The Scold's Bridle

by Minette Walters

  ‘People fear the unexpected,’ said Cooper phlegmatically. ‘I sometimes think that’s the root cause of all murders.’ He looked towards the door as the secretary popped in with an orange folder. ‘The boat rocks and the only solution is to kill the person who’s rocking it.’

  Howard opened the file and selected a sheet from the top. ‘There you are.’ He handed it across.

  Cooper examined it carefully. It was dated Saturday, November 6th, and typed. As Howard had said, it confirmed her refusal to proceed until prices improved. ‘When did you say you got this?’

  ‘Couple of days after the phone call.’

  ‘That would have been a Sunday.’

  ‘The Monday then, or maybe the Tuesday. We don’t work weekends, not in the office at least.’

  ‘Did she always type her letters?’

  ‘Don’t remember her ever doing it before.’ He looked back through the file. ‘Copper-plate script every time.’

  Cooper thought of her letter to Ruth. That had been written in a beautiful hand. ‘Have you any other letters from her? I’d like to compare the signatures.’

  Howard licked a finger and flicked over the pages, removing several more sheets. ‘You think someone else wrote it?’

  ‘It’s a possibility. There’s no typewriter in her house and she was dead by the Saturday night. When could she have had it done?’ He placed the pages side by side on the desk and squinted at the subscriptions. ‘Well, well,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘the best laid schemes – you’ve been very helpful, Mr Howard. May I take these with me?’

  ‘I’ll want photocopies for my records.’ He was consumed with curiosity. ‘Never occurred to me it wasn’t kosher. What’s wrong with it then?’

  Cooper placed a finger on the typed letter’s signature. ‘For a start, he’s dotted his “i”s’ – he pointed to the others – ‘and she hasn’t. His “M” is too upright and the “G” runs on to the following “i”.’ He chuckled. ‘The experts are going to have a field day on this. All in all it’s a very cackhanded effort.’

  ‘Bit of a fool, is he?’

  ‘Arrogant, I’d say. Forgery is an art like any other. It takes years of practice to be any good.’

  ‘I’ve a forensic team sifting through a dustbin full of Violet’s old cinders,’ Charlie told Cooper when he returned to the nick, ‘and they tell me they’ve found the diaries. Or what’s left of them at least. There’s the odd scrap of paper but several quite substantial pieces of what they say is the calf-skin binding. They’re still looking. They’re confident of finding at least one scrap with her writing on it.’ He rubbed his hands together.

  ‘They might look for scraps of typed paper while they’re about it, preferably with a Howard & Sons imprint,’ said Cooper, producing his sheaf of letters. ‘They made her a formal offer for her land on the first of November, and we certainly didn’t find it when we went through her papers. The chances are Orloff swiped an entire file. Howard Snr has a stack of correspondence relating to Cedar Estate, and there wasn’t a damn thing on the subject anywhere in the house. If there had been we might have twigged a bit sooner.’

  ‘No one’s fault but her own. I suppose she learnt never to trust anyone which is why she played everything so close to her chest. She said it all in her letter to Ruth, “there’s been too much secrecy within this family”. If she’d mentioned her plans to the solicitor even, she’d probably be alive now.’

  ‘Still, we didn’t ask the right questions, Charlie.’

  The Inspector gave a dry laugh. ‘If the answer’s forty-two, then what’s the Ultimate Question? Read The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, old son. It’s harder to ask the right question than it is to come up with the answer, so don’t lose any sleep over it.’

  Cooper, who somewhat belatedly was trying to improve his reading, took out his notebook and jotted down the title. At the very least, it had to be more palatable than Othello which he was struggling through at the moment. He tucked his pencil back into his pocket and took Charlie through his conversation with the developer. ‘It was six weeks of hard negotiating the first time before he and she could agree on a price. She used to horse-trade over the phone, apparently, rejecting every offer until he came up with one she could accept. Poor old soul,’ he said with genuine feeling. ‘Orloff must have thought his ship had come in when he heard her doing it the second time round. She made it so easy for him.’ He tapped the typed letter. ‘All he had to do was get rid of her and post that off the next day. Howard claims he and his sons lost interest immediately because he’d made it clear to her on more than one occasion that the bottom had dropped out of the market and he wasn’t in a position to offer her any more.’

