Peter Robinson - Cold Is The Grave

“Drink?” Rosalind asked.

“Small whiskey, please.”

“You might as well have a large one. I don’t like the stuff, and there’s no one else to drink it.”

“I have to drive.”

She raised her eyebrow as she poured. “Really?”

“Really.” Christ, Banks thought, she was flirting. He would have to tread carefully. He accepted the crystal glass and sat down in the only uncovered armchair. The room was as sterile as ever, and a couple of packing crates sat on the floor. The baby grand was covered by a white sheet, as was most of the other furniture. He took a sip of whiskey. It was Glenfiddich, not one of his favorites. At the moment, though, anything would do.

“I was just doing some packing,” Rosalind said. “Do you know how remarkably little I have to show for all these years?” She poured herself a large gin and tonic, clearly not her first of the evening, pulled a sheet off one of the armchairs and sat down opposite Banks. As she did so, he caught a glimpse of black silk between her legs. He looked away.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“First?”

“That’s a start.”

“I’m going down to Barnstaple after the funeral to be with Benjamin. We’ll be staying with my parents for a while. I can’t stand hanging about up here any longer. I feel like some crazy old woman all alone in a Gothic mansion. It’s too big to be here alone in. I’ve even started talking to the furniture and the creaks in the woodwork.”

Banks smiled. “And then, after Barnstaple?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to reinvent myself, won’t I? I rather fancy the coast. A little Devon fishing village, for example. I can become the mysterious woman who paces the widow’s walk in a long black cloak.”

“That was Lyme Regis,” Banks said. “ The French Lieutenant’s Woman .”

“I know. I saw the film. But this is my version.”

“What about your job?”

“That’s not important. It never has been. Jerry’s was the only important career in the family, and now that’s gone, none of it really matters.”

“And Benjamin?”

“He can walk with me. It would make me more mysterious. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be flippant. It’s just…” She ran her hand across her brow. “I’ve probably had too much to drink.” She frowned. “Why are you here?”

“I’ve got something to tell you.”

Her eyes widened. “Have you caught him? Emily’s killer?”

Banks swallowed. This was going to be harder than he had imagined. “Yes,” he said. “We’ve got a confession.”

“Clough?”

That was another bridge he’d have to cross: Mal Licious . “No. Not Clough.” He leaned forward and cupped his drink in both hands, staring into the pale liquid and catching a whiff of it. “Look, there’s no easy way to say this.”

“What?”

“It was Ruth.”

“Ruth? But… she can’t… I mean…”

“She confessed. She said she didn’t mean to kill Emily, just to give her a scare.”

“Is that true?”

“I honestly don’t know. She’s contradicted herself quite a bit.”

“ Ruth .” Rosalind fell silent and Banks let it stretch. Wind lashed the rain against the windowpanes the way it had the first night he came to the Riddle house. It seemed like years ago.

“Do you want to hear what happened?” Banks asked.

Rosalind looked at him. There was fear in her large blue eyes. “I suppose I’d better,” she said. “Look, do smoke if you want to. I know you’re a smoker.”

“It’s all right.”

“Suit yourself.” Rosalind got up a little unsteadily and pulled a packet of Dunhills and a box of matches from her handbag. She lit up, refreshed her gin and tonic and sat down again.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” said Banks.

“I didn’t. Not for twenty years. But I’ve started again.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

Banks lit up too. “It’s bad for you.”

“So’s life.”

There was no answer to that. Slowly, Banks told her the whole story about Ruth Walker’s twisted, private campaign of hatred and revenge against the Riddle family. First he told her about Ruth’s less-than-perfect life with the overzealous Walkers and about the fire that killed them. Then he told her how Ruth had discovered that Barry Clough was her father and had hooked him up with Emily out of spite, then put the tabloid on the scent of a scandal, and he told her how Ruth arranged to meet Emily and give her the poisoned cocaine, how she didn’t even need to be there, that it was enough for her simply to imagine Emily’s pain and shame as she humiliated herself. As he spoke, what little color there had been left Rosalind Riddle’s face and her eyes filled with tears. They didn’t fall, just gathered there at the rims, waiting, magnifying her despair. Rosalind left her drink and her cigarette untouched as she listened. A long column of ash gathered and fell onto the hardwood floor when a slight tremor passed through her fingers.

When Banks had finished, Rosalind sat in silence for a while, taking it all in, digesting it as best she could, shaking her head slowly as if disagreeing with some inner voice. Then she knocked back the rest of her drink and whispered, “But why? Why did she do it? Can you answer me that one?”

“She’s ill.”

“That’s no reason. Why? Why did she do it? Why did she hate us so much? Didn’t I do my best for her? I didn’t have an abortion. I gave her life. How the hell was I to know her adoptive parents would turn out to be religious fanatics?”

“You weren’t.”

“So why does she blame me?”

Ruth’s last words still echoed in Banks’s mind from that afternoon: Because they took her back. She broke their hearts and they took her back . “Because Ruth sees everything from her own point of view, and only that,” he said. “All she knows is how things affect her , how things hurt her , how she was deprived. In her way of looking at the world, everything was either done for her or against her. Mostly it was against her. She doesn’t know any different, doesn’t recognize people’s normal feelings.”

Rosalind laughed harshly. “My daughter the psychopath?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. Not as simple as that. She enjoyed exercising power over people, inflicting pain, yes, but she didn’t have the detachment of a psychopath. She was obsessed, yes, but not psychopathic. And she knows the difference between right and wrong. You’d have to ask a psychiatrist, of course, but that’s my opinion.”

Rosalind got up and fixed herself another drink. She offered Banks one, but he refused. He still had a quarter inch in the bottom of his glass, and that would do him nicely.

“Will she be put in a mental hospital?” Rosalind asked.

“She’ll be sent for psychiatric evaluation, for what it’s worth. They’ll determine what’s best done with her.”

“There’ll be a trial? Prison?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Rosalind shook her head. “Emily’s dead. Jerry’s dead. Ruth’s a murderer. Before Emily died she lived with the man who left me pregnant with Ruth more than twenty years ago. Then I find out that my daughter, my abandoned daughter Ruth, led her into it on purpose, just to humiliate us all in her eyes, so that she could be the only one to know we were all living a lie. Then she killed her. I had two daughters, and one murdered the other. How do you expect me to put all that together? How can I possibly make sense of it all?” She took a long sip of gin and tonic.

Banks shook his head. “I don’t know. In time, perhaps.”

“Remember the first time we met,” Rosalind said, crossing her long legs and leaning back in her chair so that a smooth white stretch of thigh showed. Her voice was a little slurred.