Flushed beneath her freckles, Izzy drew breath, and said:
‘I think Kinvara killed Papa. I can’t get it out of my head, can’t focus, can’t think about anything else. She was convinced there was something going on between Papa and Venetia – she was suspicious from the first moment she saw Venetia, and then the Sun snooping around convinced her she was right to be worried – and she probably thought Papa reinstating Raff proved that he was getting ready for a new era, and I think she ground up her anti-depressants and put them in his orange juice when he wasn’t looking – he always had a glass of juice first thing, that was his routine – then, when he became sleepy and couldn’t fight her off, she put the bag over his head and then, after she’d killed him, she wrote that note to try and make it look as though she was the one who was going to divorce him and I think she sneaked out of the house after she’d done it, went home to Woolstone and pretended she’d been there when Papa died.’
Running out of breath, Izzy felt for the cross around her neck and played with it nervously, watching for Strike’s reaction, her expression both nervous and defiant.
Strike, who had dealt with several military suicides, knew that survivors were nearly always left with a particularly noxious form of grief, a poisoned wound that festered even beyond that of those whose relatives had been dispatched by enemy bullets. He might have his own doubts about the way in which Chiswell had met his end, but he was not about to share them with the disorientated, grief-stricken woman beside him. What struck him chiefly about Izzy’s diatribe was the hatred she appeared to feel for her stepmother. It was no trivial charge that she laid against Kinvara, and Strike wondered what it was that convinced Izzy that the rather childish, sulky woman with whom he had shared five minutes in a car could be capable of planning what amounted to a methodical execution.
‘The police,’ he said at last, ‘will have looked into Kinvara’s movements, Izzy. In a case like this, the spouse is usually the first one to be investigated.’
‘But they’re accepting her story,’ said Izzy feverishly. ‘I can tell they are.’
Then it’s true, thought Strike. He had too high an opinion of the Met to imagine that they would be slapdash in confirming the movements of the wife who had had easy access to the murder scene, and who had been prescribed the drugs that had been found in the body.
‘Who else knew Papa always drank orange juice in the mornings? Who else had access to amitriptyline and the helium—?’
‘Does she admit to buying the helium?’ Strike asked.
‘No,’ said Izzy, ‘but she wouldn’t, would she? She just sits there doing her hysterical little girl act.’ Izzy affected a higher-pitched voice. ‘“I don’t know how it got into the house! Why are you all pestering me, leave me alone, I’ve been widowed!”
‘I told the police, she attacked Papa with a hammer, over a year ago.’
Strike froze in the act of raising his unappetising tea to his lips.
‘What?’
‘She attacked Papa with a hammer,’ said Izzy, her pale blue eyes boring into Strike, willing him to understand. ‘They had a massive row, because – well, it doesn’t matter why, but they were out in the stables – this was at home, at Chiswell House, obviously – and Kinvara grabbed the hammer off the top of a toolbox and smashed Papa over the head with it. She was bloody lucky she didn’t kill him then. It left him with olfactory dysfunction. He couldn’t smell and taste as well afterwards, and he got cross at the smallest things, but he insisted on hushing it all up. He bundled her off into some residential centre and told everyone she was ill, “nervous exhaustion”.
‘But the stable girl witnessed the whole thing and told us what had really happened. She had to call the local GP because Papa was bleeding so badly. It would have been all over the papers if Papa hadn’t got Kinvara admitted to a psychiatric ward and warned the papers off.’
Izzy picked up her tea, but her hand was now shaking so badly that she was forced to put it back down again.
‘She isn’t what men think she is,’ said Izzy vehemently. ‘They all buy the little girl nonsense, even Raff. “She did lose a baby, Izzy . . . ” But if he heard a quarter of what Kinvara says about him behind his back, he’d soon change his tune.
‘And what about the open front door?’ Izzy said, jumping subject. ‘You know all about that, it’s how you and Venetia got in, isn’t it? That door’s never closed properly unless you slam it. Papa knew that. He’d have made sure he closed it properly if he’d been in the house alone, wouldn’t he? But if Kinvara was sneaking out early in the morning without wanting to be heard, she’d have had to pull it to and leave it, wouldn’t she?
‘She isn’t very bright, you know. She’d have tidied away all the amitriptyline packaging, thinking it would incriminate her if she left it. I know the police think the absence of packaging is odd, but I can tell they’re all leaning towards suicide and that’s why I wanted to speak to you, Cormoran,’ Izzy finished, edging a little forward in her armchair. ‘I want to hire you. I want you to investigate Papa’s death.’
Strike had known the request was coming almost from the moment the tea had arrived. The prospect of being paid to investigate what was, in any case, preoccupying Strike to the point of obsession, was naturally inviting. However, clients who sought nothing but confirmation of their own theories were always troublesome. He could not accept the case on Izzy’s terms, but compassion for her grief led him to seek a gentler mode of refusal.