  Charlie picked up the letter and examined it. ‘There was a portable typewriter on the desk in his sitting-room,’ he recalled. ‘Let’s get the lads out there to make a quick comparison for us. He’s put all his effort into forging her signature and forgotten that typewriters have signatures, too.’

  ‘He’d never make it that easy for us.’

  But he had.

  ‘Duncan Jeremiah Orloff . . . formally charged with the murder of Mathilda Beryl Gillespie . . . Saturday, November sixth . . .’ The voice of the Duty Officer droned on relentlessly, making little impact on Cooper who knew the formula off by heart. Instead, his mind drifted towards an elderly woman, drained of her lifeblood, and the rusted iron framework that had encased her head. He felt an intense regret that he had never known her. Whatever sins she had committed, it would, he felt, have been a privilege.

  ‘. . . request that you be refused bail because of the serious nature of the charges against you. The magistrates will order an immediate remand into custody . . .’

  He looked at Duncan Orloff only when the man beat his fat little hands against his breast and burst into tears. It wasn’t his fault, he pleaded, it was Mathilda’s fault. Mathilda was to blame for everything. He was a sick man. What would Violet do without him?

  ‘Collapse of stout party,’ muttered the Duty Officer under his breath to Cooper, listening to the rasping, anguished breaths.

  A deep frown creased Cooper’s pleasant face. ‘By heaven, she deserved better than you, she really did,’ he said to Orloff. ‘It should have been a brave man who killed her, not a coward. What gave you the right to play God with her life?’

  ‘A brave man wouldn’t have had to, Sergeant Cooper.’ He turned haunted eyes towards the policeman. ‘It wasn’t courage that was needed to kill Mathilda, it was fear.’

  ‘Fear of a few houses in your garden, Mr Orloff?’

  Duncan shook his head. ‘I am what I am’ – he held trembling hands to his face – ‘and it was she who made me. I have spent my adult life shunning the woman I married in favour of fantasies about the one I didn’t, and you cannot live in hell for forty years without being damaged by it.’

  ‘Is that why you came back to Fontwell, to relive your fantasies?’

  ‘You can’t control them, Sergeant. They control you.’ He fell silent.

  ‘But you returned five years ago, Mr Orloff.’

  ‘I asked nothing from her, you know. A few shared memories perhaps. Peace even. After forty years I expected very little.’

  Cooper eyed him curiously. ‘You said you killed her out of fear. Was that what you fantasized about? Being so afraid of her that you could bring yourself to kill her?’

  ‘I fantasized about making love,’ he whispered.

  ‘To Mathilda?’

  ‘Of course.’ He gathered his tears in the palms of his hands. ‘I’ve never made love to Violet. I couldn’t.’

  Good God, thought Cooper with disgust, did the man have no pity at all for his poor little wife? ‘Couldn’t or wouldn’t, Mr Orloff? There is a difference.’

  ‘Couldn’t.’ The word was barely audible. ‘Mathilda did certain things’ — he shivered like a man possessed — ‘which Violet was offended by’ — his voice broke — ‘it was less unpleasant for both of us if I pai
d for what I wanted.’

  Cooper caught the Duty Officer’s gaze above Duncan’s head, and gave a cynical laugh. ‘So this is going to be your defence, is it? That you murdered Mathilda Gillespie because she gave you a taste for something only prostitutes could supply?’

  A thready sigh puttered from the moist lips. ‘You never had cause to be afraid of her, Sergeant. She didn’t own you because she didn’t know your secrets.’ The sad eyes turned towards him. ‘Surely it’s occurred to you that when we bought Wing Cottage our solicitor discovered the outline planning permission on the remaining Cedar House land? We went ahead with the purchase because Mathilda agreed to a clause in the contract, giving us a power of veto over any future decision.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I blame myself because I knew her so much better than Violet ever did. The clause was worth less than the paper it was written on.’ Briefly, he pressed his lips together in an effort to control himself. ‘She was obliged to tell me about her approach to Howard because she was going to need my signature on the final document, but when I told her that Violet and I would object to the proposed plan, which put the nearest house ten yards from our back wall, she laughed. “Don’t be absurd, Duncan. Have you forgotten how much I know about you?”’

