‘Well, that’s the strange part. You see, I started to feel peculiar about that time. Sort of woozy and strange. Gribby said I was ill and that I must go to bed to recover. I had to, because I couldn’t stand up sometimes, and everything seemed so muddled and cloudy. But since I’ve been here in the hospital I’ve gradually stopped feeling like that, so I think she must have been drugging me.’
DI Pople had been told by the doctor that tests on Christabel Coleman’s arrival had revealed narcotics in her bloodstream. The doctor thought it was withdrawal symptoms that gave the impression she was insane, because she’d been given this drug for a considerable time. DI Pople had himself been into Christabel’s father’s surgery in the house. It was very old-fashioned, a time-warp room from Victorian times, with a big mahogany desk and shelves from floor to ceiling filled with medical books and rows of medicines. In the drawers and cupboards they’d found countless bottles of pills and, presumably, Miss Gribble, when a much younger woman, had managed to discover what a great many of them were for.
DI Pople studied Christabel now. She must have been very attractive as a young woman. How sad it was that her life had been blighted because of an inability to stand up for herself.
‘It seems to me, Mrs Coleman,’ he said carefully, ‘that you’ve allowed Miss Gribble to take over your whole life. Tell me, when your husband was alive, what did he have to say about her?’
‘He didn’t like her at all,’ Christabel admitted. ‘He called her the Black Widow. In fact, she tried to stop me marrying him by hinting he had other women. I expect you know my father was a doctor? Well, he and Mother liked and trusted Reg, though Gribby would say the exact opposite, so I took no notice of what she said and we got married. A year later, in 1926, Sylvia was born and we were terribly happy. Reg was always firm with Gribby then, expecting her to know her place as housekeeper. She did help me with Sylvia sometimes, but not much. Then Father died and, soon after, Mother too, and I suppose I leaned on Gribby more than I should’ve done. Then, when the war started and Reg was called up, she just sort of took over. She ate with Sylvia and I, she came in the drawing room with us, she became like a mother.’
‘You must have been very upset when your husband was reported missing. You leaned on Miss Gribble still more then?’
‘Well, yes,’ she said with a shrug. ‘I was terribly upset. I kept crying, I felt so terribly alone. But Gribby took care of me and, looking back, I think she might have been giving me some sort of drug then, too, because I became very, very muddled. One night, I was sure Reg came back. It was so clear to me – he came into my bedroom and kissed and hugged me. He said that he’d got separated from the rest of his unit at Dunkirk. I can remember him saying he was going downstairs to find something to eat. The next thing I knew it was morning and he wasn’t there. Gribby said I’d dreamt it.’
DI Pople looked pointedly at Sergeant Wayfield. The two men excused themselves and went outside the room to confer. ‘Could Reg Coleman have returned and Miss Gribble killed him?’ he asked.
‘Well, they said he was missing, presumed dead, but if he did get separated from his unit he could have made it back home.’
‘In the Great War it was common enough for men to go missing and never be found, dead or alive, but it was fairly rare in the last one. There was one report on file that he was seen in Folkestone some time after the rest of his unit got back. But it was thought to be false information when he didn’t surface again.’
‘Why would Gribble kill him?’
‘To have Christabel to herself? Because she was afraid Reg would kick her out? We’ve already established that the woman is capable of such a thing.’
‘But we can’t take the word of a woman who’s a bit cracked for it.’
‘She isn’t cracked at all. Though, considering that Gribble was lacing her food with some kind of drug, it’s surprising she isn’t. We ought to have thought of that when we found so much medicine left in the doctor’s old surgery. A sly woman like Gribble would delight in finding out the side effects of various drugs and experimenting with them. But there’s nothing to stop us digging around in the garden of Mulberry House. We’ll go back in to Christabel now, but start the ball rolling afterwards.’
‘Is everything all right?’ Christabel asked sweetly when they came back in. ‘I bet you think I’ve gone right off my rocker, imagining Reg came home.’
‘Not at all. But can we move on a bit, to the point when Petal was born. It must have been an awful shock to have an illegitimate child in the family?’
She nodded and hung her head.
‘Do you know who the child’s father was?’
‘I can’t talk about that. It’s too painful,’ she said, her voice rising in agitation.
‘The shame? People talking?’ DI Pople said. ‘I can imagine. So when Sylvia took off with her baby, it must have been a relief for you and Miss Gribble?’
She nodded again, mutely.
‘So why, if you were glad, did you decide to look for her six years later?’
‘I wasn’t glad she left, I was terribly sad, and it just got worse and worse. Gribby kept telling me to snap out of it, but I couldn’t. I was afraid I was heading towards the asylum, and that only seeing Sylvia and the baby and knowing they were all right would save me.’
DI Pople then questioned Mrs Coleman about the trip to Somerset. Her account of finding Stone Cottage, seeing Sylvia and Petal and then going out to sit in the car was virtually identical to what Miss Gribble had said.
‘But didn’t you find it odd that Sylvia didn’t come out to say goodbye to Petal and you?’
‘It was raining so hard, Gribby said she’d told her to stay indoors. She said we were taking Petal to the Coronation party and would come back for Sylvia later in the afternoon.’
‘But weren’t you horrified when Miss Gribble drove on out of the village?’
‘Absolutely. Petal screamed blue murder about going to the party and wanting her mother. Gribby stopped the car and smacked her. She whispered to me so Petal couldn’t hear that Stone Cottage wasn’t fit to keep pigs in and Sylvia couldn’t make ends meet so she’d suggested we took Petal and then Sylvia could go to London and get a job and come home at weekends. She said Sylvia was relieved because her life there was such a struggle. She didn’t even have electricity, or a bathroom!’
‘So you were glad?’
‘Well, yes. I’d seen how ramshackle Stone Cottage was. Then Petal snuggled up to me in the back of the car, and it all felt so good and right.’
‘When did you find out that Sylvia was dead?’
‘I didn’t. Later, when Petal was asleep, Gribby said that Sylvia was selling herself to make a living, and she’d become nasty and hard-faced. She also claimed that Sylvia had asked for fifty pounds for Petal, and she had given it to her.’
‘And you believed your daughter was capable of that?’
Christabel shrugged and made a gesture with her hands. ‘It had been six years since I’d seen her, and she hadn’t written once. She was living in a tumbledown shack, and I believed that Gribby was telling the truth about how she was living. I thought Sylvia had acted in Petal’s best interests.’
‘So when did you begin to doubt that?’
Christabel wrung her hands and looked frightened. ‘A few days after we got home, really. When Gribby was so stern and wouldn’t let Petal come down with us I remembered how things had been between her and Sylvia. I started to wonder why Sylvia would risk Petal being treated as she now was. I did have a big argument with Gribby about it, I said if Petal was going to live here she should be downstairs and going to school. It was after that I started to feel poorly, and I suppose I wasn’t capable of taking in what was going on, because I don’t really remember anything much from that time.’