The Minotaur

by Barbara Vine

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘I said I don't know.’ Ella was growing irritable as she always did when the conversation wandered too far from her own troubles. ‘He's never exactly all right, is he? Ida takes him food in there on a tray, otherwise he wouldn't eat. She says he seems afraid of her. He's very afraid of Mother. You can't wonder really, can you? After all, he may be mad but he's not stupid.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’

  ‘I think he remembers they both accused him of killing Winifred and he does understand cause and effect. He thinks it's because of what they said that the police took him away.’

  ‘Can you wonder?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not. But do we have to be always talking about John? He's really very boring, you know. You'll say the mad are and it's not their fault but one doesn't have to be always discussing them. This coffee is awful, isn't it? It's worse than the stuff Ida makes. I dreamt last night that Felix came to the Hall and said he'd really loved me all along and we'd get married and he'd take me to Morocco on our honeymoon.’

  I asked why Morocco.

  ‘I don't know, it sounds so romantic. Anyway, it was nothing to do with me, it was in the dream. I believed it, you know, I thought it was all true. But it wasn't. I woke up and I was crying as if my heart would break – only it's broken already. Do you want a cake?’

  ‘Not one of those,’ I said.

  She hadn't mentioned Zorah and I didn't ask. Next day was Winifred's funeral.

  ‘You won't go to that,’ said Jane.

  It was more of a statement of fact than an inquiry. I was growing fretful and fidgety under her increasing habit of directing my life. I liked her – I was always to like her – and I could see that she had singled me out to be her son's wife, something that I too was soon to desire, though her selection had more to do with her own taste than with Charles or my preferences. But I was determined to tread that fine line between resisting her commands and being a good guest, even if it rather wore me down, for I had so recently come from another and much more savage domination.

  ‘I think I'll go,’ I said. ‘She was always pleasant to me. I had no quarrel with her.’

  ‘I hope you won't regret it,’ Jane said in the grim tone she used when thwarted.

  It was hard to see how I could feel much regret, even though there should be scenes among the Cosways and hysterical outbursts. In the event nothing like that took place. Mrs Cosway wasn't there. For the very good reason, I found out later, that she was at home being closely questioned by the police. Ida turned up, wearing the big hat I had last seen on Winifred's head and on which Eric had complimented her. Ella came to sit next to me and chatted away through the solemn voluntaries.

  ‘Have you seen the papers this morning? There's a group photograph of us all and one of those Ida took of you and me and Winifred. Mrs Lilly sneaked them out and gave them to the paper. Well, sold them, more likely. I don't absolutely know it was her but it's an intelligent guess, don't you think? Mother said it was you but I told her she shouldn't make accusations like that.’

  Someone had had the idea of bringing the coffin up the aisle to the Dead March in Handel's Saul. It was only the fact that we had to rise which stemmed the tide of Ella's chatter. Even so, as Mr Trewith began to say the words, something about man born of woman being full of misery – the women, presumably, were as happy as the day is long – she managed to whisper in my ear that she knew she looked awful in black and hoped Felix wouldn't be there to see her.

  He wasn't but Eric was, looking thinner and even more gaunt than usual. Instead of joining us, he sat alone in the pew several times occupied by Felix. What do people think about at funerals? If they were close to the dead, no doubt they think of what they have lost, their past with them and their future without them. As for the rest of us, I suppose our thoughts wander as mine did that day, returning always from these journeys through the associative process to John, then to Felix and Zorah. When did they meet? How did they come together? Where were they now? And then, as the coffin was carried out again to begin its journey to the crematorium, I thought of something else.

  It seems strange that this hadn't really come into my mind before. It entered now, driving away everything else. If John hadn't killed Winifred, who had? I said it aloud to Ella on the dreadful drive back after Winifred was ashes. Ida had gone home, driven by Eric. Ella looked blankly at me, as if she hadn't heard. I repeated it. I had a horrible feeling of being doomed to say this over and over, but unheard.

  ‘I don't want to think about it,’ she said.

