Without Sin (33 page)

‘It’s – it’s about Mrs Kirkland. Meg’s mother.’

Again the doctor and his wife exchanged a glance – a concerned look now – before Philip prompted gently, ‘Yes? What’s troubling you? If it’s about where she has to
be buried, then I’m afraid there’s nothing anyone can do. As a suicide, she had to be—’

‘That’s just it,’ Jake burst out, relieved at last to be able to share his darkest fears. ‘That’s it exactly.
I don’t think she committed
suicide.
’

Philip sat up straight in his chair so suddenly that his coffee slopped into the saucer. ‘What? What did you say?’

Louisa gave a startled gasp and her eyes widened. She said nothing, but her horrified glance went from one to the other.

‘I just don’t think she’s the type to have committed suicide. That’s all.’

‘Why not? What makes you think that?’

Jake took a deep breath. He was gratified that the doctor was taking him seriously and not dismissing his thoughts out of hand as wild imaginings. ‘She wasn’t the sort. Oh, I know
she’d had an awful lot of tragedy in her life. Enough to make anyone give up hope, but – but – look, maybe I’m being stupid. Will you just tell me, where was she found?
How
was she found?’

Philip relaxed back into his chair. With a deep sigh, almost as if he shared some of the responsibility himself, he said, ‘She was in bed. In the master’s room, of course. He was
late coming back home. She’d cut her wrists.’ His eyes were dark with the memory of it. ‘They called me, but there was nothing I could do. There was blood everywhere. I called the
police. I had to, Jake. I couldn’t cover up something like that even if I’d wanted to. It’d’ve jeopardized my career.’ He paused and then muttered. ‘But I did
want to, if truth be known. Poor woman.’

Jake licked his lips. He didn’t want his next words to sound as if he was accusing the doctor of not doing his job properly. ‘And were you quite, quite sure that she had – had
done it herself?’

Philip stared at him. ‘Well . . .’ he began and then stopped. He was staring at Jake and yet he was not seeing the young man in front of him. He was visualizing again the distressing
scene in the bedroom as he’d found her. ‘She’d cut her wrists.’

‘But could someone else have done it? Done it to her?’

‘Not without her fighting them off. And there was no indication of a struggle.’

‘Could someone have done it to her while she was asleep?’

‘No, no, she’d have woken up.’ Philip shook his head and then, suddenly, he was very still as he added slowly, ‘Unless she’d taken a sleeping draught.’

Jake leant forward now. ‘Did she take sleeping draughts? Did you prescribe them for her?’

‘Not since she lost the baby. No – no, I tell a lie. The last time I gave her some was when her son died. Little Bobbie.’

‘Might she have had some left?’

‘I don’t think so. Matron has charge of all the drugs on the premises. She keeps them locked in a cupboard in the infirmary. She is very strict about that.’

‘Who had keys to that cupboard?’

‘The matron, the master, of course, and myself. As far as I know, no one else.’ He looked keenly at Jake. ‘Surely you’re not suggesting one of them did it, are
you?’

Jake stared at the doctor, but did not reply.

‘My God!’ Philip was shocked. ‘You are!’ He paused briefly and then asked bluntly. ‘Who?’

‘The master.’

‘The master?’ Philip and Louisa both spoke at once, then the doctor shook his head firmly, ‘Oh no, Jake. I think you’re wrong.’

‘I just can’t think Mrs Kirkland would do it,’ Jake went on. ‘Even Meg . . .’ He faltered over her name and then his tone hardened as he added, ‘Even Meg, who
hasn’t a good word to say for her poor mother, doesn’t think so. Waters said Mrs Kirkland had done it because she was afraid the master was going to cast her aside. Like he did all his
women eventually,’ Jake went on bitterly. ‘But I just can’t believe it. Not Mrs Kirkland.’

The doctor sat forward in his chair and placed his cup on the table. Resting his elbows on his knees, he linked his fingers together and leant towards Jake. ‘Let’s just suppose for a
moment that you’re right. That there was foul play involving – as they say – a person or persons unknown. How do you think it could have been done?’

‘I’ve been going over it in my mind and apart from believing that she wouldn’t kill herself, I just thought it was an odd place for her to do it. I mean, if I wanted to kill
myself by cutting my wrists, I’d’ve done it in the bath. I’d have gone to the bath room and done it there.’

