Lethal White

“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?”