The Scold's Bridle

by Minette Walters

  ‘No, my dear, I’m asking you to stand by them.’

  ‘Why should I condone Mrs Henderson calling Joanna a murderess? There’s no more evidence against her than there was against me, and if I apologize it’s a tacit acceptance.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Jane stoutly. ‘It’s courtesy towards an old lady. How you deal with Joanna is a different matter altogether. If you don’t approve of the way the village is treating her then you must demonstrate it in a very public way so that no one is in any doubt of where your sympathies lie. But,’ her old eyes softened as they rested on the younger woman, ‘don’t take your annoyance out on poor Dolly Henderson, my dear. She can’t be expected to see things as you and I do. She never enjoyed our liberal education.’

  ‘I will apologize.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Sarah suddenly leaned forward and planted a kiss on the other’s cheek.

  Jane looked surprised. ‘What was that for?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Sarah smiled. ‘Standing in for my mother, perhaps. I wonder sometimes if the stand-ins aren’t rather better at the job than the real thing. Mathilda did it, too, you know. She wasn’t all acidulated spleen. She could be just as sweet as you when she wanted to be.’

  ‘Is that why you’re looking after Ruth? As a sort of quid pro quo?’

  ‘Don’t you approve?’

  Jane sighed. ‘I don’t approve or disapprove. I just feel it’s a little provocative in the circumstances. Whatever your reasons for doing it, the village has put the worst interpretation on those reasons. You do know they’re saying that Joanna’s about to be arrested for the murder of her mother, and that’s why Ruth has gone to live with you?’

  ‘I hadn’t realized it was quite that bad.’ Sarah frowned. ‘God, they’re absurd. Where do they get this rubbish from?’

  ‘They put two and two together and make twenty.’

  ‘The trouble is’ – she paused – ‘there’s nothing much I can do about it.’

  ‘But, my dear, all that’s required is an explanation of why Ruth is with you,’ Jane suggested, ‘and then you can knock these rumours on the head. There must be one, after all.’

  Sarah sighed. ‘It’s up to Ruth to explain, and at the moment she’s not in a position to do that.’

  ‘Then invent one,’ said Jane bluntly. ‘Give it to Mrs Henderson when you see her this afternoon and it’ll be all round the village by tomorrow evening. Fight fire with fire, Sarah. It’s the only way.’

  Mrs Henderson was touched by Dr Blakeney’s apology for her bad temper in the surgery, thought it very handsome of her to take the trouble to come out to her cottage, and quite agreed that if you’d been up all night looking after a seventeen-year-old showing all the symptoms of glandular fever, you were bound to be shirty the next day. Mind, she didn’t quite understand why Ruth had to stay with Dr Blakeney and her husband in the circumstances. Wouldn’t it be more fitting for her to remain with her mother? Much more fitting, agreed Sarah firmly, and Ruth would prefer it too, of course, but, as Mrs Henderson knew, glandular fever was an extremely painful and debilitating viral infection, and because of the likelihood of its recurring if the patient wasn’t cared for properly and bearing in mind this was Ruth’s A level year, Joanna had asked Sarah to take her in and get her back on her feet again as quickly as possible. In the circumstances, what with Mrs Gillespie’s will and all (Sarah looked suitably embarrassed), she could hardly refuse, could she?

  ‘Not when you’re the one what’s got all the money,’ was Mrs Henderson’s considered retort, but her rheumy eyes clouded in puzzlement. ‘Ruth going back to Southcliffe then, when she’s better, like?’

  ‘Where else would she go?’ murmured Sarah unblushingly. ‘As I said, it’s her A level year.’

  ‘Well, I never! There’s some lies being told and no mistake. Who killed Mrs Gillespie, then, if it weren’t you and it weren’t the daughter?’

  ‘God knows, Mrs Henderson.’

  ‘Happen he does, too, so it’s a shame He doesn’t pass it on. He’s causing a lot of bother by keeping the information to Hisself.’

  ‘Perhaps she killed herself.’

  ‘No,’ said the old woman decidedly. ‘That I’ll never believe. I don’t say as I liked her very much but Mrs Gillespie was no coward.’

