The Cat Next Door Page 10

  ‘Where’s Nan?’ Lynette demanded ungratefully of the two who had rushed to answer her summons.

  It was a good question. Margot raised an eyebrow to Emmeline.

  ‘Nan … had an errand to do,’ Emmeline said. ‘She’ll be back soon. What do you want?’

  ‘I want to tell her something.’

  ‘You can tell us instead,’ Emmeline said.

  ‘No, I can’t!’ Lynette’s lower lip jutted out threateningly. ‘I can only tell Nan. And I want to tell her now!’

  ‘Well, you can’t. She isn’t here.’

  Suddenly, Margot knew where Nan was. Standing outside the Crown Court, waiting for a glimpse of Chloe as she arrived with her police escort. In loco parentis, as she had so often been in the past, this time taking the place Milly should have occupied. Milly, poor Milly, once so strong and now …

  ‘Then where’s my father? I’ll tell him.’

  ‘Lynette, you know perfectly well where your father is, where Nan is and where most of us are going to be.’ Abruptly, Emmeline reverted to headmistress mode, shooting from the hip and brooking no nonsense. ‘You know what day this is and what’s happening. We all have enough to contend with without your playing up!’

  Lynette looked stricken. Tears welled up in her eyes as she stared incredulously at Emmeline. It was quite clear that no one had spoken to her that way in a very long while.

  Perhaps it was time they did. Margot found herself siding with Emmeline. Lynette might have had a hard ride but, for her own good, it was time she began toughening up.

  ‘Margot …’ Lynette looked pleadingly to someone she obviously considered more sympathetic – or a softer touch. ‘Margot, stay and play cards with me.’

  ‘Margot has other things to do,’ Emmeline said crisply. ‘You’re going to have to entertain yourself today. You could always,’ she added, giving no quarter, ‘try getting up and dressed and going for a walk. It would be an enormous help to everyone if you could even bring yourself to come downstairs for meals.’

  ‘No!’ Lynette shrank down under the coverlet. ‘I can’t! I can’t! I don’t feel well.’

  ‘None of us feel very well,’ Emmeline said unforgivingly. ‘And we’re likely to feel a lot worse before we feel any better.’

  Lynette burst into tears and hurled herself to the far side of the bed, turning her back on them.

  ‘I suppose you think I was rather harsh with her,’ Emmeline said as they descended the stairs.

  ‘I think she needed it,’ Margot answered honestly.

  ‘She’s been getting away with too much for too long. I can’t blame her for the way they’ve spoiled her, but it won’t do her any favours in the long run. I’ve had to deal with too many of these little madams who think the world revolves around them. And the consequences when they discover it doesn’t.’

  The trace of wistfulness in her tone brought home sharply to Margot just how much Emmeline must miss being away from her work, her school, her place in the world.

  ‘You’ll be glad to get back to school,’ she said.

  ‘Will I?’ Emmeline’s mouth twisted wryly. ‘Get back, I mean. “Indefinite leave” all too often translates into early retirement. Especially when there’s a whiff of scandal involved. The last thing the Board of Governors wants is three hundred excitable teenaged girls speculating about the relatives and private life of their headmistress - and whether homicide, like twins, can run in a family. Too, too unsettling for the whole school.’

  ‘Perhaps now. But later … after it’s all over?’

  ‘Will it ever be over? Do you really believe that?’

  No. No, it would never be over. Claudia would still be dead. Chloe would always be the woman who had been accused of murdering her twin sister. The family would always bear the burden of having been the family where two girls had grown up to come to such ends. Everyone had a high price to pay for what had happened.

  ‘But surely …’ Margot fought against her own growing realisation of the costs involved. ‘If …’

  ‘If what?’ Emmeline challenged her.

  ‘If Chloe is innocent …’ Or not completely guilty – not of premeditated murder. Realistically, as Wilfred had pointed out, after Milly had left the table last night, the best they could hope for was a verdict of manslaughter. Possibly mitigated by diminished responsibility. In any case, Chloe would not be returning home for a long, long time.