  When he didn’t go on, Cooper prompted him. ‘She was going to blackmail you into signing?’

  ‘Of course.’ He placed his damp palms to his breasts. ‘We were in the drawing-room. She left me for a couple of minutes to fetch a book from the library, and when she came back she read extracts to me.’ Distress wheezed from him in quickened breaths. ‘It was one of her diaries – full of such terrible lies and obscenity – and not just about me – Violet, too – intimate details that Violet had told her when she was tipsy. “Do you want me to photocopy this, Duncan, and spread it round the village?” she asked. “Do you want the whole of Fontwell to know that Violet is still a virgin because the demands you made of her on your wedding night were so disgusting that she had to lock herself in the bathroom?”’ – his voice faltered – ‘she was very entertained by it all – couldn’t put the book down once she’d started – read me pieces about the Marriotts, the vicar, the poor Spedes – everyone.’ He fell silent again.

  ‘So you went back later to read the others?’ suggested Cooper.

  Duncan shrugged helplessly. ‘I was desperate. I hoped I’d find something I could use against her. I doubted there’d be anything of value in the early ones, simply because I’d have to find independent proof to challenge her, and, bar references to Joanna’s drug addiction, Ruth’s stealing and her belief that Sarah Blakeney was the daughter she’d had by Paul Marriott, the later ones were simply a catalogue of her dislikes. They were the product of a diseased mind, and she used them, I think, as a channel for expunging her poison. If she hadn’t been able to express herself on paper’ – he shook his head – ‘she was quite mad, you know.’

  ‘Still,’ said Cooper ponderously, ‘murder was an extreme solution, Mr Orloff. You could have used her daughter’s and her granddaughter’s problems against her. She was a proud woman. She wouldn’t have wanted those made public, surely?’

  The sad eyes fixed on him again. ‘I never planned to murder her, or not till that Saturday morning when Jane Marriott went to see her. I intended to threaten her with divulging what I knew to Dr Blakeney. But as I told you, it was fear that killed her. A brave man would have said: “publish and be damned”.’

  He had lost Cooper. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘She told Jane Marriott that things would get worse before they got better because she knew James had been reading her private papers – it never occurred to her it was me – then she went on to say that she had no intention of keeping quiet any longer.’ He wrung his hands. ‘So, of course, I went round the minute Jane left and asked her what she meant by “she had no intention of keeping quiet any longer”?’ His face was grey with fatigue. ‘She picked up the scold’s bridle and taunted me with it. “Mathilda Cavendish and Mathilda Gillespie did not write their diaries for fun, Duncan. They wrote them so that one day they could have their revenge. They will not be gagged. I shall see to that.”’ He paused. ‘She really was mad,’ he insisted, ‘and she knew it. I said I’d call a doctor for her so she laughed and quoted Macbeth at me. “More needs she the divine than the physician.”’ He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘And I thought how all of us, who would be destroyed by her diaries, needed the divine more than the physician, and I made up my mind during that terrible afternoon to play . . . God.’

  Cooper was deeply sceptical. ‘But you must have planned it all in advance because you stole the sleeping pills beforehand.’

  He sighed. ‘They were for me – or Violet – or both of us.’

  ‘So what made you change your mind?’

  ‘Sergeant, I am, as you rightly say, a coward and I realized that I could not destroy the diaries without destroying her as well. She was the poison, the diaries were only the outward manifestation. At least I have allowed all the others to keep their dignity.’

  Cooper thought of the ones he cared about, Jack and Sarah, Jane and Paul Marriott; Ruth above all.

  ‘Only if you plead guilty, Mr Orloff, otherwise this will all come out in court.’

  ‘Yes. I owe Violet that much,’ he said.

  After all, it is easy to manipulate a man if all he wants is something as worthless as love. Love is easily given when it is the body that’s invaded and not the mind. My mind can withstand anything. I am Mathilda Cavendish and what does Mathilda care when the only thing she feels is contempt?

