Lethal White

“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.”

43

… I am afraid it will not be long before we hear something of the family ghost.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Robin asked whether she might use the bathroom before they departed from Chiswell House and was shown across the hall by Fizzy, who was still fuming at Kinvara.

“How dare she,” said Fizzy, as they crossed the hall. “How dare she? This is Pringle’s house, not hers.” And, in the next breath, “Please don’t pay any attention to what she said about Christopher, she’s simply trying to get a rise out of Torks, it was a disgusting thing to do, he’s simply livid.”

“Who is Christopher?” Robin asked.

“Well—I don’t know whether I should say,” replied Fizzy. “But I suppose, if you—of course, he can’t have anything to do with it. It’s just Kinvara’s spite. She’s talking about Sir Christopher Barrowclough-Burns. Old friend of Torks’ family. Christopher’s a senior civil servant and he was that boy Mallik’s mentor at the Foreign Office.”

The lavatory was chilly and antiquated. As she bolted the door, Robin heard Fizzy striding back to the drawing room, doubtless to placate the angry Torquil. She looked around: the chipped, painted stone walls were bare except for many small dark holes in which the occasional nail still stuck out. Robin presumed Kinvara was responsible for the removal of a large number of Perspex frames from the wall, which now stood stacked on the floor facing the toilet. They contained a jumble of family photographs in messy collages.

After drying her hands on a damp towel that smelled of dog, Robin crouched down to flick through these frames. Izzy and Fizzy had been almost indistinguishable as children, making it impossible to tell which of them was cartwheeling on the croquet lawn, or jumping a pony at a local gymkhana, dancing in front of a Christmas tree in the hall or embracing the young Jasper Chiswell at a shooting picnic, the men all in tweeds and Barbours.

Freddie, however, was immediately recognizable, because unlike his sisters he had inherited his father’s protuberant lower lip. As white-blond in youth as his niece and nephews, he featured frequently, beaming for the camera as a toddler, stony-faced as a child in a new prep school uniform, muddy and triumphant in rugby kit.

Robin paused to examine a group shot of teenagers, all dressed head to toe in white fencing jackets, Union Jacks ran down the sides of everyone’s breeches. She recognized Freddie, who was standing in the middle of the group, holding a large silver cup. At the far end of the group was a miserable-looking girl whom Robin recognized immediately as Rhiannon Winn, older and thinner than she had been in the photograph her father had shown Robin, her slightly cringing air at odds with the proud smiles on every other face.

Continuing to search the boards, Robin stopped at the last one to examine the faded photograph of a large party.

It had been taken in a marquee, from what seemed to be a stage. Many bright blue helium balloons in the shape of the number eighteen danced over the crowd’s heads. A hundred or so teenagers had clearly been bidden to face the camera. Robin scanned the scene carefully and found Freddie easily enough, surrounded by a large group of both boys and girls whose arms were slung around each other’s shoulders, beaming and, in some cases, braying with laughter. After nearly a minute, Robin spotted the face she had instinctively sought: Rhiannon Winn, thin, pale and unsmiling beside the drinks table. Close behind her, half-hidden in shadow, were a couple of boys who were not in black tie, but jean and T-shirts. One in particular was darkly handsome and long-haired, his T-shirt bearing a picture of The Clash.

Robin got out her mobile and took a picture of both the fencing team and the eighteenth birthday party photographs, then carefully replaced the stack of Perspex boards as she had found them, and left the bathroom.

She thought for a second that the silent hall was deserted. Then she saw that Raphael was leaning up against a hall table, his arms folded.

“Well, goodbye,” said Robin, starting to walk towards the front door.

“Hang on a minute.”

As she paused, he pushed himself off the table and approached her.

“I’ve been quite angry with you, you know.”

“I can understand why,” said Robin quietly, “but I was doing what your father hired me to do.”

He moved closer, coming to a halt benea

th an old glass lantern hanging from the ceiling. Half the lightbulbs were missing.

“I’d say you’re bloody good at it, are you? Getting people to trust you?”

“That’s the job,” said Robin.

“You’re married,” he said, eyes on her left hand.

“Yes,” she said.

“To Tim?”

“No… there isn’t any Tim.”

“You’re not married to him?” said Raphael quickly, pointing outside.