  It didn’t bear thinking about – and yet, they had no choice. Margot felt such a wave of exhaustion that her knees buckled. She sank down abruptly on the lowest step.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Emmeline asked with sudden concern.

  Tikki, strolling along the hallway as though he owned the house, now that Wilfred was out of the way, came over to investigate. He rubbed his head against Margot’s knee.

  ‘I’m all right.’ She kept her head turned away from Emmeline, using the excuse of fussing over Tikki. ‘It … just all swept over me suddenly. You … the rest of you … have had more time to get used to it.’ ‘I don’t think you ever get used to it. You just learn to live with it.’

  Tikki gave a perfunctory purr then, satisfied with his inspection, gathered himself and darted up the stairs. A moment later, there was a glad cry of greeting from Lynette.

  ‘Well, that will take care of her for a while,’ Emmeline said. ‘Why don’t you go and lie down for a bit? You can join the others in court for an hour or so this afternoon. If you feel up to it.’

  ‘I will.’ Margot pulled herself to her feet; she could make the stairs. Of course she could. And she could face a stint in court, too. But – ‘Milly …?’

  ‘Milly started a new book this morning. It’s the first of a trilogy and she has all three. They’ll keep her occupied for the next couple of days.’ Emmeline’s eyes clouded. ‘I suppose there are worse things to do than drugging oneself with words. But she’ll have to come back into the world sometime …’

  Aye, there’s the rub … Margot nodded numbly and turned to face the endless stairs. What would Milly do when she could no longer escape reality? When the verdict came in?

  What would any of them do?

  Chapter Twelve

  It seemed a very small room to harbour such enormous matters of life and death, made smaller by the way it was laid out. The centre was completely taken up by tables and benches occupied by black-robed white-wigged figures talking quietly among themselves. Along the walls, all four sides were sectioned off by pale oak wood partitions behind which were rows of seating on two sides facing each other. At the top end of the room, the partition rose to become the judge’s bench, with His Lordship on high, the great Royal Seal of lion and unicorn rampant, carved and painted, hung on the wall above him, firm reminder of the majesty of the law. Below the bench were lesser tables housing the court recorder and the clerk of court. On, one side of them, the witness box with a chair and two microphones waited.

  At the opposite end of the room, facing the judge directly, was the only almost empty seating in the room: the dock, where the accused – the defendant – sat alone. A tiny solitary figure Margot could not bring herself to look at.

  Chloe. Cousin Chloe, friend of her childhood.

  Margot closed her eyes against the swirling dizziness, but could not close out the memories. Chloe: laughing, teaching the younger ones to ride, organising picnics and swimming parties, taking them to the cinema, always there to be relied on to help with homework, provide extra pocket money, sort out misunderstandings. Chloe, who had always been one of the foundation stones of their lives.

  Now she was Chloe, the accused. Chloe, the defendant. Chloe … the murderess?

  ‘Court rise.’ A black-garbed woman had entered and given the order. QCs, barristers and all their attendants, the jury, the public, everyone in the courtroom surged to their feet to stand silent as a red-robed figure in white wig entered from a side door adjacent to the bench and walked along the high bench to his seat, dwarfed by the great Seal above his head.


  Those directly concerned with the law bowed gravely to him and everyone resumed their seats. One of the QCs stepped forward to the bench and had a quiet word with the judge. They nodded to each other and laughed, actually laughed. What were they doing – reminiscing about the party last night?

  Margot clamped down on a surge of irritation. They had a right to their private lives. That was what law and justice was all about: everyone’s right to a private life lived in peace. A life that should not be taken from them.

  A life for a life. Oh, they didn’t hang people any more, but was a life spent in prison really preferable? What would Chloe be like after fifteen or twenty years? What was she like now? Margot braced herself to look, for the first time, at the defendant.

  Beside her, Uncle Wilfred twitched suddenly and scrabbled in his jacket pocket, pulling out a roll of peppermints. He stuffed several of them into his mouth before offering the roll to her. She was aware of his relief as she shook her head, there were barely enough for him there. She wondered if he had more rolls squirrelled away.

