Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

I thought perhaps I had misheard. English colloquialisms sometimes eluded me at that time and I wasn't even sure what ‘blessing’ meant, though it was a word I had heard often enough on Eric's lips. She couldn't have meant the killing of Winifred had some sort of good aspect – could she?

‘Well, look at it this way, Kerstin. You and I are friends, aren't we, so I think I can speak frankly. Winifred was behaving terribly badly. She'd have made poor Eric a hopeless wife and in my opinion she was using Felix unforgivably. Honestly, is she that much of a loss?’

I said nothing. Starting to wonder if others among the Cosways were not madder than John, I picked up the diary, closed it and put it out of Ella's reach. She had a groomed appearance that morning as if the whole of her, hair, hands, clothes and her skin itself, had been brushed and smoothed. I soon saw why.

‘Now I want your advice, Kerstin. Tell me honestly what you feel. Do you think it's too early for me to – well, resume my relationship with Felix? I mean, should I ring up the pub and leave him a message?’

She took my silence and blank look for encouragement.

‘Of course, you'll say that at first he may just want to talk. He'll have no one to talk all this over with. I mean, he can hardly discuss it with Eric, can he? Wouldn't he welcome the chance to meet me and be alone with me and have a real heart-to-heart? And after that things should go back to their old footing.’

The last thing she really wanted was my honest opinion. I would, anyway, have been afraid to give it, it was too violent and condemnatory. Holier-than-thou it might well have been and Mrs Cosway justified. At that moment it seemed to me that almost anyone would have been holier than Ella but at the same time I felt I was dealing with someone far younger than myself, more a child than a woman. I said, carefully restraining myself, ‘It would be wiser to wait a week or two. I would let him make the first move.’

‘Oh, no, Kerstin, I know him. In that case, he wouldn't make a move at all.’ Like most people seeking advice, she had determined before she asked on the course she meant to take. ‘I think I'll ring the pub around midday and say it's Tamara. He'll know it's me because he'll know it can't be Winifred.’

I said there was no doubt about that.

‘Thanks, anyway. For your advice, I mean. You've helped me clear my mind. I'll phone at lunchtime. He may even be in the pub and come to the phone.’

She returned in a little while to say the police wanted to speak to me but there was some difficulty as to where this interview should take place. I said that perhaps the dining room would do.

‘Oh, Kerstin, I'm so sorry but Mother's in there covering all the presents up with sheets and Ida's busy in the kitchen.’

This was probably the first time I knew Mrs Cosway to do anything that could be remotely construed as housework. ‘Then they'd better come up here.’

They came up, the same young sergeant and a different older man, a detective superintendent whose name I do remember. It was Strickland. He had been in my room no more than a minute before he, like Ella, picked up the diary but, unlike her, asked what it was. I told him.

‘Look if you like,’ I said.

He looked, smiled, closed it and made no comment. I had to say it, though I was hoarse with fear and a kind of shyness.

‘John didn't kill her.’

Strickland said, very gently, ‘You weren't there, were you, Miss Kvist?’

I had to say I wasn't. I was asked a lot of questions about where in fact I had been when the attack happened, what had been said and how much I had seen. I answered as best I could but all the time I was wondering what was in store for me when I finally went downstairs. At some point I had to eat. It seemed that I was not welcome in the dining room or the kitchen. Strickland and the other man left and I sat in the window, watching them get into their car and drive away. I wanted very much to phone Mark. By this time he would know what had happened at Lydstep Old Hall, he would have heard it on the radio or read about it in the paper.

If all this was happening today, I would have access to the Internet and the means to send emails. Eating would not be a problem. The White Rose probably has a restaurant now as well as serving bar meals and there would be at least one other place to eat in Windrose. Every inhabitant of Lydstep would be offered counselling, for good or ill. The police would have sent a family liaison officer to be with us all. None of this was the case thirty-five years ago.

Eventually, because I could hardly stay in my room indefinitely, I went slowly downstairs. The sound of a furious argument reached me as I came down into the hall. The gist of it seemed to be that Ella was insisting on her right to use the phone while Mrs Cosway was equally adamantly shouting at her that it was the wrong time of day and lunch was ready. I approached the dining room, anxious to appear neither timid nor assertive and finding it hard to strike the middle way. Ida was serving meat loaf, mashed potatoes and very bright green peas. She looked at her mother, Mrs Cosway met her eyes and then looked at me.

‘Your lunch is on the kitchen table.’ With the prong of a fork Ida picked up a pea she had dropped on the table.

‘I don't believe this,’ Ella said. ‘You can't do this.’

‘My mistake was in not doing it from the start,’ said Mrs Cosway. ‘We should never have allowed her to eat with us.’

It is said that your feelings can't be hurt by someone you dislike and don't admire. I disliked Mrs Cosway and certainly had never admired her but I was hurt. Tears pricked my eyelids and I went quickly out so that no one should see. Two slices of meat loaf, a scoop of mashed potatoes and a spoonful of peas awaited me on a plate on the kitchen table. Four tinned peach halves were in a bowl, covered by an inverted saucer. My appetite had entirely gone. As I was fetching my coat, hat and snowboots from upstairs, I thought for the first time that this was to have been Winifred's wedding day.

It was very cold but Swedes are used to cold and conditioned not to make a fuss about it. A sky like the one that day, a thick yellowish-grey as if made of some solid substance like pea soup, is often described as being full of snow. I expected it to start as I walked down the hill but none fell. Windrose seemed emptier than usual on a Saturday, as if everyone had been driven indoors by the shock and manner of Winifred's death. But the cause may only have been the bitter cold.

Two women I didn't know were in the shop. Wordless and unsmiling, they turned to look at me. I expected the girl behind the counter to make some remark about the events at Lydstep Old Hall but she said nothing beyond an offhand ‘thanks' when I paid her for the brown loaf, piece of cheese and chocolate bars I bought. In the phone box outside the post office I phoned Mark but I hadn't enough change to talk to him for long and – foolishly, perhaps – I said nothing about being sent to Coventry (a phrase I learnt from Ella that day) or banished to eat in the kitchen. We were still constrained with each other and a little awkward, our frankness gone. Once I would have said to him that when the police would let me, I would come to him in London and stay, but those words were no longer possible.

In spite of the cold, I was reluctant to go back to Lydstep before I had to. The White Rose was about to close and I was afraid that unless I quickly got away I might encounter Felix Dunsford leaving the saloon bar. There, though, I later found out I did him an injustice, for he had stayed away from the pub that day. I walked across the Memorial Green. The architect and his wife had thrown out their Christmas tree but no one had collected it and it lay, brown and forlorn, on their garage drive. On the Rectory gate was the painted sign Felix had made for Winifred, frost still clinging to it. Eric's car stood on the curved drive outside the front door. I was sure there must be some etiquette laying down the correct procedure for behaving towards someone whose bride-to-be has been murdered, but I had no idea what this might be. I rang the bell, expecting a friend or relative to answer it, but Eric came himself.