Unfaithfully Yours (34 page)

⁴
Interview with subject who asked not to be named and had a brief ‘fling’ with Mr Price in 2012 after he approached her as she was buying a pre-wrapped portion of Jarlsberg.

⁵
She maintains a more or less constant vigil in her chair by the window, claiming, in the course of several interviews I conducted with her, to be ‘looking out for burglars’.

⁶
Michael Larner was on a field trip for the BBC filming a group of stickleback, or possibly gudgeon, in Hampshire.

⁷
There is no such drug registered with the MHRA.

⁸
They were temazepam – as confirmed in the police report, which I have seen.

⁹
Confirmed in an informal interview with me in the Putney Shopping Centre and, also, by an interview with Mrs Katharine Bildeeze (87) of Lawson Crescent.

¹⁰
She added, ‘Sex makes me sick. I am eighty-seven and have had enough sex. So have the people in this road. They think about nothing else. It is disgusting.’

¹¹
The person on whom I was ‘spying’ in what I now realize was a totally despicable way was my present fiancée, Mary Dimmock. I do not mean to suggest, by using the word ‘present’ that I intend to get another fiancée in the near future.

¹²
Not, obviously, the assailant but Mrs Mary Dimmock, soon to be, I hope, Mrs Mary Gibbons, who received high praise for her rendering of the part.

¹³
See earlier reference to Mrs Bildeeze’s evidence.

¹⁴
My italics.

¹⁵
It is exactly the sort of ingenious scheme one might expect from this clearly highly intelligent lady, who is, as you all know, a lover of crossword puzzles. She is a very public moralist and at one stage in her life was a committed Christian. If it was her, I knew I was going to be seriously disappointed because I had decided, after several encounters with her, that she was not one of those who said hello with Puritan enthusiasm, then sank her teeth into your flesh. You know what I mean, Acrostic Fan!

¹⁶
We have no firm evidence that the cushion was held over Mrs Larner’s face. When Mr Larner found it, it was on the floor. The pathologist’s report states that Mrs Larner died of an overdose of sleeping tablets and she had ingested enough temazepam ‘to kill a horse’ to use the term employed by Dr Ron Schnitte, the police pathologist. The crucial points of evidence here are all related to the time of death.

¹⁷
I first became aware of this on 10 December. I presented myself, unannounced, at 101 Fellen Road, the marital residence of Dr and Mrs Goldsmith. The door was opened by Mrs Price. She said, before I even had the opportunity to explain that I was there on behalf of Michael Larner, ‘Gerry left me for Barbara. He is trying to say they have always been in love but it’s obviously not as simple as that!’

¹⁸
In her first letters to me ‘Mrs Price’ managed to ‘pull off’ a convincing impression of the real Mrs Price’s style, criticizing my use of ‘inverted commas’ and generally ‘coming on’ like a disgruntled schoolteacher. I have since learned that Mrs Price, a serious and committed teacher, is not often malicious at the expense of those less well educated than herself. This is not true of ‘Ms’ Sharpe.

¹⁹
Not all are well regarded. In the
Observer
edition of 23 November 1996 the lead fiction review, written by Alison Hennehaugh, began, ‘Dishonesty in fiction is the cardinal sin. Imaginary characters have to have feeling and strength and moral purpose, and Ms Sharpe’s latest convoluted novel is peopled entirely by a cast of stooges who have neither.’

²⁰
I am told that some volunteer workers in the ‘Samaritans’ often ‘help’ suicides through the process of dying rather than trying to save their lives. A piece of moral casuistry (yes, I know the big words too, Ms Sharpe and ‘Mrs Price’ with or without inverted commas) worthy of one of Mrs Goldsmith’s characters.

²¹
A period of at least forty years, since both agree that they met at Magdalen College, Oxford, in June 1968.

²²
The italics are Mary Dimmock’s.

²³
Miss Annabelle Kwok (1982-5); Mrs Sue Jones-Parry (1983-6); Mrs Pamela Larner (1985-2000); Dominique von Finkelkraut-Smith(2001); Alison Hennehaugh (2003-2005); Julia and Margaret Smith-Lewens (2006-2009); Ulrika Schwarzkopf (January 2010); Emmeline Hughes (May 2010); Jean Priest (June 2010, probably); Mary Dimmock (September-October 2011)

²⁴
Alison Hennehaugh was ‘set upon’ by a ‘masked woman’ as she cycled home from the
Observer
in 2004. I have still not been able to ascertain whether the attack was motivated by pique at her review of ‘Ms Sharpe’’s novel or fury at Ms Hennehaugh’s affair with Gerald Price. Dominique von Finkelkraut-Smith was also sprayed with paint by a ‘heavily disguised and aggressive woman’ on Putney Heath in October 2001. There may have been other attacks or, indeed, unexplained deaths for which Barbara Goldsmith was almost certainly responsible.

²⁵
She accused me, among other things of ‘tampering with her brain’ and ‘letting electricity out to kill her’.

²⁶
Although Mr Price and Mrs Goldsmith have been, to put it mildly, obstructive, I would also welcome a response from them. On my last visit to Heathland Avenue, where Mr Price now resides with Mrs Goldsmith, he threw a chair at me and called me ‘a sneaking little rat’. My interest, I repeat, is only in the truth.

²⁷
Hennehaugh also did not wish to be named.