The Scold's Bridle (4 page)

There was a small silence. "How will you get home?" asked Sarah, fishing in her pocket for her car keys.

"I'll beg a lift," he said. "Someone's bound to be going my way."

One of Sarah's colleagues dropped in as evening surgery was finishing. There were three partners in a practice serving several square miles of Dorset coast and countryside, including sizeable villages, scattered hamlets and farmhouses. Most of the villages had small self-contained surgeries, either attached to the doctors' houses or leased from patients and, between them, the partners covered the whole area, boxing and coxing in neat rotation. Mapleton was Robin Hewitt's home village but, like Sarah, he spent as much time out of it as he did in. They had so far resisted the logic of pooling their resources in one modern clinic in the most central of the villages, but it was doubtful if they could resist for much longer. The argument, a true one, that most of their patients were elderly or lacked transport, was far outweighed by the commercial pressures now existing inside the health service.

"You look tired," said Robin, folding himself into the armchair beside her desk.

"I am."

"Trouble?"

"Only the usual."

"Domestic, eh? Get rid of him."

She laughed. "And supposing I told you, as casually, to get rid of Mary?"

"There's a small difference, my darling. Mary is an angel and Jack is not." But the idea was not without a certain appeal. After eighteen years, Mary's complacent self-assurance was so much less attractive than Sarah's troubled seeking after truths.

"I can't argue with that." She finished writing some notes and pushed them wearily to one side.

"What's he done this time?"

"Nothing, as far as I know."

Which sounded about right, thought Robin. Jack Blakeney made a virtue of doing nothing while his wife made a virtue of supporting him in idleness. Their continuing marriage was a complete mystery to him. There were no children, no ties, nothing binding them, Sarah was an independent woman with independent means, and she paid the mortgage on their house. It only required the services of a locksmith to shut the bastard out forever.

She studied him with amusement. "Why are you smiling like that?"

He switched neatly away from his mild fantasy of Sarah alone in her house. "I saw Bob Hughes today. He was very put out to find me on duty and not you." He fell into a fair imitation of the old man's Dorset burr. " 'Where's the pretty one?' he said. 'I want the pretty one to do it.' "

"Do what?"

Robin grinned. "Examine the boil on his bum. Dirty old brute. If it
had
been you, he'd have come up with another one, presumably, lurking under his scrotum and you'd have had the fun of probing for it and he'd have had the thrills while you did it."

Her eyes danced. "And it's completely free, don't forget. Relief massage comes expensive."

"That's revolting. You're not telling me he's tried it on before."

She chuckled. "No, of course not. He only comes in for a chat. I expect he felt he had to show you something. Poor old soul. I bet you sent him away with a flea in his ear."

"I did. You're far too amenable."

"But they're so lonely, some of them. We live in a terrible world, Robin. No one has time to listen any more." She toyed with her pen. "I went to Mathilda Gillespie's funeral today and her granddaughter asked me why she killed herself. I said I didn't know, and I've been thinking about that ever since. I
should
know. She was one of my patients. If I'd taken a little more trouble with her, I
would
know." She flicked him a sideways glance. "Wouldn't I?"

He shook his head. "Don't start down that route, Sarah. It's a dead end. Look, you were one person among many whom she knew and talked to, me included. The responsibility for that old woman wasn't yours alone. I'd argue that it wasn't yours at all, except in a strict medical sense, and nothing you prescribed for her contributed to her death. She died of blood loss."

"But where do you draw the line between profession and friendship? We laughed a lot. I think I was one of the few people who appreciated her sense of humour, probably because it was so like Jack's. Bitchy, often cruel, but witty. She was a latterday Dorothy Parker."

"You're being ridiculously sentimental. Mathilda Gillespie was a bitch of the first water, and don't imagine she viewed you as an equal. For years, until she sold off Wing Cottage to raise money, doctors, lawyers and accountants were required to enter by the tradesman's entrance. It used to drive Hugh Hendry mad. He said she was the rudest woman he'd ever met. He couldn't stand her."

Sarah gave a snort of laughter. "Probably because she called him Doctor Dolittle. To his face, too. I asked her once if it was by way of a job description and she said: Not entirely. He had a closer affinity with animals than he had with people. He was an ass."

Robin grinned. "Hugh was the laziest and the least able doctor I've ever met. I suggested once that we check his medical qualifications because I didn't think he had any, but it's a bit difficult when the bloke in question is the senior partner. We just had to bite the bullet and hang on for his retirement." He cocked his head on one side. "So what did she call you, if she called him Dr. Dolittle?"

She held the pen to her lips for a moment and stared past him. There was a haunting disquiet in her dark eyes. "She was obsessed with that wretched scold's bridle. It was rather unhealthy really, thinking about it. She wanted me to try it on once to see what it felt like."

"And did you?"

"No." She fell silent for a moment, then seemed to make up her mind to something. "She called her arthritis her 'Resident Scold' because it caused her so much nagging pain"-she tapped the pen against her teeth-"and in order to take her mind off it, she used to don the bridle as a sort of counter-irritant. That's what I mean about her unhealthy obsession with it. She wore it as a sort of penance, like a hair shirt. Anyway, when I took her off that rubbish Hendry had been prescribing and got the pain under some sort of manageable control, she took to calling me her little scold's bridle by way of a joke." She saw his incomprehension. "Because I'd succeeded in harnessing the Resident Scold," she explained.

"So what are you saying?"

"I think she was trying to tell me something."

Robin shook his head. "Why? Because she was wearing it when she died? It was a symbol, that's all."

"Of what?"

