A flaking wooden sign marked the turning to Chiswell House. The drive, which was overgrown and full of potholes, was bordered on the left by a dense patch of woodland and on the right, by a long field that had been separated into paddocks by electric fences, and contained a number of horses. As the Land Rover lurched and rumbled towards the out-of-sight house, two of the largest horses, spooked by the noisy and unfamiliar car, took off. A chain reaction then occurred, as most of their companions began to canter around, too, the original pair kicking out at each other as they went.

“Wow,” said Robin, watching the horses as the Land Rover swayed over the uneven ground. “She’s got stallions in together.”

“That’s bad, is it?” asked Strike, as a hairy creature the color of jet lashed out with teeth and back legs at an equally large animal he would have categorized as brown, though doubtless the coat color had some rarefied equine name.

“It’s not usually done,” said Robin, wincing as the black stallion’s rear legs made contact with its companion’s flank.

They turned a corner and saw a plain-faced neo-classical house of dirty yellow stone. The graveled forecourt, like the drive, had several potholes and was strewn with weeds, the windows were grubby and a large tub of horse feed sat incongruously beside the front door. Three cars were already sitting there: a red Audi Q3, a racing green Range Rover and an old and muddy Grand Vitara. To the right of the house lay a stable block and to the left, a wide croquet lawn that had long since been given over to the daisies. More dense woodland lay beyond.

As Robin braked, an overweight black Labrador and a rough-coated terrier came shooting out of the front door, both barking. The Labrador seemed keen to make friends but the Norfolk terrier, which had a face like a malevolent monkey, barked and growled until a fair-haired man, dressed in stripy shirt and mustard-colored corduroy trousers, appeared at the doorway and bellowed:

“SHUT UP, RATTENBURY!”

Cowed, the dog subsided into low growls, all directed at Strike.

“Torquil D’Amery,” drawled the fair-haired man, approaching Strike with his hand outstretched. There were deep pockets beneath his pale blue eyes and his shiny pink face looked as though it never needed a razor. “Ignore the dog, he’s a bloody menace.”

“Cormoran Strike. This is—”

Robin had just held out her hand when Kinvara erupted out of the house, wearing old jodhpurs and a washed-out T-shirt, her loose red hair falling everywhere.

“For God’s sake… don’t you know anything about horses?” she shrieked at Strike and Robin. “Why did you come up the drive so fast?”

“You should wear a hard hat if you’re going in there, Kinvara!” Torquil called at her retreating figure, but she stormed away giving no sign that she had heard him. “Not your fault,” he assured Strike and Robin, rolling his eyes. “Got to take the drive at speed or you’ll get stuck in one of the bloody holes, ha ha. Come on in—ah, here’s Izzy.”

Izzy emerged from the house, wearing a navy shirtdress, the sapphire cross still around her neck. To Robin’s slight surprise, she embraced Strike as though he was an old friend come to offer condolences.

“Hi, Izzy,” he said, taking half a step backwards to extricate himself from the embrace. “You know Robin, obviously.”

“Oh, yah, got to get used to calling you ‘Robin’ now,” said Izzy, smiling and kissing Robin on both cheeks. “Sorry if I slip up and call you Venetia—I’m bound to, that’s how I still think of you.

“Did you hear about the Winns?” she asked, in almost the same breath.

They nodded.

“Horrible, horrible little man,” said Izzy. “I’m delighted Della’s given him the push.

“Anyway, come along in… where’s Kinvara?” she asked her brother-in-law as she led them into the house, which seemed gloomy after the brightness outside.

“Bloody horses are upset again,” said Torquil, over the renewed barking of the Norfolk terrier. “No, fuck off, Rattenbury, you’re staying outside.”

He banged the front door closed on the terrier, which began to whine and scratch at it instead. The Labrador padded quietly in Izzy’s wake as she led them through a dingy hallway with wide stone stairs, into a drawing room on the right.

Long windows faced out over the croquet lawn and the woods. As they entered, three white-blond children raced through the overgrown grass outside with raucous cries, then passed out of sight. There was nothing of modernity about them. In their dress and their hairstyles they might have walked straight out of the 1940s.