  Sarah knew Joanna was in Cedar House, despite the stubborn silence that greeted her ringing of the doorbell. She’d seen the set white face in the shadows at the back of the dining-room and the brief flicker of recognition before Joanna slipped into the hall and out of sight. Rather more than her refusal to answer the door, it was her flicker of recognition that fuelled Sarah’s anger. Ruth was the issue here, not Mathilda’s will or Jack’s shenanigans, and while she might have sympathized with Joanna’s reluctance to open the door to the police, she could not forgive the barricading of it against the person Joanna knew was sheltering her daughter. Sarah set off grimly down the path that skirted the house. What kind of woman, she wondered, put personal enmity before concern for her daughter’s welfare?

  In her mind’s eye, she pictured the portrait Jack was working on. He had trapped Joanna inside a triangular prism of mirrors, with her personality split like refracted light. It was an extraordinary depiction of confused identity, the more so because for each image there was a single image reflected back from the huge encompassing mirror that bordered the canvas. Sarah had asked him what the single image represented. ‘Joanna as she wants to be seen. Admired, adored, beautiful.’

  She pointed to the prism images. ‘And what are they?’

  ‘That’s the Joanna she’s suppressing with drugs,’ he said. ‘The ugly, unloved woman who was rejected by mother, husband and daughter. Everything in her life is illusion, hence the mirror theme.’

  ‘That’s sad.’

  ‘Don’t go sentimental on me, Sarah, or on her either for that matter. Joanna is the most self-centred woman I have ever met. I guess most addicts are. She says Ruth rejected her. That’s baloney. It was Joanna who rejected her because Ruth cried whenever Joanna picked her up. It was a vicious circle. The more her baby cried the less inclined she was to love it. She claimed Steven rejected her because he was revolted by the pregnancy, but in the next sentence she admitted she couldn’t stand the way he fussed over Ruth. It was she, I think, who rejected him.’

  ‘But why? There must be a reason for it.’

  ‘I suspect it’s very simple. The only person she loves or is capable of loving is herself and because her swollen belly made her less attractive in her own eyes, she resented the two people responsible for it, namely her husband and her baby. I’ll put money on the fact that she’s the one who found the pregnancy repulsive.’

  ‘Nothing’s ever that simple, Jack. It could be something quite serious. Untreated post-natal depression. Narcissistic personality disorder. Schizophrenia even. Perhaps Mathilda was right, and she is unstable.’

  ‘Maybe, but if she is, then Mathilda was entirely to blame. From what I can gather, she kowtowed to Joanna and Joanna’s histrionics from day one.’ He gestured towards the painting. ‘When I said that everything in her life is illusion, what I meant was: everything is false. This is the fantasy she wants you to believe, but I’m ninety-nine per cent certain she doesn’t believe it herself.’ He laid his forefinger on the central triangle of the prism, which as yet contained nothing. ‘That’s where the real Joanna will be, in the only mirror that can’t reflect her stylized image of herself.’

  Clever stuff, thought Sarah, but was it true? ‘And what is the real Joanna?’

  He stared at the painting. ‘Utterly ruthless, I think,’ he said slowly, ‘utterly and completely ruthless about getting her own way.’

  The kitchen door was locked but the key that Mathilda had hidden under the third flowerpot to the right was still there and, with an exclamation of triumph, Sarah pounced on it and inserted it into the Yale lock. It was only after she’d opened the door and was removing the key to lay it on the kitchen tab
le that she wondered if anyone had told the police that entry into Cedar House was that easy if you knew what was under the flowerpot. She certainly hadn’t, but then she had forgotten all about it until the need to get in had jogged her memory. She had used it once, months ago, when Mathilda’s arthritis was so bad that she hadn’t been able to get out of her chair to open the front door.

  Gingerly, she laid the key on the table and stared at it. Intuition told her that whoever had used the key last had killed Mathilda Gillespie, and she didn’t need to be Einstein to work out that if their fingerprints had been on it she had just destroyed them with her own. ‘Oh, Jesus!’ she said with feeling.

  ‘How dare you come into my house without asking,’ announced Joanna in a tight little voice from the hall doorway.

  Sarah’s glare was so ferocious that the other took a step backwards. ‘Will you get off your ridiculous high horse and stop being so pompous,’ she snapped. ‘We’re all in deep shit here and the only thing you ever do is stand on your wretched dignity.’

