“I wouldn’t say no, if you’re offering,” he said shamelessly, wincing again as he massaged his right knee. “Actually, I think this is going to have to come off, do you mind?”
“Well—no, I suppose not. What do you want?”
“I’ll have a Scotch as well, please,” said Strike, setting the revolver down on the table beside the bronze frog, rolling up his trouser leg and signaling with his eyes that Robin, too, should sit down.
While Kinvara sloshed another measure into a glass, Strike started to remove the prosthesis. Turning to give him his drink, Kinvara watched in queasy fascination as Strike worked on the false leg, averting her eyes at the point it left the inflamed stump. Panting as he propped the prosthesis against the ottoman, Strike allowed his trouser leg to fall back over his amputated leg.
“Thanks very much,” he said, accepting the whisky from her and taking a swig.
Trapped with a man who couldn’t walk, to whom she ought in theory to be grateful, and to whom she had just given a drink, Kinvara sat down, too, her expression stony.
“Actually, Mrs. Chiswell, I was going to phone you to confirm a couple of things we heard from Tegan earlier,” said Strike. “We could go through them now if you like. Get them out of the way.”
With a slight shiver, Kinvara glanced at the empty fireplace, and Robin said helpfully, “Would you like me to—?”
“No,” snapped Kinvara. “I can do it.”
She went to the deep basket standing beside the fireplace, from which she grabbed an old newspaper. While Kinvara built a structure of small bits of wood over a mound of newspaper and a firelighter, Robin succeeded in catching Strike’s eye.
“There’s somebody upstairs,” she mouthed, but she wasn’t sure he had understood. He merely raised his eyebrows quizzically, and turned back to Kinvara.
A match flared. Flames erupted around the little pile of paper and sticks in the fireplace. Kinvara picked up her glass and returned to the drinks table, where she topped it up with more neat Scotch, then, coat wrapped more tightly around herself, she returned to the log basket, selected a large piece of wood, dropped it on top of the burgeoning fire, then fell back onto the sofa.
“Go on, then,” she said sullenly to Strike. “What do you want to know?”
“As I say, we spoke to Tegan Butcher today.”
“And?”
“And we now know what Jimmy Knight and Geraint Winn were blackmailing your husband about.”
Kinvara evinced no surprise.
“I told those stupid girls you’d find out,” she said with a shrug. “Izzy and Fizzy. Everyone round here knew what Jack o’Kent was doing in the barn. Of course somebody was going to talk.”
She took a gulp of whisky.
“I suppose you know all of it, do you? The gallows? The boy in Zimbabwe?”
“You mean Samuel?” asked Strike, taking a punt.
“Exactly, Samuel Mu—Mudrap or something.”
The fire caught suddenly, flames leaping up past the log, which shifted in a shower of sparks.
“Jasper was worried they were his gallows the moment we heard the boy had been hanged. You know all of it, do you? That there were two sets? But only one made it to the government. The other lot went astray, the lorry was hijacked or something. That’s how they ended up in the middle of nowhere.
“The photographs are pretty grisly, apparently. The Foreign Office thinks it was probably a case of mistaken identity. Jasper didn’t see how they could be traced to him, but Jimmy said he could prove they were.
“I knew you’d find out,” said Kinvara, with an air of bitter satisfaction. “Tegan’s a horrible gossip.”
“So, to be clear,” said Strike, “when Jimmy Knight first came here to see you, he was asking for his and Billy’s share for two sets of gallows his father had left completed when he died?”
“Exactly,” said Kinvara, sipping her whisky. “They were worth eighty thousand for the pair. He wanted forty.”
“But presumably,” said Strike, who remembered that Chiswell had talked of Jimmy returning a week after his first attempt to get money, and asking for a reduced amount, “your husband told him he’d only ever received payment for one of them, as one set got stolen en route?”
“Yes,” said Kinvara, with a shrug. “So then Jimmy asked for twenty, but we’d spent it.”
“How did you feel about Jimmy’s request, when he first came asking for money?” Strike asked.
