Troubled Blood
“What did you say about asteroids?”
Robin flicked further on through the notebook, to show Strike the page she’d pored over in Leamington Spa, which she thought of as the “horns page.”
“As the case went on, he seemed to give up on normal astrology. I think Schmidt had confused him so much he couldn’t work it any more, so he starts inventing his own system. He’s calculated the asteroids’ positions for the evening Margot disappeared. See here—”
Robin was pointing to the symbol …
“That symbol stands for the asteroid Pallas Athena—remember that ugly clock at the Phippses’ house?—and he’s using it to mean Margot. The asteroid Pallas Athena was in the tenth house of the zodiac on the night Margot disappeared, and the tenth house is ruled by Capricorn. It’s also supposed to govern businesses, upper classes and upper floors.”
“You think Margot’s still in someone’s attic?”
Robin smiled, but refused to be deflected.
“And see here…” She angled the notebook toward him, “assuming the other asteroids also refer to living people, we’ve got Ceres, Juno and Vesta.
“I think he’s using Vesta, ‘keeper of the hearth,’ to represent Cynthia. Vesta was in the seventh house, which is the house of marriage. Talbot’s written ‘FITS’—so I think he’s saying Cynthia was in Margot’s marital home, Broom House.
“I think ‘nurturing, protective Ceres’ sounds like Janice again. She’s in the twelfth house, and so’s Juno, who’s associated with ‘wives and infidelity,’ which might take us back to Joanna Hammond, Douthwaite’s married girlfriend…”
“What’s the twelfth house represent?”
“Enemies, secrets, sorrows and undoing.”
Strike looked at her, eyebrows raised. He’d indulged Robin because it was sunny, and he was enjoying her company, but his tolerance for astrology was now wearing very thin.
“It’s also Pisces’ house,” said Robin, “which is Douthwaite’s sign, so maybe—”
“You think Janice and Joanna Hammond were both in Douthwaite’s flat when Margot was abducted, do you?”
“No, but—”
“Because that’d be tricky, given that Joanna Hammond died weeks before Margot disappeared. Or are you suggesting her ghost was haunting Douthwaite?”
“All right, I know it might mean nothing,” said Robin, half-laughing as she plowed on, “but Talbot’s written something else here: ‘Ceres denies contact with Juno. Could Cetus be right?’”
She was pointing at the whale symbol representing Irene.
“I find it hard to imagine Irene Hickson being right about very much,” said Strike. He pulled the leather notebook toward him to look more closely at Talbot’s small, obsessive writing, then pushed the notes away again with a slightly impatient shrug. “Look, it’s easy to get sucked into this stuff. When I was going through the notes I started making connections while I was trying to follow his train of thought, but he was ill, wasn’t he? Nothing leads anywhere concrete.”
“I was just intrigued by that ‘Could Cetus be right?’ because Talbot mistrusted Irene from the start, didn’t he? Then he starts wondering whether she could have been right about… about something connected to enemies, secrets and undoing…”
“If we ever find out what happened to Margot Bamborough,” said Strike, “I’ll bet you a hundred quid you’ll be able to make equally strong cases for Talbot’s occult stuff being bang on the money, and completely off beam. You can always stretch this symbolic stuff to fit the facts. One of my mother’s friends used to guess everyone’s star signs and she was right every single time.”
“She was?”
“Oh yeah,” said Strike. “Because even when she was wrong, she was right. Turned out they had a load of planets in that sign or, I dunno, the midwife who delivered them was that sign. Or their dog.”
“All right,” said Robin, equably. She’d expected Strike’s skepticism, after all, and now put both the leather-bound notebook and Astrology 14 back into her bag. “I know it might mean nothing at all, I’m only—”
“If you want to go and see Irene Hickson again, be my guest. Tell her Talbot thought she might’ve had profound insight into something connected to asteroids and—I dunno—cheese—”
“The twelfth house doesn’t govern cheese,” said Robin, trying to look severe.
“What number’s the house of dairy?”
“Oh, bugger off,” she said, laughing against her will.
Robin’s mobile vibrated in her pocket, and she pulled it out. A text had just arrived.