‘The police won’t want me under their feet, Izzy.’
‘They don’t have to know it’s Papa’s death you’re investigating,’ said Izzy eagerly. ‘We could pretend we want you to investigate all those stupid trespasses into the garden that Kinvara claims have been going on. It would serve her bloody well right if we took her seriously now.’
‘Do the rest of the family know you’re meeting me?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Izzy eagerly. ‘Fizzy’s all for it.’
‘Is she? Does she suspect Kinvara, too?’
‘Well, no,’ said Izzy, sounding faintly frustrated, ‘but she agrees a hundred per cent that Papa couldn’t have killed himself.’
‘Who does she think did it, if not Kinvara?’
‘Well,’ said Izzy, who seemed uneasy at this line of questioning, ‘actually, Fizz has got this crazy idea that Jimmy Knight was involved somehow, but obviously, that’s ridiculous. Jimmy was in custody when Papa died, wasn’t he? You and I saw him being led away by the police the evening before, but Fizz doesn’t want to hear that, she’s fixated on Jimmy! I’ve said to her, “how did Jimmy Knight know where the amitriptyline and the helium were?” but she won’t listen, she keeps going on about how Knight was after revenge—’
‘Revenge for what?’
‘What?’ said Izzy restlessly, though Strike knew she had heard him. ‘Oh – that doesn’t matter now. That’s all over.’
Snatching up the teapot, Izzy marched away into the kitchen area, where she added more hot water from the kettle.
‘Fizz is irrational about Jimmy,’ she said, returning with her teapot refilled and setting it down with a bang on the table. ‘She’s never been able to stand him since we were teenagers.’
She poured herself a second cup of tea, her colour heightened. When Strike said nothing, she repeated nervously:
‘The blackmail business can’t have anything to do with Papa dying. That’s all over.’
‘You didn’t tell the police about it, did you?’ asked Strike quietly.
There was a pause. Izzy turned steadily pinker. She sipped her tea, then said:
‘No.’
Then she said, in a rush, ‘I’m sorry, I can imagine how you and Venetia feel about that, but we’re more concerned about Papa’s legacy now. We can’t face it all getting into the press, Cormoran. The only way the blackmail can have any bearing on his death is if it drove him to suicide, and I just don’t believe he’d have killed himself over that, or anything else.’
‘Della must have found it easy to get her super-injunction,’ said Strike, ‘if Chiswell’s own family were backing her up, saying nobody was blackmailing him.’
‘We care more about how Papa’s remembered. The blackmail . . . that’s all over and done with.’
‘But Fizzy still thinks Jimmy might’ve had something to do with your father’s death.’
‘That’s not – that would be a separate matter, from what he was blackmailing about,’ said Izzy incoherently. ‘Jimmy had a grudge . . . it’s hard to explain . . . Fizz is just silly about Jimmy.’
‘How does the rest of the family feel about bringing me in again?’
‘Well . . . Raff isn’t awfully keen, but it’s nothing to do with him. I’d be paying you.’
‘Why isn’t he keen?’
‘Because,’ said Izzy, ‘well, because the police questioned Raff more than any of the rest of us, because – look, Raff doesn’t matter,’ she repeated. ‘I’ll be the client, I’m the one who wants you. Just break Kinvara’s alibis, I know you can do it.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Strike, ‘I can’t take the job on those terms, Izzy.’
‘Why not?’
‘The client doesn’t get to tell me what I can and can’t investigate. Unless you want the whole truth, I’m not your man.’
‘You are, I know you’re the best, that’s why Papa hired you, and that’s why I want you.’
‘Then you’ll need to answer questions when I ask them, instead of telling me what does and doesn’t matter.’
She glared at him over the rim of her teacup, then, to his surprise, gave a brittle laugh.
‘I don’t know why I’m surprised. I knew you were like this. Remember when you argued with Jamie Maugham in Nam Long Le Shaker? Oh, you must remember. You wouldn’t back down – the whole table was at you at one point – what was the argument about, d’you—?’
‘The death penalty,’ said Strike, caught off guard. ‘Yeah. I remember.’
For the space of a blink, he seemed to see, not Izzy’s clean, bright sitting room, with its relics of a wealthy English past, but the louche, dimly lit interior of a Vietnamese restaurant in Chelsea where, twelve years previously, he and one of Charlotte’s friends had got into an argument over dinner. Jamie Maugham’s face was smoothly porcine in his memory. He had wanted to show up the oik whom Charlotte had insisted on bringing to dinner instead of Jamie’s old friend, Jago Ross.
‘ . . . and Jamie got rilly, rilly angry with you,’ Izzy said. ‘He’s quite a successful QC now, you know.’
‘Must’ve learned to keep his temper in an argument, then,’ said Strike, and Izzy gave another little giggle. ‘Izzy,’ he said, returning to the main issue, ‘if you mean what you say—’
‘—I do—’
‘—then you’ll answer my questions,’ said Strike, drawing a notebook out of his pocket.
