The Scold's Bridle (10 page)

"It might be a magnificent bluff," he said mildly. "As you say, who would suspect a doctor of doing something so crass within hours of an old lady making over three-quarters of a million pounds?"

Sarah stared at him with undisguised horror. "Three-quarters of a million?" she echoed slowly. "Is that what she was worth?"

"More or less. Probably more. It's a conservative estimate. Duggan's valued the house and its contents at around four hundred thousand, but the clocks alone were insured for well over a hundred thousand and that was based on a ten-year-old valuation. I'd hate to guess what they're worth now. Then there's the antique furniture, her jewellery and, of course, Mrs. Lascelles's flat in London, plus innumerable stocks and shares. You're a rich woman, Dr. Blakeney."

Sarah put her head in her hands. "Oh, my God!" she groaned. "You mean, Joanna doesn't even own her own flat?"

"No. It's part of Mrs. Gillespie's estate. If the old woman had had any sense she'd have made it over to her daughter in annual dollops to avoid anyone having to pay inheritance tax on it. As it is, the Treasury's going to have almost as big a windfall as you're getting." He sounded sympathetic. "And it'll be your job to decide what has to be sold off to pay the bill. You're not going to be very popular with the Lascelles women, I suspect."

"That must be the understatement of the year," said Sarah bleakly. "What on earth was Mathilda thinking of?"

"Most people would see it as manna from heaven."

"Including you?"

"Of course, but then I live in a very ordinary house, I've three grown-up children who touch me for money whenever they can, and I dream about retiring early and taking the wife on an extended cruise round the world." He glanced about the garden. "In your shoes, I'd probably react as you are reacting. You're not exactly short of a bob or two, and your conscience will stop you spending it on yourself. She was right when she said she was laying a burden on your shoulders."

Sarah digested this for a moment or two in silence. "Does that mean you don't think I murdered her?"

He looked amused. "Probably."

"Well, thank God for small mercies," she said dryly. "It's been worrying me."

"Your dependants, however, are a different matter. They stand to benefit just as much as you do from Mrs. Gillespie's death."

She looked surprised. "I don't have any dependants."

"You have a husband, Dr. Blakeney. I'm told he's dependent on you."

She stirred some leaves with the toe of her Wellington boot. "Not any more. We're separated. I don't even know where he is at the moment."

He took out his notebook and consulted it. "That must be fairly recent then. According to Mrs. Lascelles, he attended the funeral two days ago, went on to Cedar House afterwards for tea and then asked her to drive him back here at around six o'clock, which she did." He paused to look at her. "So when exactly did the separation begin?"

"He left some time that night. I found a note from him in the morning."

"Was it his idea or yours?"

"Mine. I told him I wanted a divorce."

"I see." He regarded her thoughtfully. "Was there a reason for choosing that night to do it?"

She sighed. "I was depressed by Mathilda's funeral. I found myself exploring that old chestnut, the meaning of life, and I wondered what the point of
her
life was. I suddenly realized that my own life was almost as pointless." She turned her head to look at him. "You probably think that sounds absurd. I'm a doctor, after all, and you don't enter medicine without some sort of vocation. It's like police work. We're in it because we believe we can make a difference." She gave a hollow laugh. "There's an awful arrogance in a statement like that. The presumption is that we know what we're doing when, frankly, I'm not sure that we do. Doctors strive officiously to keep people alive, because the law says we must, and we talk grandly about quality of life. But what
is
quality of life? I kept Mathilda's pain under control with some sophisticated drugs but the quality of her life was appalling, not because of pain, but because she was lonely, bitter, intensely frustrated and very unhappy." She shrugged. "I took a long hard look at myself and my husband during the funeral, and I realized that the same adjectives could be applied to the two of us. We were both lonely, both bitter, both frustrated and both unhappy. So I suggested a divorce, and he left." She smiled cynically. "It was as simple as that."

He felt sorry for her. Nothing was ever that simple, and it sounded to him as if she had tried to bluff a hand at poker, and lost. "Had he met Mrs. Lascelles before the funeral?"

"Not as far as I know
I
hadn't, so I can't imagine how he could have done."

