The Silkworm

‘So?’ repeated Fancourt.

‘So I’ve been forced to the conclusion,’ said Strike, ‘that the Bombyx Mori everyone’s read is a different book to the Bombyx Mori Owen Quine wrote.’

Fancourt stopped shuffling his feet. Momentarily frozen, he appeared to give Strike’s words serious consideration.

‘I – no,’ he said, almost, it seemed, to himself. ‘Quine wrote that book. It’s his style.’

‘It’s funny you should say that, because everyone else who had a decent ear for Quine’s particular style seems to detect a foreign voice in the book. Daniel Chard thought it was Waldegrave. Waldegrave thought it was Elizabeth Tassel. And Christian Fisher heard you.’

Fancourt shrugged with his usual easy arrogance.

‘Quine was trying to imitate a better writer.’

‘Don’t you think the way he treats his living models is strangely uneven?’

Fancourt, accepting the cigarette Strike offered him and a light, now listened in silence and with interest.

‘He says his wife and agent were parasites on him,’ Strike said. ‘Unpleasant, but the sort of accusation anyone could throw at the people who might be said to live off his earnings. He implies his mistress isn’t fond of animals and throws in something that could either be a veiled reference to her producing crap books or a pretty sick allusion to breast cancer. His transgendered friend gets off with a jibe about vocal exercises – and that’s after she claimed she showed him the life story she was writing and shared all her deepest secrets. He accuses Chard of effectively killing Joe North, and makes a crass suggestion of what Chard really wanted to do to him. And there’s the accusation that you were responsible for your first wife’s death.

‘All of which is either in the public domain, public gossip or an easy accusation to sling.’

‘Which isn’t to say it wasn’t hurtful,’ said Fancourt quietly.

‘Agreed,’ said Strike. ‘It gave plenty of people reason to be pissed off at him. But the only real revelation in the book is the insinuation that you fathered Joanna Waldegrave.’

‘I told you – as good as told you – last time we met,’ said Fancourt, sounding tense, ‘that that accusation is not only false but impossible. I am infertile, as Quine—’

‘—as Quine should have known,’ agreed Strike, ‘because you and he were still ostensibly on good terms when you had mumps and he’d already made a jibe about it in The Balzac Brothers. And that makes the accusation contained in the Cutter even stranger, doesn’t it? As though it was written by someone who didn’t know that you were infertile. Didn’t any of this occur to you when you read the book?’

The snow fell thickly on the two men’s hair, on their shoulders.

‘I didn’t think Owen cared whether any of it was true or not,’ said Fancourt slowly, exhaling smoke. ‘Mud sticks. He was just flinging a lot around. I thought he was looking to cause as much trouble as possible.’

‘D’you think that’s why he sent you an early copy of the manuscript?’ When Fancourt did not respond, Strike went on: ‘It’s easily checkable, you know. Courier – postal service – there’ll be a record. You might as well tell me.’

A lengthy pause.

‘All right,’ said Fancourt, at last.

‘When did you get it?’

‘The morning of the sixth.’

‘What did you do with it?’

‘Burned it,’ said Fancourt shortly, exactly like Kathryn Kent. ‘I could see what he was doing: trying to provoke a public row, maximise publicity. The last resort of a failure – I was not going to humour him.’

Another snatch of the interior revelry reached them as the door to the garden opened and closed again. Uncertain footsteps, winding through the snow, and then a large shadow looming out of the darkness.

‘What,’ croaked Elizabeth Tassel, who was wrapped in a heavy coat with a fur collar, ‘is going on out here?’

The moment he heard her voice Fancourt made to move back inside. Strike wondered when was the last time they had come face to face in anything less than a crowd of hundreds.

‘Wait a minute, will you?’ Strike asked the writer.

Fancourt hesitated. Tassel addressed Strike in her deep, croaky voice.

‘Pinks is missing Michael.’

‘Something you’d know all about,’ said Strike.

The snow whispered down upon leaves and onto the frozen pond where the cupid sat, pointing his arrow skywards.

