Lethal White

Strike considered that he had got out just in time. Finishing his cigarette outside the station, with ten minutes to kill before the next train to central London, he reflected that Greg had reverted over breakfast to that combination of chirpiness and heartiness with which he usually treated his brother-in-law, while Lucy’s inquiries after Robin as he put on his coat had shown signs of becoming a wide-ranging inquiry into his relationships with women in general. His thoughts had just returned dispiritedly towards Lorelei when his mobile rang.

“Hello?”

“Is this Cormoran?” said an upper-class female voice he did not immediately recognize.

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“Izzy Chiswell,” she said, sounding as though she had a head cold.

“Izzy!” repeated Strike, surprised. “Er… how are you?”

“Oh, bearing up. We, ah, got your invoice.”

“Right,” said Strike, wondering whether she was about to dispute the total, which was large.

“I’d be very happy to give you payment immediately, if you could… I wonder whether you could possibly come and see me? Today, if that’s convenient? How are you fixed?”

Strike checked his watch. For the first time in weeks he had nothing to do except make his way to Lorelei’s later for dinner, and the prospect of collecting a large check was certainly welcome.

“Yeah, that should be fine,” he said. “Where are you, Izzy?”

She gave him her address in Chelsea.

“I’ll be about an hour.”

“Perfect,” she said, sounding relieved. “I’ll see you then.”

38

Oh, this killing doubt!

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

It was almost midday when Strike arrived at Izzy’s mews house in Upper Cheyne Row in Chelsea, a quietly expensive stretch of houses which, unlike those of Ebury Street, were tastefully mismatched. Izzy’s was small and painted white, with a carriage lamp beside the front door, and when Strike rang the doorbell she answered within a few seconds.

In her loose black trousers and a black sweater too warm for such a sunny day, Izzy reminded Strike of the first time he had met her father, who had been sporting an overcoat in June. A sapphire cross hung around her neck. Strike thought that she had gone as far into official mourning as modern-day dress and sensibilities would permit.

“Come in, come in,” she said nervously, not making eye contact, and standing back, waved him into an airy open-plan sitting and kitchen area, with white walls, brightly patterned sofas and an Art Nouveau fireplace with sinuous, molded female figures supporting the mantelpiece. The long rear windows looked out onto a small, private courtyard, where expensive wrought iron furniture sat among carefully tended topiary.

“Sit down,” said Izzy, waving him towards one of the colorful sofas. “Tea? Coffee?”

“Tea would be great, thanks.”

Strike sat down, unobtrusively extracted a number of uncomfortable, beaded cushions from beneath him, and took stock of the room. In spite of the cheery modern fabrics, a more traditional English taste predominated. Two hunting prints stood over a table laden with silver-framed photographs, including a large black-and-white study of Izzy’s parents on their wedding day, Jasper Chiswell dressed in the uniform of the Queen’s Own Hussars, Lady Patricia toothy and blonde in a cloud of tulle. Over the mantelpiece hung a large watercolor of three blond toddlers, which Strike assumed represented Izzy and her two older siblings, dead Freddie and the unknown Fizzy.

Izzy clattered around, dropping teaspoons and opening and closing cupboards without finding what she was looking for. At last, turning down Strike’s offer of help, she carried a tray bearing a teapot, bone china mugs and biscuits the short distance between kitchenette and coffee table, and set it down.

“Did you watch the opening ceremony?” she asked politely, busy with teapot and strainer.

“I did, yeah,” said Strike. “Great, wasn’t it?”

“Well, I liked the first part,” said Izzy, “all the industrial revolution bit, but I thought it went, well, a bit PC after that. I’m not sure foreigners will really get why we were talking about the National Health Service, and I must say, I could have done without all the rap music. Help yourself to milk and sugar.”

“Thanks.”

There was a brief silence, broken only by the tinkling of silver and china; that plush kind of silence achievable in London only by people with plenty of money. Even in winter, Strike’s attic flat was never completely quiet: music, footsteps and voices filled the Soho street below, and when pedestrians forsook the area, traffic rumbled through the night, while the slightest breath of wind rattled his insecure windows.