  Man, proud man,

  Drest in a little brief authority,

  Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d,

  His glassy essence, like an angry ape,

  Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven,

  As make the angels weep.

  If angels weep Mathilda sees no sign of it. They do not weep for me . . .

  Twenty

  JANE MARRIOTT replaced the telephone receiver and held a shaking hand to her lips. She walked through to the living room where her invalid husband was dozing quietly in the bright winter sunshine which poured through the window. She sat beside him and took her hand in his. ‘That was Sergeant Cooper on the phone,’ she said. ‘James Gillespie was found dead in his flat this morning. A heart attack, they think.’

  Paul didn’t say anything, only stared out across the garden.

  ‘He says there’s nothing to worry about any more, that no one need ever know. He also said’ – she paused briefly – ‘he also said that the child was a girl. Mathilda lied about your having a son.’ She had told him everything after her return home from the surgery the day Sergeant Cooper had questioned her.

  A tear squeezed from between his lids. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘For James?’

  ‘For – everything. If I’d known—’ He fell silent.

  ‘Would it have made a difference, Paul?’

  ‘We could have shared the burden, instead of you bearing it alone.’

  ‘It would have destroyed me,’ she said honestly. ‘I couldn’t have coped with you knowing that Mathilda had had your child.’ She studied his face closely. ‘As time went by, you would have thought more of her and less of me.’

  ‘No.’ His marbled hand clutched at hers. ‘She was in every sense of the word a brief madness so, even if I’d known about the child, it wouldn’t have changed anything. I have only ever loved you.’ His eyes grew damp. ‘In any case, my dear, I think your first instincts were right, and that Mathilda would have killed the baby. We can none of us put any faith in what she said. She lied more often than she told the truth.’

  ‘Except that she left her money to Sarah,’ said Jane in a rush, ‘and Sergeant Cooper said the baby was a girl. Suppose Sarah—?’ She broke off and squeezed his hand encouragingly. ‘Nothing’s ever too late, Paul. Would it do any harm, do you think, to ask a few tactful questions?’

  He looked away fr
om her eager face and, in Cooper’s earlier footsteps, traced the fickleness of fate. He had lived his life believing he was childless, and now, at the age of seventy, Jane had told him he was a father. But of whom? Of a son? Of a daughter? Or had Mathilda lied about this as she had lied about so much else? For himself, it hardly mattered – he had long since come to terms with being childless – but for Jane, Mathilda would always cast a long and spiteful shadow. There were no guarantees that Sarah Blakeney was his daughter, no guarantees even that the child, if it existed at all, would welcome the intrusion of parents into its life, and he couldn’t bear to see Jane’s hopes dashed in this as surely as her hope in his fidelity had been dashed. In the end, wasn’t it better to live with the illusion of happiness than the awful certainty of trust betrayed?

  ‘You must promise me you will never say anything.’ He laid his head against the back of the chair and struggled for breath. ‘If I am her father, then Mathilda never told her, or I’m sure she would have come here of her own accord.’ His eyes filled with tears. ‘She has a loving father already who has done a fine job – a very fine job – in bringing her up. Don’t force her to choose between us, my dearest one. Rejections are such painful things.’

  Jane smoothed the thinning hair from his forehead. ‘Perhaps, after all, some secrets are best kept secret. Shall we share this one together and dream a little from time to time?’ She was a wise and generous woman who, just occasionally, acknowledged that it was Mathilda’s treachery that had given her insights into herself and Paul that she hadn’t had before. After all, she thought, there was less to mourn now than there was to celebrate.

  Joanna sat where her mother had always sat, in the hard-backed chair beside the french windows. She tilted her head slightly to look at Sergeant Cooper. ‘Does Dr Blakeney know you’re telling me this?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I rather hope you’ll make the first move by offering to drop your challenge to the will if she agrees to honour your mother’s intentions as set out in her letter to Ruth. A little oil on troubled waters, Mrs Lascelles, goes a very long way and it’s in everyone’s interests to put this sad affair behind you and go back to London where you belong.’