Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

*

‘Would you like me to drive?’ I said.

‘I can't be always letting you take over,’ she said but she was half out of the car by then.

I moved into the driver's seat. It wasn't yet four but already dark and I put the lights on. The road we were on was a narrow lane, which was why it had lay-bys, and tree branches met above our head, creating a dark winding tunnel. Much as I wanted to know, I resolved not to ask Ella any more. She was crying by then. All those five or six miles back to Windrose no cars passed us and we met only one, its headlights' beam full on, blinding me. Still crying quietly, Ella had laid her head back against the seat. When I saw the dark bulk of All Saints' tower loom up ahead, I stopped the car and asked her if she was all right.

Instead of replying, she said, ‘They both told me and that's what they said. Ida blamed Mother and Mother blamed Ida. Both had cut hands, you see. Each one of them described what had happened and it was – I don't quite know how to put this – it was as if the roles were reversed in their accounts. I mean Mother described Ida as doing it exactly as Ida described Mother as doing it. Mother said Ida did it because she couldn't bear Winifred doing what she was doing to Eric and Ida said Mother did it when Ella came in and told her Winifred was going to Felix. But I think one of them did it to put the blame on John. To get rid of him, you see, and get the house the only way they could.’

As if it was all in the day's work, the kind of thing that might happen in any family. ‘What happens now?’ I asked.

‘They said they'd want to question them again. I mean, I think they let Mother go home on account of her age. And someone had to be there to look after John.’

I had nothing to say about any of it. ‘I'll take you home,’ I said, forgetting it was her car.

‘The police were there again when I came out. They tried asking John which one of them it was. They had to go into the library after him. Of course he wouldn't say anything at all, let alone answer them.’ We were on the drive by then and again I stopped when the house came into sight. Light streamed not very brightly out of the front doorway as Strickland and another man came out and got into their car. ‘They've been there all this time,’ Ella said wonderingly.

As the car passed us, Strickland turned his eyes in our direction and nodded. It was just a nod, cold and formal. I drove up on to the gravel as an unseen hand closed the door.

‘I can't go in there, Kerstin.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Wait a minute. Try to keep calm.’

‘I can't go into a house where those two are. One of them is a murderer, Kerstin. Or both of them. Both of them could have done it. It might be me next. I can't go in. I should never sleep, never again. Oh, what shall I do?’

We had been out for hours. I had told Jane I would be back by four, for I had never meant to go to the crematorium but had only done so at Ella's insistence. Sitting there beside her, I thought ungratefully how hopeless it was to be obliged to tell someone of your comings and goings, your whereabouts and the time of your return, and resolved I would never be in that trap again. Of course I was in it because I got married but somehow that was different.

‘Did you mean that about not going back?’ I said.

‘I can't go in there ever again.’

‘You'll have to go in to get your things. Phone Bridget and ask her if you can stay, pack a bag and I'll drive you to the Millses’.’

After a good deal of arguing she did. She was in the house a very short time and when she came back she was breathless. ‘Bridget was very nice about it, said I could stay as long as I wanted, but we know what that means, don't we? I saw Ida. She looked terrible, I mean more terrible than usual, all grey in the face. Strickland had been what she called cross-examining her for hours.’

I asked her if she had seen John.

‘Oh, no. He was in the library. He lives there now apart from when he's out for a walk. Could they have Mother and Ida both up in court for murder?’

‘I don't know,’ I said.

I took her to the cottage where Bridget Mills lived with her elderly parents. Where they would put her I couldn't guess.

‘I shall go and see Felix tomorrow,’ were her parting words, ‘and he'll have to take me in even if he doesn't want to.’

Jane I found in a panic because, in her own words, I had disappeared. The police had been and returned my diary. I took it up to my bedroom and wrote down the events of the day. That evening I discussed with Jane and Gerald – discreetly, I hope – what was to be done about Ella. Saying nothing about the relentless questioning of Mrs Cosway and Ida, I told them of her fear of going back into Lydstep Old Hall, something they both seemed to understand without further explanation.

‘The Millses won't want her for long,’ Jane said. ‘They've only got two bedrooms and Ronald Mills is bedbound.’

I said nothing about Felix. ‘Perhaps she could get a flat somewhere with Bridget.’

‘Bridget Mills is needed at home.’

There seemed no solution except for Ella to give in and return home. To have nowhere to go, nowhere to lay one's head but with grudging friends, is dreadful to think of. I felt a little like that myself, though the Trintowels were far from grudging. I thought that night of phoning Isabel and asking her to put me up but I remembered she was Mark's sister-in-law and very fond of Mark. Next morning I phoned Strickland and then I went into Colchester and booked my passage back to Gothenburg for a week ahead.

I told Jane at lunchtime and she put up a good many objections. But I had already spoken to Charles on the phone and arranged to meet him in London in two days' time. He had promised to find me a cheap hotel.

Meeting Ella next day was unavoidable but I refused tea and cakes at the souvenir shop and we drove into Sudbury. It was a pleasant, pretty little town then, with a market square and water meadows by the Stour. Morning rain had been blown away by a sharp little wind and by the time we were in Friar Street, looking for a tea place, the sky was pale winter blue with streaks of grey and yellowish cloud.

Ella, of course, seethed with complaints about the hospitality of Bridget Mills and her parents. In Bridget's place she would have given up her bed to the guest and slept on the sofa herself but in fact the roles had been reversed. She didn't know how long she could stand it. She had called at The Studio at nine, knowing Felix wasn't an early riser and believing she could catch him before he went out, but he wasn't there. The neighbours in that row of cottages were all consulted before she gave up. No one knew where Felix was and the retired colonel next door said he had never spoken to him.

My decision to go to London and come back this way only to Harwich and the Gothenburg boat dismayed her.

‘But you can't! The police won't let you.’

‘I've asked them,’ I said. ‘They don't mind.’

‘I wonder what that means,’ she said. ‘Does it mean they're going to arrest Mother or Ida? Surely not Mother, not at her age. Maybe the police think they're only saying one of them killed Winifred to protect John.’

I said that if this was so, it was a pity they blamed him in the first place. As for me, I had spoken to Strickland and he said I could go. That was all. She asked me why I was going to London first.

Perhaps it was rude, what I said. ‘Because I want to.’

It was almost impossible to repulse Ella. ‘Where are you going in London? Are you going to stay with Isabel Croft? I wonder if I could come too. I really don't see why not.’

I said I wouldn't be staying with Isabel but in an hotel. ‘What about your work?’