‘You thought Elizabeth’s writing “lamentably derivative”, isn’t that right?’ Strike asked Fancourt. ‘You both studied Jacobean revenge tragedies, which accounts for the similarities in your styles. But you’re a very good imitator of other people’s writing, I think,’ Strike told Tassel.

He had known that she would come if he took Fancourt away, known that she would be frightened of what he was telling the writer out in the dark. She stood perfectly still as snow landed in her fur collar, on her iron-grey hair. Strike could just make out the contours of her face by the faint light of the club’s distant windows. The intensity and emptiness of her gaze were remarkable. She had the dead, blank eyes of a shark.

‘You took off Elspeth Fancourt’s style to perfection, for instance.’

Fancourt’s mouth fell quietly open. For a few seconds the only sound other than the whispering snow was the barely audible whistle emanating from Elizabeth Tassel’s lungs.

‘I thought from the start that Quine must’ve had some hold on you,’ said Strike. ‘You never seemed like the kind of woman who’d let herself be turned into a private bank and skivvy, who’d choose to keep Quine and let Fancourt go. All that bull about freedom of expression… you wrote the parody of Elspeth Fancourt’s book that made her kill herself. All these years, there’s only been your word for it that Owen showed you the piece he’d written. It was the other way round.’

There was silence except for the rustle of snow on snow and that faint, eerie sound emanating from Elizabeth Tassel’s chest. Fancourt was looking from the agent to the detective, open-mouthed.

‘The police suspected that Quine was blackmailing you,’ Strike said, ‘but you fobbed them off with a touching story about lending him money for Orlando. You’ve been paying Owen off for more than a quarter of a century, haven’t you?’

He was trying to goad her into speech, but she said nothing, continuing to stare at him out of the dark empty eyes like holes in her plain, pale face.

‘How did you describe yourself to me when we had lunch?’ Strike asked her. ‘“The very definition of a blameless spinster”? Found an outlet for your frustrations, though, didn’t you, Elizabeth?’

The mad, blank eyes swivelled suddenly towards Fancourt, who had shifted where he stood.

‘Did it feel good, raping and killing your way through everyone you knew, Elizabeth? One big explosion of malice and obscenity, revenging yourself on everyone, painting yourself as the unacclaimed genius, taking sideswipes at everyone with a more successful love life, a more satisfying—’

A soft voice spoke in the darkness, and for a second Strike did not know where it was coming from. It was strange, unfamiliar, high-pitched and sickly: the voice a madwoman might imagine to express innocence, kindliness.

‘No, Mr Strike,’ she whispered, like a mother telling a sleepy child not to sit up, not to struggle. ‘You poor silly man. You poor thing.’

She forced a laugh that left her chest heaving, her lungs whistling.

‘He was badly hurt in Afghanistan,’ she said to Fancourt in that eerie, crooning voice. ‘I think he’s shell-shocked. Brain damaged, just like little Orlando. He needs help, poor Mr Strike.’

Her lungs whistled as she breathed faster.

‘Should’ve bought a mask, Elizabeth, shouldn’t you?’ Strike asked.

He thought he saw the eyes darken and enlarge, her pupils dilating with the adrenalin coursing through her. The large, mannish hands had curled into claws.

‘Thought you had it all worked

out, didn’t you? Ropes, disguise, protective clothing to protect yourself against the acid – but you didn’t realise you’d get tissue damage just from inhaling the fumes.’

The cold air was exacerbating her breathlessness. In her panic, she sounded sexually excited.

‘I think,’ said Strike, with calculated cruelty, ‘it’s driven you literally mad, Elizabeth, hasn’t it? Better hope the jury buys that anyway, eh? What a waste of a life. Your business down the toilet, no man, no children… Tell me, was there ever an abortive coupling between the two of you?’ asked Strike bluntly, watching their profiles. ‘This “limp dick” business… sounds to me like Quine might’ve fictionalised it in the real Bombyx Mori.’

With their backs to the light he could not see their expressions, but their body language had given him his answer: the instantaneous swing away from each other to face him had expressed the ghost of a united front.