“Oh, your check,” gasped Izzy, jumping up again to fetch an envelope on the kitchen side. “Here.”

“Thanks very much,” said Strike, taking it from her.

Izzy sat down again, took a biscuit, changed her mind about eating it and put it on her plate instead. Strike sipped tea that he suspected was of the finest quality, but which, to him, tasted unpleasantly of dried flowers.

“Um,” said Izzy at last, “it’s quite hard to know where to begin.”

She examined her fingers, which were unmanicured.

“I’m scared you’ll think I’m bonkers,” she muttered, glancing up at him through her fair lashes.

“I doubt that,” said Strike, putting down his tea and adopting what he hoped was an encouraging expression.

“Have you heard what they found in Papa’s orange juice?”

“No,” said Strike.

“Amitriptyline tablets, ground up into powder. I don’t know whether you—they’re anti-depressants. The police say it’s quite an efficient, painless suicide method. Sort of belt and—belt and braces, the pills and the—the bag.”

She took a sloppy gulp of tea.

“They were quite kind, really, the police. Well, they have training, don’t they? They told us, if the helium’s concentrated enough, one breath and you’re… you’re asleep.”

She pursed her lips together.

“The thing is,” she said loudly, in a sudden rush of words, “I absolutely know that Papa would never have killed himself, because it was something he detested, he always said it was the coward’s way out, awful for the family and everybody left behind.

“And it was strange: there was no packaging for the amitriptyline anywhere in the house. No empty boxes, no blister packs, nothing. Of course, a box would have Kinvara’s name on it. Kinvara’s the one who’s prescribed amitriptyline. She’s been taking them for over a year.”

Izzy glanced at Strike to see what effect her words had had. When he said nothing, she plunged on.

“Papa and Kinvara rowed the night before, at the reception, right before I came over to talk to you and Charlie. Papa had just told us he’d asked Raff to come over to the Ebury Street house next morning. Kinvara was furious. She asked why and Papa wouldn’t tell her, he just smiled, and that infuriated her.”

“Why would—?”

“Because she hates all of us,” said Izzy, correctly anticipating Strike’s question. Her hands were clutched together, the knuckles white. “She’s always hated anything and anyone that competed with her for Papa’s attention or his affection, and she particularly hates Raff, because he looks just like his mother, and Kinvara’s always been insecure about Ornella, because she’s still very glamorous, but Kinvara doesn’t like that Raff’s a boy, either. She’s always been frightened he’d replace Freddie, and maybe get put back in the will. Kinvara married Papa for his money. She never loved him.”

“When you say ‘put back’—”

“Papa wrote Raff out of his will when Raff ran—when he did the thing—in the car. Kinvara was behind that, of course, she was egging Papa on to have nothing more to do with Raff at all—anyway, Papa told us at Lancaster House he’d invited Raff around next day and Kinvara went quiet, and a couple of minutes later she suddenly announced that she was leaving and walked out

. She claims she went back to Ebury Street, wrote Papa a farewell note—but you were there. Maybe you saw it?”

“Yes,” said Strike. “I did.”

“Yes, so, she claims she wrote that note, packed her bag, then caught the train back to Woolstone.

“The way the police were questioning us, they seemed to think Kinvara leaving him would have made Papa kill himself, but that’s just too ridiculous for words! Their marriage has been in trouble for ages. I think he’d been able to see through her for months and months before then. She’s been telling crazy fibs and doing all kinds of melodramatic things to try and keep Papa’s interest. I promise you, if Papa had believed she was about to leave him, he’d have been relieved, not suicidal, but of course, he wouldn’t have taken that note seriously, he’d have known perfectly well it was more play-acting. Kinvara’s got nine horses and no income. She’ll have to be dragged out of Chiswell House, just like Tinky the First—my Grandpa’s third wife,” Izzy explained. “The Chiswell men seem to have a thing for women with big boobs and horses.”