“They’re Torquil and Fizzy’s,” said Izzy fondly.

“Guilty as charged,” said Torquil, proudly. “M’wife’s upstairs, I’ll go and get her.”

As Robin turned away from the window she caught a whiff of a strong, heady scent that gave her an unaccountable feeling of tension until she spotted the vase of stargazer lilies standing on a table behind a sofa. They matched the faded curtains, once scarlet and now a washed-out pale rose, and the frayed fabric on the walls, where two patches of darker crimson showed that pictures had been removed. Everything was threadbare and worn. Over the mantelpiece hung one of the few remaining paintings, which showed a stabled horse with a splashy brown and white coat, its nose touching a starkly white foal curled in the straw.

Beneath this painting, and standing so quietly that they had not immediately noticed him, was Raphael. With his back to the empty grate, hands in the pockets of his jeans, he appeared more Italian than ever in this very English room, with its faded tapestry cushions, its gardening books piled in a heap on a small table and its chipped Chinoiserie lamps.

“Hi, Raff,” said Robin.

“Hello, Robin,” he said, unsmiling.

“This is Cormoran Strike, Raff,” said Izzy. Raphael didn’t move, so Strike walked over to him to shake hands, which Raphael did reluctantly, returning his hand to his jeans immediately afterwards.

“Yah, so, Fizz and I were just talking about Winn,” said Izzy, who seemed greatly preoccupied with the news of the Winns’ split. “We just hope to God he’s going to keep his mouth shut, because now Papa’s gorn, he can say whatever he likes about him and get away with it, can’t he?”

“You’ve got the goods on Winn, if he tries,” Strike reminded her.

She cast him a look of glowing gratitude.

“You’re right, of course, and we wouldn’t have that if it weren’t for you… and Venetia—Robin, I mean,” she added, as an afterthought.

“Torks, I’m downstairs!” bellowed a woman from just outside the room, and a woman who was unmistakably Izzy’s sister backed into the room carrying a laden tray. She was older, heavily freckled and weather-beaten, her blonde hair streaked with silver, and she wore a striped shirt very like her husband’s, though she had twinned hers with pearls. “TORKS!” she bellowed at the ceiling, making Robin jump. “I’M DOWN HERE!”

She set the tray with a clatter on the needlepoint ottoman that stood in front of Raff and the fireplace.

“Hi, I’m Fizzy. Where’s Kinvara gorn?”

“Faffing around with the horses,” said Izzy, edging around the sofa and sitting down. “Excuse not to be here, I expect. Grab a pew, you two.”

Strike and Robin took two sagging armchairs that stood side by side, at right angles to the sofa. The springs beneath them seemed to have worn out decades ago. Robin felt Raphael’s eyes on her.

“Izz tells me you know Charlie Campbell,” Fizzy said to Strike, pouring everybody tea.

“That’s right,” said Strike.

“Lucky man,” said Torquil, who had just re-entered the room.

Strike gave no sign he had heard this.

“Did you ever meet Jonty Peters?” Fizzy continued. “Friend of the Campbells? He had something to do with the police… no, Badger, these aren’t for you… Torks, what did Jonty Peters do?”

“Magistrate,” said Torquil promptly.

“Yah, of course,” said Fizzy, “magistrate. Did you ever meet Jonty, Cormoran?”

“No,” said Strike, “afraid not.”

“He was married to what’s-her-name, lovely gel, Annabel. Did masses for Save the Children, got her CBE last year, so well-deserved. Oh, but if you knew the Campbells, you must have met Rory Moncrieff?”

“Don’t think so,” said Strike patiently, wondering what Fizzy would have said if he’d told her that the Campbells had kept him as far from their friends and family as was possible. Perhaps she was equal even to that: oh, but then, you must have run across Basil Plumley? They loathed him, yah, violent alcoholic, but his wife did climb Kilimanjaro for Dogs Trust…

Torquil pushed the fat Labrador away from the biscuits and it ambled away into a corner, where it flopped down for a doze. Fizzy sat down between her husband and Izzy on the sofa.

