The Sculptress Part 37

"Did they have children?"

Olive shook her head.

"I don't think so. I never saw any." She pursed her lips.

"He was the child. It was quite funny sometimes watching him scurrying about, doing what he was told, saying sorry when he got it wrong. Amber called him Puddleglum because he was wet and miserable." She chuckled.

"I'd forgotten that until this minute. It suited him at the time. Does it still?"

Roz thought of his grip on her arms.

"He didn't strike me as being particularly wet," she said.

"Miserable, yes."

Olive studied her with her curiously penetrating gaze.

"Why have you come back?" she asked gently.

"You didn't intend to on Monday."

"What makes you say that?"

"I saw it in your face. You thought I was guilty."

"Yes."

Olive nodded.

"It upset me. I hadn't realised what a difference it made to have someone believe I didn't do it. Politicians call it the feel-good factor." Roz saw dampness on the pale lashes.

"You get used to being viewed as a monster. Sometimes I believe it myself." She placed one of her disproportionate hands between her huge b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"I thought my heart would burst when you left. Silly, isn't it?" Tears welled in her eyes.

"I can't remember being so upset about anything before."

Roz waited a moment but Olive didn't go on.

"Sister Bridget knocked some sense into me," she said.

A glow, like a rising candle flame, lit the fat woman's face.

"Sister Bridget?" she echoed in amazement.

"Does she think I didn't do it? I never guessed. I thought she came out of Christian duty."

Oh h.e.l.l, thought Roz, what does a lie matter?

"Of course she thinks you didn't do it. Why else would she keep pus.h.i.+ng me so hard?" She watched the tremulous pleasure bring a sort of beauty to the awful ugliness that was Olive, and she thought, I've burnt my boats. I can never again ask her if she's guilty or if she's telling me the truth because, if I do, her poor heart will burst.

"I didn't do it," said Olive, reading her expression.

Roz leaned forward.

"Then who did?"

"I don't know now. I thought I did at the time." She stood her second cigarette beside the first and watched it die.

"At the time it all made sense," she murmured, her mind groping into the past.

"Who did you think it was?" asked Roz after a while.

"Someone you loved?"

But Olive shook her head.

"I couldn't bear to be laughed at.

In so many ways it's easier to be feared. At least it means people respect you." She looked at Roz.

"I'm really quite happy here. Can you understand that?"

"Yes," said Roz slowly, remembering what the Governor had said.

"Oddly enough, I can."

"If you hadn't sought me out, I could have survived. I'm inst.i.tutionalised. Existence without effort. I really don't know that I could cope on the outside." She smoothed her hands down her ma.s.sive thighs.

"People will laugh, Roz."

It was a question more than a statement and Roz didn't have an answer, or not the rea.s.suring answer that Olive wanted.

People would laugh, she thought. There was an intrinsic absurdity about this grotesque woman loving so deeply that she would brand herself a murderess to protect her lover.

"I'm not giving up now," she said firmly.

"A battery hen is born to exist. You were born to live." She levelled her pen at Olive.

"And if you don't know the difference between existence and living then read the Declaration of Independence. Living means Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. You deny yourself both by staying here.

"Where would I go? What would I do?" She wrung her hands.

"In all my life I've never lived on my own. I couldn't bear it, not now, not with everyone knowing."

"Knowing what?"

Olive shook her head.

"Why can't you tell me?"

"Because," said Olive heavily, *you wouldn't believe me.

No one ever does when I tell the truth." She rapped on the gla.s.s to attract a prison officer's attention.

"You must find out for yourself. It's the only way you'll ever really know."

"And if I can't?"

"I'm no worse off than I was before. I can live with myself, and that's all that really matters."

Yes, thought Roz, at the end of the day it probably was.

"Just tell me one thing, Olive. Have you lied to me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

The door opened and Olive heaved herself upright with the customary shove from behind.

"Sometimes, it's safer."

The telephone was ringing as she opened the door to the flat.

"Hi," she said, thrusting it under her chin and taking off her jacket.

"Rosalind Leigh." Pray G.o.d it wasn't Rupert.

"It's Hal. I've been ringing all day. Where the h.e.l.l have you been?"

He sounded worried.

"Chasing clues." She leant her back against the wall for support.

"What's it to you, anyway?"

"I'm not psychotic, Roz."

"You d.a.m.n well behaved like it yesterday."

"Just because I didn't call the police?"

"Among other things. It's what normal people do when their property's been smashed up. Unless they've done it themselves, of course."

"What other things?"

"You were b.l.o.o.d.y rude. I was only trying to help." He laughed softly.

"I keep seeing you standing by my door with that table leg. You're a h.e.l.l of a gutsy lady. s.h.i.+t scared, but gutsy.

I've got those photographs for you. Do you still want them?"

"Yes."

"Are you brave enough to collect them or do you want me to post them?"

"It's not bravery that's required, Hawksley, it's thick b.l.o.o.d.y skin.

I'm tired of being needled." She smiled to herself at the pun.

"Which reminds me, was it Mrs. Clarke who said Gwen and Amber were alive after Robert went to work?"

There was a slight pause while he tried to see a connection.

He couldn't.

"Yes, if she was the one in the attached semi."

"She was lying. She says now that she didn't see them, which means Robert Martin's alibi is worthless. He could have done it before he went to work."

"Why would she give Robert Martin an alibi?"

"I don't know. I'm trying to work it out. I thought at first she was alibiing her own husband, but that doesn't hold water.

Apart from anything else, Olive tells me he was already retired so he wouldn't have gone to work anyway. Can you remember checking Mrs.

Clarke's statement?"

"Was Clarke the accountant? Yes?" He thought for a moment.

"OK, he ran most of his business from home but he also looked after the books of several small firms in the area. That week he was doing the accounts of a central heating contractor in Portswood. He was there all day. We checked. He didn't get home until after we had the place barricaded. I remember the fuss he made about having to park his car at the other end of the road. Elderly man, bald, with gla.s.ses. That the one?"

"Yes," she said, *but what he and Robert did during the day is irrelevant if Gwen and Amber were dead before either of the men left for work."

"How reliable is Mrs. Clarke?"

"Not very," she admitted.

"What was the earliest estimate of death according to your pathologist?"

He was unusually evasive.

"I can't remember now."

"Try," she pressed him.

"You suspected Robert enough to check his alibi so he can't have been ruled out immediately on the forensic evidence."