“No. We just work together.”

“And that’s your real accent,” said Raphael. “Yorkshire.”

“Yes,” she said. “This is it.”

She thought he was going to say something insulting. The olive dark eyes moved over her face, then he shook his head slightly.

“I quite like the voice, but I preferred ‘Venetia.’ Made me think of masked orgies.”

He turned and walked away, leaving Robin to hurry back out into the sunshine to rejoin Strike, who she presumed would be waiting impatiently in the Land Rover.

She was wrong. He was still standing beside the car’s bonnet, while Izzy, who was standing very close to him, talked rapidly in an undertone. When she heard Robin’s feet on the gravel behind her, Izzy took a step backwards with what, to Robin, seemed a slightly guilty, embarrassed air.

“Lovely to see you again,” Izzy said, kissing Robin on both cheeks, as though this had been a simple social call. “And you’ll ring me, won’t you?” she said to Strike.

“Yep, I’ll keep you updated,” he said, moving around to the passenger seat.

Neither Strike nor Robin spoke as she turned the car around. Izzy waved them off, a slightly pathetic figure in her loose shirt dress. Strike raised a hand to her as they took the bend in the drive that hid her from their sight.

Trying not to upset the skittish stallions, Robin drove at a snail’s pace. Glancing left, Strike saw that the injured horse had been removed from the field, but in spite of Robin’s best intentions, as the noisy old car lurched past its field, the black stallion took off again.

“Who d’you reckon,” said Strike, watching the horse plunge and buck, “first took a look at something like that and thought, ‘I should get on its back’?”

“There’s an old saying,” said Robin, trying to steer around the worst of the potholes, “‘the horse is your mirror.’ People say dogs resemble their owners, but I think it’s truer of horses.”

“Making Kinvara highly strung and prone to lash out on slight provocation? Sounds about right. Turn right here. I want to get a look at Steda Cottage.”

A bare two minutes later, he said:

“Here. Go up here.”

The track to Steda Cottage was so overgrown that Robin had missed it entirely the first time they had passed it. It led deep into the woodland that lay hard up against the gardens of Chiswell House, but unfortunately, the Land Rover was only able to proceed for ten yards before the track became impassable by car. Robin cut the engine, privately worried about how Strike was going to manage a barely discernible path of earth and fallen leaves, overgrown with brambles and nettles, but as he was already getting out, she followed suit, slamming the driver’s door behind her.

The ground was slippery, the tree canopy so dense that the track was in deep shade, dank and moist. A pungent, green, bitter smell filled their nostrils, and the air was alive with the rustle of birds and small creatures whose habitat was being rudely invaded.

“So,” said Strike, as they struggled through the bushes and weeds. “Christopher Barrowclough-Burns. That’s a new name.”

“No, it isn’t,” said Robin.

Strike looked sideways at her, grinning, and immediately tripped on a root, remaining upright at some cost to his sore knee.

“Shit… I wondered whether you remembered.”

“‘Christopher didn’t promise anything about the pictures,’” quoted Robin promptly. “He’s a civil servant who mentored Aamir Mallik at the Foreign Office. Fizzy just told me.”

“We’re back to ‘a man of your habits,’ aren’t we?”

Neither spoke for a short spell as they concentrated on a particularly treacherous stretch of path where whip-like branches clung willingly to fabric and skin. Robin’s skin was a pale, dappled green in the sun filtered by the ceiling of leaves above them.

“See any more of Raphael, after I went outside?”

“Er—yes, actually,” said Robin, feeling slightly self-conscious. “He came out of the sitting room as I was coming out of the loo.”

“Didn’t think he’d pass up another chance of talking to you,” said Strike.

“It wasn’t like that,” Robin said untruthfully, remembering the remark about masked orgies. “Izzy whispering anything interesting, back there?” she asked.

Amused by the reciprocal jab, Strike took his eyes off the path, thereby failing to spot a muddy stump. He tripped for a second time, this time saving himself from a painful fall by grabbing a tree covered in a prickly climbing plant.

“Fuck—”

“Are you—?”

“I’m fine,” he said, angry with himself, examining the palm that was now full of thorns and starting to pull them out with his teeth. He heard a loud snap of wood behind him and turned to see Robin holding out a fallen branch, which she had broken to make a rough walking stick.

