Lethal White

“You’ve escaped two killers using your wits and remembering your training. I’d lay odds bloody Matthew couldn’t’ve managed that. But I don’t want a third time, Robin, because you might not be so lucky.”

“You are telling me to go back to a desk job—”

“Can I finish?” he said sternly. “I don’t want to lose you, because you’re the best I’ve got. Every case we’ve worked since you arrived, you’ve found evidence I couldn’t have found and got round people I couldn’t have persuaded to talk to me. We’re where we are today largely because of you. But the odds are always going to be against you if you come up against a violent man and I’ve got responsibilities here. I’m the senior partner, I’m the one you could sue—”

“You’re worried I’d sue—?”

“No, Robin,” he said harshly, “I’m worried you’ll end up fucking dead and I’ll have to carry that on my conscience for the rest of my life.”

He took another swig of Doom Bar, then said:

“I need to know you’re mentally healthy if I’m putting you out on the street. I want a cast-iron guarantee from you that you’re going to address these panic attacks, because it isn’t only you who has to live with the consequences if you’re not up to it.”

“Fine,” muttered Robin, and when Strike raised his eyebrows, she said, “I mean it. I’ll do what it takes. I will.”

The crowd around the paddock was becoming ever denser. Evidently the runners in the next race were about to be paraded.

“How are things with Lorelei?” Robin asked. “I like her.”

“Then I’m afraid I’ve got even more bad news for you, because you and Matthew aren’t the only people who split up last weekend.”

“Oh, shit. Sorry,” said Robin, and she covered her embarrassment by drinking more champagne.

“For someone who didn’t want that, you’re getting through it quite fast,” said Strike, amused.

“I didn’t tell you, did I?” said Robin, remembering suddenly, as she held up the little green bottle. “I know where I saw Blanc de Blancs before, and it wasn’t on a bottle—but it doesn’t help us with the case.”

“Go on.”

“There’s a suite at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons called that,” said Robin. “Raymond Blanc, you know, the chef who started the hotel? Play on words. Blanc de Blanc—no ‘s.’”

“Is that where you had your anniversary weekend?”

“Yeah. We weren’t in ‘Blanc de Blanc,’ though. We couldn’t afford a suite,” said Robin. “I just remember walking past the sign. But yes… that’s where we celebrated our paper anniversary. Paper,” she repeated, with a sigh, “and some people make it to platinum.”

Seven dark thoroughbreds were appearing one by one in the paddock now, jockeys in their silks perched atop them like monkeys, stable girls and lads leading the nervy creatures, with their silken flanks and their prancing strides. Strike and Robin were some of the few not craning their necks for a better view. Before she had time to second-guess herself, Robin introduced the subject she most wanted to discuss.

“Was that Charlotte I saw you talking to at the Paralympic reception?”

“Yeah,” said Strike.

He glanced at her. Robin had had occasion before now to deplore how easily he seemed to read her thoughts.

“Charlotte had nothing to do with me and Lorelei splitting. She’s married now.”

“So were Matthew and I,” Robin pointed out, taking another sip of champagne. “Didn’t stop Sarah Shadlock.”

“I’m not Sarah Shadlock.”

“Obviously not. If you were that bloody annoying I wouldn’t be working for you.”

“Maybe you could put that on the next employee satisfaction review. ‘Not as bloody annoying as the woman who shagged my husband.’ I’ll have it framed.”

Robin laughed.

“You know, I had an idea about Blanc de Blancs myself,” said Strike. “I was going back over Chiswell’s to-do list, trying to eliminate possibilities and substantiate a theory.”

“What theory?” said Robin sharply, and Strike noted that even halfway down the bottle of champagne, with her marriage in splinters and a box room in Kilburn to look forward to, Robin’s interest in the case remained as acute as ever. “Remember when I told you I thought there was something big, something fundamental, behind the Chiswell business? Something we hadn’t spotted yet?”

“Yes,” said Robin, “you said it kept ‘almost showing itself.’”

