The Scold's Bridle

by Minette Walters

  ‘Hate is too pervasive,’ he said mildly. ‘It leaves no room for anything else.’ With an idle flick of his fingers he tossed a torn page of his sketchpad towards her and watched it flutter to the bed beside her. ‘Read that,’ he invited. ‘If you’re interested, it’s my assessment of your character after three sittings. I jot down my impressions as I go along.’

  With a remarkable lack of curiosity – most women, he thought, would have seized on it with alacrity – she retrieved it and gave a cursory glance to both sides of the paper. ‘There’s nothing on it.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘That’s cheap.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘but you’ve given me nothing to paint.’ He passed her the sketchpad. ‘I don’t do glossy nudes and so far that’s all you’ve offered me, bar a dreary and unremitting display of Electra complex, or more accurately demi-Electra complex. There’s no attachment to a father, only a compulsive hostility towards a mother. You’ve talked about nothing else since I’ve been here.’ He shrugged. ‘Even your daughter doesn’t feature. You haven’t mentioned the poor kid once since she went back to school.’

  Joanna got off the bed, wrapped herself in her dressing-gown and walked to the window. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I understand,’ he murmured. ‘You can’t con a conman, Joanna.’

  She frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘One of the most colossal egos I’ve ever come across, and God knows I should recognize one when I see it. You may persuade the rest of the world that Mathilda wronged you, but not me. You’ve been screwing her all your life,’ he tipped a finger at her, ‘although you probably didn’t know until recently just why you were so damn good at it.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’ll hazard a guess that your childhood was one endless tantrum, which Mathilda attempted to control with the scold’s bridle. Am I right?’ He paused. ‘And then what? Presumably you were bright enough to work out a way to stop her using it.’

  Her tone was frigid. ‘I was terrified of the beastly thing. I used to convulse every time she produced it.’

  ‘Easily done,’ he said with amusement. ‘I did it myself as a child when it suited me. So how old were you when you worked that one out?’

  Her peculiarly fixed gaze lingered on him, but he could feel the growing agitation underneath. ‘The only time she ever showed me any affection was when she put the scold’s bridle over my head. She’d put her arms about me and rub her cheek against the framework. “Poor darling,” she’d say, “Mummy’s doing this for Joanna.”’ She turned back to the window. ‘I hated that. It made me feel she could only love me when I was at my ugliest.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘You’re right about one thing. It wasn’t until I found out that Gerald was my father that I understood why my mother was afraid of me. She thought I was mad. I’d never realized it before.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever ask her why she was afraid?’

  ‘You wouldn’t even put that question if you’d really known my mother.’ Her breath misted the glass. ‘There were so many secrets in her life that I learnt very rapidly never to ask her anything. I had to make up a fantasy background for myself when I went to boarding school because I knew so little about my own.’ She dashed the mist away with an impatient hand and turned back into the room. ‘Have you finished? I’ve things to do.’

  He wondered how long he could stall her this time before the demands of her addiction sent her scurrying for the bathroom. She was always infinitely more interesting under the stress of abstinence than she ever was drugged. ‘Southcliffe?’ he asked. ‘The same school Ruth’s at now?’

  She gave a hollow laugh. ‘Hardly. Mother wasn’t so free with her money in those days. I was sent to a cheap finishing school which made no attempt to educate, merely groomed cattle for the cattle market. Mother had ambitions to marry me off to a title. Probably,’ she went on cynically, ‘because she hoped a chinless wonder would be so inbred himself he wouldn’t notice the lunacy in me.’ She glanced towards the door. ‘Ruth has had far more spent on her than I ever had, and not because Mother was fond of her, believe me.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘It was all done to stamp out the Jew in her after my little faux pas with Steven.’

  ‘Did you love him?’

  ‘I’ve never loved anyone.’

  ‘You love yourself,’ he said.

  But Joanna had already gone. He could hear her scrabbling feverishly through the vanity case in the bathroom. For what? he wondered. Tranquillizers? Cocaine? Whatever it was, she wasn’t injecting it. Her skin was flawless and beautiful like her face.