‘When was this?’ Strike asked, watching the dark outline that was Elizabeth. ‘After Elspeth died? But then you moved on to Fenella Waldegrave, eh, Michael? No trouble keeping it up there, I take it?’

Elizabeth emitted a small gasp. It was as though he had hit her.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ growled Fancourt. He was angry with Strike now. Strike ignored the implicit reproach. He was still working on Elizabeth, goading her, while her whistling lungs struggled for oxygen in the falling snow.

‘Must’ve really pissed you off when Quine got carried away and started shouting about the contents of the real Bombyx Mori in the River Café, did it, Elizabeth? After you’d warned him not to breathe a word about the contents?’

‘Insane. You’re insane,’ she whispered, with a forced smile beneath the shark eyes, her big yellow teeth glinting. ‘The war didn’t just cripple you—’

‘Nice,’ said Strike appreciatively. ‘There’s the bullying bitch everyone’s told me you are—’

‘You hobble around London trying to get in the papers,’ she panted. ‘You’re just like poor Owen, just like him… how he loved the papers, didn’t he, Michael?’ She turned to appeal to Fancourt. ‘Didn’t Owen adore publicity? Running off like a little boy playing hide-and-seek…’

‘You encouraged Quine to go and hide in Talgarth Road,’ said Strike. ‘That was all your idea.’

‘I won’t listen to any more,’ she whispered and her lungs were whistling as she gasped the winter air and she raised her voice: ‘I’m not listening, Mr Strike, I’m not listening. Nobody’s listening to you, you poor silly man…’

‘You told me Quine was a glutton for praise,’ said Strike, raising his voice over the high-pitched chant with which she was trying to drown out his words. ‘I think he told you his whole prospective plot for Bombyx Mori months ago and I think Michael here was in there in some form – nothing as crude as Vainglorious, but mocked for not getting it up, perhaps? “Payback time for both of you”, eh?’

And as he had expected, she gave a little gasp at that and stopped her frantic chanting.

‘You told Quine that Bombyx Mori sounded brilliant, that it would be the best thing he’d ever done, that it was going to be a massive success, but that he ought to keep the contents very, very quiet in case of legal action, and to make a bigger splash when it was unveiled. And all the time you were writing your own version. You had plenty of time on your hands to get it right, didn’t you, Elizabeth? Twenty-six years of empty evenings, you could have written plenty of books by now, with your first from Oxford… but what would you write about? You haven’t exactly lived a full life, have you?’

Naked rage flickered across her face. Her fingers flexed, but she controlled herself. Strike wanted her to crack, wanted her to give in, but the shark’s eyes seemed to be waiting for him to show weakness, for an opening.

‘You crafted a novel out of a murder plan. The removal of the guts and the covering of the corpse in acid weren’t symbolic, they were designed to screw forensics – but everyone bought it as literature.

‘And you got that stupid, egotistical bastard to collude in planning his own death. You told him you had a great idea for maximising his publicity and his profits: the pair of you would stage a very public row – you saying the book was too contentious to put out there – and he’d disappear. You’d circulate rumours about the book’s contents and finally, when Quine allowed himself to be found, you’d secure him a big fat deal.’

She was shaking her head, her lungs audibly labouring, but her dead eyes did not leave his face.

‘He delivered the book. You delayed a few days, until bonfire night, to make sure you had lots of nice diversionary noise, then you sent out copies of the fake Bombyx to Fisher – the better to get the book talked about – to Waldegrave and to Michael here. You faked your public row, then you followed Quine to Talgarth Road—’

‘No,’ said Fancourt, apparently unable to help himself.

‘Yes,’ said Strike, pitiless. ‘Quine didn’t realise he had anything to fear from Elizabeth – not from his co-conspirator in the comeback of the century. I think he’d almost forgotten by then that what he’d been doing to you for years was blackmail, hadn’t he?’ he asked Tassel. ‘He’d just developed the habit of asking you for money and being given it. I doubt you ever even talked about the parody any more, the thing that ruined your life…

‘And you know what I think happened once he let you in, Elizabeth?’