Hi Robin, if you want I can talk now? I’ve just agreed to work a later shift, so I’m not needed at work for a few hours. Otherwise it’ll have to be after 8 tonight—Amanda
“Amanda White,” she told Strike. “She wants to talk now.”
“Works for me,” said Strike, relieved to be back on firm investigative ground. Liar or not, Amanda White would at least be talking about an actual woman at a real window.
Robin pressed Amanda’s number, switched the mobile to speaker-phone and laid it on the table between her and Strike.
“Hi,” said a confident female voice, with a hint of North London. “Is that Robin?”
“Yes,” said Robin, “and I’m with Cormoran.”
“Morning,” said Strike.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said Amanda, sounding delighted. “I am honored. I’ve been dealing with your assistant.”
“She’s actually my partner,” said Strike.
“Really? Business, or the other?” said Amanda.
“Business,” said Strike, not looking at Robin. “I understand Robin’s been talking to you about what you saw on the night Margot Bamborough disappeared?”
“That’s right,” said Amanda.
“Would you mind if we take a recording of this interview?”
“No, I s’pose not,” said Amanda. “I mean, I want to do the right thing, although I won’t pretend it hasn’t been a bit of a dilemma, because it was really stressful, last time. Journalists, two police interviews, and I was only fourteen. But I’ve always been a stubborn girl, haha, and I stuck to my guns…”
So Amanda told the story with which Strike and Robin were already familiar: of the rain, and the angry schoolfriend, and the upper window, and the retrospective recognition of Margot, when Amanda saw her picture in the paper. Strike asked a couple of questions, but he could tell that nothing would ever change Amanda’s story. Whether she truly believed she’d seen Margot Bamborough at the window that night or not, she was evidently determined never to relinquish her association with the forty-year-old mystery.
“… and I suppose I’ve been haunted ever since by the idea that I didn’t do anything, but I was fourteen and it only hit me later, I could’ve been the one to save her,” she ended the story.
“Well,” said Robin, as Strike nodded at her, signaling he had everything he wanted, “thank you so much for talking to us, Amanda. I really—”
“There’s something else, before you go,” said Amanda. “Wait until you hear this. It’s just an amazing coincidence, and I don’t think even the police know about this, because they’re both dead.”
“Who’re dead?” asked Robin, while Strike lit himself another cigarette.
“Well,” said Amanda, “how’s this for strange? My last job, this young girl at the office’s great-aunt—”
Strike rolled his eyes.
“—was in a hospice with, guess who?”
“I don’t know,” said Robin politely.
“Violet Cooper,” said Amanda. “You probably don’t—”
“Dennis Creed’s landlady,” said Robin.
“Exactly!” said Amanda, sounding pleased that Robin appreciated the significance of her story. “So, anyway, isn’t that just weird, that I saw Margot at that window, and then, all those years later, I work with someone whose relative met Vi Cooper? Only she was calling herself something different by then, because people hated her.”
“That is a coincidence,” said Robin, making sure not to look at Strike. “Well, thank—”
“That’s not all!” said Amanda, laughing. “No, there’s more to it than that! So, this girl’s great-aunt said Vi told her she wrote to Creed, once, asking if he’d killed Margot Bamborough.”
Amanda paused, clearly wanting a response, so Robin, who’d already read about this in The Demon of Paradise Park, said,
“Wow.”
“I know,” said Amanda. “And apparently, Vi said—this is on her deathbed, so you know, she was telling the truth, because you would, wouldn’t you?—Vi said the letter she got back, said he had killed her.”
“Really?” said Robin. “I thought the letter—”
“No, but this is direct from Violet,” Amanda said, while Strike rolled his eyes again, “and she said, he definitely did, he as good as told her so. He said it in a way only she’d understand, but she knew exactly what he meant.
“Crazy, though, isn’t it? I see Margot at the window, and then, years later—”
“Amazing,” said Robin. “Well, thanks very much for your time, Amanda, this has been really… er…”
It took Robin another couple of minutes, and much more insincere gratitude, to get Amanda off the line.
“What d’you think?” Robin asked Strike, when at last she’d succeeded in getting rid of Amanda.