That made things easier. ‘I took it on an impulse,’ she said. ‘I happened to find myself in the surgery on my own and I saw the physostigmine on the shelf. I knew exactly what it was. I’d done some medical training before I went to America.’
‘What did you want it for?’
‘I’m ashamed to tell you, Mr Pünd. I know it was wrong of me and I may have been just a little bit out of my mind. But in the light of what we’ve just been saying, you of all people will understand that very little in my life has worked out the way I wanted. It’s not just Magnus and the house. I never married. I never had any real love, not even when I was young. Oh yes, I have the church and I have the village, but there have been times when I’ve found myself looking in the mirror and I’ve wondered – what’s the point? What am I doing here? Why should I even want to go on?
‘The Bible is very clear about suicide. It’s the moral equivalent of murder. “God is the giver of life. He gives and He takes away.” That’s from the book of Job. We have no right to take matters into our own hands.’ She stopped and suddenly there was a hardness in her eyes. ‘But there have been times when I have been very much in the shadows, when I have looked into the valley of death and wished – and wished I could enter. How do you think it’s been for me, watching Magnus and Frances and Freddy? I used to live in that house! All that wealth and comfort was once mine! Forget the fact that it was actually stolen from me, I should never have come back to Saxby-on-Avon! It was mad of me to humiliate myself by returning to the emperor’s table. So the answer is – yes. I thought about killing myself. I took the physostigmine because I knew it would do the job quickly and painlessly.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘Upstairs. In the bathroom.’
‘I’m afraid I must ask you to give it to me.’
‘Well, I certainly don’t need it now, Mr Pünd.’ She spoke the words lightly, almost with a glint in her eye. ‘Are you going to prosecute me for theft?’
‘There won’t be any need for that, Miss Pye,’ Chubb said. ‘We’ll just make sure it gets back to Dr Redwing.’
They left a few minutes later and Clarissa Pye closed the front door, glad to be alone. She stood quite still, her breasts rising and falling, thinking over what had just been said. The business with the poison didn’t matter. That wasn’t important now. But it was strange that such a tiny theft should have brought them here when so much had been stolen from her. Would she be able to prove that Pye Hall was hers? Suppose the Detective Inspector was right? All she had were the words of a sick and dying man with no witnesses present in the room, no proof that he was actually sane when he spoke them. A legal case resting on twelve minutes that had ticked by more than fifty years ago.
Where could she possibly begin?
And did she actually want to?
It was very strange, but Clarissa suddenly felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The fact that Pünd had taken the poison with him was certainly part of it. The physostigmine had been preying on her conscience for all manner of reasons and she knew that she had regretted taking it from the very start. But it was more than that. She remembered what Chubb had said. You might be better off just accepting things as they are. You have a nice enough house here. You’re well known and respected in the village.
She was respected. It was true. She was still a popular teacher at the village school. She always made the most profitable stall at the village fête. Everyone liked her flower displays at Sunday service: in fact, Robin Osborne had often said that he didn’t know how he would manage without her. Could it be, perhaps, that now she knew the truth, Pye Hall no longer had the power to intimidate her? It was hers. It always had been. And at the end of the day, it hadn’t been Magnus who had stolen it from her. It hadn’t been fate. It had been her own father, a man she had always remembered with fondness but who turned out to be antediluvian – a monster! Did she really want to fight him, to bring him back into her life when he had been so long below the ground?
No.
She could rise above it. She might visit Frances and Freddy at Pye Hall and this time she would be the one in the know. The joke would be on them.
With something close to a smile, she went into the kitchen. There was a tinned salmon rissole and some stewed fruit in the fridge. They would do very nicely for lunch.
5
‘I thought she took it extremely well,’ Emilia Redwing said. ‘We weren’t even sure at first if we should tell her. But now I’m glad we did.’
Pünd nodded. He and Fraser had come here alone, Inspector Chubb having returned to Pye Hall to meet the two police divers who had been summoned from Bristol, the nearest metropolis to have such a resource. They would be examining the lake that very day although Pünd already had a very good idea what they would find. He was sitting in the doctor’s private office. Arthur Redwing was also present. He looked uncomfortable, as if he would rather be anywhere else.
‘Yes. Miss Pye is certainly a formidable person,’ Pünd agreed.
‘So how is your investigation going?’ Arthur Redwing asked.
It was the first time Pünd had met Dr Redwing’s husband, the man who had painted the portrait of Frances Pye – and also, quite clearly that of the young boy which hung on the wall behind him now. The boy must be his son. He had the same dark, good looks, the slightly crumpled, very English features. And yet the two of them were at odds. There had been some difficulty between them. Pünd had always been interested in the unique relationship that exists between the portraitist and his subject, how there can never be secrets. It was true here. The way the boy had been painted, his pose, the nonchalance of his shoulders resting against the wall, one knee bent, hands in his pockets … all this suggested intimacy, even love. But Arthur Redwing had also captured something dark and suspicious in the boy’s eyes. He wanted to be away.
‘It is your son?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Arthur replied. ‘Sebastian. He’s in London.’ The three words somehow contained a lifetime of disappointment.
‘We don’t see him very often, I’m afraid,’ Emilia Redwing added. ‘Arthur painted that when Sebastian was seventeen.’
‘It’s terribly good,’ Fraser said. When it came to art, he was the expert, not Pünd, and he was glad to have his moment in the sun. ‘Do you exhibit?’
‘I’d like to …’ Arthur mumbled.
‘You were about to tell us about your investigation,’ Emilia Redwing cut in.
‘Yes, indeed, Dr Redwing.’ Pünd smiled. ‘It is very nearly complete. I do not to expect to spend more than two more nights in Saxby-on-Avon.’
Fraser’s ears pricked up when he heard this. He’d had no idea that Pünd was so close and wondered who had said what, and when, to provide the significant breakthrough. He was keen to hear the solution to the crime – and he wouldn’t be sorry to get back to the comfort of Tanner Court either.
‘Do you know who killed Sir Magnus?’