"We never really expected to. He'd have destroyed them long ago."
"But there's so much unexplained," said Sarah in frustration. "How did he get her to take the sleeping pills? Why did he do it? Why didn't Violet wake up? Why didn't he tell you Ruth had been there if he wanted her implicated? And then the bit I really don't understand-why on earth did Jane have a row with Mathilda that day?"
Cooper glanced at Jack, then took out his cigarettes. "I can make a guess at some answers," he said, planting a cigarette in the side of his mouth and flicking his lighter to the tip. "Both Mathilda and Violet like a tipple in the evening and they both drank whisky. I think the chances are it was Mathilda who first introduced Violet to it, made it respectable as it were in the face of Duncan's disapproval, but in any case Violet was certainly in the habit of dozing off in her armchair. The night Mathilda died, Violet went out for the count during Blind Date which comes on at six thirty or thereabouts, woke up briefly some time after ten o'clock, when Duncan shook her and told her she was snoring through Match of the Day, went up to bed and slept like the dead for the rest of the night." He tapped ash into his cupped palm. "That was definitely no doze. That was a barbiturate-induced stupor which is why Duncan leaving the room wouldn't have wakened her. I think he greeted Violet when she got home after a tiring day in Poole with a stiff whisky, laced with sleeping tablets, waited till she fell asleep, then trotted next door and used the same concoction on Mathilda. She kept the drink in the kitchen. How simple just to say: Don't stir yourself. Let me do the honours and get you a top-up."
"But where did he get the sleeping pills from? He's on my list and I've never prescribed any for him or Violet."
"Presumably he used the ones you prescribed for Mrs. Gillespie."
Sarah looked doubtful. "When could he have taken them, though? Surely she'd have noticed if any were missing."
"If she did," he said dryly, "then she probably assumed it was her own daughter who was responsible. With Mrs. Lascelles's sort of dependence she must have been raiding her mother's drug cupboard for years."
Jack looked thoughtful. "Who told you?"
"As a matter of fact, you did, Jack. But I wasn't too sure what she was on until we searched the house yesterday for the diaries. She's not very good at hiding things, but then she's damn lucky she hasn't fallen foul of the police before. She will, though, now that the money's dried up."
"I didn't tell you anything."
Cooper tut-tutted. "You've told me everything you know about Mrs. Lascelles, right down to the fact that you, personally, despise her. I stood and looked at her portrait while we were discussing Othello and Iago, and all I could see was a desperately weak and fragmented character whose existence-" he used his hands to depict a border "-depends on external stimulation. I compared the pallid colours and the distorted shapes of Joanna's portrait with the vigour of Mathilda's and Sarah's and I thought, you've painted a woman without substance. The only reality you perceive is a reflected reality, in other words, a personality that can only express itself artificially. I guessed it had to be drink or drugs."
"You're lying through your teeth," said Jack bluntly. "That bastard Smollett told you. Dammit, Cooper, even I didn't see all that and I painted the bloody picture."
Cooper gave a deep chuckle. "It's all there, my friend, believe me. Mr. Smollett told me nothing." His face sobered. "But you had no business withholding that information, either of you, not in a murder enquiry." He looked at Sarah. "And you should never have confronted her with it the other afternoon, if you don't mind me saying so, Doctor. People like that are shockingly unpredictable and you were alone in the house with her."
"She's not on LSD, Cooper, she's on Valium. Anyway, how do you know I confronted her with it?"
"Because I'm a policeman, Dr. Blakeney, and you were looking guilty. What makes you think she's on Valium?"
"She told me she was."
Cooper raised his eyes to heaven. "One day, Dr. Blakeney, you will learn not to be so gullible."
"Well, what is she on then?" demanded Jack. "I guessed tranquillizers, too. She's not injecting. I sketched her in the nude and there wasn't a mark on her."
"It depends what you were looking for. She's rich enough to do the thing cleanly. It's dirty needles and dirty lavatories that cause most of the problems. Where did you look anyway? Arms and legs?" Jack nodded. "The veins around her groin?"
"No," he admitted. "I was having enough trouble as it was, I didn't want to encourage her by staring at the damn thing."
Cooper nodded. "I found half a pharmacy under her floorboards, including tranquillizers, barbiturates, amphetamines and sizeable quantities of heroin and syringes. She's chronically addicted, I'd say, presumably has been for years. And, I'll tell you this for free, her mother's allowance alone couldn't possibly have funded what she'd got stashed away, and nor could fancy flower arranging. I think Duncan and Violet's anonymous letter said it all, Joanna is a high-class prostitute turning tricks to fund a very expensive habit, begun, I would guess, when she married Steven Lascelles."
"But she looks so..." Sarah sought for the right word, "unsullied."
"Not for much longer," said Cooper cynically. "She's about to discover what it's like to live in the real world where there's no Mathilda to keep the coffers topped up. It's when you get desperate that you start getting careless." He patted Sarah's hand. "Don't waste your sympathy on her. She's been a taker all her life and, rather belatedly, her mother has forced her to face up to it."
Of all absurd things, Gerald has developed a conscience. "No more, Matty, please," he said, bursting into tears. "We'll go to hell for what we've done." The ingratitude of the man beggars belief. Does he think I get any pleasure from being pawed by a drooling half-wit? It's Father's doing, of course. He lost his temper yesterday and started calling Gerald names. Now Gerald says he's going back to the slut down the road who first seduced him, and this time he says he'll marry her. "Grace will give Gerry a baby, Matty," he blubbered, "and Gerry wants a baby." Why, oh why, was my grandfather so stupid? How much more sensible it would have been to weather the embarrassment of certifying Gerald than to pretend to the world he was normal.
I sought out Father in the library, drunk as usual, and told him bluntly that Gerald wasn't playing any more. "You're such a fool," I stormed at him. "Grace won't be bought off a second time. Don't imagine she hasn't guessed by now that she'll get more by marrying Gerald than by taking your bribes." Father cringed away from me as he always does. "It's not my fault," he whined, "it's your grandfather's fault. He should have mentioned me by name in his will instead of referring to Gerald's nearest male relative." I could have murdered him then. The same old story, never his fault, always someone else's. But in one way he's right. Why did my grandfather create a trust to prevent his idiot first-born disposing of his wealth without clarifying that my father must inherit afterwards? And why did it not occur to him that Gerald might repeat the terms of the will parrot-fashion to any scheming little bitch who cared to listen? Grace must have worked out by now that Gerald is worth marrying just to produce a son who will inherit everything. I suppose my grandfather had no idea that imbeciles were so interested in sex nor, indeed, that they were capable of fathering children.
I made Father wear the scold's bridle all evening and he's promised to hold his tongue in future. Gerald, of course, whimpered in the corner, afraid that I would make him wear it, too, but I promised that if we heard no more talk of going to live with Grace, I would be nice to him. Now he is pliable once more.
How strange it is that these two, without a brain between them, can see the scold's bridle for the humiliation it is, while Duncan, who has some pretensions to intelligence, is disgustingly excited by it. For Gerald and Father it is a necessary penance for the sins they wish to commit. For Duncan, it is a fetish that unlocks his potency. He is invariably aroused by wearing it. But what a gutless worm he is. He begs me on his knees to marry him while he allows Violet and her parents to continue with the marriage arrangements. He is not prepared to risk losing her miserable dowry, unless he is first assured of mine.