“Well remembered. So, a couple of things Raphael said—”

“That’s me on my break, now,” said a nervous female voice behind them.

63

It is a purely personal matter, and there is not the slightest necessity to go proclaiming it all over the countryside.

Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm

Short, square and heavily freckled, Tegan Butcher wore her dark hair scraped back in a bun. Even in her smart bar uniform, which comprised a gray tie and a black shirt on which a white horse and jockey were embroidered, she had the air of a girl more at home in muddy Wellington boots. She had brought a milky coffee out of the bar to drink while they questioned her.

“Oh—thanks very much,” she said, when Strike went to fetch an extra chair, clearly gratified that the famous detective would do as much for her.

“No problem,” said Strike. “This is my partner, Robin Ellacott.”

“Yeah, it was you that contacted me, wasn’t it?” said Tegan as she got up onto the bar chair, making slightly heavy weather of the climb, being so short. She seemed simultaneously excited and fearful.

“You haven’t got long, I know,” said Strike, “so we’ll get straight to it, if you don’t mind, Tegan?”

“No. I mean, yeah. That’s fine. Go on.”

“How long did you work for Jasper and Kinvara Chiswell?”

“I was doing it part time for them while I was still at school, so counting that… two and a half years, yeah.”

“How did you like working for them?”

“It was all right,” said Tegan cautiously.

“How did you find the minister?”

“He was all right,” said Tegan. She appeared to realize that this wasn’t particularly descriptive, and added, “My family’ve known him for ages. My brothers done a bit of work up at Chiswell House for years, on and off.”

“Yeah?” said Strike, who was making notes. “What did your brothers do?”

“Repairing fences, bit of gardening, but they’ve sold off most of the land now,” said Tegan. “The garden’s gone wild.”

She picked up her coffee and took a sip, then said anxiously:

“My mum would do her nut if she knew I was meeting you. She told me to keep well out of it.”

“Why’s that?”

“‘Least said, soonest mended,’ she always says. That and ‘least seen, most admired.’ That’s what I got if I ever wanted to go to the young farmers’ disco.”

Robin laughed. Tegan grinned, proud to have amused her.

“How did you find Mrs. Chiswell as an employer?” asked Strike.

“All right,” said Tegan, yet again.

“Mrs. Chiswell liked to have someone sleeping at the house if she was away for the night, is that right? To be near the horses?”

“Yeah,” said Tegan, and then, volunteering information for the first time, “she’s paranoid.”

“Wasn’t one of her horses slashed?”

“You can call it slashed if you want,” said Tegan, “but I’d call it more of a scratch. Romano managed to get his blanket off in the night. He was a sod for doing that.”

“You don’t know anything about intruders in the garden, then?” asked Strike, his pen poised over his notebook.

“Weelll,” said Tegan slowly, “she said something about it, but…”

Her eyes had strayed to Strike’s Benson & Hedges, which were lying beside his beer glass.

“Can I have a smoke?” she asked, greatly darin

g.

“Help yourself,” said Strike, taking out a lighter and pushing it towards her.

Tegan lit up, took a deep drag on the cigarette, and said:

“I don’t think there was ever anyone in the gardens. That’s just Mrs. Chiswell. She’s—” Tegan struggled to find the right word. “Well, if she was a horse you’d call her spooky. I never heard anyone when I was there overnight.”

“You slept over at the house the night before Jasper Chiswell was found dead in London, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you remember what time Mrs. Chiswell got back?”

“’Bout eleven. I got a right shock,” said Tegan. Now that her nerves were wearing off, a slight tendency to garrulity was revealed. “Because she was s’posed to be staying up in London. She went off on one when she walked in, because I’d had a fag in front of the telly—she doesn’t like smoking—and I’d had a couple of glasses of wine out the bottle in the fridge, as well. Mind, she’d told me to help myself to anything I wanted before she left, but she’s like that, always shifting the goalposts. What was right one minute was wrong the next. You had to walk on eggshells, you really did.