  ‘Stop swearing. I detest people who swear. You’re worse than Ruth and she has a mouth like a sewer. You’re not a lady. I can’t understand how my mother put up with you.’

  Sarah drew a deep angry breath. ‘You’re unreal, Joanna. Which century do you think you’re living in? And what is a lady? Someone like you who’s never done a hand’s turn in her life but passes muster because she doesn’t utter profanities?’ She shook her head. ‘Not in my book it isn’t. The greatest lady I know is a seventy-eight-year-old Cockney who works with the down-and-outs in London and swears like a trooper. Open your eyes, woman. It’s the contribution you make to society that earns you respect, not a tight-arsed allegiance to some outmoded principle of feminine purity that died the day women discovered they weren’t condemned to a life of endless pregnancy and child-rearing.’

  Joanna’s lips thinned. ‘How did you get in?’

  Sarah nodded towards the table. ‘I used the key under the flowerpot.’

  Joanna frowned angrily. ‘Which key?’

  ‘That one, and don’t touch it, whatever you do. I’m sure whoever killed your mother must have used it. Can I borrow the phone? I’m going to call the police.’ She brushed past Joanna into the hall. ‘I’ll have to ring Jack as well, tell him I’m going to be late. Do you mind? Presumably the cost will come out of your mother’s estate.’

  Joanna pursued her. ‘Yes, I do mind. You’ve no business to force your way in. This is my house and I don’t want you here.’

  ‘No,’ said Sarah curtly, picking up the phone on the hall table, ‘according to your mother’s will, Cedar House belongs to me.’ She flicked through her diary for Cooper’s telephone number. ‘And you’re only in it because I’ve balked at evicting you.’ She held the receiver to her ear and dialled Learmouth Police Station, watching Joanna as she did so. ‘But I’m rapidly changing my mind. Frankly, I see no reason why I should show you more consideration than you’re prepared to show your own daughter. Detective Sergeant Cooper, please. Tell him it’s Dr Blakeney and it’s urgent. I’m at Cedar House in Fontwell. Yes, I’ll hold.’ She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘I want you to come home with me and talk to Ruth. Jack and I are doing our best but we’re no substitute for you. She needs her mother.’

  A small tic flickered at the side of Joanna’s mouth. ‘I resent your interference in matters that don’t concern you. Ruth is quite capable of looking after herself.’

  ‘My God, you really are unreal,’ said Sarah in amazement. ‘You couldn’t give a shit, could you?’

  ‘You are doing this deliberately, Dr Blakeney.’

  ‘If you’re referring to my swearing, then, yes, you’re dead right I am,’ said Sarah. ‘I want you to be as shocked by me as I am by you. Where’s your sense of responsibility, you sodding bitch? Ruth didn’t materialize out of thin air. You and your husband had a fucking good time when you made her, and don’t forget it.’ Abruptly she transferred her attention to the telephone. ‘Hello, Sergeant, yes, I’m at Cedar House. Yes, she’s here, too. No, there’s no trouble, it’s just that I think I know how Mathilda’s murderer got in. Has anyone told you she kept a key to the kitchen door under a flowerpot by the coal bunker at the back? I know, but I forgot about it.’ She pulled a face. ‘No, it’s not still there. It’s on the kitchen table. I used it to get in.’ She held the receiver away from her ear. ‘I did not do it on purpose,’ she said coldly after a moment. ‘You should have searched a bit more thoroughly at the beginning then it wouldn’t have happened.’ She replaced the receiver with unnecessary force. ‘We’ve both got to stay here until the police come.’

  But Joanna’s composure had abandoned her. ‘GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!’ she screamed ‘I WILL NOT BE SPOKEN TO LIKE THIS IN MY HOUSE!’ She ran up the stairs. ‘YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH IT! I’LL REPORT YOU TO THE MEDICAL COUNCIL! MUD STICKS. I’LL TELL THEM YOU MURDERED MR STURGIS AND THEN MY MOTHER.’

  Sarah followed in her wake, watched her run into the bathroom and slam the door, then lowered herself to the floor and sat cross-legged outside it. ‘Tantrums and convulsions may have worked a treat with Mathilda but they sure as hell aren’t going to work with me. GODDAMMIT!’ she roared suddenly, putting her mouth to the oak-panelled door. ‘You’re a forty-year-old middle-aged woman, you stupid cow, so act your age.’