“I don’t know whether Kinvara’s intending to come back,” said Izzy. “We might as well get started.”

Strike asked whether the family had heard any more about the progress of the police investigation. There was a tiny pause, during which the distant shrieks of children echoed across the overgrown lawn.

“We don’t know much more than I’ve already told you,” said Izzy, “though I think we all get the sense—don’t we?” she appealed to the other family members, “that the police think it’s suicide. On the other hand, they clearly feel they have to investigate thoroughly—”

“That’s because of who he was, Izz,” Torquil interrupted. “Minister of the Crown, obviously they’re going to look into it more deeply than they would for the bloke in the street. You should know, Cormoran,” he said portentously, adjusting his substantial weight on the sofa, “sorry, gels, but I’m going to say it—personally, I think it was suicide.

“I understand, of course I do, that that’s a hard thought to bear, and don’t think I’m not happy you’ve been brought in!” he assured Strike. “If it puts the gels’ minds at rest, that’s all to the good. But the, ah, male contingent of the family—eh, Raff?—think there’s nothing more to it than, well, m’father-in-law felt he couldn’t go on. Happens. Not in his right mind, clearly. Eh, Raff?” repeated Torquil.

Raphael did not seem to relish the implicit order. Ignoring his brother-in-law, he addressed Strike directly.

“My father was acting strangely in the last couple of weeks. I didn’t understand why, at the time. Nobody had told me he was being blackm—”

“We’re not going into that,” said Torquil quickly. “We agreed. Family decision.”

Izzy said anxiously:

“Cormoran, I know you wanted to know what Papa was being blackmailed about—”

“Jasper broke no law,” said Torquil firmly, “and that’s the end of it. I’m sure you’re discreet,” he said to Strike, “but these things get out, they always do. We don’t want the papers crawling all over us again. We’re agreed, aren’t we?” he demanded of his wife.

“I suppose so,” said Fizzy, who seemed conflicted. “No, of course we don’t want it all over the papers, but Jimmy Knight had good reason to wish Papa harm, Torks, and I think it’s important Cormoran knows that, at least. You know he was here, in Woolstone, this week?”

“No,” said Torquil, “I didn’t.”

“Yah, Mrs. Ankill saw him,” said Fizzy. “He asked her whether she’d seen his brother.”

“Poor little Billy,” said Izzy vaguely. “He wasn’t right. Well, you wouldn’t be, would you, if you were brought up by Jack o’Kent? Papa was out with the dogs one night years ago,” she told Strike and Robin, “and he saw Jack kicking Billy, literally kicking him, all around their garden. The boy was naked. When he saw Papa, Jack o’Kent stopped, of course.”

The idea that this incident should have been reported to either police or social work seemed not to have occurred to Izzy, or indeed her father. It was as though Jack o’Kent and his son were wild creatures in the wood, behaving, regrettably, as such animals naturally behaved.

“I think the less said about Jack o’Kent,” said Torquil, “the better. And you say Jimmy had reason to wish your father harm, Fizz, but what he really wanted was money, and killing your father certainly wasn’t going—”

“He was angry with Papa, though,” said Fizzy determinedly. “Maybe, when he realized Papa wasn’t going to pay up, he saw red. He was a holy terror when he was a teenager,” she told Strike. “Got into far-left politics early. He used to be down in the local pub with the Butcher brothers, telling everybody that Tories should be hung, drawn and quartered, trying to sell people the Socialist Worker…”

Fizzy glanced sideways at her younger sister, who rather determinedly, Strike thought, ignored her.

“He was trouble, always trouble,” Fizzy said. “The girls liked him, but—”

The drawing room door opened and, to the rest of the family’s evident surprise, Kinvara strode in, flushed and agitated. After a little difficulty extricating himself from his sagging armchair, Strike succeeded in standing up and held out a hand.

“Cormoran Strike. How do you do?”