Flushed beneath her freckles, Izzy drew breath, and said:

“I think Kinvara killed Papa. I can’t get it out of my head, can’t focus, can’t think about anything else. She was convinced there was something going on between Papa and Venetia—she was suspicious from the first moment she saw Venetia, and then the Sun snooping around convinced her she was right to be worried—and she probably thought Papa reinstating Raff proved that he was getting ready for a new era, and I think she ground up her anti-depressants and put them in his orange juice when he wasn’t looking—he always had a glass of juice first thing, that was his routine—then, when he became sleepy and couldn’t fight her off, she put the bag over his head and then, after she’d killed him, she wrote that note to try and make it look as though she was the one who was going to divorce him and I think she sneaked out of the house after she’d done it, went home to Woolstone and pretended she’d been there when Papa died.”

Running out of breath, Izzy felt for the cross around her neck and played with it nervously, watching for Strike’s reaction, her expression both nervous and defiant.

Strike, who had dealt with several military suicides, knew that survivors were nearly always left with a particularly noxious form of grief, a poisoned wound that festered even beyond that of those whose relatives had been dispatched by enemy bullets. He might have his own doubts about the way in which Chiswell had met his end, but he was not about to share them with the disoriented, grief-stricken woman beside him. What struck him chiefly about Izzy’s diatribe was the hatred she appeared to feel for her stepmother. It was no trivial charge that she laid against Kinvara, and Strike wondered what it was that convinced Izzy that the rather childish, sulky woman with whom he had shared five minutes in a car could be capable of planning what amounted to a methodical execution.

“The police,” he said at last, “will have looked into Kinvara’s movements, Izzy. In a case like this, the spouse is usually the first one to be investigated.”

“But they’re accepting her story,” said Izzy feverishly. “I can tell they are.”

Then it’s true, thought Strike. He had too high an opinion of the Met to imagine that they would be slapdash in confirming the movements of the wife who had had easy access to the murder scene, and who had been prescribed the drugs that had been found in the body.

“Who else knew Papa always drank orange juice in the mornings? Who else had access to amitriptyline and the helium—?”

“Does she admit to buying the helium?” Strike asked.

“No,” said Izzy, “but she wouldn’t, would she? She just sits there doing her hysterical little girl act.” Izzy affected a higher-pitched voice. “‘I don’t know how it got into the house! Why are you all pestering me, leave me alone, I’ve been widowed!’

“I told the police, she attacked Papa with a hammer, over a year ago.”

Strike froze in the act of raising his unappetizing tea to his lips.

“What?”

“She attacked Papa with a hammer,” said Izzy, her pale blue eyes boring into Strike, willing him to understand. “They had a massive row, because—well, it doesn’t matter why, but they were out in the stables—this was at home, at Chiswell House, obviously—and Kinvara grabbed the hammer off the top of a toolbox and smashed Papa over the head with it. She was bloody lucky she didn’t kill him then. It left him with olfactory dysfunction. He couldn’t smell and taste as well afterwards, and he got cross at the smallest things, but he insisted on hushing it all up. He bundled her off into some residential center and told everyone she was ill, ‘nervous exhaustion.’

“But the stable girl witnessed the whole thing and told us what had really happened. She had to call the local GP because Papa was bleeding so badly. It would have been all over the papers if Papa hadn’t got Kinvara admitted to a psychiatric ward and warned the papers off.”

Izzy picked up her tea, but her hand was now shaking so badly that she was forced to put it back down again.

“She isn’t what men think she is,” said Izzy vehemently. “They all buy the little girl nonsense, even Raff. ‘She did lose a baby, Izzy…’ But if he heard a quarter of what Kinvara says about him behind his back, he’d soon change his tune.

“And what about the open front door?” Izzy said, jumping subject. “You know all about that, it’s how you and Venetia got in, isn’t it? That door’s never closed properly unless you slam it. Papa knew that. He’d have made sure he closed it properly if he’d been in the house alone, wouldn’t he? But if Kinvara was sneaking out early in the morning without wanting to be heard, she’d have had to pull it to and leave it, wouldn’t she?

