Jane looked surprised. "What was that for?"
"Oh, I don't know." Sarah smiled. "Standing in for my mother, perhaps. I wonder sometimes if the stand-ins aren't rather better at the job than the real thing. Mathilda did it, too, you know. She wasn't all acidulated spleen. She could be just as sweet as you when she wanted to be."
"Is that why you're looking after Ruth? As a sort of quid pro quo?"
"Don't you approve?"
Jane sighed. "I don't approve or disapprove. I just feel it's a little provocative in the circumstances. Whatever your reasons for doing it, the village has put the worst interpretation on those reasons. You do know they're saying that Joanna's about to be arrested for the murder of her mother, and that's why Ruth has gone to live with you?"
"I hadn't realized it was quite that bad." Sarah frowned. "God, they're absurd. Where do they get this rubbish from?"
"They put two and two together and make twenty."
"The trouble is"-she paused-"there's nothing much I can do about it."
"But, my dear, all that's required is an explanation of why Ruth is with you," Jane suggested, "and then you can knock these rumours on the head. There must be one, after all."
Sarah sighed. "It's up to Ruth to explain, and at the moment she's not in a position to do that."
"Then invent one," said Jane bluntly. "Give it to Mrs. Henderson when you see her this afternoon and it'll be all round the village by tomorrow evening. Fight fire with fire, Sarah. It's the only way."
Mrs. Henderson was touched by Dr. Blakeney's apology for her bad temper in the surgery, thought it very handsome of her to take the trouble to come out to her cottage, and quite agreed that if you'd been up all night looking after a seventeen-year-old showing all the symptoms of glandular fever, you were bound to be shirty the next day. Mind, she didn't quite understand why Ruth had to stay with Dr. Blakeney and her husband in the circumstances. Wouldn't it be more fitting for her to remain with her mother? Much more fitting, agreed Sarah firmly, and Ruth would prefer it too, of course, but, as Mrs. Henderson knew, glandular fever was an extremely painful and debilitating viral infection, and because of the likelihood of its recurring if the patient wasn't cared for properly and bearing in mind this was Ruth's A level year, Joanna had asked Sarah to take her in and get her back on her feet again as quickly as possible. In the circumstances, what with Mrs. Gillespie's will and all (Sarah looked suitably embarrassed), she could hardly refuse, could she?
"Not when you're the one what's got all the money," was Mrs. Henderson's considered retort, but her rheumy eyes clouded in puzzlement. "Ruth going back to Southcliffe then, when she's better, like?"
"Where else would she go?" murmured Sarah un-blushingly. "As I said, it's her A level year."
"Well, I never! There's some lies being told and no mistake. Who killed Mrs. Gillespie, then, if it weren't you and it weren't the daughter?"
"God knows, Mrs. Henderson."
"Happen He does, too, so it's a shame He doesn't pass it on. He's causing a lot of bother by keeping the information to Hisself."
"Perhaps she killed herself."
"No," said the old woman decidedly. "That I'll never believe. I don't say as I liked her very much but Mrs. Gillespie was no coward."
Sarah knew Joanna was in Cedar House, despite the stubborn silence that greeted her ringing of the doorbell. She'd seen the set white face in the shadows at the back of the dining-room and the brief flicker of recognition before Joanna slipped into the hall and out of sight. Rather more than her refusal to answer the door, it was her flicker of recognition that fuelled Sarah's anger. Ruth was the issue here, not Mathilda's will or Jack's shenanigans, and while she might have sympathized with Joanna's reluctance to open the door to the police, she could not forgive the barricading of it against the person Joanna knew was sheltering her daughter. Sarah set off grimly down the path that skirted the house. What kind of woman, she wondered, put personal enmity before concern for her daughter's welfare?
In her mind's eye, she pictured the portrait Jack was working on. He had trapped Joanna inside a triangular prism of mirrors, with her personality split like refracted light. It was an extraordinary depiction of confused identity, the more so because for each image there was a single image reflected back from the huge encompassing mirror that bordered the canvas. Sarah had asked him what the single image represented. "Joanna as she wants to be seen. Admired, adored, beautiful."
She pointed to the prism images. "And what are they?"
"That's the Joanna she's suppressing with drugs," he said. "The ugly, unloved woman who was rejected by mother, husband and daughter. Everything in her life is illusion, hence the mirror theme."
"That's sad."
"Don't go sentimental on me, Sarah, or on her either for that matter. Joanna is the most self-centered woman I have ever met. I guess most addicts are. She says Ruth rejected her. That's baloney. It was Joanna who rejected her because Ruth cried whenever Joanna picked her up. It was a vicious circle. The more her baby cried the less mclined she was to love it. She claimed Steven rejected her because he was revolted by the pregnancy, but in the next sentence she admitted she couldn't stand the way he fussed over Ruth. It was she, I think, who rejected him."
'But why? There must be a reason for it."
"I suspect it's very simple. The only person she loves or is capable of loving is herself and because her swollen belly made her less attractive in her own eyes, she resented the two people responsible for it, namely her husband and her baby. I'll put money on the fact that she's the one who found the pregnancy repulsive."
"Nothing's ever that simple, Jack. It could be something quite serious. Untreated post-natal depression. Narcissistic personality disorder. Schizophrenia even. Perhaps Mathilda was right, and she is unstable."
"Maybe, but if she is, then Mathilda was entirely to blame. From what I can gather, she kowtowed to Joanna and Joanna's histrionics from day one." He gestured towards the painting. "When I said that everything in her life is illusion, what I meant was: everything is false. This is the fantasy she wants you to believe, but I'm ninety-nine per cent certain she doesn't believe it herself." He laid his forefinger on the central triangle of the prism, which as yet contained nothing. "That's where the real Joanna will be, in the only mirror that can't reflect her stylized image of herself."
Clever stuff, thought Sarah, but was it true? "And what is the real Joanna?"
He stared at the painting. "Utterly ruthless, I think," he said slowly, "utterly and completely ruthless about getting her own way." The kitchen door was locked but the key that Mathilda had hidden under the third flowerpot to the right was still there and, with an exclamation of triumph, Sarah pounced on it and inserted it into the Yale lock. It was only after she'd opened the door and was removing the key to lay it on the kitchen table that she wondered if anyone had told the police that entry into Cedar House was that easy if you knew what was under the flowerpot. She certainly hadn't, but then she had forgotten all about it until the need to get in had jogged her memory. She had used it once, months ago, when Mathilda's arthritis was so bad that she hadn't been able to get out of her chair to open the front door.
Gingerly, she laid the key on the table and stared at it. Intuition told her that whoever had used the key last had killed Mathilda Gillespie, and she didn't need to be Einstein to work out that if their fingerprints had been on it she had just destroyed them with her own. "Oh Jesus!" she said with feeling.
"How dare you come into my house without asking." announced Joanna in a tight little voice from the hall doorway.
Sarah s glare was so ferocious that the other took a step backwards. "Will you get off your ridiculous high horse and stop being so pompous," she snapped. "We're all in deep shit here and the only thing you ever do is stand on your wretched dignity."