Scold's Bridle

interested to know how you gave her the barbiturates. The pathologist estimates four or five and she would never have taken that many herself.'

Duncan's gaze rested briefly on his wife's shocked face, before shifting to Cooper's. 'Old women have two things in common,' he said with a small smile. 'They drink too much and they talk too much. You'd have liked Mathilda, Sergeant, she was a very amusing woman, although the memory of her was a great deal more attractive than the real thing. It was a disappointment coming back. Age has few compensations, as I think I told you.' His pleasant face beamed. 'On the whole I prefer male company. Men are so much more predictable.'

'Which is convenient,' remarked Cooper to the Blakeneys in Mill kitchen that evening, 'since he'll probably spend the rest of his life in prison.'

'Assuming you can prove he did it,' said Jack. 'What happens if he doesn't confess? You'll be left with circumstantial evidence, and if his defence has any sense they'll go all out to convince the jury Mathilda committed suicide. You don't even know why he did it, do you?'

'Not yet.'

'Doesn't Violet know?' asked Sarah.

Cooper shook his head, thinking of the wretched woman they'd abandoned at Wing Cottage, wringing her hands and protesting there must be some mistake. 'Claims she doesn't.'

'And you didn't find the diaries?'

'We never really expected to. He'd have destroyed them long ago.'

'But there's so much unexplained,' said Sarah in frustration. 'How did he get her to take the sleeping pills? Why did he do it? Why didn't Violet wake up? Why didn't he tell you Ruth had been there if he wanted her implicated? And then the bit I really don't understand-why on earth did Jane have a row with Mathilda that day?'

Cooper glanced at Jack, then took out his cigarettes. 'I can make a guess at some answers,' he said, planting a cigarette in the side of his mouth and flicking his lighter to the tip. 'Both Mathilda and Violet like a tipple in the evening and they both drank whisky. I think the chances are it was Mathilda who first introduced Violet to it, made it respectable as it were in the face of Duncan's disapproval, but in any case Violet was certainly in the habit of dozing off in her armchair. The night Mathilda died, Violet went out for the count during Blind Date which comes on at six thirty or thereabouts, woke up briefly some time after ten o'clock, when Duncan shook her and told her she was snoring through Match of the Day, went up to bed and slept like the dead for the rest of the night.' He tapped ash into his cupped palm. 'That was definitely no doze. That was a barbiturate-induced stupor which is why Duncan leaving the room wouldn't have wakened her. I think he greeted Violet when she got home after a tiring day in Poole with a stiff whisky, laced with sleeping tablets, waited till she fell asleep, then trotted next door and used the same concoction on Mathilda. She kept the drink in the kitchen. How simple just to say: Don't stir yourself. Let me do the honours and get you a top-up.'

'But where did he get the sleeping pills from? He's on my list and I've never prescribed any for him or Violet.'

'Presumably he used the ones you prescribed for Mrs. Gillespie.'

Sarah looked doubtful. 'When could he have taken them, though? Surely she'd have noticed if any were missing.'

'If she did,' he said dryly, 'then she probably assumed it was her own daughter who was responsible. With Mrs. Lascelles's sort of dependence she must have been raiding her mother's drug cupboard for years.'

Jack looked thoughtful. 'Who told you?'

'As a matter of fact, you did, Jack. But I wasn't too sure what she was on until we searched the house yesterday for the diaries. She's not very good at hiding things, but then she's damn lucky she hasn't fallen foul of the police before. She will, though, now that the money's dried up.'

'I didn't tell you anything.'

Cooper tut-tutted. 'You've told me everything you know about Mrs. Lascelles, right down to the fact that you, personally, despise her. I stood and looked at her portrait while we were discussing Othello and Iago, and all I could see was a desperately weak and fragmented character whose existence-' he used his hands to depict a border '- depends on external stimulation. I compared the pallid colours and the distorted shapes of Joanna's portrait with the vigour of Mathilda's and Sarah's and I thought, you've painted a woman without substance. The only reality you perceive is a reflected reality, in other words, a personality that can only express itself artificially. I guessed it had to be drink or drugs.'

'You're lying through your teeth,' said Jack bluntly. 'That bastard Smollett told you. Dammit, Cooper, even I didn't see all that and I painted the bloody picture.'

Cooper gave a deep chuckle. 'It's all there, my friend, believe me. Mr. Smollett told me nothing.' His face sobered. 'But you had no business withholding that information, either of you, not in a murder enquiry.' He looked at Sarah. 'And you should never have confronted her with it the other afternoon, if you don't mind me saying so, Doctor. People like that are shockingly unpredictable and you were alone in the house with her.'

'She's not on LSD, Cooper, she's on Valium. Anyway, how do you know I confronted her with it?'

'Because I'm a policeman, Dr. Blakeney, and you were looking guilty. What makes you think she's on Valium?'

'She told me she was.'

Cooper raised his eyes to heaven. 'One day, Dr. Blakeney, you will learn not to be so gullible.'

'Well, what is she on then?' demanded Jack. 'I guessed tranquillizers, too. She's not injecting. I sketched her in the nude and there wasn't a mark on her.'

'It depends what you were looking for. She's rich enough to do the thing cleanly. It's dirty needles and dirty lavatories that cause most of the problems. Where did you look anyway? Arms and legs?' Jack nodded. 'The veins around her groin?'

'No,' he admitted. 'I was having enough trouble as it was, I didn't want to encourage her by staring at the damn thing.'

Cooper nodded. 'I found half a pharmacy under her floorboards, including tranquillizers, barbiturates,