Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

A few regulars came to the service but most of the people I knew stayed away, whether because of the snow or the fear of awkwardness if a Cosway came, I couldn't tell. Mr Trewith, he who heard confessions, took the service, and the architect's wife was there, fetching in a Russian fur hat, but Felix didn't come. Ella watched for him, turning her head from the pew he had once or twice sat in to the door and back again several times until Mr Trewith came down the chancel steps and began telling us that the scripture moved us in sundry places. Alone of the congregation, Mrs Waltham and the architect's wife came up to Ella afterwards and said how sorry they were. After they had gone I asked Ella what she was called.

‘The architect's wife? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows. I used to be so jealous because Felix admired her. Well, I still am. I can't bear him even looking at another woman.’

And then he was upon us.

A meeting was unavoidable. He had been to see Eric and was coming down the Rectory drive to the gate. We were leaving the churchyard by the gate which was next to it, as near as the entrances to two semi-detached houses.

‘Good morning, ladies,’ he said.

We might have been any two women from the village, June Prothero's mother perhaps and Mrs Cusp. His tone was polite, indifferent, cheerful. In spite of the cold, he wore no coat over his check flannel shirt and jeans. Something about his appearance made me think of the leading actor in one of those western films and I felt I should be looking about me for his horse. What Ella felt showed plainly in her face. She had gone very white and suddenly she looked much older than she was. She lifted her eyes to Felix's face and, to my alarm, took hold of him by his upper arms, clutching the stuff of his shirt.

‘Oh, Felix, how can you speak to me like that?’

He appealed to me. ‘What have I done?’ I think he genuinely didn't know. ‘I'm sorry if I've put my foot in it. Believe me, I'm pretty upset myself about what happened to Winifred.’

He was one of the few people I have ever known with no feeling of empathy whatsoever. He simply seemed to believe that other people felt the same about things, everything , as he did. In this, curiously, he was behaving like a high-functioning autistic. Ella was near to tears and when she spoke her voice rose. Mr Trewith, coming down the path with Bill Cusp, turned his head sharply away, as did his companion.

‘Winifred's dead but I'm alive,’ Ella said. ‘Have you forgotten what we've been to each other?’ Her voice rose. She held on to his shirt, shaking it and shaking him. ‘Have you, Felix? I love you. I want to be with you again. You said you loved me. Didn't you? Didn't you?’

‘I never did,’ he said. ‘I'm sure I never did.’

He seemed to stop in mid-sentence. ‘I never do say it,’ was what I am sure he was holding back. He was not in the least embarrassed. I suspect he had been through this kind of thing too many times for awkwardness. Slightly shaking his head, he tried to prise apart the fingers that clutched his shirt.

‘Let go,’ he said. ‘Now, come on. Let go of me.’

‘I will never let you go!’

Incredibly, he began to laugh. It sounded real. It sounded as if he found the situation hilarious. I turned away then, I walked away, unwilling to do a Cosway and tell Ella to keep her voice down. It would anyway have been too late. She was beyond control, his laughter touching the switch that released her screaming and loosened her hands. She began to beat them against his chest but he ducked and ran away from her across the Memorial Green.

‘As if all the devils in hell were after him,’ Mrs Cusp remarked to me. She had been part of the little crowd which gathered to watch the fun. I took Ella by the arm and put her into the passenger seat of the car, where she rocked herself back and forward, sobbing and clutching handfuls of her hair. Without waiting for her to calm down – something which might have taken a long time – I drove us back to Lydstep Old Hall.

The drawing room, which had been out of bounds for three days, by Monday morning was once again made accessible to the family. Ida had made a fire in the grate, logs piled precariously high but the fender securely in place. The police had performed all their tasks and tests and cleaned up, the sergeant recommending Ida to have the place redecorated if she wanted all the stains eradicated. The spots and stains and splashes could still be seen, though bleached to a yellowish-brown so that, if you didn't know, you wouldn't have identified them as made by flying blood. At first I thought that all remains of the Roman vase had gone too, that priceless object I had seen John stroking reverently, but crossing to the window, I spotted a green shard winking in the snow-light. It was half embedded in the carpet, its sharp point sticking up out of the faded pile. That is how I happen to have it still, not from souvenir-hunting but because I picked it up for fear someone would tread on it. I put it in the pocket of my skirt. By the time I found it again Mrs Cosway had turned me out of Lydstep Old Hall.

The police came back just as she and Ida were returning to the drawing room, Ida with new knitting wool and needles, the bloodstained grey discarded. This time it was Strickland and the sergeant. A calm and tragic Ella, a kind of Mourning Becomes Electra figure, brought them in. Strickland said, ‘I'd like a few words with Miss Kvist.’

Without saying so, he indicated by not taking a seat and holding the door open, that the interview was to be in private.

‘You can talk to her here,’ said Mrs Cosway. ‘She has nothing to say that she can't say in front of us.’

‘I won't keep you more than a minute or two, Miss Kvist,’ Strickland said. ‘The purpose of my visit is to ask you if we might borrow your diary.’

Mrs Cosway's face was frightening. I got up and Strickland followed me out of the room, leaving the sergeant behind. The request had shaken me, as I think it would most people. Unless we are the sort of people who keep diaries for future publication, we think of this record as more private than our thoughts and more secret than the most awkward moments of our pasts.

‘Will it help John Cosway?’ I said as we went upstairs.

‘Does he need help?’

I said I didn't know. Could he tell me where John was and what had become of him?

‘He hasn't been charged,’ Strickland said. ‘I don't know yet if he will be. At present he is in hospital.’ The sight of my stricken face must have made him say quickly, ‘As a voluntary patient.’

‘Does Mrs Cosway know all this?’

‘Of course. I'm surprised no one has told you.’

I wasn't surprised. We went into my bedroom. Bright sunshine streamed through my windows, melting the long icicles which hung, dripping, from the eaves. I took the diary out of the drawer where I kept it and handed it to him.

‘We have a translator lined up,’ he said.

Dreading his answer, I asked him if it would be produced as evidence in court at John's trial; to my immense relief he shook his head, saying it was for the eyes of the investigating officers only and for counsel. My knowledge of English law was almost nil. If Strickland thought my ignorance profound when I asked him if John could be executed, he gave no sign of it. He seemed unaffected by my drawings.

‘The death penalty for murder came to an end three years ago,’ he said, leafing through the diary with its incomprehensible language. ‘It was suspended under the Abolition of Death Penalty Act of 1965.’

I asked him what the punishment now was.

‘Imprisonment for life.’

He moved towards the door. ‘A beautiful day for the time of year,’ he said. ‘Now that your duties here have ended, for the time being at least, you may be tempted to leave. Please remember we would like you to remain for the present or let us know at once if you – well, change your place of residence.’