Scold's Bridle

'I asked nothing from her, you know. A few shared memories perhaps. Peace even. After forty years I expected very little.'

Cooper eyed him curiously. 'You said you killed her out of fear. Was that what you fantasized about? Being so afraid of her that you could bring yourself to kill her?'

'I fantasized about making love,' he whispered.

'To Mathilda?'

'Of course.' He gathered his tears in the palms of his hands. 'I've never made love to Violet. I couldn't.'

Good God, thought Cooper with disgust, did the man have no pity at all for his poor little wife? 'Couldn't ot wouldn't, Mr. Orloff? There is a difference.'

'Couldn't.' The word was barely audible. 'Mathilda did certain things'-he shivered like a man possessed-'which Violet was offended by'-his voice broke-'it was less unpleasant for both of us if I paid for what I wanted.'

Cooper caught the Duty Officer's gaze above Duncan's head, and gave a cynical laugh. 'So this is going to be your defence, is it? That you murdered Mathilda Gillespie because she gave you a taste for something only prostitutes could supply?'

A thready sigh puttered from the moist lips. 'You never had cause to be afraid of her, Sergeant. She didn't own you because she didn't know your secrets.' The sad eyes turned towards him. 'Surely it's occurred to you that when we bought Wing Cottage our solicitor discovered the outline planning permission on the remaining Cedar House land? We went ahead with the purchase because Mathilda agreed to a clause in the contract, giving us a power of veto over any future decision.' He gave a hollow laugh. 'I blame myself because I knew her so much better than Violet ever did. The clause was worth less than the paper it was written on.' Briefly, he pressed his lips together in an effort to control himself. 'She was obliged to tell me about her approach to Howard because she was going to need my signature on the final document, but when I told her that Violet and I would object to the proposed plan, which put the nearest house ten yards from our back wall, she laughed. 'Don't be absurd, Duncan. Have you forgotten how much I know about you?' '

When he didn't go on, Cooper prompted him. 'She was going to blackmail you into signing?'

'Of course.' He placed his damp palms to his breasts. 'We were in the drawing-room. She left me for a couple of minutes to fetch a book from the library, and when she came back she read extracts to me.' Distress wheezed from him in quickened breaths. 'It was one of her diaries-full of such terrible lies and obscenity-and not just about me-Violet, too-intimate details that Violet had told her when she was tipsy. 'Do you want me to photocopy this, Duncan, and spread it round the village?' she asked. 'Do you want the whole of Fontwell to know that Violet is still a virgin because the demands you made of her on your wedding night were so disgusting that she had to lock herself in the bathroom?' '-his voice faltered-'she was very entertained by it all-couldn't put the book down once she'd started-read me pieces about the Marriotts, the vicar, the poor Spedes-everyone.' He fell silent again.

'So you went back later to read the others?' suggested Cooper.

Duncan shrugged helplessly. 'I was desperate. I hoped I'd find something I could use against her, I doubted there'd be anything of value in the early ones, simply because I'd have to find independent proof to challenge her, and, bar references to Joanna's drug addiction, Ruth's stealing and her belief that Sarah Blakeney was the daughter she'd had by Paul Marriott, the later ones were simply a catalogue of her dislikes. They were the product of a diseased mind, and she used them, I think, as a channel for expunging her poison. If she hadn't been able to express herself on paper'-he shook his head-'she was quite mad, you know.'

'Still,' said Cooper ponderously, 'murder was an extreme solution, Mr. Orloff. You could have used her daughter's and her granddaughter's problems against her. She was a proud woman. She wouldn't have wanted those made public, surely?'

The sad eyes fixed on him again. 'I never planned to murder her, or not till that Saturday morning when Jane Marriott went to see her. I intended to threaten her with divulging what I knew to Dr. Blakeney. But as I told you, it was fear that killed her. A brave man would have said: 'publish and be damned.' '

He had lost Cooper. 'I don't understand.'

'She told Jane Marriott that things would get worse before they got better because she knew James had been reading her private papers-it never occurred to her it was me-then she went on to say that she had no intention of keeping quiet any longer.' He wrung his hands. 'So, of course, I went round the minute Jane left and asked her what she meant by 'she had no intention of keeping quiet any longer'?' His face was grey with fatigue. 'She picked up the scold's bridle and taunted me with it. 'Mathilda Cavendish and Mathilda Gillespie did not write their diaries for fun, Duncan. They wrote them so that one day they could have their revenge. They will not be gagged. I shall see to that.'' He paused. 'She really was mad,' he insisted, 'and she knew it. I said I'd call a doctor for her so she laughed and quoted Macbeth at me. 'More needs she the divine than the physician.' ' He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. 'And I thought how all of us, who would be destroyed by her diaries, needed the divine more than the physician, and I made up my mind during that terrible afternoon to play ... God.'

Cooper was deeply sceptical. 'But you must have planned it all in advance because you stole the sleeping pills beforehand.'

He sighed. 'They were for me-or Violet-or both of us.'

'So what made you change your mind?'

'Sergeant, I am, as you rightly say, a coward and I realized that I could not destroy the diaries without destroying her as well. She was the poison, the diaries were only the outward manifestation. At least I have allowed all the others to keep their dignity.'

Cooper thought of the ones he cared about, Jack and Sarah, Jane and Paul Marriott; Ruth above all.

'Only if you plead guilty, Mr. Orloff, otherwise this will all come out in court.'

'Yes. I owe Violet that much,' he said.

After all, it is easy to manipulate a man if all he wants is something as worthless as love. Love is easily given when it is the body that's invaded and not the mind. My mind can withstand anything. I am Mathilda Cavendish and what does Mathilda care when the onfy thing she feels is contempt?