Kinvara looked as though she would have liked to ignore his friendly overture, but shook the offered hand with bad grace. Torquil pulled up another chair beside the ottoman, and Fizzy poured an extra cup of tea.

“Horses all right, Kinvara?” Torquil asked heartily.

“Well, Mystic’s taken another chunk out of Romano,” she said with a nasty glance at Robin, “so I’ve had to call the vet again. He gets upset every time somebody comes up the drive too fast, otherwise he’s absolutely fine.”

“I don’t know why you’ve put the stallions in together, Kinvara,” said Fizzy.

“It’s a myth that they don’t get along,” Kinvara snapped back. “Bachelor herds are perfectly common in the wild. There was a study in Switzerland that proved they can coexist peacefully once they’ve established the hierarchy among themselves.”

She spoke in dogmatic, almost fanatic, tones.

“We were just telling Cormoran about Jimmy Knight,” Fizzy told Kinvara.

“I thought you didn’t want to go into—?”

“Not the blackmail,” said Torquil hastily, “but what a horror he was when he was younger.”

“Oh,” said Kinvara, “I see.”

“Your stepdaughter’s worried that he may have had something to do with your husband’s death,” said Strike, watching her for a reaction.

“I know,” said Kinvara, with apparent indifference, her eyes following Raphael, who had just walked away from the grate to fetch a pack of Marlboro Lights that lay beside a table lamp. “I never knew Jimmy Knight. The first time I ever laid eyes on him was when he turned up at the house a year ago to speak to Jasper. There’s an ashtray beneath that magazine, Raphael.”

Her stepson lit his cigarette and returned, carrying the ashtray, which he placed on a table beside Robin, before resuming his position in front of the empty fireplace.

“That was the start of it,” Kinvara continued. “The blackmail. Jasper wasn’t actually there that night, so Jimmy talked to me. Jasper was furious when he came home and I told him.”

Strike waited. He suspected that he wasn’t the only one in the room who thought Kinvara might break the family vow of omerta and blurt out what Jimmy had come to say. She refrained, however, so Strike drew out his notebook.

“Would you mind if I run through a few routine questions? I doubt there’ll be anything you haven’t already been asked by the police. Just a couple of points I’d like clarified, if you don’t mind.

“How many keys are there, to the house in Ebury Street?”

“Three, as far as I’m aware,” said Kinvara. The emphasis suggested that the rest of the family might have been hiding keys from her.

“And who had them?” asked Strike.

“Well, Jasper had his own,” she said, “and I had one and there was a spare that Jasper had given to the cleaning woman.”

“What’s her name?”

“I’ve no idea. Jasper let her go a couple of weeks before he—he died.”

“Why did he sack her?” asked Strike.

“Well, if you must know, we got rid of her because we were tightening our belts.”

“Had she come from an agency?”

“Oh no. Jasper was old-fashioned. He put up a card up in a local shop and she applied. I think she was Romanian or Polish or something.”

“Have you got her details?”

“No. Jasper hired and fired her. I never even met her.”

“What happened to her key?”

“It was in the kitchen drawer at Ebury Street, but after he died we found out that Jasper had removed it and locked it up in his desk at work,” said Kinvara. “It was handed back by the ministry, with all his other personal effects.”

“That seems odd,” Strike said. “Anyone know why he’d have done that?”

The rest of the family looked blank, but Kinvara said:

“He was always security conscious and he’d been paranoid lately—except when it came to the horses, of course. All the keys to Ebury Street are a special kind. Restricted. Impossible to copy.”

“Tricky to copy,” said Strike, making a note, “but not impossible, if you know the right people. Where were the other two keys at the time of death?”

“Jasper’s was in his jacket pocket and mine was here, in my handbag,” said Kinvara.

“The canister of helium,” said Strike, moving on. “Does anybody know when it was purchased?”

Total silence greeted these words.

“Was there ever a party,” Strike asked, “perhaps for one of the children—?”

“Never,” said Fizzy. “Ebury Street was the place Papa used for work. He never hosted a party there that I can remember.”