"But he knew Mrs. Gillespie?"

She looked out across the garden, playing for time. "If he did, then it wasn't through me. He never mentioned meeting her."

DS Cooper's already lively interest in the absent Jack Blakeney was growing. "Why did he go to the funeral?"

"Because I asked him to." She straightened. "I hate funerals but I always feel I have to go to them. It seems so churlish to turn your back on a patient the minute they're dead. Jack was very good about lending support." Unexpectedly, she laughed. "To tell you the truth, I think he rather fancies himself in his black overcoat. He enjoys looking satanic."

Satanic.
The Sergeant pondered over the word. Duncan Orloff had said Mathilda liked Blakeney. Mrs. Lascelles had described him as "a peculiar man who said very little and then demanded to be taken home." Ruth had found him "intimidating." The vicar, on the other hand, had had a great deal to say when Cooper had approached him about the various members of the funeral congregation. "Jack Blakeney? He's an artist though not a very successful one, poor chap. If it wasn't for Sarah, he'd be starving. Matter of fact, I like his work. I'd buy a canvas if only he'd lower his sights a little, but he knows his worth, or says he does, and refuses to sell himself cheap. Did he know Mathilda? Yes, he must have done. I saw him leaving her house one day with his sketchpad under his arm. She'd have been a wonderful subject for his type of work. He couldn't have resisted her."

He took the bull by the horns. "The Reverend Matthews tells me your husband was painting a portrait of Mrs. Gillespie. He must have known her quite well to do that." He lit another cigarette and watched Sarah through the smoke.

She sat for a long time in silence, contemplating a distant cow in a far field. "I feel inclined to say I won't answer any more questions until my solicitor's present," she murmured at last, "except that I have a nasty feeling you'd regard that as suspicious." He didn't say anything, so she glanced at him. There was no sympathy in the pleasant face, only a patient confidence that she would answer in the affirmative, with or without a solicitor. She sighed. "I could deny a portrait quite easily. They're all in the studio, and there isn't a chance in a million you'd recognize Mathilda's. Jack doesn't paint faces. He paints personalities. And you have to understand his colour-coding and the way he uses dynamics in shape, depth and perspective to interpret what he's done."

"But you're not going to deny it?" he suggested.

"Only because Jack won't, and I'm not particularly keen to perjure myself." She smiled and her eyes lit with enthusiasm. "Actually, it's brilliant. I think it's probably the best thing he's ever done. I found it yesterday just before you came." She pulled a wry face. "I knew it would be there because of something Ruth said. According to her, Jack mentioned that Mathilda called me her scold's bridle." She sighed again. "And he couldn't have known that unless Mathilda had told him, because I never did."

"May I see this painting?"

She ignored the question. "He wouldn't have murdered her, Sergeant, not for money, anyway. Jack despises materialism. The only use he has for money is as a guide to the value of his genius. Which is why he never sells anything. His own valuation of his art is rather higher than everybody else's." She smiled at his frown of disbelief. "Actually, it makes sense in a funny sort of way, but it's irritating because it's so conceited. The argument goes something like this: your average prole is incapable of recognizing genius so he won't be interested in buying your picture whatever price you put on it. While a Renaissance man, on the other hand, will recognize genius and will pay handsomely for it. Ergo, if you're a genius, you put a high price on yourself and wait for the right person to come and discover you."

"If you'll pardon the language, Dr. Blakeney, that is bullshit." He felt quite angry. "The man's conceit must be colossal. Has anyone else said he's a genius?"

"No one said Van Gogh was a genius either until after he was dead." Why, she wondered, did Jack's single-minded view of himself always put people's backs up? Was it because, in an uncertain world, his certainty was threatening? "It really doesn't matter," she said calmly, "what sort of an artist Jack is. Good, bad, indifferent. I happen to think he's good, but that's a personal opinion. The point is he would never have killed Mathilda for her money, assuming he knew she'd made the will in my favour, which I doubt. Why should she have told him when she never told me?"

"Except that he thought you were going to divorce him and push him into the cold."

