Lethal White

by Galbraith, Robert

  ‘Is that where your mother lives? Siena?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s shacked up with an Italian count these days, and believe me, the last thing he wants is her twenty-nine-year-old son moving in. He’s showing no sign of wanting to marry her and she’s starting to worry about her old age, hence the idea of flogging the flat here. She’s getting a bit long in the tooth to pull the trick she did on my father.’

  ‘What d’you—?’

  ‘She got pregnant on purpose. Don’t look so shocked. My mother doesn’t believe in shielding me from the realities of life. She told me the story years ago. I’m a gamble that didn’t come off. She thought he’d marry her if she got pregnant, but as you’ve just pointed out—’

  ‘I said I’m sorry,’ said Robin. ‘I am. It was really insensitive and – and stupid.’

  She thought perhaps Raphael was about to tell her to go to hell, but instead he said quietly:

  ‘See, you are sweet. You weren’t entirely acting, were you? In the office?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Robin. ‘I suppose not.’

  Feeling his legs shift under the table, she moved very slightly backwards again.

  ‘What’s your husband like?’ Raphael asked.

  ‘I don’t know how to describe him.’

  ‘Does he work for Christie’s?’

  ‘No,’ said Robin. ‘He’s an accountant.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Raphael, appalled. ‘Is that what you like?’

  ‘He wasn’t an accountant when I met him. Can we go back over your father calling you on the morning he died?’

  ‘If you like,’ said Raphael, ‘but I’d much rather talk about you.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you tell me what happened that morning and then you can ask me whatever you like,’ said Robin.

  A fleeting smile passed over Raphael’s face. He took a swig of beer and said:

  ‘Dad called me. Told me he thought Kinvara was about to do something stupid and told me to go straight down to Woolstone and stop it. I did ask why it had to be me, you know.’

  ‘You didn’t tell us that at Chiswell House,’ said Robin, looking up from her notes.

  ‘Of course I didn’t, because the others were there. Dad said he didn’t want to ask Izzy. He was quite rude about her on the phone . . . he was an ungrateful shit, really he was,’ said Raphael. ‘She worked her fingers to the bloody bone and you saw how he treated her.’

  ‘What do you mean, rude?’

  ‘He said she’d shout at Kinvara, upset her and make it worse or something. Pot and bloody kettle, but there you are. But the truth is,’ said Raphael, ‘that he saw me as a kind of upper servant and Izzy as proper family. He didn’t mind me getting my hands dirty and it didn’t matter if I pissed off his wife by barging into her house and stopping her—’

  ‘Stopping her what?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Raphael, ‘food.’

  The dim sum placed on the table before them, the waitress retreated.

  ‘What did you stop Kinvara doing?’ Robin repeated. ‘Leaving your father? Hurting herself?’

  ‘I love this stuff,’ said Raphael, examining a prawn dumpling.

  ‘She left a note,’ persisted Robin, ‘saying she was leaving. Did your father send you down there to persuade her not to go? Was he afraid Izzy would egg her on to leave him?’

  ‘D’you seriously think I could persuade Kinvara to stay in the marriage? Never having to lay eyes on me again would’ve been one more incentive to go.’

  ‘Then why did he send you to her?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ said Raphael. ‘He thought she was going to do something stupid.’

  ‘Raff,’ said Robin, ‘you can keep playing silly buggers—’

  He corpsed.

  ‘Christ, you sound Yorkshire when you say that. Say it again.’

  ‘The police think there’s something fishy about your story of what you were up to that morning,’ said Robin. ‘And so do we.’

  That seemed to sober him up.

  ‘How do you know what the police are thinking?’

  ‘We’ve got contacts on the force,’ said Robin. ‘Raff, you’ve given everyone the impression that your father was trying to stop Kinvara hurting herself, but nobody really buys that. The stable girl was there. Tegan. She could have prevented Kinvara from hurting herself.’

  Raphael chewed for a while, apparently thinking.

  ‘All right,’ he sighed. ‘All right, here it is. You know how Dad had sold off everything that would raise a few hundred quid, or given it to Peregrine?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘All right, Pringle,’ said Raphael, exasperated. ‘I prefer not to use their stupid bloody nicknames.

  ‘He didn’t sell off everything of value,’ said Robin.

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘That picture of the mare and foal is worth five to eight—’

  Robin’s mobile rang. She knew from the ringtone that it was Matthew.

  ‘Aren’t you going to get that?’

  ‘No,’ said Robin.

  She waited until the phone had stopped ringing, then took it out of her bag.

  ‘“Matt”,’ said Raphael, reading the name upside down. ‘That’s the accountant, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Robin, silencing the phone, but it immediately began to vibrate in her hand instead. Matthew had called back.

  ‘Block him,’ suggested Raphael.

  ‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘good idea.’

  All that was important to her right now was keeping Raphael cooperative. He seemed to enjoy watching her block Matthew. She put the mobile back in her bag and said:

  ‘Go on about the paintings.’

  ‘Well, you know how Dad had offloaded all the valuable ones through Drummond?’

  ‘Some of us think five thousand pounds worth of picture is quite valuable,’ said Robin, unable to help herself.

  ‘Fine, Ms Lefty,’ said Raphael, suddenly nasty. ‘You can keep sneering about how people like me don’t know the value of money—’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Robin quickly, cursing herself. ‘I am, seriously. Look, I’ve – well, I’ve been trying to find a room to rent this morning. Five thousand pounds would change my life right now.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Raphael, frowning. ‘I – OK. Actually, if it comes to that I’d leap at the chance of five grand in my pocket right now, but I’m talking about seriously valuable stuff, worth tens and hundreds of thousands, things that my father wanted to keep in the family. He’d already handed them on to little Pringle to avoid death duties. There was a Chinese lacquer cabinet, an ivory workbox and a couple of other things, but there was also the necklace.’

  ‘Which—?’

  ‘It’s a big ugly diamond thing,’ said Raphael, and with the hand not spearing dumplings he mimed a thick collar. ‘Important stones. It’s come down through five generations or something and the convention was that it went to the eldest daughter on her twenty-first, but my father’s father, who as you might have heard was a bit of a playboy—’

  ‘This is the one who married Tinky the nurse?’

  ‘She was his third or fourth,’ said Raphael, nodding. ‘I can never remember. Anyway, he only had sons, so he let all his wives wear the thing in turn, then left it to my father, who kept the new tradition going. His wives got to wear it – even my mother got a shot – and he forgot about the handing on to the daughter on her twenty-first bit, Pringle didn’t get it and he didn’t mention it in his will.’

  ‘So – wait, d’you mean it’s now—?’

  ‘Dad called me up that morning and told me I had to get hold of the bloody thing. Simple job, kind of thing anyone would enjoy,’ he said, sarcastically. ‘Bust in on a stepmother who hates my guts, find out where she’s keeping a valuable necklace, then steal it from under her nose.’

  ‘So you think your father believed that she was leaving him, and was worried that she was going to take it with her?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Raphael.


  ‘How did he sound on the phone?’

  ‘I told you this. Groggy. I thought it was a hangover. After I heard he’d killed himself,’ Raphael faltered, ‘ . . . well.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ said Raphael, ‘I couldn’t get it out of my head that the last thing Dad wanted to say to me in this life was, “run along and make sure your sister gets her diamonds”. Words to treasure for ever, eh?’

  At a loss for anything to say, Robin took another sip of wine, then asked quietly:

  ‘Do Izzy and Fizzy realise the necklace is Kinvara’s now?’

  Raphael’s lips twisted in an unpleasant smile.

  ‘Well, they know it is legally, but here’s the really funny thing: they think she’s going to hand it over to them. After everything they’ve said about her, after calling her a gold-digger for years, slagging her off at every possible opportunity, they can’t quite grasp that she won’t hand the necklace over to Fizzy for Flopsy – damn it – Florence – because,’ he affected a shrill upper-class voice, ‘“Darling, even TTS wouldn’t do that, it belongs in the family, she must realise she can’t sell it.”

  ‘Bullets would bounce off their self-regard. They think there’s a kind of natural law in operation, where Chiswells get what they want and lesser beings just fall into line.’

  ‘How did Henry Drummond know you were trying to stop Kinvara keeping the necklace? He told Cormoran you went to Chiswell House for noble reasons.’

  Raphael snorted.

  ‘Cat’s really out of the bag, isn’t it? Yeah, apparently Kinvara left a message for Henry the day before Dad died, asking where she could get a valuation on the necklace.’

  ‘Is that why he phoned your father that morning?’

  ‘Exactly. To warn him what she was up to.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell the police all this?’

  ‘Because once the others find out she’s planning to sell it, the whole thing’s going to turn nuclear. There’ll be an almighty row and the family’ll go to lawyers and expect me to join them in kicking the shit out of Kinvara, and meanwhile I’m still treated like a second-class citizen, like a fucking courier, driving all the old paintings up to Drummond in London and hearing how much Dad was getting for them, and not a penny of that did I ever see – I’m not getting caught up in the middle of the great necklace scandal, I’m not playing their bloody game. I should’ve told Dad to stuff it, the day he phoned,’ said Raphael, ‘but he didn’t sound well, and I suppose I felt sorry for him, or something, which only goes to prove they’re right, I’m not a proper bloody Chiswell.’

  He had run out of breath. Two couples had joined them in the restaurant now. Robin watched in the mirror as a well-groomed blonde did a double take at Raphael as she sat down with her florid, overweight companion.

