‘Darling!’ Betrice protested. ‘Well, Ingrid is volatile. She was diagnosed as manic-depressive well before she lost her baby. She told me all about it. She said she tended to brood for hours on end on something trivial. She was prescribed all sorts of powerful drugs. Demerol? Then of course she had the nervous breakdown and that was – mega. They feared for her life. She kept harming herself. She wrote a frightfully disturbing poem called “Madrigals for Mad Girls”. She started having delusions. Once she imagined her doctor was Ralph in disguise and she tried to stab him in the eye with the paper knife from his desk. She underwent all sorts of very special treatments and it took her ages to recover.’
‘She never recovered,’ Colville said emphatically. ‘Au contraire.’
‘I know she’s been particularly horrid to you, darling, but do try to be fair.’ Beatrice sighed. ‘She still takes anti-depressants – when she remembers, that is. Her room is full of pills. Well, taking care of me seemed to help her. Len is not convinced, but she did get better for a while. She put on weight. She started taking an interest in clothes and flowers and things. We went places. That picture on the mantelpiece – Len, would you be so kind? Thank you, darling. Look at us! Just look at us. We are at Cliveden. Doesn’t Ingrid look in the pink?’
‘She certainly seems different from the time I met her,’ Antonia admitted.
The photograph showed a radiant Beatrice in her wheel-chair, a mink coat draped around her shoulders, clutching a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, and a plumper, smiling Ingrid, her eyes a little puffy, in a Yum-Yum haircut and encased in a silk magenta-coloured trouser suit with an embroidered front.
‘She looks like an ornament the Astors might have brought back from their travels in the Mysterious East,’ Payne murmured.
‘Yes! Doesn’t she just?’ Beatrice leant towards Antonia and whispered, ‘Your husband says such clever things.’
Colville’s smile, Antonia observed, was beginning to look as if it had been left on his face by an oversight.
Beatrice had become wistful once more. ‘We had such good times. All right. She’s deteriorated since.’
‘Tell them about the bitches,’ Colville prompted.
‘Ingrid had two dogs,’ Beatrice began after a pause. ‘A golden retriever and a pit bull – Pip and Taylor – both bitches, as it happens. She had them put down for being “control freaks”. She explained the dogs had been putting her under an awful lot of pressure. The funny thing is that Ingrid is something of a control freak herself. You saw her in Hay-on-Wye, Antonia. You noticed the way she acted? I am infinitely grateful to Ingrid, mind, but sometimes it did feel as though she’d injected me with some paralysing fluid. I am probably being fanciful, but every so often I’d get this most peculiar feeling. How can I explain it? As though I’d been cocooned in an undetectable glaze of fixative. Goodness, that does sound weird, doesn’t it?’
Payne murmured, ‘Perhaps she did inject you with something?’
‘I bet she did,’ said Colville. ‘She gave Bee all sorts of injections – vitamins, painkillers and so on. She had plenty of opportunity to do something to her.’
‘Well, there were times when I did feel my power of choice diminishing – my rational judgement about things weakening -’ Beatrice broke off. ‘My main worry at the moment is that Ingrid might do something terrible to Ralph if somehow she were to learn that he isn’t dead but living next door.’
‘What’s the connection between Ingrid and Ralph?’ Antonia was frowning. ‘And how did Ingrid and you meet?’
‘Oh, didn’t I say? I am hopeless at explaining things. Sorry, my dear. It was the accident. The accident brought us together,’ Beatrice said. ‘I was in hospital – bedridden. The worst time of my life! Ingrid paid me a visit. She sat beside my bed and stroked my hand. She said she intended to take care of me. It seemed the most natural thing in the world, it honestly did, at least at the time. I knew at once she was looking for a substitute, but that didn’t really bother me much.’
‘A substitute? What substitute?’ Payne looked puzzled.
‘For her dead child of course,’ said Beatrice. ‘ She lost her baby, you see. In the accident.’
8
Doppelganger
Payne stared. ‘In the same accident?’
‘Yes – she was in the other car. The one we collided with. She was seven months pregnant at the time. She survived but she lost her baby. She had a miscarriage.’
‘How terrible,’ Antonia said.
‘Oh, it was. Doesn’t bear thinking about!’ Beatrice flapped her hands. ‘It was the most tragic thing. Poor Ingrid was all alone in the world when it happened. She wasn’t married. She hated her parents. She had run away from home. She wasn’t in what is known as a “stable relationship” either. A caring, loving, understanding husband or boyfriend might have helped her recover, but that man – Ingrid’s boyfriend – the child’s father – was no good. He’d never really loved Ingrid.’
‘He didn’t care about the child?’
‘Not one bit, Antonia. Poor Ingrid, on the other hand, wanted a child more than anything else in the world, so she lied to him that she was on the pill. I don’t think he ever forgave her for it. Oh, it is all so sordid. Anyhow, she got pregnant, which had been her intention all along. It made her extremely happy. She started buying things for the baby – clothes, a cot, a pram, various toys.’ Beatrice pressed her handkerchief against her lips.
‘I don’t think you should get upset now, really.’ Colville put a protective arm round her shoulders.
Beatrice sniffed. ‘She said she’d never been so happy… But then the accident happened and she lost the baby. And then – then she was dealt another blow – the doctors told her she couldn’t have any more children. That’s when it happened. She said it felt like a wire snapping inside her brain.’
‘She swore she’d kill Renshawe, didn’t she?’ Colville said portentously.
Beatrice didn’t answer. She had covered her face with her hands.
There was a pause. ‘Ralph was drunk that night, but he isn’t the only one to blame.’ Beatrice looked from Antonia to Payne, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘I haven’t told you the whole story. You see, it was my fault too.’
‘Nonsense,’ Colville said robustly. The next moment he looked up. ‘Was that the front door?’
‘No, it was my fault. I was tipsy that night. Not as drunk as Ralph was but tipsy nevertheless. We had been drinking at Baudolino’s Bar in Greek Street. We’d had such a marvellous time. Ralph made me laugh. He said such outrageous things! I was very much taken by him, I must admit. How I laughed. I was quite hysterical with it. That’s always a bad sign, isn’t it?’
‘I think Ingrid’s back,’ Colville said.
Beatrice didn’t seem to hear. ‘I didn’t stop Ralph from driving. I should have done, but didn’t. I had actually brought a bottle of champagne with me. We kept drinking from it. I encouraged him to drive fast. If I had been a mature, responsible kind of person, I wouldn’t have allowed Ralph to get into the car, but I wasn’t. I was intent on having a good time. I wanted to please Ralph. We could have taken a cab. Don’t you see? I might have prevented the accident. Only I didn’t.’
‘Did you ever tell Ingrid that part of the story?’ Antonia asked after a pause.
‘Goodness, no. I gave her a completely different version of events. How I’d begged Ralph not to drive that night. How I had implored him. How I had wept. How I had tried to hide the car keys. I told Ingrid a pack of whoppers. Well, I am as bad as Ralph. I as good as killed Ingrid’s baby. What’s the matter now, darling?’ Beatrice asked irritably as Colville rose abruptly from his seat. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to check,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I think Ingrid’s come back.’
Beatrice blinked. ‘Come back?’ Her expression changed and she clapped her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh my God. The door -’ She shook her forefinger. ‘Look! It’s ajar! Oh, Len, why didn’t you shut it?’ She gesticulated frantically.