"No."
"I have to tell you, Mr. Blakeney, that according to this report she had the marks of a stranglehold on her neck when the car that answered the nine-nine-nine call arrived at Cedar House. Therefore someone did try to strangle her, and she says that someone was you." He paused, inviting Jack to answer. When he didn't, he tried a different approach. "Were you in Cedar House at approximately ten thirty this morning?"
"Yes."
"Did you put your hand about Mrs. Joanna Lascelles's throat?"
"Yes."
"Is she justified in believing that you were trying to strangle her?"
"Yes."
"Were you trying to strangle her?"
"No."
"Then explain it to me. What the hell were you doing?"
"Showing you lot where you've been going wrong again. Mind you, it's not the most sensible thing I've done, and I wouldn't have done it at all if I hadn't been so pissed off by that jerk of an Inspector last night." His eyes narrowed angrily at the memory. "I don't give a toss about myself, matter of fact I rather hope he decides to prosecute and give me my day in court, but I do care about Sarah and I care very much indeed at the moment about Ruth. He treated them both like shit and I made up my mind then that enough was enough. Joanna's past saving, I suspect, but her daughter isn't, and I want the poor kid free to put this bloody awful mess behind her." He took a deep angry breath. "So I sat up last night and did what you should have done, worked out who killed Mathilda and why. And believe me it wasn't difficult."
Charlie did believe him. Like Cooper, he was beginning to find Jack irresistible. "Mrs. Lascelles," he said with conviction. "She's always been top of the list."
"No, and I satisfied myself of that this morning. I agree she's quite capable of it. She has an almost identical personality to her mother, and if Mathilda could murder to get what she wanted, then Joanna could, too. You don't grow up in an atmosphere of extreme dysfunction and emerge normal at the end of it. But Joanna's relationship with Mathilda was very ambivalent. Despite everything, I suspect they were actually rather fond of each other. Perhaps, quite simply, their fondness was based on mutual understanding, the devil you know being more acceptable than the devil you don't."
"All right," said Charlie patiently. "Then who did kill Mrs. Gillespie?"
"I can't prove it, that's your job. All I can do is take you through what I worked out last night." He took a moment to organize his thoughts. "You've concentrated entirely on Sarah, me, Joanna and Ruth," he said, "and all because of the will. Not unreasonable in the circumstances-but if you take us out of the equation then the balance of probability shifts. So let's assume she wasn't killed for money and take it from there. Okay, I don't believe she was killed in anger either. Anger is a violent, hot-blooded emotion and her death was too well planned and too meticulous. Too symbolic. Whoever murdered her may well have been angry with her, but it wasn't done because someone's patience had finally run out." He glanced at Jones who nodded. "Which leaves what? Hatred? She was certainly disliked by a lot of people but as none of them had killed her before, why decide to do it then? Jealousy?" He shrugged eloquently. "What was there to be jealous of? She was a virtual recluse, and I can't believe Jane Marriott stored her jealousy for years to have it erupt suddenly in November. So, at the risk of stating the obvious, Mathilda must have been murdered because someone wanted her out of the way."
Jones had difficulty keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. "I think we can agree on that," he said.
Jack stared at him for a moment. "Yes, but why? Why did someone want her out of the way? What had she done or what was she going to do that meant she had to be killed? That's the question you've never asked, not outside the context of the will at least."
"Because I don't find it quite so easy, as you apparently do, to ignore it."
"But it is just a will. Thousands of people make them every week and thousands of people die every week. The fact that Mathilda's was unusually radical becomes completely irrelevant if you absolve Joanna, Ruth, Sarah and me of her death. No one else is directly affected by the way she chose to leave her money."
Cooper cleared his throat. "It's a good point, Charlie."
"All right," he conceded. "Why was she killed then?"
"I don't know."
Charlie raised his eyes to heaven. "God give me strength!" he growled savagely.
Cooper chuckled quietly to himself. "Get on with it, Jack, before you give the poor man apoplexy," he suggested. "We're all running out of patience on this one. Let's take it as read that the will wasn't the motive and that neither the Lascelles women nor you and your wife were involved. Where does that leave us?"
"With Mathilda wearing the scold's bridle. Why? And why did it have half a hedgerow carefully entwined through it? Isn't that what persuaded you it wasn't suicide?"
Cooper nodded.
"Then the logical conclusion has to be that the murderer never intended you to think it was suicide. I mean we're not talking about a moron here, we're talking finesse and careful planning. My guess is that someone knew Mathilda thought Sarah was her daughter, knew that both Mathilda and Joanna had been conditioned by the scold's bridle in their childhoods, knew that Joanna was a florist and knew, too, that 'scold's bridle' was Mathilda's nickname for Sarah. Hence the contraption on her head and the King Lear imagery. If you put all that together with the fact that Ruth was in the house that day, then the aim must surely have been to focus your attention on Sarah, Joanna and Ruth-Lear's three daughters in other words. And that's exactly what happened, even if it was the will that set you thinking along those lines because you mistook the symbolism for Ophelia's coronet weeds. You mustn't forget how close Mathilda played the will to her chest. As far as anyone knew, Joanna and Ruth were going to share the estate between them. Sarah's possible claim as the long-lost daughter was nothing but a wild card when the murder took place so, for the murderer, it came as a sort of bonus."
Charlie frowned. "I still don't understand. Were we supposed to arrest one of them? And which one? I mean, was your wife indicated because of the scold's bridle, was Joanna indicated because of the flowers, or was Ruth indicated because she was there?"
Jack shrugged. "I'd say that's the whole point. It doesn't matter a damn, just so long as you focus your attention on them."
"But why?" snarled Charlie through gritted teeth.
Jack looked helplessly from him to Cooper. "There's only one reason that I can see, but maybe I've got it all wrong. Hell dammit!" he exploded angrily. "I'm not an expert."
"Confusion," said Cooper stoutly, a man ever to be relied upon. "The murderer wanted Mrs. Gillespie dead and confusion to follow. And why would they want confusion to follow? Because it would be much harder to proceed with any kind of normality if the mess surrounding Mrs. Gillespie's death wasn't sorted out."
Jack nodded. "Sounds logical to me."
It was Charlie's turn to be lost in Cooper's flights of fancy. "What normality?"
"The normality that follows death," he said ponderously. "Wills in other words. Someone wanted the settling of Mrs. Gillespie's estate delayed." He thought for a moment. "Let's say she was about to embark on something that someone else didn't like, so they stopped her before she could do it. But let's say, too, that whatever it was could be pursued by her beneficiary the minute that beneficiary came into the estate. With a little ingenuity, you throw a spanner in the works by pointing a finger at the more obvious legatees and grind the process to a halt. How does that sound?"
"Complicated," said Charlie tartly.
"But the pressure was to stop Mathilda," said Jack. "The rest was imaginative flair which might or might not work. Think of it as a speculative venture that could, with a little bit of luck, produce the goods."