She didn't say anything.
"I'll hazard a guess that your childhood was one endless tantrum, which Mathilda attempted to control with the scold's bridle. Am I right?" He paused. "And then what? Presumably you were bright enough to work out a way to stop her using it."
Her tone was frigid. "I was terrified of the beastly thing. I used to convulse every time she produced it."
"Easily done," he said with amusement. "I did it myself as a child when it suited me. So how old were you when you worked that one out?"
Her peculiarly fixed gaze lingered on him, but he could feel the growing agitation underneath. "The only time she ever showed me any affection was when she put the scold's bridle over my head. She'd put her arms about me and rub her cheek against the framework. 'Poor darling,' she'd say, 'Mummy's doing this for Joanna.' " She turned back to the window. "I hated that. It made me feel she could only love me when I was at my ugliest." She was silent for a moment. "You're right about one thing, it wasn't until I found out that Gerald was my father that I understood why my mother was afraid of me. She thought I was mad. I'd never realized it before."
"Didn't you ever ask her why she was afraid?"
"You wouldn't even put that question if you'd really known my mother." Her breath misted the glass. "There were so many secrets in her life that I learnt very rapidly never to ask her anything. I had to make up a fantasy background for myself when I went to boarding school because I knew so little about my own." She dashed the mist away with an impatient hand and turned back into the room. "Have you finished? I've things to do."
He wondered how long he could stall her this time before the demands of her addiction sent her scurrying for the bathroom. She was always infinitely more interesting under the stress of abstinence than she ever was drugged. "Southcliffe?" he asked. "The same school Ruth's at now?"
She gave a hollow laugh. "Hardly. Mother wasn't so free with her money in those days. I was sent to a cheap finishing school which made no attempt to educate, merely groomed cattle for the cattle market. Mother had ambitions to marry me off to a title. Probably," she went on cynically, "because she hoped a chinless wonder would be so inbred himself he wouldn't notice the lunacy in me." She glanced towards the door. "Ruth has had far more spent on her than I ever had, and not because Mother was fond of her, believe me." Her mouth twisted. "It was all done to stamp out the Jew in her after my little faux pas with Steven."
"Did you love him?"
"I've never loved anyone."
"You love yourself," he said.
But Joanna had already gone. He could hear her scrabbling feverishly through the vanity case in the bathroom. For what? he wondered. Tranquillizers? Cocaine? Whatever it was, she wasn't injecting it. Her skin was flawless and beautiful like her face.
Sarah Blakeney tells me her husband is an artist. A painter of personalities. I guessed he would be something in that line. It's what I would have chosen myself. The arts or literature.
"I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another. " Funnily enough, that might have been written for Sarah. She projects herself as a frank and open person, with strong, decided views and no hidden contradictions, but in many ways she is very insecure. She positively loathes confrontation, preferring agreement to disagreement, and will placate if she can. I asked her what she was afraid of, and she said: "I was taught to be accommodating. It's the curse of being a woman. Parents don't want to be left with spinsters on their hands so they teach their daughters to say yes to everything except sex."
Times haven't changed then ...
*8*
Sarah was waiting outside the doorway of Barclays Bank in Hills Street when Keith Smollett arrived. She had her coat collar pulled up around her ears and looked pale and washed out in the grey November light. He gave her a warm hug and kissed her cold cheek. "You're not much of an advertisement for a woman who's just scooped the jackpot," he remarked, holding her at arm's length and examining her face. "What's the problem?"
"There isn't one," she said shortly. "I just happen to think there's more to life than money."
He smiled, his thin face irritatingly sympathetic. "Would we be talking Jack by any chance?"
"No, we would not," she snapped. "Why does everyone assume that my equanimity depends on a shallow, two-faced skunk whose one ambition in life is to impregnate every female he meets?"
"Ah!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded.
"Just, ah!" He tucked her hand into his arm. "Things are pretty bad at the moment, then?" He gestured towards the road. "Which way to Duggan's office?"
"Up the hill. And, no, things are not pretty bad at the moment. At the moment things are pretty good. I haven't felt so calm and so in control for years." Her bleak expression belied her words. She allowed herself to be drawn out on to the pavement.
"Or so lonely, perhaps?"
"Jack's a bastard."
Keith chuckled. "Tell me something I don't know."
"He's living with Mathilda Gillespie's daughter."
Keith slowed down and eyed her thoughtfully. "Mathilda Gillespie as in the old dear who's left you her loot?"
Sarah nodded.
"Why would he want to live with her daughter?"
"It depends who you listen to. Either because he feels guilty that I, his greedy wife, have deprived poor Joanna of her birthright, or he is protecting her and himself from my murderous slashes with a Stanley knife. No one appears to give any credence to the most obvious reason."
"Which is?"
"Common-or-garden lust. Joanna Lascelles is very beautiful." She pointed to a door ten yards ahead. "That's Duggan's office."
He stopped and drew her to one side. "Let me get this straight. Are people saying you murdered the old woman for her money?"
"It's one of the theories going the rounds," she said dryly. "My patients are abandoning me in droves." Dampness sparkled along her lashes. "It's the absolute pits if you want to know. Some of them are even crossing the road to avoid me." She blew her nose aggressively. "And my partners aren't happy about it either. Their surgeries are overflowing while mine are empty. If it goes on, I'll be out of a job."
"That's absurd," he said angrily.
"No more absurd than an old woman leaving everything she had to a virtual stranger."
"I talked with Duggan on the phone yesterday. He said Mrs. Gillespie was clearly very fond of you."
"I'm very fond of you, Keith, but I don't intend to leave you all my money." She shrugged. "I probably wouldn't have been surprised if she'd left me a hundred quid or even her scold's bridle, but leaving me the whole caboodle just doesn't make sense. I didn't do anything to deserve it, except laugh at her jokes from time to time and prescribe a few pain-killers."
He shrugged in his turn. "Perhaps that was enough."
She shook her head. "People don't dispossess their families in favour of a slight acquaintance who turns up once a month for half an hour. It's completely crazy. Old men besotted with young girls might be foolish enough to do it, but not tough old boots like Mathilda. And, if she was that way inclined, then why didn't she leave it to Jack? According to him, he knew her so well she was happy to let him paint her in the nude."
Keith felt unreasonably irritated as he pushed open the door of Duggan, Smith and Drew and ushered Sarah inside. There was, he thought, something deeply offensive about Jack Blakeney persuading a wretched old woman to strip for him. And why would she want to anyway? He couldn't get to grips with that at all. But then Blakeney's attraction, if it existed at all, was entirely lost on Keith. He preferred conventional types who told amusing anecdotes, bought their own drinks and didn't rock the boat by speaking or acting out of turn. He consoled himself with the idea that the story wasn't true. But in his heart of hearts he knew it must be. The real crippler about Jack Blakeney was that women did take their clothes off for him.