  I found myself coming out with the absurd usage I hated so much from her. ‘You'll say it's no business of mine.’

  ‘Oh, no, Kerstin. No, I won't. It's just that it's so awful, one's mother and one's sister…’

  ‘Which one?’ I said, my voice a breath or a whisper.

  She pulled the car into a lay-by and switched off the engine. Her face was full of woe, like a hurt child's, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘I don't know.’ Hope – a ridiculous hope – sent the colour into her white cheeks. ‘Does it have to be either of them?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I thought someone might have got in from outside. By the French windows. No, they couldn't, could they? That's impossible. And Winifred couldn't have – well, done it herself. No. No, she couldn't have.’

  We sat silent in the car, starting to shiver. Our breath steamed up the windows. ‘I'd better tell you.’

  I had reached the point of dreading revelations. I wished I hadn't asked which one, but I had asked. It was too late.

  ‘The police came yesterday. They asked a lot of questions and then they took Mother and Ida away to a police station somewhere. When they brought them back it was very late. They were questioned separately and – well, I'll have to tell you now I've begun. Ida said Mother did it and Mother said Ida did.’

  *

  ‘Would you like me to drive?’ I said.

  ‘I can't be always letting you take over,’ she said but she was half out of the car by then.

  I moved into the driver's seat. It wasn't yet four but already dark and I put the lights on. The road we were on was a narrow lane, which was why it had lay-bys, and tree branches met above our head, creating a dark winding tunnel. Much as I wanted to know, I resolved not to ask Ella any more. She was crying by then. All those five or six miles back to Windrose no cars passed us and we met only one, its headlights' beam full on, blinding me. Still crying quietly, Ella had laid her head back against the seat. When I saw the dark bulk of All Saints' tower loom up ahead, I stopped the car and asked her if she was all right.

  Instead of replying, she said, ‘They both told me and that's what they said. Ida blamed Mother and Mother blamed Ida. Both had cut hands, you see. Each one of them described what had happened and it was – I don't quite know how to put this – it was as if the roles were reversed in their accounts. I mean Mother described Ida as doing it exactly as Ida described Mother as doing it. Mother said Ida did it because she couldn't bear Winifred doing what she was doing to Eric and Ida said Mother did it when Ella came in and told her Winifred was going to Felix. But I think one of them did it to put the blame on John. To get rid of him, you see, and get the house the only way they could.’

  As if it was all in the day's work, the kind of thing that might happen in any family. ‘What happens now?’ I asked.

  ‘They said they'd want to question them again. I mean, I think they let Mother go home on account of her age. And someone had to be there to look after John.’

  I had nothing to say about any of it. ‘I'll take you home,’ I said, forgetting it was her car.

  ‘The police were there again when I came out. They tried asking John which one of them it was. They had to go into the library after him. Of course he wouldn't say anything at all, let alone answer them.’ We were on the drive by then and again I stopped when the house came into sight. Light streamed not very brightly out of the front doorway as Strickla
nd and another man came out and got into their car. ‘They've been there all this time,’ Ella said wonderingly.

  As the car passed us, Strickland turned his eyes in our direction and nodded. It was just a nod, cold and formal. I drove up on to the gravel as an unseen hand closed the door.

  ‘I can't go in there, Kerstin.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Wait a minute. Try to keep calm.’

  ‘I can't go into a house where those two are. One of them is a murderer, Kerstin. Or both of them. Both of them could have done it. It might be me next. I can't go in. I should never sleep, never again. Oh, what shall I do?’

  We had been out for hours. I had told Jane I would be back by four, for I had never meant to go to the crematorium but had only done so at Ella's insistence. Sitting there beside her, I thought ungratefully how hopeless it was to be obliged to tell someone of your comings and goings, your whereabouts and the time of your return, and resolved I would never be in that trap again. Of course I was in it because I got married but somehow that was different.

  ‘Did you mean that about not going back?’ I said.

  ‘I can't go in there ever again.’

