‘Do you condone what Granny did?’ There was a wary look in her eyes.
‘Not at all. I suppose I’m trying to understand it. Most children in your mother’s position suffer constant verbal abuse, and that is often as damaging as the physical abuse, simply because the scars don’t show and nobody outside the family knows about it.’ She shrugged. ‘But the results are the same. The child is just as repressed and just as flawed. Few personalities can survive the constant battering of criticism from a person they depend on. You either crawl or fight. There’s no middle way.’
Ruth looked angry. ‘My mother had both, verbal and physical. You’ve no idea how vicious my grandmother was to her.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Sarah helplessly. ‘But if it’s true that Mathilda was also punished brutally as a child, then she was as much a victim as your mother. But I don’t suppose that’s any consolation to you.’
Ruth lit another cigarette. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong,’ she said with an ironic twist to her mouth, ‘I loved my grandmother. At least she had some character. My mother has none. Sometimes I hate her. Most of the time I just despise her.’ She frowned at the floor, stirring the dust with the toe of one shoe. ‘I think she killed Granny and I don’t know what to do about it. Half of me blames her and the other half doesn’t.’
Sarah let the remark hang in the air for a moment while she cast around for something to say. What sort of accusation was this? A genuine accusation of murder? Or a spiteful sideswipe by a spoilt child against a parent she disliked? ‘The police are convinced it was suicide, Ruth. They’ve closed the case. As I understand it, there’s no question of anyone else being involved in your grandmother’s death.’
‘I don’t mean Mum actually did it,’ she said, ‘you know, took the knife and did it. I mean that she drove Granny to killing herself. That’s just as bad.’ She raised suspiciously bright eyes. ‘Don’t you think so, Doctor?’
‘Perhaps. If such a thing is possible. But from what you’ve told me of your mother’s relationship with Mathilda, it sounds unlikely. It would be more plausible if it had happened the other way round and Mathilda had driven your mother to suicide.’ She smiled apologetically. ‘Even then, that sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, and there would be a history of mental instability behind the person who saw suicide as their only escape from a difficult relationship.’
But Ruth wasn’t to be persuaded so easily. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘They could be as unpleasant as they liked to each other and it didn’t matter a damn. Mum was just as bad as Granny, but in a different way. Granny said what she thought while Mum just went on chipping away with snide little remarks. I hated being with them when they were together.’ Her lips thinned unattractively. ‘That was the only good thing about being sent to boarding school. Mum moved out then and went to London, and I could choose whether to come here for my holidays or go to Mum’s. I didn’t have to be a football any more.’
How little Sarah knew about these three women. Where was Mr Lascelles, for example? Had he, like James Gillespie, run away? Or was Lascelles some kind of courtesy title that Joanna had adopted to give her daughter legitimacy? ‘How long did you and your mother live here, then, before you went away to school?’
‘From when I was a baby to when I was eleven. My father died and left us without a bean. Mum had to come crawling home or we’d have starved. That’s her story at least. But personally I think she was just too snobbish and too lazy to take a menial job. She preferred Granny’s insults to getting her hands dirty.’ She wrapped her arms about her waist and leaned forward, rocking herself. ‘My father was a Jew.’ She spoke the word with contempt.
Sarah was taken aback. ‘Why do you say it like that?’
‘It’s how my grandmother always referred to him. That Jew. She was an anti-Semite. Didn’t you know?’
Sarah shook her head.
‘Then you didn’t know her very well.’ Ruth sighed. ‘He was a professional musician, a bass guitarist, attached to one of the studios. He did the backing tracks when the groups weren’t good enough to do them themselves, and he had a band of his own which did gigs occasionally. He died of a heroin overdose in 1978. I don’t remember him at all, but Granny took great delight in telling me what a worthless person he was. His name was Steven, Steven Lascelles.’ She lapsed into silence.
‘How did your mother meet him?’