“You, Mrs. Chiswell,” Strike asked Kinvara. “Can you remember any occasion—?”

“No,” she said, cutting across him. “I’ve already told the police this. Jasper must have bought it himself, there’s no other explanation.”

“Has a receipt been found? A credit card bill?”

“He probably paid cash,” said Torquil helpfully.

“Another thing I’d like to clear up,” Strike said, working down the list he had made himself, “is this business of the phone calls the minister made on the morning of his death. Apparently he called you, Mrs. Chiswell, and then you, Raphael.”

Raphael nodded. Kinvara said:

“He wanted to know whether I meant it when I said I was leaving and I said yes, I did. It wasn’t a long conversation. I didn’t know—I didn’t know who your assistant really was. She appeared out of nowhere and Jasper was odd in his manner when I asked about her and I—I was very upset. I thought there was something going on.”

“Were you surprised that your husband waited until the morning to call you about the note you’d left?” asked Strike.

“He told me he hadn’t spotted it when he came in.”

“Where had you left it?”

“On his bedside table. He was probably drunk when he got back. He’s been—he was—drinking heavily. Ever since the blackmail business started.”

The Norfolk terrier that had been shut out of the house suddenly popped up at one of the long windows and began barking at them again.

“Bloody dog,” said Torquil.

“He misses Jasper,” said Kinvara. “He was Jasper’s d-dog—”

She stood up abruptly and walked away to snatch some tissues from a box sitting on top of the gardening books. Everybody looked uncomfortable. The terrier barked on and on. The sleeping Labrador woke and let out a single deep bark in return, before one of the tow-headed children reappeared on the lawn, shouting for the Norfolk terrier to come and play ball. It bounded off again.

“Good boy, Pringle!” shouted Torquil.

In the absence of barking, Kinvara’s small gulps and the sounds of the Labrador flopping down to sleep again filled the room. Izzy, Fizzy and Torquil exchanged awkward glances, while Raphael stared rather stonily ahead. Little though she liked Kinvara, Robin found the family’s inaction unfeeling.

“Where did that picture come from?” asked Torquil, with an artificial air of interest, squinting at the equine painting over Raphael’s head. “New, isn’t it?”

“That was one of Tinky’s,” said Fizzy, squinting up at it. “She brought a bunch of horsey junk over from Ireland with her.”

“See that foal?” said Torquil, staring critically at the picture. “You know what it looks like? Lethal white syndrome. Heard of it?” he asked his wife and sister-in-law. “You’ll know all about that, Kinvara,” he said, clearly under the impression that he was graciously offering a way back into polite conversation. “Pure white foal, seems healthy when it’s born, but defective bowel. Can’t pass feces. M’father bred horses,” he explained to Strike. “They can’t survive, lethal whites. The tragedy is that they’re born alive, so the mare feeds them, gets attached and then—”

“Torks,” said Fizzy tensely, but it was too late. Kinvara blundered out of the room. The door slammed.

“What?” said Torquil, surprised. “What have I—?”

“Baby,” whispered Fizzy.

“Oh, Lord,” he said, “I clean forgot.”

He got to his feet, hitched up his mustard corduroys, embarrassed and defensive.

“Oh, come on,” he said, to the room at large. “I couldn’t expect her to take it that way. Horses in a bloody painting!”

“You know what she’s like,” said Fizzy, “about anything connected with birth. Sorry,” she said to Strike and Robin. “She had a baby that didn’t survive, you see. Very sensitive on the subject.”

Torquil approached the painting and squinted over Raphael’s head at words etched on a small plaque set into the frame.

“‘Mare Mourning,’” he read. “There you are, you see,” he said, with an air of triumph. “Foal is dead.”

“Kinvara likes it,” said Raphael unexpectedly, “because the mare reminds her of Lady.”

“Who?” said Torquil.

“The mare that got laminitis.”

“What’s laminitis?” asked Strike.

“A disease of the hoof,” Robin told him.

“Oh, do you ride?” asked Fizzy keenly.

“I used to.”