“She isn’t very bright, you know. She’d have tidied away all the amitriptyline packaging, thinking it would incriminate her if she left it. I know the police think the absence of packaging is odd, but I can tell they’re all leaning towards suicide and that’s why I wanted to speak to you, Cormoran,” Izzy finished, edging a little forward in her armchair. “I want to hire you. I want you to investigate Papa’s death.”

Strike had known the request was coming almost from the moment the tea had arrived. The prospect of being paid to investigate what was, in any case, preoccupying Strike to the point of obsession, was naturally inviting. However, clients who sought nothing but confirmation of their own theories were always troublesome. He could not accept the case on Izzy’s terms, but compassion for her grief led him to seek a gentler mode of refusal.

“The police won’t want me under their feet, Izzy.”

“They don’t have to know it’s Papa’s death you’re investigating,” said Izzy eagerly. “We could pretend we want you to investigate all those stupid trespasses into the garden that Kinvara claims have been going on. It would serve her bloody well right if we took her seriously now.”

“Do the rest of the family know you’re meeting me?”

“Oh, yes,” said Izzy eagerly. “Fizzy’s all for it.”

“Is she? Does she suspect Kinvara, too?”

“Well, no,” said Izzy, sounding faintly frustrated, “but she agrees a hundred percent that Papa couldn’t have killed himself.”

“Who does she think did it, if not Kinvara?”

“Well,” said Izzy, who seemed uneasy at this line of questioning, “actually, Fizz has got this crazy idea that Jimmy Knight was involved somehow, but obviously, that’s ridiculous. Jimmy was in custody when Papa died, wasn’t he? You and I saw him being led away by the police the evening before, but Fizz doesn’t want to hear that, she’s fixated on Jimmy! I’ve said to her, ‘how did Jimmy Knight know where the amitriptyline and the helium were?’ but she won’t listen, she keeps going on about how Knight was after revenge—”

“Revenge for what?”

“What?” said Izzy restlessly, though Strike knew she had heard him. “Oh—that doesn’t matter now. That’s all over.”

Snatching up the teapot, Izzy marched away into the kitchen

area, where she added more hot water from the kettle.

“Fizz is irrational about Jimmy,” she said, returning with her teapot refilled and setting it down with a bang on the table. “She’s never been able to stand him since we were teenagers.”

She poured herself a second cup of tea, her color heightened. When Strike said nothing, she repeated nervously:

“The blackmail business can’t have anything to do with Papa dying. That’s all over.”

“You didn’t tell the police about it, did you?” asked Strike quietly.

There was a pause. Izzy turned steadily pinker. She sipped her tea, then said:

“No.”

Then she said, in a rush, “I’m sorry, I can imagine how you and Venetia feel about that, but we’re more concerned about Papa’s legacy now. We can’t face it all getting into the press, Cormoran. The only way the blackmail can have any bearing on his death is if it drove him to suicide, and I just don’t believe he’d have killed himself over that, or anything else.”

“Della must have found it easy to get her super-injunction,” said Strike, “if Chiswell’s own family were backing her up, saying nobody was blackmailing him.”

“We care more about how Papa’s remembered. The blackmail… that’s all over and done with.”

“But Fizzy still thinks Jimmy might’ve had something to do with your father’s death.”

“That’s not—that would be a separate matter, from what he was blackmailing about,” said Izzy incoherently. “Jimmy had a grudge… it’s hard to explain… Fizz is just silly about Jimmy.”

“How does the rest of the family feel about bringing me in again?”

“Well… Raff isn’t awfully keen, but it’s nothing to do with him. I’d be paying you.”

“Why isn’t he keen?”

“Because,” said Izzy, “well, because the police questioned Raff more than any of the rest of us, because—look, Raff doesn’t matter,” she repeated. “I’ll be the client, I’m the one who wants you. Just break Kinvara’s alibis, I know you can do it.”