‘At a party in London. She was supposed to get off with a deb’s delight but got off with the guitarist instead. Granny didn’t know anything about it until Mum told her she was pregnant, and then the shit hit the fan. I mean, can you imagine it? Mum up the spout by a Jewish rock guitarist with a heroin habit.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘It was a hell of a revenge.’ Her arms were turning blue with cold but she didn’t seem to notice it. ‘So, anyway, they got married and she moved in with him. They had me and then six months later he was dead after spending all their money on heroin. He hadn’t paid the rent for months. Mum was a widow – before she was twenty-three – on the dole with a baby and no roof over her head.’
‘Then coming back here was probably her only option.’
Ruth pulled a sour face. ‘You wouldn’t have done it though, not if you knew you’d never be allowed to forget your mistake.’
Probably not, thought Sarah. She wondered if Joanna had loved Steven Lascelles or if, as Ruth had implied, she had taken up with him simply to spite Mathilda. ‘It’s easy to be wise after the event,’ was all she said.
The girl went on as if she hadn’t heard. ‘Granny tried to change my name to something more WASP – you know, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant – to erase the Hebrew in me. She called me Elizabeth for a while but Mum threatened to take me away, so Granny gave in. Other than that and her refusal to let Granny put the bridle on me when I cried, Mum let Granny dictate terms on everything.’ Her eyes flashed scornfully. ‘She was so wet. But it was easy to stand up to my grandmother. I did it all the time and we got on like a house on fire.’
Sarah had no desire to be drawn into a domestic squabble between a mother and daughter she barely knew. She watched the long shadow creep across the lawn again as the sun emerged from behind a cloud. ‘Why did you ask me to come here, Ruth?’
‘I don’t know what to do. I thought you’d tell me.’
Sarah studied the thin, rather malicious face and wondered if Joanna had any idea how much her daughter disliked her. ‘Don’t do anything. Frankly, I can’t imagine what your mother could have said or done that would have driven Mathilda to kill herself and, even if there were something, it would hardly be a chargeable offence.’
‘Then it should be,’ said Ruth harshly. ‘She found a letter in the house last time she was down here. She told Granny she’d publish it if Granny didn’t change her will immediately and move out of the house. So Granny killed herself. She’s left everything to me, you see. She wanted to leave everything to me.’ Now there was definite malice in the immature features.
Oh God, thought Sarah. What were you trying to tell me, Mathilda? ‘Have you seen this letter?’
‘No, but Granny wrote and told me what was in it. She said she didn’t want me to find out from my mother. So, you see, Mum did drive her to it. Granny would have done anything to avoid having her dirty linen washed in public.’ Her voice grated.
‘Do you still have the letter she wrote to you?’
Ruth scowled. ‘I tore it up. But that one wasn’t important, it’s the one Mum found that’s important. She’ll use it to try and overturn Granny’s will.’
‘Then I think you should find yourself a solicitor,’ said Sarah firmly, drawing her legs together under her chair preparatory to getting up. ‘I was your grandmother’s doctor, that’s all. I can’t get involved between you and your mother, Ruth, and I’m quite sure Mathilda wouldn’t have wanted me to.’
‘But she would,’ the girl cried. ‘She said in her letter that if anything happened to her I was to talk to you. She said you would know what to
do for the best.’
‘Surely not? Your grandmother didn’t confide in me. All I know about your family is what you’ve told me today.’
A thin hand reached out and gripped hers. It was icy cold. ‘The letter was from Granny’s uncle, Gerald Cavendish, to his solicitor. It was a will, saying he wanted everything he had to go to his daughter.’
Sarah could feel the hand on hers trembling, but whether from cold or nerves she didn’t know. ‘Go on,’ she prompted.
‘This house and all the money was his. He was the elder brother.’
Sarah frowned again. ‘So what are you saying? That Mathilda never had any rights to it? Well, I’m sorry, Ruth, but this is way beyond me. You really must find a solicitor and talk it through with him. I haven’t a clue what your legal position is, truly I haven’t.’ Her subconscious caught up with her. ‘Still, it’s very odd, isn’t it? If his daughter was his heir, shouldn’t she have inherited automatically?’