“Laminitis is serious,” Fizzy told Strike. “It can cripple them. They need a lot of care, and sometimes nothing can be done, so it’s kindest—”

“My stepmother had been nursing this mare for weeks,” Raphael told Strike, “getting up in the middle of the night and so on. My father waited—”

“Raff, this really hasn’t got anything to do with anything,” said Izzy.

“—waited,” continued Raphael doggedly, “until Kinvara went out one day, called in the vet without telling her and had the horse put down.”

“Lady was suffering,” said Izzy. “Papa told me what a state she was in. It was pure selfishness, keeping her alive.”

“Yeah, well,” said Raphael, his eyes on the lawn beyond the windows, “if I’d gone out and come back to the corpse of an animal I loved, I might’ve reached for the nearest blunt instrument as well.”

“Raff,” said Izzy, “please!”

“You’re the one who wanted this, Izzy,” he said, with grim satisfaction. “D’you really think Mr. Strike and his glamorous assistant aren’t going to find Tegan and talk to her? They’ll soon know what a shit Dad could—”

“Raff!” said Fizzy sharply.

“Steady on, old chap,” said Torquil, something that Robin had never thought to hear outside a book. “This whole thing’s been bloody upsetting, but there’s no need for that.”

Ignoring all of them, Raphael turned back to Strike.

“I suppose your next question was going to be, what did my father say to me, when he called me that morning?”

“That’s right,” said Strike.

“He ordered me down here,” said Raphael.

“Here?” repeated Strike. “Woolstone?”

“Here,” said Raphael. “This house. He told me he thought Kinvara was going to do something stupid. He sounded wooly. A bit odd. Like he had a heavy hangover.”

“What did you understand by ‘something stupid’?” asked Strike, his pen poised over his pad.

“Well, she’s got form at threatening to top herself,” said Raff, “so that, I suppose. Or he might’ve been afraid she was going to torch what little he had left.” He gestured around the shabby room. “As you can see, that wasn’t much.”

“Did he tell you she was leaving him?”

“I got the impression that things were bad between them, but I can’t remember his exact words. He wasn’t very coherent.”

“Did you do as he asked?” asked Strike.

“Yep,” said Raphael. “Got in my car like an obedient son, drove all the way here and found Kinvara alive and well in the kitchen, raging about Venetia—Robin, I mean,” he corrected himself. “As you may have gathered, Kinvara thought Dad was fucking her.”

“Raff!” said Fizzy, sounding outraged.

“There’s no need,” said Torquil, “for that kind of language.”

Everybody was carefully avoiding catching Robin’s eye. She knew she had turned red.

“Seems odd, doesn’t it?” Strike asked. “Your father asking you to come all the way down to Oxfordshire, when there were people far closer he could have asked to keep an eye on his wife? Didn’t I hear that there was someone here overnight?”

Izzy piped up before Raphael could answer.

“Tegan was here that night—the stable girl—because Kinvara won’t leave the horses without a sitter,” she said, and then, correctly anticipating Strike’s next question, “I’m afraid nobody’s got any contact details for her, because Kinvara had a row with her right after Papa died, and Tegan walked out. I don’t actually know where she’s working now. Don’t forget, though,” said Izzy, leaning forwards and addressing Strike earnestly, “Tegan was probably fast asleep when Kinvara claims she came back here. This is a big house. Kinvara could have claimed to have come back any time and Tegan might not have known.”

“If Kinvara was there with him in Ebury Street, why would he tell me to come and find her here?” Raphael asked, exasperated. “And how do you explain how she got here ahead of me?”

Izzy looked as though she would like to make a good retort to this, but appeared unable to think of one. Strike knew now why Izzy had said that the content of Chiswell’s phone call to his son “didn’t matter”: it further undermined the case for Kinvara as murderer.

“What’s Tegan’s surname?” he asked.

“Butcher,” said Izzy.

“Any relation to the Butcher brothers Jimmy Knight used to hang around with?” Strike asked.

