"My God!" said Jack with genuine enthusiasm. "You're going to have to let me do this portrait of you. Two thousand. Is that what we agreed?"
"You haven't answered my question," said the policeman patiently.
Jack reached for his sketchpad and flicked through to a clean page. "Just stand there for a moment," he murmured, taking a piece of charcoal and making swift lines on the paper. "That was some speech. Is your wife as decent and honourable as you are?"
"You're taking the mickey."
"Actually, I'm not." Jack squinted at him briefly before returning to his drawing. "I happen to think the relationship between the police and society is drifting out of balance. The police have forgotten that they are there only by invitation; while society has forgotten that, because it chooses the laws which regulate it, it has a responsibility to uphold them. The relationship should be a mutually supportive one; instead, it is mutually suspicious and mutually antagonistic." He threw Cooper a disarmingly sweet smile. "I am thoroughly enchanted to meet a policeman who seems to share my point of view. And, no, of course I don't think so little of Sarah that I'd allow her reputation to suffer. Is that really likely?"
"You've not been out and about much since you moved in here."
"I never do when I'm working."
"Then perhaps it's time you left. There's a kangaroo court operating in Fontwell and your wife is their favourite target. She's the newcomer, after all, and you've done her no favours by shacking up with the opposition. She's lost a goodly number of patients already."
Jack held the sketchpad at arm's length to look at it. "Yes," he said, "I'm going to enjoy doing you." He started to pack his hold-all. "It's too damn cold here anyway, and I've got enough on Joanna to finish her at home. Will Sarah have me back?"
"I suggest you ask her. I'm not paid to meddle in domestic disputes."
Jack tipped a finger in acknowledgement. "Okay," he said, "the only thing I know about Ruth is what Mathilda told me. I can't vouch for its accuracy, so you'll have to check that for yourself. Mathilda kept a float of fifty pounds locked in a cash-box in her bedside table and opened it up one day because she wanted me to go to the shop and buy some groceries for her. It was empty. I said, perhaps she'd already spent the money and forgotten. She said, no, it's what came of having a thief for a granddaughter." He shrugged. "For all I know she may have been excusing her own memory lapse by slandering Ruth, but she didn't elaborate and I didn't ask. More than that I can't tell you."
"What a disappointing family," said the Sergeant. "No wonder she chose to leave her money elsewhere."
"That's where we part company," said Jack, standing up and stretching towards the ceiling. "They are Mathilda's creations. She had no business passing the buck to Sarah."
I had an appalling shock today. I walked into the surgery, completely unprepared, and found Jane Marriott behind the counter. Why did nobody tell me they were back? Forewarned would have meant forearmed. Jane, of course, knowing our paths must cross, was as cool as ever. "Good morning, Mathilda," she said. "You're looking well." I couldn't speak. It was left to Doctor Dolittle, asinine man, to bray the good news that Jane and Paul have decided to move back to Rossett House following the death of their tenant. I gather Paul is an invalid-chronic emphysema- and will benefit from the peace and quiet of Fontwell after the rigours of Southampton. But what am I to do about Jane? Will she talk? Worse, will she betray me?
"Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, that sees into the bottom of my grief?"
I would feel less desperate if Ruth had not gone back to school. The house is empty without her. There are too many ghosts here and most of them unlaid. Gerald and my father haunt me mercilessly. There are times, not many, when I regret their deaths. But I have high hopes of Ruth. She is bright for her age. Something good will come of the Cavendishes, I'm sure of it. If not, everything I have done is wasted.
"Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! Mathilda Gillespie is saying her prayers." I have such terrible headaches these days. Perhaps it was never Joanna who was mad, but only I...
*10*
Ruth, summoned out of a chemistry lesson, sidled into the room set aside for Sergeant Cooper by her housemistress and stood with her back to the door. "Why did you have to come back?" she asked him. "It's embarrassing. I've told you everything I know." She was dressed in mufti and, with her hair swept back into a tight bun, she looked more than her seventeen years.
Cooper could appreciate her embarrassment. Any school was a goldfish bowl but a boarding school peculiarly so. "Police investigations are rarely tidy things," he said apologetically. "Too many loose ends for tidiness." He gestured towards a chair. "Sit down, Miss Lascelles."
With a bad grace, she did so, and he caught a brief glimpse of the gawky adolescent beneath the pseudo-sophistication of the outer shell. He lowered his stocky body on to the chair in front of her and studied her gravely but not unkindly.
"Two days ago we received a letter about you," he said. "It was anonymous. It claimed you were in Cedar House the day your grandmother died and that you stole some earrings. Are either of those facts true, Miss Lascelles?"
Her eyes widened but she didn't say anything.
"Since which time," he went on gently, "I have been told on good authority that your grandmother knew you were a thief. She accused you of stealing money from her. Is that also true?"
The colour drained from her face. "I want a solicitor."
"Why?"
"It's my right."
He stood up with a nod. "Very well. Do you have a solicitor of your own? If you do, you may give your housemistress the number and ask her to telephone him. If not, I'm sure she will be happy to call the one the school uses. Presumably they will charge it to the fees." He walked to the door. "She may even offer to sit in herself to safeguard your interests. I have no objection to either course."
"No," she said sharply, "I want the duty solicitor."
"Which duty solicitor?" He found her transparency oddly pathetic.
"The one the police provide."
He considered this during a prolonged and thoughtful silence. "Would you be referring to duty solicitors at police stations who act on behalf of persons who have no legal representation of their own?"
She nodded.