  ‘You'll have to go in to get your things. Phone Bridget and ask her if you can stay, pack a bag and I'll drive you to the Millses’.’

  After a good deal of arguing she did. She was in the house a very short time and when she came back she was breathless. ‘Bridget was very nice about it, said I could stay as long as I wanted, but we know what that means, don't we? I saw Ida. She looked terrible, I mean more terrible than usual, all grey in the face. Strickland had been what she called cross-examining her for hours.’

  I asked her if she had seen John.

  ‘Oh, no. He was in the library. He lives there now apart from when he's out for a walk. Could they have Mother and Ida both up in court for murder?’

  ‘I don't know,’ I said.

  I took her to the cottage where Bridget Mills lived with her elderly parents. Where they would put her I couldn't guess.

  ‘I shall go and see Felix tomorrow,’ were her parting words, ‘and he'll have to take me in even if he doesn't want to.’

  Jane I found in a panic because, in her own words, I had disappeared. The police had been and returned my diary. I took it up to my bedroom and wrote down the events of the day. That evening I discussed with Jane and Gerald – discreetly, I hope – what was to be done about Ella. Saying nothing about the relentless questioning of Mrs Cosway and Ida, I told them of her fear of going back into Lydstep Old Hall, something they both seemed to understand without further explanation.

  ‘The Millses won't want her for long,’ Jane said. ‘They've only got two bedrooms and Ronald Mills is bedbound.’

  I said nothing about Felix. ‘Perhaps she could get a flat somewhere with Bridget.’

  ‘Bridget Mills is needed at home.’

  There seemed no solution except for Ella to give in and return home. To have nowhere to go, nowhere to lay one's head but with grudging friends, is dreadful to think of. I felt a little like that myself, though the Trintowels were far from grudging. I thought that night of phoning Isabel and asking her to put me up but I remembered she was Mark's sister-in-law and very fond of Mark. Next morning I phoned Strickland and then I went into Colchester and booked my passage back to Gothenburg for a week ahead.

  I told Jane at lunchtime and she put up a good many objections. But I had already spoken to Charles on the phone and arranged to meet him in London in two days' time. He had promised to find me a cheap hotel.

  Meeting Ella next day was unavoidable but I refused tea and cakes at the souvenir shop and we drove into Sudbury. It was a pleasant, pretty little town then, with a market square and water meadows by the Stour. Morning rain had been blown away by a sharp little wind and by the time we were in Friar Street, looking for a tea place, the sky was pale winter blue with streaks of grey and yellowish cloud.

  Ella, of course, seethed with complaints about the hospitality of Bridget Mills and her parents. In Bridget's place she would have given up her bed to the guest and slept on the sofa herself but in fact the roles had been reversed. She didn't know how long she could stand it. She had called at The Studio at nine, knowing Felix wasn't an early riser and believing she could catch him before he went out, but he wasn't there. The neighbours in that row of cottages were all consulted before she gave up. No one knew where Felix was and the retired colonel next door said he had never spoken to him.

  My decision to go to London and come back this way only to Harwich and the Gothenburg boat dismayed her.

  ‘But you can't! The police won't let you.’

  ‘I've asked them,’ I said. ‘They don't mind.’

  ‘I wonder what that means,’ she said. ‘Does it mean they're going to arrest Mother or Ida? Surely not Mother, not at her age. Maybe the police think they're only saying one of them killed Winifred to protect John.’

  I said that if this was so, it was a pity they blamed him in the first place. As for me, I had spoken to Strickland and he said I could go. That was all. She asked me why I was going to London first.

  Perhaps it was rude, what I said. ‘Because I want to.’

  It was almost impossible to repulse Ella. ‘Where are you going in London? Are you going to stay with Isabel Croft? I wonder if I could come too. I really don't see why not.’

  I said I wouldn't be staying with Isabel but in an hotel. ‘What about your work?’