  ‘DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT!’

  ‘But you get up my nose, Joanna. I have only contempt for someone who can’t function unless they’re doped stupid.’ Tranquillizers was Jack’s guess.

  No answer.

  ‘You need help,’ she went on matter-of-factly, ‘and the best person to give it to you is based in London. He’s a psychiatrist who specializes in all forms of drug addiction but he won’t take you on unless you’re willing to give up. If you’re interested I’ll refer you, if you’re not then I suggest you prepare yourself for the long term consequences of habitual substance abuse on the human body, beginning with the one thing you don’t want. You will get old very much quicker than I will, Joanna, because your physical chemistry is under constant attack and mine isn’t.’

  ‘Get out of my house, Dr Blakeney.’ She was beginning to calm down.

  ‘I can’t, not till Sergeant Cooper gets here. And it’s not your house, remember, it’s mine. What are you on?’

  There was a long, long silence. ‘Valium,’ said Joanna finally. ‘Dr Hendry prescribed it for me when I came back here after Steven died. I tried to smother Ruth in her cot, so Mother called him in and begged him to give me something.’

  ‘Why did you try to smother Ruth?’

  ‘It seemed the most sensible thing to do. I wasn’t coping terribly well.’

  ‘And did tranquillizers help?’

  ‘I don’t remember. I was always tired, I remember that.’

  Sarah believed her, because she could believe it of Hugh Hendry. Classic symptoms of severe post-natal depression, and instead of giving the poor woman anti-depressants to lift her mood, the idiot had effectively shoved her into a state of lethargy by giving her sedatives. No wonder she found it so difficult to get on with Ruth, when one of the tragic consequences of post-natal depression, if it wasn’t treated properly, was that mothers found it difficult to develop natural loving relationships with their babies whom they saw as the reason for their sudden inability to cope. God, but it explained a lot about this family if the women had a tendency to post-natal depression. ‘I can help you,’ she said. ‘Will you let me help you?’

  ‘Lots of people take Valium. It’s perfectly legal.’

  ‘And very effective in the right circumstances and under proper supervision. But you’re not getting yours from a doctor, Joanna. The problems of diazepam addiction are so well documented that no responsible practitioner would go on prescribing them for you. Which means you’ve got a private supplier somewhere and the tablets won’t be cheap. Black market drugs never are. Let me help you,’ she said again.

  ‘You’ve never been afraid. Wh
at would you know about anything if you’ve never been afraid?’

  ‘What were you afraid of?’

  ‘I was afraid to go to sleep. For years and years I was afraid to go to sleep.’ She laughed suddenly. ‘Not any more, though. She’s dead.’

  The doorbell rang.

  Sergeant Cooper was in very tetchy mood. The last twenty-four hours had been frustrating ones for him and not just because he had had to work over the weekend and miss Sunday lunch with his children and grandchildren. His wife, tired and irritable herself, had delivered the inevitable ticking-off about his lack of commitment to his family. ‘You should put your foot down,’ she told him. ‘The police force doesn’t own you, Tommy.’

  They had held Hughes overnight at Learmouth Police Station but had released him without charge at lunchtime. After a persistent refusal the previous afternoon to say anything at all, he had reverted that morning to his previous statement, namely that he had been driving around aimlessly before returning to his squat. He gave the time for his return as nine o’clock. Cooper, dispatched by Charlie Jones to interview the youths who shared the squat with him, had come back deeply irritated.

  ‘It’s a set-up,’ he told the DCI. ‘They’ve got his alibi off pat. I spoke to each one in turn, asked them to give me an account of their movements on the evening of Saturday, the sixth of November, and each one told me the same story. They were watching the portable telly and drinking beer in Hughes’s room when Hughes walked in at nine o’clock. He stayed there all night, as did his van which was parked in the road outside. I did not mention Hughes once, nor imply that I was at all interested in him or his blasted van. They offered the information gratuitously and without prompting.’

  ‘How could they know he’d told us nine o’clock?’

  ‘The solicitor?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Very unlikely. I get the impression he doesn’t like his client any more than we do.’