Scold's Bridle

'Ah!'

'What's that supposed to mean?' she demanded.

'Just, ah!' He tucked her hand into his arm. 'Things are pretty bad at the moment, then?' He gestured towards the road. 'Which way to Duggan's office?'

'Up the hill. And, no, things are not pretty bad at the moment. At the moment things are pretty good. I haven't felt so calm and so in control for years.' Her bleak expression belied her words. She allowed herself to be drawn out on to the pavement.

'Or so lonely, perhaps?'

'Jack's a bastard.'

Keith chuckled. 'Tell me something I don't know.'

'He's living with Mathilda Gillespie's daughter.'

Keith slowed down and eyed her thoughtfully. 'Mathilda Gillespie as in the old dear who's left you her loot?'

Sarah nodded.

'Why would he want to live with her daughter?'

'It depends who you listen to. Either because he feels guilty that I, his greedy wife, have deprived poor Joanna of her birthright, or he is protecting her and himself from my murderous slashes with a Stanley knife. No one appears to give any credence to the most obvious reason.'

'Which is?'

'Common-or-garden lust. Joanna Lascelles is very beautiful.' She pointed to a door ten yards ahead. 'That's Duggan's office.'

He stopped and drew her to one side. 'Let me get this straight. Are people saying you murdered the old woman for her money?'

'It's one of the theories going the rounds,' she said dryly. 'My patients are abandoning me in droves.' Dampness sparkled along her lashes. 'It's the absolute pits if you want to know. Some of them are even crossing the road to avoid me.' She blew her nose aggressively. 'And my partners aren't happy about it either. Their surgeries are overflowing while mine are empty. If it goes on, I'll be out of a job.'

'That's absurd,' he said angrily.

'No more absurd than an old woman leaving everything she had to a virtual stranger.'

'I talked with Duggan on the phone yesterday. He said Mrs. Gillespie was clearly very fond of you.'

'I'm very fond of you, Keith, but I don't intend to leave you all my money.' She shrugged. 'I probably wouldn't have been surprised if she'd left me a hundred quid or even her scold's bridle, but leaving me the whole caboodle just doesn't make sense. I didn't do anything to deserve it, except laugh at her jokes from time to time and prescribe a few pain-killers.'

He shrugged in his turn. 'Perhaps that was enough.'

She shook her head. 'People don't dispossess their families in favour of a slight acquaintance who turns up once a month for half an hour. It's completely crazy. Old men besotted with young girls might be foolish enough to do it, but not tough old boots like Mathilda. And, if she was that way inclined, then why didn't she leave it to Jack? According to him, he knew her so well she was happy to let him paint her in the nude.'

Keith felt unreasonably irritated as he pushed open the door of Duggan, Smith and Drew and ushered Sarah inside. There was, he thought, something deeply offensive about Jack Blakeney persuading a wretched old woman to strip for him. And why would she want to anyway? He couldn't get to grips with that at all. But then Blakeney's attraction, if it existed at all, was entirely lost on Keith. He preferred conventional types who told amusing anecdotes, bought their own drinks and didn't rock the boat by speaking or acting out of turn. He consoled himself with the idea that the story wasn't true. But in his heart of hearts he knew it must be. The real crippler about Jack Blakeney was that women did take their clothes off for him.

The meeting dragged on interminably, bogged down in technical details about the 1975 family provision legislation, which, as Duggan had warned Mathilda, might entitle Joanna, as a dependent, to claim reasonable provision for maintenance. 'She ignored my advice,' he said, 'and instructed me to draw up the will leaving all her assets at the time of her death to you. However, it is my considered opinion that in view of the allowance she was paying her daughter and the fact that Mrs. Lascelles does not own her own flat, Mrs. Lascelles has a good case in law for claiming maintenance. In which case a capital sum now, without prejudice, is worth consideration. I suggest we take counsel's opinion on it.'

Sarah lifted her head. 'You're jumping the gun a little. I haven't yet said that I'm prepared to accept the bequest.'

He could be very direct when he chose. 'Why wouldn't you?'

'Self-preservation.'

'I don't follow.'

'Probably because you haven't had a policeman parked on your doorstep for the last three weeks. Mathilda died in very mysterious circumstances and I'm the only person who stands to gain by her death. I'd say that makes me rather vulnerable, wouldn't you?'

'Not if you didn't know about the bequest.'

'And how do I prove that, Mr. Duggan?'

He smiled in his amiable way. 'Let me put it to you another way, Dr. Blakeney, how will refusing the bequest prove that you didn't murder her? Won't everyone just say you've taken fright because your attempt to make it look like suicide didn't work?' He paused for a moment, but went on when she didn't say anything. 'And no one will applaud you for your magnanimity, you know, because the money won't go to Mrs. Lascelles or her daughter but to