Scold's Bridle

were you a Cleo Laine fan, Jack? I thought Sarah was the aficionado.' He pressed the eject button on the recorder and removed the tape to read the handwritten label on the front. 'Well, well. Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is the one I made for her before you married. Does she know you've got it?'

Jack surveyed him through half-closed lids. He was on the point of telling him to put his hackles down, his customary response to Smollett's invariably critical opening remarks, when he thought better of it. For once, he was pleased to see the pompous bastard. In fact, he admitted to himself, he was so damn pleased he could be persuaded to change the habits of the last six years and greet him as a friend instead of a marriage-breaking incubus. He stuck his paintbrush in a jar of turpentine and wiped his hands down the front of his jumper, producing a huge paint-smeared palm as a peace-offering. 'I suppose Sarah's sent you.'

Keith pretended not to see the hand, instead eyed the sleeping-bag, abandoned in a dishevelled heap in a corner, then pulled forward a chair. 'No,' he said, folding himself into it. 'I left her in Poole. She doesn't know I'm here. I've come to try and talk some sense into you.' He studied the portrait. 'Mrs. Lascelles presumably.'

Jack crossed his arms. 'What do you think?'

'Of her or the portrait?'

'Either.'

'I only saw six inches of her through the gap in the door.' He cocked his head on one side to examine the painting. 'You've been pretty heavy-handed with the purples. What is she, a nymphomaniac? Or is that just wishful thinking on your part?'

Jack lowered himself gingerly into the chair opposite-the cold and the floorboards were wreaking havoc on the muscles of his back-and wondered if the gentlemanly thing was to bop Keith on the nose now or wait till the man was on guard. 'Not all the time,' he said, answering the question seriously, 'only when she's stoned.'

Keith digested this in silence for a moment or two. 'Have you told the police?'

'What?'

'That she's a user.'

'No.'

'Then I think it's better all round if you never told me and I never heard it.'

'Why?'

'Because I'm on the side of law and order and I don't have your freedom to behave as I like.'

'Don't blame your profession for your lack of freedom, Smollett,' Jack growled, 'blame yourself for selling out to it.' He nodded towards the house. 'She needs help and the best person to give it to her is the one she won't see. Sarah, in other words. What good would a policeman be to her?'

'He could prevent her murdering someone else.'

Thoughtfully, Jack rubbed his unshaven jaw. 'Meaning that because she's degenerate enough to use drugs, she's ipso facto degenerate enough to kill her mother. That's crap, and you know it.'

'It gives her a damn sight better motive than the one Sarah's been saddled with. It's expensive to feed a habit, not to mention the effect it has on the personality. If she didn't kill the old woman for money, then she's probably unpredictable enough to have done it out of sudden fury.'

'You'd have no qualms about briefing a barrister with that codswallop either, would you?' murmured Jack.

'No qualms at all, particularly if it's Sarah's neck that ends up on the line.' Keith turned the cassette in his fingers, then reached out to put it beside the recorder. 'You do know she's worried sick about losing her patients and being arrested for murder, I suppose, while you're here mooning over a drug-addicted nymphomaniac? Where's your loyalty, man?'

Was this Sarah talking? Jack wondered. He hoped not. 'Mooning' was not a word he recognized as part of her vocabulary. She had too much self-respect. He gave a prodigious yawn. 'Does Sarah want me back. Is that why you're here? I don't mind admitting I'm pretty fed up with freezing my balls off in this miserable dump.'

Keith breathed deeply through his nose. 'I don't know what she wants,' he said, bunching his fists in his lap. 'I came because I had an absurd idea that you and I could discuss this mess in an adult way without either of us needling the other. I should have known it was impossible.'

Jack squinted at the bunched fists, while doubting that Keith could ever be provoked into using them. 'Did she tell you why she wanted a divorce?'

'Not precisely.'

He linked his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. 'She took against me when she had to arrange an abortion for my lover. It's been downhill ever since.'

Keith was genuinely shocked. That explained Sarah's bitterness all right. With a shake of his head, he pushed himself out of his chair and stood by the door, gazing out across the garden. 'If I wasn't so sure I'd lose, I'd invite you out there for a thrashing. You're a shit, Jack. JE-SUS!' he said, as the full import of what the man had said slowly dawned. 'You had the bloody nerve to make Sarah murder your baby. That is so damn sick I can hardly believe it. She's your wife, for God's sake, not some sleazy back-street abortionist slaughtering wholesale for money. No wonder she wants a divorce. Don't you have any sensibilities at all?'

'Clearly not,' said Jack impassively.

'I warned her not to marry you.' He turned back bludgeoning the air with his finger because he hadn't the courage to bludgeon Jack with a fist. 'I knew it wouldn't last, told her exactly what to expect, what sort of a man you were, how many women you'd used and discarded. But not this. Never this. How could you do such a thing?' He was almost in tears. 'Dammit, I wouldn't even turn my back on the baby, but to make your own wife responsible for its murder. You're sick! Do you know that? You're a sick man.'

'Put like that, I rather agree with you.'

'If I have my way you won't get a penny out of this divorce,' he said ferociously. 'You do realize I'm going to