Daisy and Bernard (The Blind Sleuth Mysteries 3)

Chapter 9

Sometime later, at New Scotland Yard, they were once again sitting across from one another on both sides of the desk, the investigator and the witness... or the suspect. Bernard said in his soft, crooning voice, "So, on the spur of the moment, you decide to drink the man's blood..."

"Yes... It sounds awful when you put it in those words, but at this moment in time I'm just following my animal instincts. I am deaf as well as blind, so I'm feeling half dead already, but I want to survive. I just want to live a few days more and see what happens..."

"All right. Now, before we go on, I must caution you again: I'm taking notes; I'm very proficient at shorthand. I will use all this to write up the final deposition. So now you have officially admitted that you did drink a human being's blood with the aim of feeding yourself... I may put that on the record?"

"Yes, yes. But, God, Bernard, all this makes me feel terribly uncomfortable. So I was a cannibal! You're making me go through hell once more! Is it really necessary?"

"Well, Daisy, I've already said so a dozen times: we need to get to the truth. I put it to you that your whole life until now has been utterly dominated by these unresolved issues. Take the case of your own son, for instance. Maybe he would never have killed McCullough if your narrative had not been: 'I killed your father and got away with it.' If only you had been able to tell him instead: 'Of course I went to the police as soon as I could, and the judge decided that I had acted under duress, so I was not prosecuted..."

There was a long silence. Then finally Daisy said, "So it was my fault after all? I did fail as a mother!"

"Well, I admit that is what I seem to be implying, but it's not exactly what I mean... It's all idle speculation of course, and I'm being unfair. Jonathan is still personally and entirely responsible for his own actions, obviously."

"Is there any news of Jonathan?"

"No. I'm not supposed to discuss this with you, but the boy is very clever. The entire force is looking for him, but he's managed to stay out of their hands for quite some time now. Perhaps he's smarter than I credited him for, though this can't go on forever."

"I'm so sorry for what happened. I helped him to escape; I tipped him off. But what else could I do? I'm his mother!"

"That's all right, darling. Let the police do their job; I did mine; I identified the culprit. And what I want to do now, is to wrap up both the Martin and the Loretta McCullough cases, so that the Crown Prosecution Service can take a look at them. Your deposition is central to these cases, and it is absolutely essential that you tell the truth."

"Yes, but what has it got to do with the Martin McCullough case? Do you really need my deposition there?"

"Well, maybe it is not as essential, no. We have enough hard physical evidence. But still, we need to establish how you killed Jonathan's father, so we can explain why the suspect killed the victim in this peculiar way. It explains his motives."

Collins had collected enough proof for the case when he had gone to speak with Daisy's dentist. The man told him that Jonathan had needed braces at the age of thirteen. He still had photographs he'd made when Jonathan's braces came out a couple of years later, and he could therefore testify with absolute certainty that the marks found on the victim's body were indeed those of the suspect's teeth.

Even more crucially, when Collins had asked him if Jonathan had ever stolen anything from his practice, the dentist had volunteered the information that a bottle of chloroform had disappeared shortly after the young man's last visit. He had in fact suspected the "shifty little bastard" of taking it, but did not report the incident to the police. "I see now that maybe I should have," the man had added.