Robin thought the three on the sofa seemed to be avoiding each other’s eyes. Fizzy then answered.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, but—”

“I suppose I could try and contact the family, see whether they’ll give me Tegan’s number,” said Izzy. “Yes, I’ll do that, Cormoran, and let you know how I get on.”

Strike turned back to Raphael.

“So, did you set off immediately after your father asked you to go to Kinvara?”

“No, I ate something, first, and showered,” said Raphael. “I wasn’t exactly looking forward to dealing with her. She and I aren’t each other’s favorite people. I got here around nine.”

“How long did you stay?”

“Well, in the end, I was here for hours,” said Raphael quietly. “A couple of police arrived to break the news that Dad was dead. I could hardly walk out after that, could I? Kinvara nearly coll—”

The door reopened and Kinvara walked back in, returned to her hard-backed chair, her face set, tissues clutched in her hand.

“I’ve only got five minutes,” she said. “The vet’s just called, he’s in the area, so he’ll pop in to see Romano. I can’t stay.”

“Could I ask something?” Robin asked Strike. “I know it might be nothing at all,” she said, to the room at large, “but there was a small blue tube of homeopathic pills on the floor beside the minister when I found him. Homeopathy didn’t seem to be the kind of thing he’d—”

“What kind of pills?” asked Kinvara sharply, to Robin’s surprise.

“Lachesis,” said Robin.

“In a small blue tube?”

“Yes. Were they yours?”

“Yes, they were!”

“You left them in Ebury Street?” asked Strike.

“No, I lost them weeks ago… but I never had them there,” she said, frowning, more to herself than to the room. “I bought them in London, because the pharmacy in Woolstone didn’t have any.”

She frowned, clearly reconstructing events in her mind.

“I remember, I tasted a couple outside the chemists, because I wanted to know whether he’d notice them in his feed—”

“Sorry, what?” asked Robin, unsure she had heard correctly.

“Mystic’s feed,” said Kinvara. “I was going to give them to Mystic.”

“You were going to give homeopathic tablets to a horse?” said Torquil, inviting everyone else to agree that this was funny.

“Jasper thought it was a ludicrous idea, too,” said Kinvara vaguely, still lost in recollection. “Yes, I opened them up right after I’d paid for them, took a couple, and,” she mimed the action, “put the tube in my jacket pocket, but when I got home, they weren’t there any more. I thought I must have dropped them somehow…”

Then she gave a little gasp and turned red. She seemed to be boggling at some inner, private realization. Then, realizing that everybody was still watching her, she said:

“I traveled home from London with Jasper that day. We met at the station, got the train together… he took them out of my pocket! He stole them, so I couldn’t give them to Mystic!”

“Kinvara, don’t be so utterly ridiculous!” said Fizzy, with a short laugh.

Raphael suddenly ground out his cigarette in the china ashtray at Robin’s elbow. He seemed to be refraining from comment with difficulty.

“Did you buy more?” Robin asked Kinvara.

“Yes,” said Kinvara, who seemed almost disoriented with shock, though Robin thought her conclusion as to what had happened to her pills very strange. “They were in a different bottle, though. That blue tube, that’s the one I bought first.”

“Isn’t homeopathy just placebo effect?” Torquil inquired of the room at large. “How could a horse—?”

“Torks,” muttered Fizzy, through gritted teeth. “Shut up.”

“Why would your husband have stolen a tube of homeopathic pills from you?” asked Strike curiously. “It seems—”

“Pointlessly spiteful?” asked Raphael, arms folded beneath the picture of the dead foal. “Because you’re so convinced you’re right, and the other person’s wrong, that it’s OK to stop them doing something harmless?”

“Raff,” said Izzy at once, “I know you’re upset—”

“I’m not upset, Izz,” said Raphael. “Very liberating, really, going back through all the shitty things Dad did while he was alive—”

“That’s enough, boy!” said Torquil.

“Don’t call me ‘boy,’” said Raphael, shaking another cigarette out of his packet. “All right? Don’t fucking call me ‘boy.’”

“You’ll have to excuse Raff,” Torquil told Strike loudly, “he’s upset with m’late father-in-law because of the will.”