Irresolute, she watched him take out a pen.
‘I’m discreet,’ said Strike. ‘In the past couple of years, I’ve been told the secrets of a hundred families and not shared one of them. Nothing irrelevant to your father’s death will ever be mentioned again outside my agency. But if you don’t trust me—’
‘I do,’ said Izzy desperately, and to his slight surprise, she leaned forward and touched him on the knee. ‘I do, Cormoran, honestly, but it’s . . . it’s hard . . . talking about Papa . . . ’
‘I understand that,’ he said, readying his pen. ‘So let’s start with why the police questioned Raphael so much more than the rest of you.’
He could tell that she didn’t want to answer, but after a moment’s hesitation she said:
‘Well, I think it was partly because Papa phoned Raff early on the morning he died. It was the last call he made.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing that mattered. It can’t have had anything to do with Papa dying. But,’ she rushed on, as though wanting to extinguish any impression her last words might have made, ‘I think the main reason Raff isn’t keen on me hiring you is that he rather fell for your Venetia while she was in the office and now, well, obviously, he feels a bit of an idiot that he poured his heart out to her.’
‘Fell for her, did he?’ said Strike.
‘Yes, so it’s hardly surprising he feels everyone’s made a fool of him.’
‘The fact remains—’
‘I know what you’re going to say, but—’
‘—if you want me to investigate, it’ll be me who decides what matters, Izzy. Not you. So I want to know,’ he ticked off all the times she had said that information ‘didn’t matter’ on his fingers as he named them, ‘what your father called Raphael about the morning he died, what your father and Kinvara were rowing about when she hit him around the head with a hammer – and what your father was being blackmailed about.’
The sapphire cross winked darkly as Izzy’s chest rose and fell. When at last she spoke, it was jerkily.
‘It’s not up to me to tell you about what Papa and Raff said to each other, the last t-time they spoke. That’s for Raff to say.’
‘Because it’s private?’
‘Yes,’ she said, very pink in the face. He wondered whether she was telling the truth.
‘You said your father had asked Raphael over to the house in Ebury Street the day he died. Was he rearranging the time? Cancelling?’
‘Cancelling. Look, you’ll have to ask Raff,’ she reiterated.
‘All right,’ said Strike, making a note. ‘What caused your stepmother to hit your father around the head with a hammer?’
Izzy’s eyes filled with tears. Then, with a sob, she pulled a handkerchief out of her sleeve and pressed it to her face:
‘I d-didn’t want to tell you that b-because I d-didn’t want you to think badly of Papa now he’s . . . now he’s . . . you see, he d-did something that . . . ’
Her broad shoulders shook as she emitted unromantic snorts. Strike, who found this frank and noisy anguish more touching than he would have found delicate eye dabbing, sat in impotent sympathy while she tried to gasp out her apologies.
‘I’m – I’m s—’
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said gruffly. ‘Of course you’re upset.’
But she seemed deeply ashamed of this loss of control, and her hiccoughing return to calm was punctuated with further flustered ‘sorrys’. At last, she wiped her face dry as roughly as though cleaning a window, said one final ‘I’m so sorry’, she straightened her spine and said with a forcefulness Strike rather admired, given the circumstances:
‘If you take the case . . . once we’ve signed on the dotted line . . . I’ll tell you what Papa did that made Kinvara hit him.’
‘I assume,’ said Strike, ‘the same goes for the reason that Winn and Knight were blackmailing your father?’
‘Look,’ she said, tears welling again, ‘don’t you see, it’s Papa’s memory, his legacy, now. I don’t want those things to be the thing people remember about him – please help us, Corm. Please. I know it wasn’t suicide, I know it wasn’t . . . ’
He let his silence do the work for him. At last, her expression piteous, she said with a catch in her voice:
‘All right. I’ll tell you all about the blackmail, but only if Fizz and Torks agree.’
‘Who’s Torks?’ enquired Strike.
‘Torquil. Fizzy’s husband. We swore we wouldn’t ever tell anyone, but I’ll t-talk to them and if they agree, I’ll t-tell you everything.’
‘Doesn’t Raphael get consulted?’
‘He never knew anything about the blackmail business. He was in jail when Jimmy first came to see Papa and anyway, he didn’t grow up with us, so he couldn’t – Raff never knew.’
‘And what about Kinvara?’ asked Strike. ‘Did she know?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Izzy, and a look of malice hardened her usually friendly features, ‘but she definitely won’t want us to tell you. Oh, not to protect Papa,’ she said, correctly reading Strike’s expression, ‘to protect herself. Kinva
ra benefited, you see. She didn’t mind what Papa was up to, so long as she reaped the rewards.’
39
… naturally I talk as little about it as possible; it is better to be silent about such things.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
Robin was having a bad Saturday, following an even worse night.
Lethal White Page 35