‘But you’d have risked being found.’ Philip was playing devil’s advocate.

‘She risked being found in the master’s bedroom. She didn’t know what time he’d be coming home.’

‘Maybe she did it hoping he’d find her in time,’ Philip suggested. ‘Maybe it was a cry for help.’ He paused, and guilt swept through him that he had not noticed
whether the poor woman was so depressed that she had been driven to suicide. ‘Perhaps he was later than she thought in getting home and he was
too
late.’

They were bandying ideas between them, testing out Jake’s terrible theory. Philip looked across at Louisa. ‘Come on, love, help us out here. What would you – God forbid that
you ever should – have done?
How
would you have done it?’

Louisa thought for a moment. ‘Of course, you can’t tell how terrible she must have been feeling,’ she said slowly, still not quite able to discount it as a suicide and
unwittingly adding to her husband’s sense of guilt. ‘She’d lost her husband, her baby, Bobbie.’ As she remembered the little boy, Louisa’s eyes filled with tears.
‘And then, when she opted to take what security she could as – as the master’s –’ she ran her tongue around her lips – ‘the master’s friend, her own
daughter condemns her and deserts her.’

Philip sighed. ‘Yes, when you put it like that, the poor soul had reason enough, didn’t she?’

‘And yet,’ Louisa went on slowly, ‘I have to agree that over the last weeks I was working there, she did seem happier. Oh, there was a sadness deep in her eyes, a sadness, I
suspect, that would never have gone, but she looked better – she’d put on a little weight.’ She glanced at Jake and explained, ‘She’d gone so terribly thin after
little Bobbie died, I feared for her then. But after the master took her in, well, she seemed better. If only Meg . . .’ She stopped and glanced up at the two men. ‘I’m sorry
– I shouldn’t be blaming poor Meg. She must be feeling dreadful.’

‘Huh! Only for herself. She says her mother has humiliated and shamed her. Again!’

‘That’s just bravado. She’s covering up her true feelings, I’m sure,’ Louisa said gently. ‘She must be feeling torn apart.’

Jake cast a disbelieving look at her. ‘You’re being too kind. Maybe you don’t know Meg now like I do. She’s changed. Become ruthless. She’s just out for herself.
Out for what she can get. Look how she duped poor old Percy Rodwell into marrying her.’

‘Oh now, Jake, I think you are being unfair,’ the doctor put in. ‘Percy is devoted to her. You only have to see him with her to know that.’

‘I don’t deny that, but is
she
as devoted to
him
?’

Philip stared at him.

Jake nodded and smiled grimly. ‘No, you can’t say she is, can you?’

Now there was silence between the three of them until Philip said slowly, ‘So you really think there might be cause to doubt the apparent suicide?’

‘Well, it’s been bothering me. I just needed someone to talk it over with and I thought you’d be the best person. You’d seen her and you’d know if something
hadn’t seemed quite right.’

Philip frowned. ‘It’s strange you should say that because there was something at the very back of my mind niggling me and yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Look, do
something for me, will you, both of you?’

Jake and Louisa looked at him, eager to help in any way they could. Philip grimaced. ‘It’s a bit of a gruesome thing to ask you, but can you make the action of cutting your wrists? I
want to see how you would do it.’

They stared at him, then at each other and shrugged. But they each picked up one of the small cake knives, which Louisa had brought in on the tray.

‘You first,’ Jake nodded towards Louisa.

She held her hands in front of her, the knife in her right hand. Then she pretended to cut into her left wrist with a downward stroke so that, in reality, a cut would have appeared diagonally
from the base of her thumb to just below her wrist bone. She switched the knife to her left hand and repeated the stroke, against with a diagonal, downwards gash.

‘Mm, good,’ Philip nodded. ‘Now you, Jake. You’re left-handed so it will be interesting to see if there’s any difference.’

There wasn’t. Jake made the stroke in the same direction and in the same place on each wrist as Louisa had done. When he had done, he looked up expectantly. Again, Philip nodded and picked
up a knife himself. The result was still the same; a diagonal, downward stroke on the inside of his wrists. Jake and Louisa were watching him. Carefully, he laid the knife back on the table and
linked his fingers once more before looking up at them to say quietly, ‘That’s what was niggling at me. The cuts on her wrists didn’t seem right. They were diagonal, all right,
but the other way. And the natural way to do it is the way we’ve demonstrated.’

