Scold's Bridle

Cooper chuckled again. 'Do you blame me? It's probably empty optimism, but I haven't quite given up on promotion, and back-handers to murder suspects would go down like a lead balloon with my governor. The future looks a lot brighter if you make Inspector.'

Jack studied him intently for several seconds, then crossed his arms over his tatty jumper. He found himself warming to this rotund, rather untypical detective with his jolly smile. 'So what was your question? Why did Mathilda sit for me with the scold's bridle on her head?' He looked at the portrait. 'Because she said it represented the essence of her personality. She was right, too.' His eyes narrowed in recollection. 'I suppose the easy way to describe her is to say she was repressed, but the repression worked both ways.' He smiled faintly. 'Perhaps it always does. She was abused as a child and grew up incapable of feeling or expressing love, so became an abuser herself. And the symbol of her abuse, both active and passive, was the bridle. It was strapped to her and she strapped it to her daughter.'

His eyes flickered towards his wife. 'The irony is that it was also a symbol of her love, I think, or those cessations from hostility that passed for love in Mathilda's life. She called Sarah her scold's bridle and she meant it as a compliment. She said Sarah was the only person she had ever met who came to her without prejudice and took her as she was.' He grinned amiably. 'I tried to explain that that was hardly something to applaud-Sarah has many weaknesses, but the worst in my view is her naive willingness to accept everyone at his or her own valuation-but Mathilda wouldn't have a word spoken against her. And that's all I know,' he finished ingenuously.

DS Cooper decided privately that Jack Blakeney was probably one of the least ingenuous men he had ever met, but he played along with him for disingenuous reasons of his own. 'That's very helpful, sir. I never knew Mrs. Gillespie myself, and it's important for me to understand her character. Would you say she was the type to commit suicide?'

'Without a doubt. And she'd do it with a Stanley knife, too. She found as much enjoyment in making an exit as she did in making an entrance. Possibly more. If she's looking at the three of us now, picking over the bones of her demise, she'll be hugging herself with delight. She was talked about in life because she was a bitch, but that's nothing to the way she's being talked about in death. She'd love every cliff-hanging moment of it.'

Cooper frowned at Sarah. 'Do you agree, Dr. Blakeney?'

'It has an absurd sort of logic, you know. She was like that.' She thought for a moment or two. 'But she didn't believe in an afterlife, or only the maggot variety which means we're all cannibals.' She smiled at Cooper's expression of distaste. 'A man dies and is eaten by maggots, the maggots are eaten by birds, the birds are eaten by cats, the cats defecate on the vegetables and we eat the vegetables. Or any permutation you like.' She smiled again. 'I'm sorry, but that was Mathilda's view of death. Why would she waste her last, great exit? I honestly believe she would have prolonged it for all it was worth and, in the process, made as many people wriggle as she could. Take that video, for example. Why did she want music and credits added if it was only to be shown after she was dead? She was going to watch it herself, and if someone walked in while she was doing it, then so much the better. She meant to use it as a stick to beat Joanna and Ruth with. I'm right, aren't I, Jack?'

'Probably. You usually are.' He spoke without irony. 'Which video are we talking about?'

She had forgotten he hadn't seen it. 'Mathilda's posthumous message to her family,' she said, with a shake of her head. 'You'd have loved it, by the way. She looked rather like Cruella De Vil out of The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Dyed black wings on either side of a white streak, nose like a beak, and mouth a thin line. Very paintable.' She frowned. 'Why didn't you tell me you knew her?'

'You'd have interfered.'

'How?'

'You'd have found a way,' he said. 'I can't paint them when you bleat your interpretations of them into my ear.' He spoke in a mocking falsetto. 'But I like her, Jack. She's really very nice. She's not half as bad as everyone says. She's a softy at heart.'

'I never talk like that,' said Sarah dismissively.

'You should listen to yourself once in a while. The dark side of people scares you, so you close your eyes to it.'

'Is that a bad thing?'

He shrugged. 'Not if you want existence without passion.'

She studied him thoughtfully for a moment. 'If passion means confrontation, then yes, I prefer existence without passion. I lived through the disintegration of my parents' marriage, remember. I'd go a long way to avoid repeating that experience.'

His eyes sparkled in his tired face. 'Then perhaps it's your own dark side that scares you. Is there a fire in there waiting to blaze out of control? A scream of frustration that will topple your precarious house of cards? You'd better pray for gentle breezes and no strong winds, my angel, or you'll find you've been living in a fool's paradise.'

She didn't respond and the room fell silent, its three occupants curiously abstracted like the portraits round the walls. It occurred to DS Cooper, fixed in fascinated immobility upon his chair, that Jack Blakeney was a terrible man. Did he devour everyone in the way he was devouring his wife? A scream of frustration that will topple your precarious house of cards. Cooper had held his own scream in check for years, the scream of a man caught in the toils of rectitude and responsibility. Why couldn't Jack Blakeney do the same?

He cleared his throat. 'Did Mrs. Gillespie ever tell you, sir, what her intentions were with regard to her will?'

Jack had been watching Sarah intently. He glanced now towards the policeman. 'Not in so many words. She asked me once what I would do if I had her money.'

'What did you say?'

'I said I'd spend it.'

'Your wife told me you despise materialism.'

'Quite right, so I'd use it to enhance my spirituality.'

'How?'