Robin wasn’t sure whether Kinvara had turned a little pinker in the face, or whether it was the effects of the whisky.
“Well, I saw his point, if you want the truth. I could see why he felt he had a claim. Half the proceeds of the gallows belonged to the Knight boys. That had been the arrangement while Jack o’Kent was alive, but Jasper took the view that Jimmy couldn’t expect money for the stolen set, and given that he’d been storing them in his barn, and bearing all the costs of transportation and so on… and he said that Jimmy couldn’t sue him even if he wanted to. He didn’t like Jimmy.”
“No, well, I suppose their politics were very different,” said Strike.
Kinvara almost smirked.
“It was a bit more personal than that. Haven’t you heard about Jimmy and Izzy? No… I suppose Tegan’s too young to have heard that story. Oh, it was only once,” she said, apparently under the impression that Strike was shocked, “but that was quite enough for Jasper. A man like Jimmy Knight, deflowering his darling daughter, you know…
“But Jasper couldn’t have given Jimmy the money even if he’d wanted to,” she went on. “He’d already spent it. It took care of our overdraft for a while and repaired the stable roof. I never knew,” she added, as though sensing unspoken criticism, “until Jimmy explained it to me that night, what the arrangement between Jasper and Jack o’Kent had been. Jasper had told me the gallows were his to sell and I believed him. Naturally I believed him. He was my husband.”
She got up again and headed back to the drinks table as the fat Labrador, seeking warmth, left its distant corner, waddled around the ottoman and slumped down in front of the now roaring fire. The Norfolk terrier trotted after it, growling at Strike and Robin until Kinvara said angrily:
“Shut up, Rattenbury.”
“There’s are a couple more things I wanted to ask you about,” said Strike. “Firstly, did your husband have a passcode on his phone?”
“Of course he did,” said Kinvara. “He was very security-conscious.”
“So he didn’t give it out to a lot of people?”
“He didn’t even tell me what it was,” said Kinvara. “Why are you asking?”
Ignoring the question, Strike said:
“Your stepson’s now told us a different story to account for his trip down here, on the morning of your husband’s death.”
“Oh, really? What’s he saying this time?”
“That he was trying to stop you selling a necklace that’s been in the family for—”
“Come clean, has he?” she interrupted, turning back towards them with a fresh whisky in her hands. With her long red hair tangled from the night air, and her flushed cheeks, she had a slight air of abandon now, forgetting to hold her coat closed as she headed back to the sofa, the black nightdress revealing a canyon of cleavage. She flopped back down on the sofa. “Yes, he wanted to stop me doing a flit with the necklace, which, by the way, I’m perfectly entitled to do. It’s mine under the terms of the will. Jasper should have been a bit more bloody careful writing it if he didn’t want me to have it, shouldn’t he?”
Robin remembered Kinvara’s tears, the last time they had been in this room, and how she had felt sorry for her, unlikable though she had shown herself to be in other ways. Her attitude now had little of the grief-stricken widow about it, but perhaps, Robin thought, that was the drink, and the recent shock of their intrusion into her grounds.
“So you’re backing up Raphael’s story that he drove down here to stop you taking off with the necklace?”
“Don’t you believe him?”
“Not really,” said Strike. “No.”
“Why not?”
“It rings false,” said Strike. “I’m not convinced your husband was in a fit state that morning to remember what he had and hadn’t put in his will.”
“He was well enough to call me and demand to know whether I was really walking out on him,” said Kinvara.
“Did you tell him you were going to sell the necklace?”
“Not in so many words, no. I said I was going to leave as soon as I could find somewhere else for me and the horses. I suppose he might have wondered how I’d manage that, with no real money of my own, which made him remember the necklace.”
“So Raphael came here out of simple loyalty to the father who’d cut him off without a penny?”
Kinvara subjected Strike to a long and penetrating look over her whisky glass, then said to Robin:
“Would you throw another log on the fire?”