“But she was already in a bad mood when she arrived. I could tell from the way she came stomping down the hall. The fag and the wine, that just gave her an excuse to have a go at me. That’s what she’s like.”

“But you stayed the night, anyway?”

“Yeah. She said I was too drunk to drive, which was rubbish, I weren’t drunk, and then she told me to go and check on the horses, because she had a phone call to make.”

“Did you hear her make the call?”

Tegan rearranged herself in the too-high chair, so that the elbow of her smoking arm was cupped in her free hand, her eyes slightly narrowed against the smoke, a pose she evidently thought appropriate while dealing with a tricky private detective.

“I dunno if I should say.”

“How about I suggest a name and you can nod if it’s the right one?”

“Go on, then,” said Tegan, with the mingled mistrust and curiosity of one who has been promised a magic trick.

“Henry Drummond,” said Strike. “She was leaving a message to say that she wanted a valuation on a necklace?”

Impressed against her will, Tegan nodded.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s right.”

“So you went out to check on the horses…?”

“Yeah, and when I got back Mrs. Chiswell said I should stay over anyway, because she needed me early, so I did.”

“And where did she sleep?” asked Robin.

“Well—upstairs,” said Tegan, with a surprised laugh. “Obviously. In her bedroom.”

“You’re sure she was there all night?” asked Robin.

“Yeah,” said Tegan, with another little laugh. “Her bedroom was next to mine. They’re the only two with windows that face the stables. I could hear her going to bed.”

“You’re sure she didn’t leave the house during the night? Didn’t drive anywhere, as far as you know?” asked Strike.

“No. I’d’ve heard the car. There are potholes everywhere round that house, you can’t leave quietly. Anyway, I met her next morning on the landing, heading for the bathroom in her nightie.”

“What time would that have been?”

“’Bout half-seven. We had breakfast together in the kitchen.”

“Was she still angry with you?”

“Bit ratty,” admitted Tegan.

“You didn’t happen to hear her take another call, round about breakfast time?”

Frankly admiring, Tegan said:

“You mean, from Mr. Chiswell? Yeah. She went out of the kitchen to take it. All I heard was ‘No, I mean it this time, Jasper.’ Sounded like a row. I’ve told the police this. I thought they must’ve argued in London and that’s why she’d come home early instead of staying up there.

“Then I went outside to muck out, and she came out and she was schooling Brandy, that’s one of her mares, and then,” said Tegan, with a slight hesitation, “he arrived. Raphael, you know. The son.”

“And what happened then?” asked Strike.

Tegan hesitated.

“They had a row, didn’t they?” said Strike, mindful of how much of Tegan’s break was slipping away.

“Yeah,” said Tegan, smiling in frank wonderment. “You know everything!”

“D’you know what it was about?”

“Same thing she was phoning that bloke about, night before.”

“The necklace? Mrs. Chiswell wanting to sell it?”

“Yeah.”

“Where were you when they were having the row?”

“Still mucking out. He got out of his car and went marching up to her in the outdoor school—”

Robin, seeing Strike’s perplexity, muttered, “Like a paddock where you train horses.”

“Ah,” he said.

“—yeah,” said Tegan, “that’s where she was schooling Brandy. First they were talking and I couldn’t hear what they were saying and then it turned into a proper shouting match and she dismounted and yelled at me to come and untack Brandy—take off the saddle and bridle,” she added kindly, in case Strike hadn’t understood, “and they marched off into the house and I could hear them still having a go at each other as they disappeared.

“She never liked him,” said Tegan. “Raphael. Thought he was spoiled. Always slagging him off. I thought he was all right, personally,” she said, with a would-be dispassionate air at odds with her heightened color.

“Can you remember what they were saying to each other?”

“A bit,” said Tegan. “He was telling her she couldn’t sell it, that it belonged to his dad or something, and she told him to mind his own business.”

“Then what happened?”