‘No one knew she was his daughter,’ said Ruth bleakly, ‘except Granny, and she told everyone James Gillespie was the father. It’s my mother, Dr Blakeney. Granny was being fucked by her uncle. It’s really sick, isn’t it?’
Joanna came to visit me today. She fixed me with that peculiarly unpleasant stare of hers through most of lunch – I was reminded of a terrier Father once had which turned vicious after a beating and had to be put down; there was the same malicious gleam in his eyes just before he sank his teeth into Father’s palm and ripped the flesh from the bone – then spent most of the afternoon searching about in the library. She said she was looking for my mother’s book on flower arranging, but she was lying, of course. I remember giving that to her when she moved back to London. I did not interfere.
She looked very tarty, I thought – far too much makeup for a trip to the country and in a ridiculously short skirt for a woman of her age. I suspect some man brought her down and was abandoned to forage for himself at the pub. Sex, to Joanna, is a currency to be used quite shamelessly in return for services rendered.
Oh, Mathilda, Mathilda! Such hypocrisy!
Do these men realize, I wonder, how little she cares for and about them? Not through contempt, I think, but through sheer indifference to anyone’s feelings but her own. I should have taken Hugh Hendry’s advice and insisted on a psychiatrist. She’s quite mad, but then, so, of course, was Gerald. ‘The wheel is come full circle.’
She came out of the library with his idiotic will held in front of her like some holy relic and cursed me in the most childish and absurd way for stealing her inheritance. I wonder who told her about it . . .
Four
WHEN SARAH ARRIVED home that evening, she made a bee-line for Jack’s studio. To her relief, nothing had been moved. She passed the canvas on the easel without so much as a glance, and started rummaging feverishly through the portraits stacked against the far wall. Those she recognized, she left; those she didn’t, she lined up side by side, facing into the room. In all, there were three paintings she had no recollection of ever having seen before. She stood back and gazed at them, trying to decipher who they were. More accurately, she was trying to isolate one that might strike a chord.
She hoped quite earnestly that she wouldn’t find it. But she did, of course. It screamed at her, a violent and vivid portrayal of bitterness, savage wit and repression, and the whole personality was encaged in a rusted iron framework that was all too clearly the scold’s bridle. Sarah’s shock was enormous, driving the breath from her body in a surge of panic. She collapsed on to Jack’s painting stool and closed her eyes against the jeering anger of Mathilda’s image. What had he done?
The doorbell rang, jerking her to her feet like a marionette. She stood for a moment, wide-eyed with shock, then, without consciously rationalizing why she was doing it, she seized the picture, turned it round and thrust it amongst the others against the wall.
It crossed DS Cooper’s mind that Dr Blakeney wasn’t well. She looked very pale when she opened the door, but she smiled a welcome and stepped back to let him in, and by the time they were settled on chairs in the kitchen some of the colour had returned to her cheeks. ‘You telephoned last night,’ he reminded her, ‘left a message saying you had more information about Mrs Gillespie.’
‘Yes.’ Her mind raced. She said you would know what to do for the best. But I don’t! I DON’T! ‘I’ve been worrying about why she wore the bridle,’ she said slowly. ‘I’ve come to the conclusion that she was trying to tell me something, although I must emphasize that I don’t know what that something could have been.’ As clearly as she could, she repeated what she had told Robin Hewitt the night before about Mathilda’s nickname for her. ‘It’s probably just me being fanciful,’ she finished lamely.
The Sergeant frowned deeply. ‘She must have known you’d make a connection. Could she have been accusing you, perhaps?’
Sarah showed an unexpected relief. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she admitted. ‘You mean a slap over the knuckles to bring me down a peg or two. Doctors can’t cure unhappiness, Sarah. Something along those lines?’
He found her relief puzzling. ‘It’s possible,’ he agreed. ‘Who else knew that she called you her scold’s bridle, Dr Blakeney?’