  Sarah Blakeney tells me her husband is an artist. A painter of personalities. I guessed he would be something in that line. It’s what I would have chosen myself. The arts or literature.

  ‘I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another.’ Funnily enough, that might have been written for Sarah. She projects herself as a frank and open person, with strong, decided views and no hidden contradictions, but in many ways she is very insecure. She positively loathes confrontation, preferring agreement to disagreement, and will placate if she can. I asked her what she was afraid of, and she said: ‘I was taught to be accommodating. It’s the curse of being a woman. Parents don’t want to be left with spinsters on their hands so they teach their daughters to say “yes” to everything except sex.’

  Times haven’t changed then . . .

  Eight

  SARAH WAS WAITING outside the doorway of Barclays Bank in Hills Street when Keith Smollett arrived. She had her coat collar pulled up around her ears and looked pale and washed out in the grey November light. He gave her a warm hug and kissed her cold cheek. ‘You’re not much of an advertisement for a woman who’s just scooped the jackpot,’ he remarked, holding her at arm’s length and examining her face. ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘There isn’t one,’ she said shortly. ‘I just happen to think there’s more to life than money.’

  He smiled, his thin face irritatingly sympathetic. ‘Would we be talking Jack by any chance?’

  ‘No, we would not,’ she snapped. ‘Why does everyone assume that my equanimity depends on a shallow, twofaced skunk whose one ambition in life is to impregnate every female he meets?’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she demanded.

  ‘Just, ah!’ He tucked her hand into his arm. ‘Things are pretty bad at the moment, then?’ He gestured towards the road. ‘Which way to Duggan’s office?’

  ‘Up the hill. And, no, things are not pretty bad at the moment. At the moment things are pretty good. I haven’t felt so calm and so in control for years.’ Her bleak expression belied her words. She allowed herself to be drawn out on to the pavement.

  ‘Or so lonely, perhaps?’

  ‘Jack’s a bastard.’

  Keith chuckled. ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s living with Mathilda Gillespie’s daughter.’

  Keith slowed down and eyed her thoughtfully. ‘Mathilda Gillespie as in the old dear who’s left you her loot?’

  Sarah nodded.

  ‘Why would he want to live with her daughter?’

  ‘It depends who you listen to. Either because he feels guilty that I, his greedy wife, have deprived poor Joanna of her birthright, or he is protecting her and himself from my murderous slashes with a Stanley knife. No one appears to give any credence to the most obvious reason.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Common-or-garden lust. Joanna Lascelles is very beautiful.’ She pointed to a door ten yards ahead. ‘That’s Duggan’s office.’

  He stopped and drew her to one side. ‘Let me get this straight. Are people saying you murdered the old woman for her money?’

  ‘It’s one of the theories going the rounds,’ she said dryly. ‘My patients are abandoning me in droves.’ Dampness sparkled along her lashes. ‘It’s the absolute pits if you w
ant to know. Some of them are even crossing the road to avoid me.’ She blew her nose aggressively. ‘And my partners aren’t happy about it either. Their surgeries are overflowing while mine are empty. If it goes on, I’ll be out of a job.’

  ‘That’s absurd,’ he said angrily.

  ‘No more absurd than an old woman leaving everything she had to a virtual stranger.’

  ‘I talked with Duggan on the phone yesterday. He said Mrs Gillespie was clearly very fond of you.’

  ‘I’m very fond of you, Keith, but I don’t intend to leave you all my money.’ She shrugged. ‘I probably wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d left me a hundred quid or even her scold’s bridle, but leaving me the whole caboodle just doesn’t make sense. I didn’t do anything to deserve it, except laugh at her jokes from time to time and prescribe a few pain-killers.’

  He shrugged in his turn. ‘Perhaps that was enough.’