Against his will, Strike remembered the scene: the great vaulted window, the body centred there as though for a grisly still life.

‘I think you got that poor naive, narcissistic sod to pose for a publicity photograph. Was he kneeling down? Did the hero in the real book plead, or pray? Or did he get tied up like your Bombyx? He’d have liked that, wouldn’t he, Quine, posing in ropes? It would’ve made it nice and easy to move behind him and smash his head in with the metal doorstop, wouldn’t it? Under cover of the neighbourhood fireworks, you knocked Quine out, tied him up, sliced him open and—’

Fancourt let out a strangled moan of horror, but Tassel spoke again, crooning at him in a travesty of consolation:

‘You ought to see someone, Mr Strike. Poor Mr Strike,’ and to his surprise she reached out to lay one of her big hands on his snow-covered shoulder. Remembering what those hands had done, Strike stepped back instinctively and her arm fell heavily back to her side, hanging there, the fingers clenching reflexively.

‘You filled a holdall with Owen’s guts and the real manuscript,’ said the detective. She had moved so close that he could again smell the combination of perfume and stale cigarettes. ‘Then you put on Quine’s own cloak and hat and left. Off you went, to feed a fourth copy of the fake Bombyx Mori through Kathryn Kent’s letter box, to maximise suspects and incriminate another woman who was getting what you never got – sex. Companionship. At least one friend.’

She feigned laughter again but this time the sound was manic. Her fingers were still flexing and unflexing.

‘You and Owen would have got on so well,’ she whispered. ‘Wouldn’t he, Michael? Wouldn’t he have got on marvellously with Owen? Sick fantasists… people will laugh at you, Mr Strike.’ She was panting harder than ever, those dead, blank eyes staring out of her fixed white face. ‘A poor cripple trying to recreate the sensation of success, chasing your famous fath—’

‘Have you got proof of any of this?’ Fancourt demanded in the swirling snow, his voice harsh with the desire not to believe. This was no ink-and-paper tragedy, no greasepaint death scene. Here beside him stood the living friend of his student years and whatever life had subsequently done to them, the idea that the big, ungainly, besotted girl whom he had known at Oxford could have turned into a woman capable of grotesque murder was almost unbearable.

‘Yeah, I’ve got proof,’ said Strike quietly. ‘I’ve got a second electric typewriter, the exact model of Quine’s, wrapped up in a black burqa and hydrochloric-stained overalls and weighted with stones. An amateur diver I happen to know pulled it out of the sea just a few day

s ago. It was lying beneath some notorious cliffs at Gwithian: Hell’s Mouth, a place featured on Dorcus Pengelly’s book cover. I expect she showed it to you when you visited, didn’t she, Elizabeth? Did you walk back there alone with your mobile, telling her you needed to find better reception?’

She let out a ghastly low moan, like the sound of a man who has been punched in the stomach. For a second nobody moved, then Tassel turned clumsily and began running and stumbling away from them, back towards the club. A bright yellow rectangle of light shivered then disappeared as the door opened and closed.

‘But,’ said Fancourt, taking a few steps and looking back at Strike a little wildly, ‘you can’t – you’ve got to stop her!’

‘Couldn’t catch her if I wanted to,’ said Strike, throwing the butt of his cigarette down into the snow. ‘Dodgy knee.’

‘She could do anything—’

‘Off to kill herself, probably,’ agreed Strike, pulling out his mobile.

The writer stared at him.

‘You – you cold-blooded bastard!’

‘You’re not the first to say it,’ said Strike, pressing keys on his phone. ‘Ready?’ he said into it. ‘We’re off.’

49

Dangers, like stars, in dark attempts best shine.

Thomas Dekker, The Noble Spanish Soldier

Out past the smokers at the front of the club the large woman came, blindly, slipping a little in the snow. She began to run up the dark street, her fur-collared coat flapping behind her.

A taxi, its ‘For Hire’ light on, slid out of a side road and she hailed it, flapping her arms madly. The cab slid to a halt, its headlamps making two cones of light whose trajectory was cut by the thickly falling snow.