Noting the lack of a “please,” Robin nevertheless did as she was asked. The Norfolk terrier, which had now joined the sleeping Labrador on the hearthrug, growled at her until she had sat down again.
“All right,” said Kinvara, with an air of coming to a decision. “All right, here it is. I don’t suppose it matters any more, anyway. Those bloody girls will find out in the end and serve Raphael right.
“He did come down to try and stop me taking the necklace, but it wasn’t for Jasper, Fizzy or Flopsy’s sake—I suppose,” she said aggressively to Robin, “you know all the family nicknames, don’t you? You probably had a good giggle at them, while you were working with Izzy?”
“Erm—”
“Oh, don’t pretend,” said Kinvara, rather nastily, “I know you’ll have heard them. They call me ‘Tinky Two’ or something, don’t they? And behind his back, Izzy, Fizzy and Torquil call Raphael ‘Rancid.’ Did you know that?”
“No,” said Robin, at whom Kinvara was still glaring.
“Sweet, isn’t it? And Raphael’s mother is known to all of them as the Orca, because she dresses in black and white.
“Anyway… when the Orca realized Jasper wasn’t going to marry her,” said Kinvara, now very red in the face, “d’you know what she did?”
Robin shook her head.
“She took the famous family necklace to the man who became her next lover, who was a diamond merchant, and she had him prize out the really valuable stones and replace them with cubic zirconias. Man-made diamond substitutes,” Kinvara elucidated, in case Strike and Robin hadn’t understood. “Jasper never realized what she’d done and I certainly didn’t. I expect Ornella’s been having a jolly good laugh every time I’ve been photographed in the necklace, thinking I’m wearing a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of stones.
“Anyway, when my darling stepson got wind of the fact that I was leaving his father, and heard that I’d talked about having enough money to buy land for the horses, he twigged that I might be about to get the necklace valued. So he came hotfooting it down here, because the last thing he wanted was for the family to find out what his mother had done. What would be the odds of him wheedling his way back into his father’s good books after that?”
“Why haven’t you told anyone this?” asked Strike.
“Because Raphael promised me that morning that if I didn’t tell his father what the Orca had done, he’d maybe manage to persuade his mother to give the stones back. Or at least, give me their value.”
“And are you still trying to recover the missing stones?”
Kinvara squinted malevolently at Strike over the rim of her glass.
“I haven’t done anything about it since Jasper died, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. Why should I let the bloody Orca waltz off with what’s rightfully mine? It’s down in Jasper’s will, the contents of the house that haven’t been spefi—specif—spe-cif-ically excluded,” she enunciated carefully, thick-tongued now, “belong to me. So,” she said, fixing Strike with a gimlet stare, “does that sound more like Raphael to you? Coming down here to try and cover up for his darling mama?”
“Yes,” said Strike, “I’d have to say it does. Thank you for your honesty.”
Kinvara looked pointedly at the grandfather clock, which was now showing three in the morning, but Strike refused to take the hint.
“Mrs. Chiswell, there’s one last thing I want to ask and I’m afraid it’s quite personal.”
“What?” she said crossly.
“I spoke to Mrs. Winn recently. Della Winn, you know, the—”
“Della-Winn-the-Minister-for-Sport,” said Kinvara, just as her husband had done, the first time Strike met him. “Yes, I know who she is. Very odd woman.”
“In what way?”
Kinvara wriggled her shoulders impatiently, as though it should be obvious.
“Never mind. What did she say?”
“That she met you in a state of considerable distress a year ago and that from what she could gather, you were upset because your husband had admitted to an affair.”
Kinvara opened her mouth then closed it again. She sat thus for a few seconds, then shook her head as though to clear it and said:
“I… thought he was being unfaithful, but I was wrong. I got it all wrong.”
“According to Mrs. Winn, he’d said some fairly cruel things to you.”
“I don’t remember what I said to her. I wasn’t very well at the time. I was overemotional and I got everything wrong.”