“I already knew I’d been written out of the will!” snapped Raphael, pointing at Kinvara. “She saw to that!”

“Your father didn’t need any persuasion from me, I promise you!” said Kinvara, scarlet in the face now. “Anyway, you’ve got plenty of money, your mother spoils you rotten.” She turned to Robin. “His mother left Jasper for a diamond merchant, after taking Jasper for everything she could lay her hands on—”

“Could I ask another couple of questions?” said Strike loudly, before a plainly fuming Raphael could speak.

“The vet will be here for Romano in a minute,” said Kinvara. “I need to get back to the stable.”

“Just a couple, and I’m done,” Strike assured her. “Did you ever miss any amitriptyline pills? I think you were prescribed them, weren’t you?”

“The police asked me this. I might have lost some,” said Kinvara, with irritating vagueness, “but I can’t be sure. There was a box I thought I’d lost and then I found it again and it didn’t have as many pills in as I remembered, and I know I meant to leave a pack at Ebury Street in case I ever forgot when I was coming up from London, but when the police asked me I couldn’t remember whether I’d actually done it or not.”

“So you couldn’t swear to it that you had pills missing?”

“No,” said Kinvara. “Jasper might have stolen some, but I can’t swear to it.”

“Have you had any more intruders in your garden since your husband died?” asked Strike.

“No,” said Kinvara. “Nothing.”

“I heard that a friend of your husband’s tried to call him early the morning that he died, but couldn’t get through. D’you happen to know who the friend was?”

“Oh… yes. It was Henry Drummond,” said Kinvara.

“And who’s—?”

“He’s an art dealer, very old friend of Papa’s,” interrupted Izzy. “Raphael worked for him for a little while—didn’t you, Raff?—until he came to help Papa at the House of Commons.”

“I can’t see what Henry’s got to do with anything,” said Torquil, with an angry little laugh.

“Well, I think that’s everything,” said Strike, ignoring this comment as he closed his notebook, “except that I’d be glad to know whether you think your husband’s death was suicide, Mrs. Chiswell.”

The hand grasping the tissue contracted tightly.

“Nobody’s interested in what I think,” she said.

“I assure you, I am,” said Strike.

Kinvara’s eyes flickered from Raphael, who was scowling at the lawn outside, to Torquil.

“Well, if you want my opinion, Jasper did a very stupid thing, right before he—”

“Kinvara,” said Torquil sharply, “you’d be best advised—”

“I’m not interested in your advice!” said Kinvara, turning on him suddenly, eyes narrowed. “After all, it’s your advice that brought this family to financial ruin!”

Fizzy shot her husband a look across Izzy, warning him against retorting. Kinvara turned back to Strike.

“My husband provoked somebody, somebody I warned him he shouldn’t upset, shortly before he died—”

“You mean Geraint Winn?” asked Strike.

“No,” said Kinvara, “but you’re close. Torquil doesn’t want me to say anything about it, because it involves his good friend Christopher—”

“Bloody hell!” exploded Torquil. He got to his feet, again hitching up his mustard corduroys, and looking incensed. “My God, are we dragging total outsiders into this fantasy, now? What the bloody hell has Christopher got to do with anything? M’father-in-law killed himself!” he told Strike loudly, before rounding on his wife and sister-in-law. “I’ve tolerated this nonsense because you gels want peace of mind, but frankly, if this is where it’s going to lead—”

Izzy and Fizzy set up an outcry, both trying to placate him and justify themselves, and in the midst of this mêlée, Kinvara got to her feet, tossed back her long red hair and walked towards the door, leaving Robin with the strong impression that she had lobbed this grenade into the conversation deliberately. At the door she paused, and the others’ heads turned, as though she had called to them. In her high, clear, childish voice, Kinvara said:

“You all come back here and treat this house as though you’re the real owners and I’m a guest, but Jasper said I could live here as long as I’m alive. Now I need to see the vet and when I get back, I’d like you all to have gone home. You aren’t welcome here any more.”