Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

In spite of what Ella had said, I knew Mrs Cosway wouldn't apologize to me. I wouldn't have known how to react if she had, saying sorry would be such a departure from the norm for her. She went as far to compensate by asking me how I was, an inquiry to which I am certain she wanted no reply, so I only smiled and took my cup of coffee from Ida.

‘I don't know how much you have heard about what's happening to my son,’ Mrs Cosway said. ‘Of course there's so much tittle-tattle in this village that one can't keep anything dark for a moment.’

I hadn't heard any gossip, I said, but the police had told me he was in hospital.

‘He has probably appeared in the magistrates' court by now. Of course, nobody tells me anything. They haven't the courtesy for that. His trial proper may not be for a long time.’ Mrs Cosway looked hard at me, then from one daughter to the other, as if expecting a chorus of support. ‘If it takes place at all.’

‘Don't be so cryptic, Mother,’ said Ella.

‘I was merely leading up to what must be a very shocking disclosure, Ella. I never have believed it necessary to call a spade a bloody shovel without preamble.’ There could be no mistaking from the way Mrs Cosway leaned towards me, lifting her head, that I was being particularly addressed. ‘It is most probable, indeed a foregone conclusion, that John will be found unfit to plead.’

The triumph in her face was chilling. ‘I don't know what that means,’ I said.

‘It's no good asking me.’ Mrs Cosway's assumed graciousness was quickly giving place to her usual manner. ‘I don't know the ins and outs of these things. All it means to me is that since John is in an advanced state of schizophrenia, in other words, he's stark mad, he won't be able to understand the charge or say whether he's guilty or not guilty or, probably, even remember what he's done. The trial will stop and he'll be sent to a prison for the criminally insane. There you are.’

I think that even Ida and Ella were shocked. This, after all, was John's mother talking. She seemed to read our faces.

‘Dr Lombard told me his trouble was brought on by a severe emotional shock. He always knew what he was talking about, he was a wonderful man. Possibly the birth of Ella. John wasn't the precious baby any more, you see. That was Dr Lombard's view and he was always right.’

Perhaps my ‘Really?’ sounded doubtful.

‘Please don't start arguing with me again, Kerstin. Dr Lombard was sure and that was quite enough for me. It should be enough for you.’

‘Why did you want me to come?’ I could easily have asked her this back in June. Seven months later it took a great deal of screwing up my courage. ‘Was it just to tell me this?’

‘Isn't it enough?’ It was a week since I had heard the Cosway laugh, the coughing bark, as often as not uttered with the mouth closed. Mrs Cosway laughed like this for a long while, shaking her head. ‘My purpose was principally to tell you that John will be unfit to plead. This will be something for you to tell all your new friends. And if you want an explanation I should ask that son of the house who brought you here. Oh, yes, Ida saw him from the hall window. He's a lawyer. Ask him.’

I did ask him. But first, of course, I said goodbye and thank you for the coffee, before escaping from that drawing room. I had been in there less than half an hour and wished very much I had asked Charles to wait or at least come back for me. A little way down the drive, Ella caught up with me. She had put on a pink parka with white fur or faux fur round hood and hem, a garment more suitable for skiing than the Essex countryside on a damp grey day. The tree branches hung quite still and thin shreds of mist wove themselves round their trunks. Grey and white toadstools like hats with frilled brims grew along the wet grass verge.

‘You can eat them, you know,’ Ella said, picking one and holding it up to my face. ‘They're quite harmless but people are such cowards, aren't they? Felix cooks fungus for himself. It doesn't cost anything, you see. Have you seen anything of him?’

The last thing I would have mentioned was my sighting of him and Zorah in the Lotus. ‘Have you?’

‘I think he's gone away. Not for good, I don't mean that. He'll be back. I don't think he's capable of love. What do you think?’

‘I don't know, Ella. I suppose everyone is capable of it.’

‘When John is sent to Broadmoor or wherever it is, I mean a place for the criminally insane, the house reverts to Mother for her life and the money comes to us. Well, it was never right that John had it.’

‘Wasn't it?’

‘If Felix knew I was going to have money of my own, do you think he'd come back to me?’

The morning had brought too many shocks. This last one had almost struck me dumb. I don't know how I would have answered her for, at that moment, Eric's car came up the hill and drew up beside us.

‘Goodness, I quite forgot he was coming to lunch,’ Ella said but she got into the passenger seat beside him and waved goodbye to me.

Alone and thankful to be, I considered what she had said and thought it quite possible that Felix might return to her when he knew about the money. Of course, whatever she got from the estate would be very little compared with what Zorah had but Zorah would never marry him. If he was a playboy or would have liked to be, then she was a playgirl and successful at it.

Charles told me a lot about an accused's fitness to plead. He said that the issue could be raised by the trial judge on his own initiative or at the request of the prosecution or the defence. If neither party does so, the judge should do so himself if he has doubts about the accused's fitness. If the issue is raised by either party, or the judge has doubts, the issue must be tried by a jury specially empanelled for the purpose. If it were decided that John was unfit to plead, an order would be made committing him to a hospital for the criminally insane.

‘Prison, really,’ said Charles. ‘His life in there would be hell on earth.’

‘How long for?’ I asked.

‘During Her Majesty's pleasure, is how they put it. For life is what it probably means.’

Those words stayed in my mind and whenever I was alone they surfaced. I fretted miserably about John, fearing I would have to go home to Sweden without knowing what his fate was to be. Then he came home. I heard the news no more than a few hours after he was brought back to Lydstep Old Hall, Jane running into the house to tell me.

I will never know if it was the diary or what I said to Strickland, John's love for the Roman vase, his unwounded hands or the cut hands of Ida and her mother, which released him. But at home he was, the police apparently having insufficient evidence to charge him with anything.

Once at Lydstep Old Hall, he seemed to me to be in danger from those two, though I wasn't able to formulate what they might realistically do to him. But Ella, at least, was in the house, for what that was worth. I had had dreadful misgivings about her, sometimes thinking she was losing her mind. Like some operatic heroine, a Lucia di Lammermoor perhaps, she was distraught and wandering, saying things that seemed scarcely sane, that she would camp on Felix's doorstep, she would kill him and herself.

She wanted to spend part of every day with me. Telling me repeatedly that I was her only friend and no one else cared about her, she still had some diffidence about invading White Lodge. Charles had gone back to London, James was up at his university and Gerald mostly out somewhere, but Jane was usually at home and Ella, insensitive as she was, couldn't fail to notice that she wasn't welcome. I too was made very aware of the difficulties attendant on being a guest, even a very kindly received and wonderfully treated guest, in someone else's house. Not that I particularly wanted to see Ella but I longed to be free to see her. Jane made it very clear how deeply she disliked the Cosways. Also she had heard all about the scene at the Rectory gate, as had everyone else in the village, churchgoers or not.