  The momentary distraction had weakened her resolve. It took her another few moments to steel herself again for what she might see. At last, she turned her head slowly and saw –

  Claudia!

  Margot leaned back and closed her eyes, wondering if she were hallucinating … wondering if she had fainted from shock.

  They were twins, that was all. Of course they looked like each other. Identical twins. And yet, it had been possible to tell them apart, especially as they had grown older. Little, indefinable things separated them. A bit more flesh rounding Chloe’s chin, the quick fluid gestures of Claudia, the faintest difference in the timbre of their voices …

  Was that why Chloe had refused to speak?

  No! It was impossible! Someone would have noticed. Claudia’s had been too large a personality to mask. Chloe’s slightly diffident air had usually given her away.

  No, it made no sense. Why should Claudia want to kill Chloe, any more than Chloe would want to kill Claudia? It would be like killing oneself, an obscure form of suicide. And yet, one of them was dead, the other one on trial for her murder.

  ‘Court rise.’ She had to move, to stand, perhaps to bow like the others as the judge left the room, followed by one of the court officials. What was happening now? Was it all over? Had something vital been decided in that brief interchange between judge and QC?

  No, no, it couldn’t be. The jury would have had something to say, a verdict to give.

  She looked at Wilfred, but he was lost in his private world, seizing the opportunity to crunch his mints between his teeth in the brief respite from absolute silence. The barristers, unconcerned, were talking among themselves. Perhaps nothing important was happening, after all.

  ‘Court rise.’ The judge was back already. Perhaps it had been nothing more than a sudden call of nature. They were only human. Weren’t they?

  Wilfred swallowed audibly and crammed several more mints into his mouth. The judge cleared his throat and the proceedings began.

  It was all so quiet and civilised. The QC for the Crown Prosecution Service began his address, speaking in so conversational a manner that, standing as he was with his back to the public benches in order to address the jury, he could barely be heard. What phrases drifted over his shoulder to the listening public were so appalling that Margot could only catch her breath. So many terrible suggestions, couched in terms of sweet reasonableness that they seemed almost possible. The very calmness of his presentation defused all the emotion in the situation.

  Comfrey QC, for the defence, at the opposite end of the long table, was jotting down notes, bending forward into a sort of box which shielded his notations from any prying eyes. When he came to speak in defence of Chloe, would he, too, be so … so bloodless and dispassionate that it relegated his speech to just another form of intellectual debate?

  Margot risked another quick glance towards the dock. This time the defendant looked more like Chloe. Unmistakably Chloe, head bowed, eyes downcast, all propensity towards diffidence multiplied a thousand times. Was that what prison had done to her?

  Or, no … not to her. She wasn’t there. Wherever she had retreated to, Chloe was not here. Only the shell of the woman sat in the dock. Was she as remote as she seemed? Was she seeing what was going on before her? The bench, the judge, the jury, the legal teams, the full panoply of the law? Or -?

  Beside Margot, Uncle Wilfred suddenly began to shake, then jerk convulsively. She turned, startled and frightened, to look at him. Was he having a heart attack? It would not be surprising if the strain had become too much for him. And surely he had put himself further into the risk category by the amount of weight he had piled on in so short a space of time.

  His face was turning puce, he clawed convulsively at his throat, his breath came in gasps. He was choking.

  He was also becoming increasingly noisy. The judge turned his head to see what was going on. The QC on his feet stopped speaking and listened, testing the atmosphere before turning slowly.

  Chloe did not move.

  ‘Down … wrong … way,’ Wilfred choked, lurching to his feet and pushing past Margot.

  Realisation dawned. He’d swallowed one of his bloody peppermints! Margot got out of his way hastily. He blundered past her, gasping for air, his upper torso heaving.

  The court usher rose and, after a quick bow to the judge, came towards them purposefully. Margot turned and fled after Wilfred, aware that Richard had half risen from his seat and was turning his head from side to side, first looking after them and then looking towards the judge, not sure whether he should follow or stay to support his sister.