  She shook her head. ‘People don’t dispossess their families in favour of a slight acquaintance who turns up once a month for half an hour. It’s completely crazy. Old men besotted with young girls might be foolish enough to do it, but not tough old boots like Mathilda. And, if she was that way inclined, then why didn’t she leave it to Jack? According to him, he knew her so well she was happy to let him paint her in the nude.’

  Keith felt unreasonably irritated as he pushed open the door of Duggan, Smith and Drew and ushered Sarah inside. There was, he thought, something deeply offensive about Jack Blakeney persuading a wretched old woman to strip for him. And why would she want to anyway? He couldn’t get to grips with that at all. But then Blakeney’s attraction, if it existed at all, was entirely lost on Keith. He preferred conventional types who told amusing anecdotes, bought their own drinks and didn’t rock the boat by speaking or acting out of turn. He consoled himself with the idea that the story wasn’t true. But in his heart of hearts he knew it must be. The real crippler about Jack Blakeney was that women did take their clothes off for him.

  The meeting dragged on interminably, bogged down in technical details about the 1975 family provision legislation, which, as Duggan had warned Mathilda, might entitle Joanna, as a dependent, to claim reasonable provision for maintenance. ‘She ignored my advice,’ he said, ‘and instructed me to draw up the will leaving all her assets at the time of her death to you. However, it is my considered opinion that in view of the allowance she was paying her daughter and the fact that Mrs Lascelles does not own her own flat, Mrs Lascelles has a good case in law for claiming maintenance. In which case a capital sum now, without prejudice, is worth consideration. I suggest we take counsel’s opinion on it.’

  Sarah lifted her head. ‘You’re jumping the gun a little. I haven’t yet said that I’m prepared to accept the bequest.’

  He could be very direct when he chose. ‘Why wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Self-preservation.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Probably because you haven’t had a policeman parked on your doorstep for the last three weeks. Mathilda died in very mysterious circumstances and I’m the only person who stands to gain by her death. I’d say that makes me rather vulnerable, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Not if you didn’t know about the bequest.’

  ‘And how do I prove that, Mr Duggan?’

  He smiled in his amiable way. ‘Let me put it to you another way, Dr Blakeney, how will refusing the bequest prove that you didn’t murder her? Won’t everyone just say you’ve taken fright because your attempt to make it look like suicide didn’t work?’ He paused for a moment, but went on when she didn’t say anything. ‘And no one will applaud you for your magnanimity, you know, because the money won’t go to Mrs Lascelles or her daughter but to a handful of donkeys. At least if you accept the bequest, they’ve a chance of a capital sum.’

  Sarah stared past him towards the window. ‘Why did she do it?’

  ‘She said she was fond of you.’

  ‘Didn’t you question that at all? I mean, do you normally have rich old ladies turning up out of the blue, saying that they want to make new, secret wills which they don’t wish their families to know about? Shouldn’t you have tried to persuade her out of it? It might have been a spur-of-the-moment whim which we’re all saddled with because she died on us. People are saying I used undue influence.’

  He turned his pencil in his fingers. ‘It wasn’t spur-of-the-moment. She first approached me about three months ago and, yes, as a matter of fact I did try to persuade her out of it. I pointed out that, as a general rule, family money is best left with families however much one individual may dislike his or her children. I argued, with no success at all, that she should not regard the Cavendish wealth as hers but as a sort of inherited trust to be passed on to succeeding generations.’ He shrugged. ‘She wouldn’t have it. So I tried to persuade her to discuss it with you first, but I’m afraid she wouldn’t have that either. She was quite adamant that you were to inherit but weren’t to know about it in advance. For the record, and as I told the police, I was satisfied there was no question of undue influence.’

  Sarah was appalled. ‘Three months,’ she echoed slowly. ‘Have you told the police that?’

  He nodded. ‘They were also working on the theory that it was a sudden whim.’

  She put unsteady fingers to her lips. ‘I could just about prove I couldn’t have known about it if she made the will two days before she died. There is no way I can prove ignorance if she’d been planning it for three months.’