“Use this.”

“I don’t—” he began, but catching sight of her stern expression, he gave in. “Thanks.”

They set off again, Strike finding the stick more useful than he wanted to admit.

“Izzy was just trying to convince me that Kinvara could have sneaked back to Oxfordshire, after bumping off Chiswell between six and seven in the morning. I don’t know whether she realizes there are multiple witnesses to every stage of Kinvara’s journey from Ebury Street. The police probably haven’t gone into detail with the family yet, but I think, once the penny drops that Kinvara can’t have done it in person, Izzy’ll start suggesting she hired a hitman. What did you make of Raphael’s various outbursts?”

“Well,” said Robin, navigating around a patch of nettles, “I can’t blame him, getting annoyed with Torquil.”

“No,” agreed Strike, “I think old Torks would grate on me, too.”

“Raphael seems really angry with his father, doesn’t he? He didn’t have to tell us about Chiswell putting that mare down. I thought he was almost going out of his way to paint his father as… well…”

“A bit of a shit,” agreed Strike. “He thought Chiswell had stolen those pills of Kinvara’s out of malice, too. That whole episode was bloody strange, actually. What made you so interested in those pills?”

“They seemed so out of place for Chiswell.”

“Well, it was a good call. Nobody else seems to have asked questions about them. So what does the psychologist make of Raphael denigrating his dead father?”

Robin shook her head, smiling, as she usually did when Strike referred to her in this way. She had dropped out of her psychology course at university, as he well knew.

“I’m serious,” said Strike, grimacing as his false foot skidded on fallen leaves and he saved himself, this time with the aid of Robin’s stick. “Bollocks… go on. What d’you make of him putting the boot into Chiswell?”

“Well, I think he’s hurt and furious,” said Robin, weighing her words. “He and his father were getting on better than they ever had, from what he told me when I was at the House of Commons, but now Chiswell’s dead, Raphael’s never going to be able to get properly back on good terms with him, is he? He’s left with the fact he was written out of the will and no idea of how Chiswell really felt about him. Chiswell was quite inconsistent with Raphael. When he was drunk and depressed, he seemed to lean on him, but otherwise he was pretty rude to him. Although I can’t honestly say I saw Chiswell ever being nice to anybody, except maybe—”

She stopped short.

“Go on,” said Strike.

“Well, actually,”

said Robin, “I was going to say he was quite nice to me, the day I found out all about the Level Playing Field.”

“This was when he offered you a job?”

“Yes, and he said he might have a bit more work for me, once I’d got rid of Winn and Knight.”

“Did he?” said Strike, curiously. “You never told me that.”

“Didn’t I? No, I don’t suppose I did.”

And like Strike, she remembered the week that he had been laid up at Lorelei’s, followed by the hours at the hospital with Jack.

“I went over to his office, as I told you, and he was on the phone to some hotel about a money clip he’d lost. It was Freddie’s. After Chiswell got off the phone, I told him about the Level Playing Field and he was happier than I ever saw him. ‘One by one, they trip themselves up,’” he said.

“Interesting,” panted Strike, whose leg was now killing him. “So you think Raphael’s smarting about the will, do you?”

Robin, who thought she caught a sardonic note in Strike’s voice, said:

“It isn’t just money—”

“People always say that,” he grunted. “It is the money, and it isn’t. Because what is money? Freedom, security, pleasure, a fresh chance… I think there’s more to be got out of Raphael,” said Strike, “and I think you’re going to have to be the one to do it.”

“What else can he tell us?”

“I’d like a bit more clarity on that phone call Chiswell made to him, right before that bag went over his head,” panted Strike, who was now in considerable pain. “It doesn’t make much sense to me, because even if Chiswell knew he was about to kill himself, there were people far better placed to keep Kinvara company than a stepson she didn’t like who was miles away in London.

“Trouble is, the call makes even less sense if it was murder. There’s something,” said Strike, “we aren’t being t—ah. Thank Christ.”

Steda Cottage had just come into view in a clearing ahead of them. The garden, which was surrounded by a broken-down fence, was now almost as overgrown as its surroundings. The building was squat, made of dark stone and clearly derelict, with a yawning hole in the roof and cracks in most of the windows.