“Forgive me,” said Strike, “but, as an outsider, your marriage seemed—”
“What a dreadful job you’ve got,” said Kinvara shrilly. “What a really nasty, seedy job you do. Yes, our marriage was going wrong, what of it? Do you think, now he’s dead, now he’s killed himself, I want to relive it all with the pair of you, perfect strangers whom my stupid stepdaughters have dragged in, to stir everything up and make it ten times worse?”
“So you’ve changed your mind, have you? You think your husband committed suicide? Because when we were last here, you suggested Aamir Mallik—”
“I don’t know what I said then!” she said hysterically. “Can you not understand what it’s been like since Jasper killed himself, with the police and the family and you? I didn’t think this would happen, I had no idea, it didn’t seem real—Jasper was under enormous pressure those last few months, drinking too much, in an awful temper—the blackmail, the fear of it all coming out—yes, I think he killed himself and I’ve got to live with the fact that I walked out on him that morning, which was probably the final straw!”
The Norfolk terrier began to yap furiously again. The Labrador woke with a start and started barking, too.
“Please leave!” shouted Kinvara, getting to her feet. “Get out! I never wanted you mixed up in this in the first place! Just go, will you?”
“Certainly,” said Strike politely, setting down his empty glass. “Would you mind waiting while I get my leg back on?”
Robin had already stood up. Strike strapped the false leg back on while Kinvara watched, chest heaving, glass in hand. At last, Strike was ready to stand, but his first attempt had him falling back onto the sofa. With Robin’s assistance, he finally achieved a standing position.
“Well, goodbye, Mrs. Chiswell.”
Kinvara’s only answer was to stalk to the window and fling it open again, shouting at the dogs, which had got up excitedly, to stay put.
No sooner had her unwelcome guests stepped out onto the gravel path than Kinvara slammed the window behind them. While Robin put her Wellington boots back on, they heard the shriek of the brass curtain rings as Kinvara dragged the drapes shut, then called the dogs out of the room.
“Not sure I’m going to be able to make it back to the car, Robin,” said Strike, who wasn’t putting weight on his prosthesis. “In retrospect, the digging might’ve… might’ve been a mistake.”
Wordlessly, Robin took his arm and placed it over her shoulders. He didn’t resist. Together they moved slowly off a
cross the grass.
“Did you understand what I mouthed at you back there?” asked Robin.
“That there was someone upstairs? Yeah,” he said, wincing horribly every time he put down his false foot. “I did.”
“You don’t seem—”
“I’m not surpr—wait,” he said abruptly, still leaning on her as he came to a halt. “You didn’t go up there?”
“Yes,” said Robin.
“For fuck’s sake—”
“I heard footsteps.”
“And what would’ve happened if you’d been jumped?”
“I took a weapon and I wasn’t—and if I hadn’t gone up there, I wouldn’t have seen this.”
Taking out her mobile, Robin brought up the photo of the painting on the bed, and handed it to him.
“You didn’t see Kinvara’s expression, when she saw the blank wall. Cormoran, she didn’t realize that painting had been moved until you asked about it. Whoever was upstairs tried to hide it while she was outside.”
Strike stared at the phone screen for what felt like a long time, his arm heavy on Robin’s shoulders. Finally, he said:
“Is that a piebald?”
“Seriously?” said Robin, in total disbelief. “Horse colors? Now?”
“Answer me.”
“No, piebalds are black and white, not brown and—”
“We need to go to the police,” said Strike. “The odds on another murder just went up exponentially.”
“You aren’t serious?”
“I’m completely serious. Get me back to the car and I’ll tell you everything… but don’t ask me to talk till then, because my leg’s fucking killing me.”
68
I have tasted blood now…
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
Three days later, Strike and Robin received an unprecedented invitation. As a courtesy for having chosen to aid rather than upstage the police in passing on information about Flick’s stolen note and “Mare Mourning,” the Met welcomed the detective partners into the heart of the investigation at New Scotland Yard. Used to being treated by the police as either inconveniences or showboaters, Strike and Robin were surprised but grateful for this unforeseen thawing of relations.