  John Hapgood, the bank manager, cleared his throat. ‘It does seem to me, Dr Blakeney, that you are concentrating on entirely the wrong issue. The night Mrs Gillespie died was a Saturday if I remember correctly. Where were you that night, and what were you doing? Let’s establish whether you need to prove your ignorance of the bequest.’

  ‘I was at home on call. I checked when I learnt about the will.’

  ‘And did you receive any calls?’

  ‘Only one, shortly before eight o’clock. It was nothing serious so I dealt with it over the phone.’

  ‘Was your husband with you?’

  ‘No, he was in Stratford that weekend. No one was with me.’ She smiled faintly. ‘I’m not a complete moron, Mr Hapgood. If I had an alibi I’d have produced it by now.’

  ‘Then I think you must have more faith in the police, Dr Blakeney. Despite what you read in the papers, they are probably still the best in the world.’

  She studied him with amusement. ‘You may be right, Mr Hapgood, but, personally, I have no faith at all in my ability to prove I didn’t kill Mathilda for her money, and I have a nasty feeling the police know it.’ She held up her fingers and ticked off point after point. ‘I had motive, I had opportunity and I provided at least half the means.’ Her eyes glittered. ‘In case you didn’t know, she was drugged with the barbiturates I prescribed for her before the incisions were made in her wrists. On top of that, I did twelve months in a pathology department because I was considering a career in forensic medicine before I became a GP, so if anyone would know how to fake a suicide it would be me. Now give me one good argument that I can quote in my defence when the police decide to arrest me.’

  He steepled his fingers under his chin. ‘It’s an interesting problem, isn’t it?’ He beetled his white eyebrows into a ferocious scowl. ‘What were you doing that Saturday?’

  ‘The usual. Gardening, housework. I think I used most of that Saturday to prune the roses.’

  ‘Did anyone see you?’

  ‘What difference does it make whether anyone saw me or not?’ She spoke with considerable irritation. ‘Mathilda was killed some time during the night, and I certainly wasn’t gardening in the dark.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  Cursing Jack. Feeling sorry for myself. ‘I was painting one of the bedrooms.’

  ‘After doing the garden all day?’

  ‘Someone had to do it,’ she said curtly.

  There was a short silence.

  ‘You’re o
bviously a workaholic,’ said Mr Hapgood lamely. She reminded him of his wife, always on the move, always restless, never pausing long enough to work out where she was going.

  Sarah gave a slight smile. ‘Most women are. We can’t shrug off the responsibility of the home just because we want a career. We got the worst of both worlds when we set out to storm the male bastions.’ She pressed her thumb and forefinger to her tired eyes. ‘Look, none of this is relevant to why we’re here. As far as I can see Mathilda has put me in an impossible position. Whatever I do, I shall be saddled with guilt over her daughter and granddaughter. Is there no way I can simply side-step the issue and leave them to fight it out between themselves?’

  ‘There’s nothing to stop you giving it back to them in the form of a gift,’ said Duggan, ‘once it’s yours. But it would be a very inefficient use of the money. The tax liability would be colossal.’ He smiled apologetically. ‘It would also be flying in the face of Mrs Gillespie’s wishes. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, she did not want Mrs Lascelles or Miss Lascelles to inherit her estate.’

  Keith reached for his briefcase. ‘Is there any hurry for Dr Blakeney to make her decision,’ he asked reasonably, ‘or can I suggest we put the whole thing on a back burner for another week or two until the police resolve this one way or another? I can’t help feeling Dr Blakeney will find it easier to make her decision once the inquest has been held.’

  And so it was agreed, although for Sarah it was simply the postponement of a choice already made.

  Keith and Sarah had lunch in a small restaurant at the bottom of the hill. Keith watched her over the rim of his wine glass. ‘Was that an act or are you genuinely afraid of being arrested?’

  She shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’ He thought how deeply Jack’s departure had affected her. He had never encountered Sarah’s bitterness before.

  ‘Of course it matters,’ he said bluntly. ‘If you’re worried, then I suggest I come with you now to sort it out with the police. Where’s the sense in tearing yourself apart over something that may never happen?’