Scold's Bridle

'Did she always type her letters?'

'Don't remember her ever doing it before.' He looked back through the file. 'Copper-plate script every time.'

Cooper thought of her letter to Ruth. That had been written in a beautiful hand. 'Have you any other letters from her? I'd like to compare the signatures.'

Howard licked a finger and flicked over the pages, removing several more sheets. 'You think someone else wrote it?'

'It's a possibility. There's no typewriter in her house and she was dead by the Saturday night. When could she have had it done?' He placed the pages side by side on the desk and squinted at the subscriptions. 'Well, well,' he said with satisfaction, 'the best laid schemes-you've been very helpful, Mr. Howard. May I take these with me?'

'I'll want photocopies for my records.' He was consumed with curiosity. 'Never occurred to me it wasn't kosher. What's wrong with it then?'

Cooper placed a finger on the typed letter's signature. 'For a start, he's dotted his Ts'-he pointed to the others-'and she hasn't. His 'M' is too upright and the 'G' runs on to the following 'i.'' He chuckled. 'The experts are going to have a field day on this. All in all it's a very cack-handed effort.'

'Bit of a fool, is he?'

'Arrogant, I'd say. Forgery is an art like any other. It takes years of practice to be any good.'

'I've a forensic team sifting through a dustbin full of Violet's old cinders,' Charlie told Cooper when he returned to the nick, 'and they tell me they've found the diaries. Or what's left of them at least. There's the odd scrap of paper but several quite substantial pieces of what they say is the calf-skin binding. They're still looking. They're confident of finding at least one scrap with her writing on it.' He rubbed his hands together.

'They might look for scraps of typed paper while they're about it, preferably with a Howard & Sons imprint,' said Cooper, producing his sheaf of letters. 'They made her a formal offer for her land on the first of November, and we certainly didn't find it when we went through her papers. The chances are Orloff swiped an entire file. Howard Snr has a stack of correspondence relating to Cedar Estate, and there wasn't a damn thing on the subject anywhere in the house. If there had been we might have twigged a bit sooner.'

'No one's fault but her own. I suppose she learnt never to trust anyone which is why she played everything so close to her chest. She said it all in her letter to Ruth, 'there's been too much secrecy within this family.' If she'd mentioned her plans to the solicitor even, she'd probably be alive now.'

'Still, we didn't ask the right questions, Charlie.'

The Inspector gave a dry laugh. 'If the answer's forty-two, then what's the Ultimate Question? Read The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, old son. It's harder to ask the right question than it is to come up with the answer, so don't lose any sleep over it.'

Cooper, who somewhat belatedly was trying to improve his reading, took out his notebook and jotted down the title. At the very least, it had to be more palatable than Othello which he was struggling through at the moment. He tucked his pencil back into his pocket and took Charlie through his conversation with the developer. 'It was six weeks of hard negotiating the first time before he and she could agree on a price. She used to horse-trade over the phone, apparently, rejecting every offer until he came up with one she could accept. Poor old soul,' he said with genuine feeling. 'Orloff must have thought his ship had come in when he heard her doing it the second time round. She made it so easy for him.' He tapped the typed letter. 'All he had to do was get rid of her and post that off the next day. Howard claims he and his sons lost interest immediately because he'd made it clear to her on more than one occasion that the bottom had dropped out of the market and he wasn't in a position to offer her any more.'

Charlie picked up the letter and examined it. 'There was a portable typewriter on the desk in his sitting-room,' he recalled. 'Let's get the lads out there to make a quick comparison for us. He's put all his effort into forging her signature and forgotten that typewriters have signatures, too.'

'He'd never make it that easy for us.'

But he had.

'Duncan Jeremiah Orloff ... formally charged with the murder of Mathilda Beryl Gillespie ... Saturday, November sixth...' The voice of the Duty Officer droned on relentlessly, making little impact on Cooper who knew the formula off by heart. Instead, his mind drifted towards an elderly woman, drained of her life-blood, and the rusted iron framework that had encased her head. He felt an intense regret that he had never known her. Whatever sins she had committed, it would, he felt, have been a privilege.

'...request that you be refused bail because of the serious nature of the charges against you. The magistrates will order an immediate remand into custody...'

He looked at Duncan Orloff only when the man beat his fat little hands against his breast and burst into tears. It wasn't his fault, he pleaded, it was Mathilda's fault. Mathilda was to blame for everything. He was a sick man. What would Violet do without him?

'Collapse of stout party,' muttered the Duty Officer under his breath to Cooper, listening to the rasping, anguished breaths.

A deep frown creased Cooper's pleasant face. 'By heaven, she deserved better than you, she really did,' he said to Orloff. 'It should have been a brave man who killed her, not a coward. What gave you the right to play God with her life?'

'A brave man wouldn't have had to, Sergeant Cooper.' He turned haunted eyes towards the policeman. 'It wasn't courage that was needed to kill Mathilda, it was fear.'

'Fear of a few houses in your garden, Mr. Orloff?'

Duncan shook his head. 'I am what I am'-he held trembling hands to his face-'and it was she who made me. I have spent my adult life shunning the woman I married in favour of fantasies about the one I didn't, and you cannot live in hell for forty years without being damaged by it.'

'Is that why you came back to Fontwell, to relive your fantasies?'

'You can't control them, Sergeant. They control you.' He fell silent.

'But you returned five years ago, Mr. Orloff.'