The Sculptress Read Free Page A

mean, either there’s one
God or there’s a mountainful of them. It just depends
on how imaginative you feel. I, for one, have no cause
to celebrate that Christ is Risen.’
    Roz, whose faith was dead, could sympathize with
Olive’s cynicism. ‘So, if I understand you correctly,
you’re saying there is no absolute right or wrong,
only individual conscience and the law.’ Olive nodded.
‘And your conscience isn’t troubling you because you
don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.’
    Olive looked at her with approval. ‘That’s it.’
    Roz chewed her bottom lip in thought. ‘Which
means you believe your mother and sister deserved to
die.’ She frowned. ‘Well, I don’t understand, then.
Why didn’t you put up a defence at your trial?’
    ‘I had no defence.’
    ‘Provocation. Mental cruelty. Neglect. They must have done something if you felt you were justified in
killing them.’
    Olive took another cigarette from the pack but
didn’t answer.
    ‘Well?’
    The intense scrutiny again. This time Roz held her
gaze.
    ‘Well?’ she persisted.
    Abruptly, Olive rapped the window pane with the
back of her hand. ‘I’m ready now, Miss Henderson,’
she called out.
    Roz looked at her in surprise. ‘We’ve forty minutes
yet.’
    ‘I’ve talked enough.’
    ‘I’m sorry. I’ve obviously upset you.’ She waited.
‘It was unintentional.’
    Olive still didn’t answer but sat impassively until
the Officer came in. Then she grasped the edge of the
table and, with a shove from behind, heaved herself
to her feet. The cigarette, unlit, clung to her lower
lip like a string of cotton wool. ‘I’ll see you next
week,’ she said, easing crabwise through the door and
shambling off down the corridor with Miss Henderson
and the metal chair in tow.
    Roz sat on for several minutes, watching them
through the window. Why had Olive balked at the
mention of justification? Roz felt unreasonably
cheated – it was one of the few questions she had
wanted an answer to – and yet . . . Like the first stirrings of long dormant sap, her curiosity began to
reawaken. God knows, there was no sense to it – she
and Olive were as different as two women could
be – but she had to admit an odd liking for the
woman.
    She snapped her briefcase closed and never noticed
that her pencil was missing.

    Iris had left a breathy message on the answerphone.
‘Ring me with all the dirt . . . Is she perfectly ghastly?
If she’s as mad and as fat as her solicitor said, she
must be terrifying. I’m agog to hear the gory details.
If you don’t phone, I shall come round to the flat
and make a nuisance of myself . . .’
    Roz poured herself a gin and tonic and wondered
if Iris’s insensitivity was inherited or acquired. She
dialled her number. ‘I’m phoning because it’s the
lesser of two evils. If I had to watch you drooling
your disgusting prurience all over my carpet, I should
be sick.’ Mrs Antrobus, her bossy white cat, slithered
round her legs, stiff tailed and purring. Roz winked
down at her. She and Mrs Antrobus had a relationship
of long standing, in which Mrs Antrobus
wore the trousers and Roz knew her place. There
was no persuading Mrs A. to do anything she didn’t
want.
    ‘Oh, goody. You liked her, then?’
    ‘What a revolting woman you are.’ She took a sip from her glass. ‘I’m not sure that like is quite the
word I would use.’
    ‘How fat is she?’
    ‘Grotesque. And it’s sad, not funny.’
    ‘Did she talk?’
    ‘Yes. She has a very pukka accent and she’s a bit of
an intellectual. Not at all what I expected. Very sane,
by the way.’
    ‘I thought the solicitor said she was a psychopath.’
    ‘He did. I’m going to see him tomorrow. I want
to know who gave him that idea. According to Olive,
five psychiatrists have diagnosed her normal.’
    ‘She might be lying.’
    ‘She’s not. I checked with the Governor afterwards.’
Roz reached down to scoop Mrs