"Life's illusion. We're all prisoners. Perhaps it was her final joke. My tongue is curbed forever, something like that." He shrugged. "Have you told the police?"

"No. I was so shocked when I saw her that I didn't think about it." She raised her hands in a gesture of helplessness. "And the pathologist and the policeman latched on to what I said she always called the geraniums inside the beastly thing. Her coronet weeds. It comes from the speech about Ophelia's death and, what with the bath and the nettles, I thought they were probably right. But now I'm not so sure." Her voice tailed off and she sat staring at her desk.

Robin watched her for several seconds. "Supposing she
was
trying to say that her tongue was curbed forever. You realize it has a double meaning?"

"Yes," said Sarah unhappily, "that someone else curbed it. But that doesn't make sense. I mean, if Mathilda knew she was going to be murdered she wouldn't have wasted time donning the scold's bridle in the hall when all she had to do was run to the front door and scream her head off. The whole village would have heard her. And the murderer would have taken it off anyway."

"Perhaps it was the murderer who was saying, 'Her tongue is curbed forever.' "

"But that doesn't make sense either. Why would a murderer advertise that it's murder when he's gone to so much trouble to make it look like suicide?" She rubbed her tired eyes. "Without the scold's bridle, it would have looked straightforward. With it, it looks anything
but
. And why the flowers, for God's sake? What were they supposed to tell us?"

"You'll have to talk to the police," said Robin with sudden decision, reaching for the telephone. "Dammit, Sarah, who else knew she called you her scold's bridle? Surely it's occurred to you that the message is directed at you."

"What message?"

"I don't know. A threat, perhaps. You next, Dr. Blakeney."

She gave a hollow laugh. "I see it more in terms of a signature." She traced a line on the desk with her fingertip. "Like the mark of Zorro on his victims."

"Oh, Jesus!" said Robin, putting the receiver back. "Maybe it's wiser not to say anything. Look, it was obviously suicide-you said yourself she was unhealthily obsessed with the damn thing."

"But I was fond of her."

"You're fond of everyone, Sarah. It's nothing to be proud of."

"You sound like Jack." She retrieved the telephone, dialled Learmouth Police Station and asked for Detective Sergeant Cooper.

Robin watched with gloomy resignation-she had no idea how the tongues would wag if they ever got wind of Mathilda's nickname for her-and wondered disloyally why she had chosen to tell him before anyone else. He had the strangest impression that she had been using him. As a yardstick by which to measure other people's reactions? As a confessor?

DS Cooper had already left for home and the bored voice at the other end of the wire merely agreed to pass on Sarah's request to speak to him when he arrived the next morning. There was no urgency, after all. The case was closed.

Jack was working in his studio when Sarah's key finally grated in the lock at around eleven o'clock. He looked up as she passed his open door. "Where have you been?"

She was very tired. "At the Hewitts'. They gave me supper. Have you eaten?" She didn't come in, but stood in the doorway watching him.

He nodded absent-mindedly. Food was a low priority in Jack's life. He jerked his head at the canvas on the easel. "What do you think?"

How much simpler it would be, she thought, if she were obtuse, and genuinely misunderstood what he was trying to achieve in his work. How much simpler if she could just accept what one or two critics had said, that it was pretentious rubbish and bad art.

"Joanna Lascelles presumably."

But not a Joanna Lascelles that anyone would recognize, except perhaps in the black of her funeral weeds and the silver gold of her hair, for Jack used shape and colour to paint emotions, and there was an extraordinary turbulence about this painting, even in its earliest stage. He would go on now for weeks, working layer on layer, attempting through the medium of oils to build and depict the complexity of the human personality. Sarah, who understood his colour-coding almost as well as he did, could interpret much of what he had already blocked in. Grief (for her mother?), disdain (for her daughter?), and, all too predictably, sensuality (for him?).

Jack watched her face. "She's interesting," he said.

"Obviously."

His eyes narrowed angrily. "Don't start," he murmured. "I'm not in the mood."

She shrugged. "Neither am I. I'm going to bed."

"I'll work on the jacket tomorrow," he promised grudgingly. He made a living of sorts by designing book jackets, but the commissions were few and far between because he rarely met deadlines. The disciplines imposed by the profit motive infuriated him.

"I'm not your mother, Jack," she said coolly. "What you do tomorrow is your own affair."

But he was in the mood for a row, probably, thought Sarah, because Joanna had flattered him. "You just can't leave it alone, can you? No, you're not my mother, but by God you're beginning to sound like her."

"How odd," she said with heavy irony, "and I always thought you didn't get on with her because she kept telling you what to do. Now I'm tarred with the same brush, yet I've done the exact opposite, left you to work things out for yourself. You're a child, Jack. You need a woman in your life to blame for every little thing that goes wrong for you."

"Is this babies again?" he snarled. "Dammit, Sarah, you knew the score before you married me, and it was your choice to go through with it. The career was everything, remember? Nothing's changed. Not for me, anyway. It's not my fault if your bloody hormones are screaming that time's running out. We had a deal. No children."

She eyed him curiously. After all, she thought, Joanna must have been less accommodating than he had hoped. Well, well! "The deal, Jack, for what it's worth, was that I would support you until you established yourself. After that, all options were open. What we never considered, for that I blame myself because I relied on my own artistic judgement, was that you might
never
establish yourself. In which circumstance, I suspect, the deal is null and void. So far, I have kept you for six years, two years before marriage and four afterwards, and the choice to marry was as much yours as mine. As far as I remember we were celebrating your first major sale, your only major sale," she added. "I think that's fair, don't you? I can't recall your selling a canvas since."