"Hardly. That would leave me enjoying the loot all by myself, wouldn't it? How could he get his hands on the inheritance if he and I were divorced?"
I'll be going for a fifty-fifty split
... She pushed that thought away. "And in any case, two weeks ago when Mathilda died, he didn't know I wanted to divorce him. How could he? I didn't know myself."

Cooper took that with a pinch of salt. "These things don't happen out of the blue, Dr. Blakeney. He must have had an inkling that the marriage was in difficulties."

"You're underestimating Jack's egotism," she answered with a somewhat bitter irony. "He's far too self-centred to notice anyone else's unhappiness unless he's painting them. Believe me, my decision
did
come out of the blue. For him, anyway."

He puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette. "Do you expect him to come back at all?"

"Oh, yes. He'll want to collect his paintings if nothing else."

"Good. Some of the fingerprints we lifted may well be his. It will help if we can eliminate them. Yours, too, of course. There'll be a team taking prints in Fontwell on Wednesday morning. I assume you've no objections to giving yours? They'll be destroyed afterwards." He took her silence for assent. "You say you don't know where your husband is, but can you think of anyone who might be in contact with him?"

"Only my solicitor. He's promised to let me know the minute he hears anything."

The Sergeant dropped his cigarette end on to the damp grass and stood up, drawing his mackintosh about him. "No friends he might have gone to?"

"I've tried everyone I can think of. He's not been in touch with any of them."

"Then perhaps you'll be so kind as to write out your solicitor's name and phone number while I take a look at this painting." He grinned. "In view of what you've said, I'm fascinated to see if I can make anything of it."

Sarah found his careful appraisal of the picture rather impressive. He stood for a long time without saying anything, then asked her if Jack had done a portrait of her. She fetched hers from the drawing-room and placed it alongside the one of Mathilda. He resumed his silent study.

"Well," he said at last, "you're quite right. I would never have guessed that this was a portrait of Mrs. Gillespie, any more than I would have guessed that that was a portrait of you. I can see why no one else considers him a genius."

Sarah's disappointment surprised her. But what had she expected? He was a country policeman, not a Renaissance man. She forced the polite smile to her lips that was her customary response to other people's often rude comments on Jack's paintings and wondered, not for the first time, why she was the only person who seemed able to appreciate them. It wasn't as if she were blinded by love-rather the reverse in fact-and yet, to her, the portrait of Mathilda was extraordinary and brilliant. Jack had worked layer on layer to bring a deep golden translucence into the heart of the painting-Mathilda's wit, she thought, shining through the complex blues and greys of cruelty and cynicism. And round it all the browns of despair and repression, and the rusted red of iron, shorthand in Jack's work for backbone and character, but moulded here into the shape of the scold's bridle.

She shrugged. After all, perhaps it was a mercy the Sergeant couldn't see it. "As I said, he paints personalities and not faces."

"When did he paint the one of you?"

"Six years ago."

"And has your personality changed in six years?"

"I shouldn't think so. Personalities change very little, Sergeant, which is why Jack likes to paint them. You are what you are. A generous person remains generous. A bully remains a bully. You can smooth the rough edges but you can't transform the core. Once painted, the personality should be recognizable for ever."

He rubbed his hands together in anticipation of a challenge. "Then let's see if I can work out his system. There's a lot of green in yours and your most obvious characteristics are sympathy-no-" he contradicted himself immediately, "empathy-you enter into other people's feelings, you don't make a judgement on them. So, empathy, honour-you're an honourable woman or you wouldn't feel so racked with guilt about this bequest-truthful-most people would have lied about this painting-nice." He turned to look at her. "Does niceness count as a personality trait or is it too flabby?"

She laughed. "Far too flabby, and you're ignoring the unpleasant aspects. Jack sees two sides to everybody."

"All right." He stared at her portrait. "You're a very opinionated woman who is confident enough to fly in the face of established fact, otherwise you wouldn't have liked Mrs. Gillespie. A corollary to that is that you are also naive or your views wouldn't be so divergent from everyone else's. You're inclined to be rash or you wouldn't be regretting your husband's departure, and that implies a depth of affection for hopeless causes which is probably why you became a doctor and probably, too, why you were so fond of the old bitch in this amazing painting next to you. How am I doing for a prole?"