“They went inside, I kept mucking out, and after a bit,” said Tegan, faltering slightly, “I saw a police car coming up the drive and… yeah, it was awful. Policewoman come and asked me to go inside and help. I went in the kitchen and Mrs. Chiswell was white as a sheet and all over the place. They wanted me to show them where the teabags were. I made her a hot drink and he—Raphael—made her sit down. He was really nice to her,” said Tegan, “considering she’d just been calling him every name under the sun.”

Strike checked his watch.

“I know you haven’t got long. Just a couple more things.”

“All right,” she said.

“There was an incident over a year ago,” said Strike, “where Mrs. Chiswell attacked Mr. Chiswell with a hammer.”

“Oh, God, yeah,” said Tegan. “Yeah… she really lost it. That was right after Lady was put down, start of the summer. She was Mrs. Chiswell’s favorite mare and Mrs. Chiswell come home and the vet had already done it. She’d wanted to be there when it happened and she went crazy when she come back and seen the knacker’s van.”

“How long had she known that the mare would have to be put down?” asked Robin.

“Those last two, three days, I think we all knew, really,” said Tegan sadly. “But she was such a lovely horse, we kept hoping she’d pull through. The vet had waited for hours for Mrs. Chiswell to come home, but Lady was suffering and he couldn’t wait around all day, so…”

Tegan made a gesture of hopelessness.

“Any idea what made her go up to London that day, if she knew Lady was dying?” asked Strike.

Tegan shook her head.

“Can you talk us through exactly what happened, when she attacked her husband? Did she say anything first?”

“No,” said Tegan. “She come into the yard, seen what had happened, ran towards Mr. Chiswell, grabbed the hammer and just swung for him. Blood everywhere. It was horrible,” said Tegan, with patent sincerity. “Awful.”

“What did she do after she’d hit him?” asked Robin.

“Just stood there. The expression on her face… it was like a demon or something,” said Tegan unexpectedly. “I thought he was dead,

thought she’d killed him.

“They put her away for a couple of weeks, you know. She went off to some hospital. I had to do the horses alone…

“We were all gutted about Lady. I loved that mare and I thought she was going to make it, but she’d given up, she lay down and wouldn’t eat. I couldn’t blame Mrs. Chiswell for being upset, but… she could’ve killed him. Blood everywhere,” she repeated. “I wanted to leave. Told my mum. Mrs. Chiswell scared me, that night.”

“So what made you stay?” asked Strike.

“I dunno, really… Mr. Chiswell wanted me to, and I was fond of the horses. Then she came out of hospital and she was really depressed and I suppose I felt sorry for her. I kept finding her crying in Lady’s empty stall.”

“Was Lady the mare that Mrs. Chiswell wanted to—er—what’s the right term?” Strike asked Robin.

“Put in foal?” Robin suggested.

“Yeah… put in foal to the famous stallion?”

“Totilas?” said Tegan, with the ghost of an eye roll. “No, it was Brandy she wanted to breed from, but Mr. Chiswell was having none of it. Totilas! He costs a fortune.”

“So I heard. She didn’t by any chance mention using a different stallion? There’s one called ‘Blanc de Blancs,’ I don’t know whether—”

“Never heard of him,” said Tegan. “No, it had to be Totilas, he was the best, she was fixated on using him. That’s what she’s like, Mrs. Chiswell. When she gets an idea in her head you can’t shift it. She was going to breed this beautiful Grand Prix horse and… you know she lost a baby, don’t you?”

Strike and Robin nodded.

“Mum felt sorry for her, she thought the thing about getting a foal was, you know, a sort of substitute. Mum thinks it was all to do with the baby, how Mrs. Chiswell’s mood went up and down all the time.

“Like, one day, a few weeks after she came out of hospital, I remember, she was manic. I think it was the drugs they had her on. High as a kite. Singing in the yard. And I said to her, ‘You’re cheerful, Mrs. C,’ and she laughed and said, ‘Oh, I’ve been working on Jasper and I think I’m nearly there, I think he’s going to let me use Totilas after all.’ It was all rubbish. I asked him and he was really grumpy about it, said it was wishful thinking and he could hardly afford as many horses as she’d already got.”