  ‘So, why did you leave Matthew?’ Raphael asked.

  ‘He cheated,’ said Robin. She didn’t have the energy to lie.

  ‘Who with?’

  She had the impression he was seeking to redress some kind of power balance. However much anger and contempt he had displayed during the outburst about his family, she had heard the hurt, too.

  ‘With a friend of his from university,’ said Robin.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘A diamond earring, in our bed.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously,’ said Robin.

  She felt a sudden wave of depression and fatigue at the idea of travelling all the way back to that hard sofa in Wembley. She had not yet called her parents to tell them what had happened.

  ‘Under normal circumstances,’ said Raphael, ‘I’d be putting the moves on you. Well, not right now. Not tonight. But give it a couple of weeks . . .

  ‘Trouble is, I look at you,’ he raised a forefinger, and pointed first to her, and then to an imaginary figure behind her, ‘and I see your one-legged boss looming over your shoulder.’

  ‘Is there any particular reason you feel the need to mention him being one-legged?’

  Raphael grinned.

  ‘Protective, aren’t you?’

  ‘No, I—’

  ‘It’s all right. Izzy fancies him, too.’

  ‘I never—’

  ‘Defensive, too.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Robin, half-laughing, and Raphael grinned.

  ‘I’m having another beer. Drink that wine, why don’t you?’ he said, indicating her glass, which was still two-thirds full.

  When he had procured another bottle, he said with a malevolent grin, ‘Izzy’s always liked bits of rough. Did you notice the charged look from Fizzy to Izzy when Jimmy Knight’s name was mentioned?’

  ‘I did, actually,’ said Robin. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘Freddie’s eighteenth birthday party,’ said Raphael, smirking. ‘Jimmy crashed it with a couple of mates and Izzy – how do I put this delicately? – lost something in his company.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Robin, astonished.

  ‘She was blind drunk. It’s passed into family legend. I wasn’t there. I was too young.

  ‘Fizzy’s so amazed at the idea that her sister could have slept with the estate carpenter’s son that she thinks he must have some sort of supernatural, demonic sex appeal. That’s why she thinks Kinvara was slightly on his side, when he turned up asking for money.’

  ‘What?’ said Robin sharply, reaching for her notebook again, which had fallen closed.

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ said Raphael, ‘I still don’t know what he was blackmailing Dad about, I never did. Not a full member of the family, you see, so not to be fully trusted.

  ‘Kinvara told you this at Chiswell House, don’t you remember? She was alone at home, the first time Jimmy turned up. Dad was in London again. From what I’ve pieced together, when she and Dad first talked it over, she argued Jimmy’s case. Fizzy thinks that’s down to Jimmy’s sex appeal. Would you say he’s got any?’

  ‘I suppose some people might think he has,’ said Robin indifferently, who was making notes. ‘Kinvara thought your father should pay Jimmy his money, did she?’

  ‘From what I understand,’ said Raphael, ‘Jimmy didn’t frame it as blackmail on the first approach. She thought Jimmy had a legitimate claim and argued for giving him something.’

  ‘When was this, d’you know?’

  ‘Search me,’ said Raphael, shaking his head. ‘I think I was in jail at the time. Bigger things to worry about . . .

  ‘Guess,’ he said, for the second time, ‘how often any of them have asked me what it was like in jail?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Robin cautiously.

  ‘Fizzy, never. Dad, never—’

  ‘You said Izzy visited.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he acknowledged, with a tip of the bottle to his sister. ‘Yeah, she did, bless her. Good old Torks has made a couple of jokes about not wanting to bend over in the shower. I suggested,’ said Raphael, with a hard smile, ‘that he’d know all about that kind of thing, what with his old pal Christopher sliding his hand between young men’s legs at the office. Turns out it’s serious stuff when some hairy old convict tries it, but harmless frolics for public schoolboys.’

  He glanced at Robin.

  ‘I suppose you know now why Dad was taunting that poor bloke Aamir?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Which Kinvara thought was a motive for murder,’ said Raphael, rolling his eyes. ‘Projection, pure projection – they’re all at it.

  ‘Kinvara thinks Aamir killed Dad, because Dad had been cruel to him in front of a room full of people. Well, you should have heard some of the things Dad was saying to Kinvara by the end.

  ‘Fizzy thinks Jimmy Knight might’ve done it because he was angry about money. She’s bloody angry about all the family money that’s vanished, but she can’t say that in so many words, not when her husband’s half the reason it’s gone.

  ‘Izzy thinks Kinvara must have killed Dad because Kinvara felt unloved and sidelined and disposable. D
ad never thanked Izzy for a damn thing she did for him, and didn’t give a toss when she said she was leaving. You get the picture?