He took a drink from his glass. "Do you know anything about her being a prostitute?"
"No."
"Or what she spends her money on?"
"No."
"Any ideas?"
"It's nothing to do with me. Why don't you ask her?"
"I have. She told me to mind my own business."
Sarah chuckled. "I'd have done the same."
He stared at her. "Has anyone ever told you you're too good to be true, Dr. Blakeney?" He spoke with a touch of sarcasm.
She held his gaze, but didn't say anything.
"Women in your position drive their husband's car through their rival's front door, or take a chainsaw to the rival's furniture. At the very least, they feel acute bitterness. Why don't you?"
"I'm busy shoring up my house of cards," she said cryptically. "Have some more wine." She filled her own glass, then his. "It's not bad, this one. Australian Shiraz and fairly inexpensive."
He was left with the impression that, of the two women, Joanna Lascelles was the less puzzling. "Would you have described yourself and Mrs. Gillespie as friends?" he asked.
"Of course."
"Why 'of course'?"
"I describe everyone I know well as a friend."
"Including Mrs. Lascelles."
"No. I've only met her twice."
"You wouldn't think it to listen to you."
She grinned. "I have a fellow-feeling with her, Sergeant, just as I have with Ruth and Jack. You don't feel comfortable with any of us. Joanna or Ruth might have done it if they didn't know the will had been changed, Jack or I might have done it if we did. On the face of it, Joanna appears the most likely which is why you keep asking me questions about her. I imagine you've quizzed her pretty thoroughly about when she first learnt who her father was, so you'll know that she threatened her mother with exposure?" She looked at him enquiringly, and he nodded. "At which point, you're thinking, Mathilda turned round and said, any more threats like this and I'll cut you out altogether. So, in desperation, Joanna dosed her mother with barbiturates and slit the old lady's wrists, unaware that Mathilda had altered the will already."
"What makes you think I don't feel comfortable with that scenario?"
"You told me Joanna was in London that night."
He shrugged. "Her alibi is very shaky. The concert ended at nine thirty which meant she had plenty of time to drive down here and kill her mother. The pathologist puts the time of death somewhere between nine p.m. on the Saturday night and three a.m. the following morning."
"Which does he favour?"
"Before midnight," Cooper admitted.
"Then her defence barrister will tear your case to shreds. In any case, Mathilda wouldn't have bothered with pretence. She'd have told Joanna straight out she'd changed the will."
"Perhaps Mrs. Lascelles didn't believe her."
Sarah dismissed this with a smile. "Mathilda always told the truth. That's why everyone loathed her."
"Perhaps Mrs. Lascelles just suspected that her mother might change the will."
"It wouldn't have made any difference as far as Joanna was concerned. She was preparing to use her father's codicil to fight her mother in court. At that stage, it didn't matter a twopenny damn who Mathilda left the money to, not if Joanna could prove she had no right to it in the first place."
"Perhaps it wasn't done for money. You keep wondering about the significance of the scold's bridle. Perhaps Mrs. Lascelles was revenging herself."
But Sarah shook her head. "She hardly ever saw her mother. I think Mathilda mentioned that she came down once in the last twelve months. It would be a remarkable anger that could sustain itself at fever pitch over such a lengthy cooling period."
"Not if Mrs. Lascelles is unstable," murmured Cooper.
"Mathilda wasn't killed in a mad frenzy," said Sarah slowly. "It was all done with such meticulous care, even down to the flowers. You said yourself the arrangement was difficult to reproduce without help."
The Sergeant drained his glass and stood up. "Mrs. Lascelles works freelance for a London florist. She specializes in bridal bouquets and wreaths. I can't see her finding a few nettles and daisies a problem." He walked to the door. "Good night, Dr. Blakeney. I'll see myself out."
Sarah stared into her wine glass as she listened to his footsteps echoing down the hall. She felt like screaming, but was too afraid to do it. Her house of cards had never seemed so fragile.
There was a conscious eroticism to every movement Joanna made and Jack guessed she had posed before, probably for photographs. For money or for self-gratification? The latter, he thought. Her vanity was huge.
She was obsessed with Mathilda's bed and Mathilda's bedroom, aping her mother's posture against the piled pillows. Yet the contrast between the two women could not have been greater. Mathilda's sexuality had been a gentle, understated thing, largely because she had no interest in it; Joanna's was mechanical and obtrusive, as if the same visual stimuli could arouse all men in the same way on every occasion. Jack found it impossible to decide whether she was acting out of contempt for him or out of contempt for men in general.
"Is your wife a prude?" she demanded abruptly after a long period of silent sketching.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because what I'm doing shocks you."
He was amused. "Sarah has a very open and healthy libido and far from shocking me, what you're doing offends me. I resent being categorized as the sort of man who can be turned on by cheap pornographic posturing."
She looked away from him towards the window and sat in strange self-absorption, her pale eyes unfocused. "Then tell me what Sarah does to excite you," she said finally.
He studied her for a moment, his expression unreadable. "She's interested in what I'm trying to achieve in my work. That excites me."
"I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about sex."
"Ah," he said apologetically, "we're at cross purposes then. I was talking about love."
"How very twee." She gave a small laugh. "You ought to hate her, Jack. She must have found someone else or she wouldn't have kicked you out."
"Hate is too pervasive," he said mildly. "It leaves no room for anything else." With an idle flick of his fingers he tossed a torn page of his sketchpad towards her and watched it flutter to the bed beside her. "Read that," he invited. "If you're interested, it's my assessment of your character after three sittings. I jot down my impressions as I go along."
With a remarkable lack of curiosity-most women, he thought, would have seized on it with alacrity-she retrieved it and gave a cursory glance to both sides of the paper. "There's nothing on it."
"Exactly."
"That's cheap."
"Yes," he agreed, "but you've given me nothing to paint." He passed her the sketchpad. "I don't do glossy nudes and so far that's all you've offered me, bar a dreary and unremitting display of Electra complex, or more accurately demi-Electra complex. There's no attachment to a father, only a compulsive hostility towards a mother. You've talked about nothing else since I've been here." He shrugged. "Even your daughter doesn't feature. You haven't mentioned the poor kid once since she went back to school."
Joanna got off the bed, wrapped herself in her dressing-gown and walked to the window. "You don't understand," she said.
"Oh, I understand," he murmured. "You can't con a conman, Joanna."
She frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"One of the most colossal egos I've ever come across, and God knows I should recognize one when I see it. You may persuade the rest of the world that Mathilda wronged you, but not me. You've been screwing her all your life," he tipped a finger at her, "although you probably didn't know until recently just why you were so damn good at it."