  In one last glance as the door closed behind them, Margot saw both QCs advance to the bench to confer with the judge. It seemed likely that further proceedings might be suspended until they discovered whether they had a medical emergency on their hands.

  ‘Aaaaaargh … aaaaargh …’ With the courtroom door closed, Wilfred gave full-throated cry to his distress.

  Margot thumped him on the back and continued thumping, although it appeared to be having no effect. She began to be worried; this could be serious.

  ‘Is he all right?’ The court usher appeared beside her. ‘Does he need medical help? Oxygen? Is it a congenital condition?’

  ‘Aaaaaargh … aaaaargh … Yee-ow!’ The last was a yelp of alarm as another heavy blow from Margot sent him reeling across the corridor towards the suddenly insubstantial-looking railing that might not be enough to keep him from plunging over it and down to the atrium floor.

  ‘Hang on!’ Straight into Nan’s arms. She caught him and whirled him around expertly, clasped her arms around his midriff and pulled him sharply to her.

  ‘Aaaa – Oooomph!’ A splatter of small circular white objects flew from his mouth.

  ‘Better?’ Nan had not released her hold. For good measure, she yanked him to her again, expelling what little air he had just managed to take in – and anything else that might be lurking in his windpipe.

  ‘I think … you … got it.’ His breathing seemed to be returning to normal. ‘Thanks … Nan.’

  ‘Think nothing of it.’ Nan slowly unwound her arms, her face nearly as pink as his.

  ‘Is he all right now?’ The court usher was hovering, obviously anxious to report back to the judge.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’ Wilfred spoke for himself. ‘Sorry about that – ’ He gestured towards the peppermint-littered floor.

  The usher dismissed his apology with a wave of her hand. She didn’t have to clean it up.

  ‘When did you get here?’ Margot asked Nan. ‘Why didn’t you come in?’

  ‘I’m a witness.’ Nan grimaced. ‘I have to wait out here until I’m called.’

  A witness. Yes, of course. Nan had been there that night. First on the scene. What had been her first reaction: to gently detach the knife from Chloe’s grasp? Or to hug Lynette and hurry her away from the terrible sight? Poor Nan, torn
between the devastating needs of her nurslings.

  ‘After I’ve given my evidence,’ Nan continued, ‘they tell me I can join the rest of you on the public benches.’ Nan held Margot with her gaze and asked, ‘How is she?’

  ‘I don’t know. She doesn’t move. She doesn’t look up. She just … sits there.’

  Nan nodded as though she had expected no different. Her faint troubled sigh was barely audible.

  ‘Shall we go back in?’ Uncle Wilfred was himself again. ‘I’m perfectly fit now.’

  The door opened just as they reached it and people began filing out of the courtroom. Among them was Richard; he took his father’s arm.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Wilfred demanded.

  ‘They’ve ended for the day,’ Richard said. ‘It’s four-thirty, after all. We can go home now.’

  ‘Home …’ Wilfred rummaged for his mints and threw another handful of them into his mouth. ‘Home …’ His voice was faint and wistful … and curiously lost. ‘Home …’

  Home wasn’t what it used to be; perhaps it never had been. Nevertheless, Margot felt herself relax as the familiar walls closed around her. The inevitable had been postponed. At least, for another day. She wouldn’t worry about tomorrow until it arrived.

  A warm welcoming aroma of something delicious cooking in the oven floated through the air.

  ‘Oh, good,’ Nan said. ‘Milly remembered to put the steak-and-mushroom pie in the oven. I hope she’s put the baking potatoes in, too. I left them all scrubbed and ready, but she sometimes gets … distracted.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to put everything in the oven and just set the timer on the cooker?’

  ‘Well, it would, yes. But I like to give her little tasks to do. I think it helps to keep her … in touch. Nothing that can’t be salvaged fairly painlessly if she forgets. But – ’ Nan sniffed the air expertly and brightened. ‘There’s something else cooking in there, too. Perhaps she’s – ’