She folded her hands in her lap. ‘I don’t know. Whoever she mentioned it to, presumably.’
‘You didn’t tell anyone?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘No one at all? Not even your partners or your husband?’
‘No.’ She forced a light chuckle. ‘I wasn’t altogether sure that she meant it as a compliment. I always took it as such because it would have strained our relationship if I hadn’t, but she might have been implying that I was as repressive and tormenting as the instrument itself.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘If she killed herself, then you and I will be puzzling over the significance of this for the rest of our lives.’ His eyes watched Sarah’s face. ‘If, however, somebody else killed her, and that person knew she called you her scold’s bridle, then it does seem to me that the message is very direct. Namely, I have done this for you, Dr Blakeney, or because of you. Would you agree with that?’
‘No,’ she said with a spark of anger. ‘Of course I wouldn’t. You can’t possibly make assumptions like that. In any case I was under the impression that the inquest verdict was a foregone conclusion. The only reason I felt I should tell you all this was because it’s been worrying me, but at the end of the day I’m probably reading far more into it than Mathilda intended. I suspect the pathologist was right, and that she simply wanted to deck herself out like Ophelia.’
He smiled pleasantly. ‘And, of course, you may not have been the only person she used the nickname on.’
‘Well, exactly.’ She plucked a hair from the front of her jacket. ‘May I ask you something?’
‘By all means.’
‘Does the pathologist’s report come down firmly in favour of suicide or is there any room for doubt?’
‘Not much,’ the policeman admitted. ‘He’s unhappy about the absence of a letter of explanation, particularly in view of the rather dramatic way she killed herself, and he’s unhappy about the flower arrangement.’
‘Because the nettles stung her?’
‘No. If she was set on killing herself the way she did, a few nettle stings wouldn’t have worried her.’ He tapped his pencil on the table top. ‘I persuaded him to do some experiments. He’s been unable to reproduce the arrangement she came up with without assistance.’ He drew a quick diagram in his notebook. ‘If you remember, the Michaelmas daisies were set upright in the forehead band, which incidentally is so rusted it can’t be tightened, and the nettles hung down like a veil over her hair and cheeks. The stems were alternate, a nettle down, a daisy up, completely symmetrical all the way round. Now that is impossible to achieve without help. You can hold half the arrangement in place with one hand but the minute you get beyond the stretch of the fingers, the flowers start to drop out. It’s only when thr
ee-quarters of the arrangement is in place that the gap between the frame and the head has reduced enough to retain the other quarter without dropping them, assuming the same circumference head as Mrs Gillespie. Do you follow?’
She frowned. ‘I think so. But couldn’t she have used cotton wool or tissues to pad the gap while she put in the flowers?’
‘Yes. But if she had, then something in that house would have had rust marks on it. We searched it from top to bottom. There was nothing. So what happened to the padding?’
Sarah closed her eyes and pictured the bathroom. ‘There was a sponge on the bathrack,’ she said, remembering. ‘Perhaps she used that and then washed it in the bath.’
‘It does have particles of rust on it,’ he admitted, ‘but then the bath was full of them. The sponge could have picked them up when it was soaked by the water.’ He pursed his lips in frustration. ‘Or, as you say, it could have been used as padding. We don’t know, but what worries me is this: if she did it herself, then she must have sat at her dressing-table to do it. It’s the only surface where we’ve discovered any sap.’ He made a vague gesture with his hand. ‘We picture it something like this. She placed the flowers on the dressing-table, sat down in front of the mirror and then set about arranging them in the framework on her head, but she wouldn’t have discovered she needed padding until she was half-way round, at which point the natural thing to do would have been to reach for some Kleenex or some cotton wool, both of which were there in front of her. So why go to the bathroom for the sponge?’ He fell silent for a moment or two. ‘If, however, someone else killed her and arranged the flowers after she was in the bath, then the sponge would have been the obvious thing to use. It’s a far more logical scenario and would explain the absence of nettle rash on Mrs Gillespie’s hands and fingers.’
The Scold's Bridle Page 5
