his age, was a good deal stronger than he looked.

She turned the problem in her mind throughout the long drive home. She was caught in the same dilemma that Olive kept posing her, the dilemma of belief. Was Mrs. Clarke telling the truth? Had she lied to the police that day or was her senile recollection faulty? And if she had lied, did it make a difference?

Roz pictured herself in the Poacher’s kitchen, listening to Hal talking about Robert Martin’s alibi.

“We did wonder if he might have killed Gwen and Amber before he went to work and Olive then attempted to dispose of the bodies to protect him, but the numbers didn’t add up. He had an alibi even for that. There was a neighbour who saw her husband off to work a few minutes before Martin himself left. Amber and Gwen were alive then because she spoke to them on their doorstep. She remembered asking Amber how she was getting on at Glitzy. They waved as Martin drove away.”