‘So – so you think someone else could have done it?’ Jake said. ‘If she’d taken a sleeping draught—’

‘Or worse still, if she’d been
given
a sleeping draught.’

Louisa covered her mouth with trembling fingers. ‘Oh, Philip, how dreadful. You really think someone might have killed her?’

Solemnly, Philip said, ‘I don’t like even to think it, but Jake has raised doubts in my mind too now and I’ll have to take it further. I shall have to share my suspicions with
the police. Now, Jake, I shall need your help. You, more than anyone, know the internal workings of that place. Who does what and who has access to different places? For instance, could anyone else
at all have got hold of a sleeping draught from the infirmary?’

‘I suppose anyone could if they’d had the chance to get hold of a set of keys. They could have got into the cupboard when matron wasn’t looking, though Miss Pendleton,’
he added swiftly, anxious that the woman who had always been so kind to him should not be blamed in any way, ‘was always very particular about it being kept locked. And she always kept the
keys with her. Had ’em on a chain around her waist.’ Despite the seriousness of their conversation, Jake smiled. ‘We always used to reckon she slept with it still on
her.’

‘What about the master? Was he so particular – so careful?’

Everything led back to Isaac Pendleton.

Jake shook his head. ‘I – I don’t know.’ He was trying desperately to be impartial, to put aside the memory of the beatings he had suffered at the hands of the
master.

It was Percy who persuaded Meg that she should at least attend her mother’s funeral.

‘So you’d have me humiliated all over again, would you? You’re as bad as Jake.’ She pouted truculently.

He sighed. ‘You won’t be humiliated. It’s not your fault she – she did what she did.’

‘She committed suicide. Why don’t you say it outright?’

Percy winced. ‘Like I say, it’s not your fault.’

‘Jake thinks it is. He’s blaming me because I didn’t go to see her.’

Percy stared at her. ‘But you did go. I persuaded you to go. You did go, Meg, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, yes,’ she waved him aside impatiently. ‘Of course I went, but Waters came and told me that my mother didn’t want to see me.’

Percy blinked. ‘Oh.’ He was puzzled. He had never met Sarah, but he couldn’t imagine any mother not wanting to see her own child.

But Meg’s mind was no longer on her mother. She was filled with indignation against Jake. ‘I don’t know what he’s trying to do to me. Stirring up trouble. Having the
police come here to question me and then having to stand up in court and answer that man’s questions. What do they think I’ve done? Murdered her?’

Ironically, it had been Mr Snape who had posed the questions to the witnesses.

‘There had to be an inquest after a suicide,’ Percy commented reasonably. ‘And if Dr Collins wasn’t happy, then the police had to look into it, didn’t
they?’

‘But it was Jake who stirred it all up.’

‘Well, they haven’t found anything, have they? Nothing that proves any different. The police couldn’t come up with any evidence of foul play. Nor could the doctor.’

‘Of course they haven’t. All that stuff about the cuts being the wrong way.’ She made an angry gesture as if slashing her own wrists, first one way and then the other.
‘As if that proves anything. You can do it either way.’

‘I hope you’ll never think of doing such a thing.’ He was worried now. If the tendency was in Meg’s blood . . .

‘I wouldn’t dream of shaming my family like that. Oh no, nothing will ever get me so down that I do away with myself.’

On the morning of the funeral Percy saw to it that Meg was dressed in black from head to toe. He himself wore a black suit and tie and insisted that the shop be closed all day
as a mark of respect.

‘She doesn’t deserve any respect,’ Meg glowered.

‘Oh, Meg, show a little compassion for your poor mother.’

‘And besides,’ she went on as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘I thought folk round here didn’t like women attending funerals.’

‘I don’t hold with that. I never have. We’re going together.’

So Meg found herself obliged to go, but she was the only woman standing alongside Percy on the cold, windswept patch of ground just outside the churchyard boundary. The vicar intoned the words
monotonously, his voice clearly indicating his own disapproval. He had no words of forgiveness or understanding for the dead woman or of comfort for her daughter. On the opposite side of the grave
stood the only other three people to attend: Isaac Pendleton, Jake Bosley and Dr Collins.

Isaac’s face was stony. He had taken it as a personal insult that Sarah had so hated her life with him that she preferred death. He glared accusingly across the grave at Meg, seeming to
blame her as the plain wooden coffin – a pauper’s – was lowered into the ground.