  From her position, after Winifred's death, of longing to be back, she had since used her loss as an excuse for not returning. She hadn't, up till then, done an hour's teaching at her Sudbury school, the playground and outbuildings of which we could see from the teashop window. ‘Of course I'll have to go back,’ she said. ‘But not quite yet. D‘you know, I haven't been to London for ages, literally years.’

  I couldn't encourage her. The sad fact was that I didn't want her. There are words for people like Ella today and perhaps there were then, only I hadn't heard of them: ‘clingy’ and ‘needy’ were among them. I could almost, but never quite, sympathize with Felix Dunsford. She plainly wanted to stay out, keep away from Windrose as long as she could, and after we had talked exhaustively about the Millses, her mother, how Eric was coping and when she and Felix would next meet, she suggested we have lunch in one of Sudbury's hotels.

  I didn't care for the idea. Before I went next day I wanted to see John for the last time and there was a half-formed plan in my mind of catching him on his walk – if he went for a walk. He didn't always but he often did when the day was fine and when he did he took one of two routes. I would have to take my chance. I knew the chances of his speaking to me were slight but he might just say, ‘Hallo, Shashtin,’ giving my name its proper pronunciation, the way he invariably did. But I was feeling guilty over Ella, irrationally guilty no doubt, but most guilt is irrational. I felt I owed her something because I had refused her the chance of an innocent and harmless trip to London, so I said yes to her lunch invitation. Perhaps I could still be back in time to see John.

  In the intervening years, the world has utterly changed. We could park the car anywhere we liked and where we liked was right outside the hotel. Lunch in English country hotels then was quite different from pub lunches today with the menus chalked on blackboards and help-yourself paper napkins. It was all rather grand, the white damask tablecloth, starched stiff, the heavy silver, the waiters; somewhat less pleasant was their attitude, slightly contemptuous, faintly amused, that two women should be eating in a restaurant alone together.

  We ate and I clock-watched. Would I be in time for John? If not, could I manage to see him tomorrow before I went to London? Ella smoked between courses, wreathing the air above us with grey plumes, but no one minded in those days, no one even looked disapproving. Most people were doing the same. We weren't back in the car until nearly three and I knew we would be too late. Plainly, Ella didn't know what to do, where to go. Bridget was at work till five. Her parents slept most of
the afternoon away and they hadn't given her a key. Did I think she could come to White Lodge with me?

  ‘You'll say Jane Trintowel won't like it.’

  For once she was right but I couldn't bring myself to say so. ‘Ella, couldn't you go home? You're going to have to sometime. What else can you do?’

  An explosive ‘No!’

  Not if I came with her? I suggested this most reluctantly, though I did think that this way at least I could contrive to see John. An argument ensued, Ella insisting that she would never set foot in Lydstep Old Hall again and I telling her to be realistic and asking what options she had. All the time this was going on she drove erratically, sometimes mounting the grass verge, and I could see what Zorah had meant when she told her to improve her driving. In spite of all this, we came safely into Windrose just before half-past three, the question of where Ella was to go not resolved.

  The sun was setting behind Lydstep Old Hall, a crimson and orange sunset showing under the hem of a black cloud curtain. I got out of the car outside the church and stared at it, seeing something wrong, off-key, the red glare just in the wrong place, not due west where it should have been, where sunsets always were. And then I saw a man walking towards me, down the village street, past the White Rose, past the general store and the butcher's, and he too was in the wrong place. John never came into Windrose. Years had passed since he had walked this way and the locals had laughed at him. He wore his winter coat with the Black Watch tartan blanket over it and he was holding his sleeping bag unzipped round his shoulders.

  I began to move slowly to meet him, hoping in vain that he would smile.

  29

  Unlike Thornfield, unlike Manderley, those mansions of fiction, most of the house survived the fire. The local fire brigade, composed of volunteers, got to Lydstep Old Hall before it reached the south side of the house, but the drawing room and those rooms along the passage I had never been in and the library, all those were burnt out. The ten thousand books in the library resisted the volunteers' hoses for a long while and nothing that had been in there was left but the statue of Longinus, which was found next day, lying on the lawn.