The Arsenic Labyrinth

by Martin Edwards

  ‘Sorry, perhaps I’m imagining things. Forget I mentioned it.’

  Hannah frowned as traffic lights ahead turned to red just as she was tempted to rush through on amber. Maggie didn’t imagine things, that was the point. Better keep an eye on Les. Just in case.

  Guy and Sarah stayed in bed until mid-day. After she finally got up, he lingered under the warm duvet while she busied herself in the kitchen, making them a scratch lunch. He’d assumed she would be out of condition and her reserves of stamina had come as a surprise. She was never satisfied for long and the endless exertion, coupled with a night broken by memories of the Arsenic Labyrinth, had left him listless and unable to stop yawning. He’d drunk too much the previous evening and his throat was dry. When he moved, his body protested and he worried that he might have put his back out.

  When he hobbled downstairs, she flung her arms around his neck, pressing herself into him as they embraced. Her tongue was large and insistent. He caught her glancing at the kitchen table and he wondered if she entertained fantasies of emulating Jessica Lange in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Not this bloody postman, he thought, I’m knackered. As gently as he could, he disengaged from her.

  ‘Thought you’d be hungry,’ she said with a provocative smile.

  ‘I wouldn’t say no to a couple of slices of toast. Any chance of some soup?’

  ‘Rob Stevenson, what are you like!’ She pretended to cuff his ear. ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’

  It was weird, he thought, as he watched her stretching up into the cupboards above her head, mauve leggings so tight over her ample backside that they must be in danger of splitting. The thrill of the chase meant far more than the triumph of conquest and it wouldn’t be long before his interest fizzled out. Nothing personal, it had been the same with Megan, with Farfalla, with Maryell and with all the rest.

  His head was throbbing, the air was stale. He might be suffering from a touch of claustrophobia, maybe even the early stages of flu. All through lunch, she never stopped chattering about her younger days before the marriage that went wrong. It was as if she were trying to suck him into her existence, make him understand every little thing about her. She didn’t seem to appreciate that affairs like theirs were transient. You savoured the moment and then got on with the rest of your life. He hardly spoke, although she hadn’t reached the stage of chastising him for having so little to say to her. The blissful look would give way to a reproachful frown and she would click her tongue each time he fell short of expectations. Nobody ever realised how difficult it was, when you made up an identity for yourself. You had to take such care to avoid making a mistake, a careless remark that revealed you were not the man you claimed to be.

  As soon as they’d finished eating, he made an excuse about phoning a colleague and hurried out before she could ask any tricky questions. So far his vagueness about his working life had given him the freedom to spend his time as he pleased, but she was starting to take a closer interest. Soon she would be interfering, making demands on his time. She ought to be content to trust him. To allow him, as he liked to say, to do all the worrying for her.

  He walked quickly, keen to put distance between himself and the stuffiness of the Glimpse. By the time he’d reached the short, low wooden pier at Monk Coniston, the pain in his back had eased and his head had cleared. He prided himself on being a man who was never cast down for long. Time to look on the bright side.

  He stood by the water’s edge, remembering. This was where he’d collected a small fortune ten years ago. The world had been at his feet, he’d felt as though he could achieve anything. And now he was back here and about to get lucky again. Sarah was eating out of the palm of his hand. She only harped on because she was happy. He’d made fantastic progress and soon he would be rolling in money. Think of the classy, secluded hotels that he might grace with his presence. He deserved a few treats.

  Half way between Brantwood and Nibthwaite, he emerged from the forest path and strode towards the shore, feet crunching over the narrow strip of clean shingle in front of the trees. He paused and gazed across the lake towards Torver Beck Common, the Old Man and the Yewdale Fells. The sky was clear and he could make out the silvery water of the White Lady cascade. Impossible to see Mispickel Scar from here, it was masked by familiar peaks. He could almost believe that the Arsenic Labyrinth was one more figment of his vivid imagination.

  ‘So you’re fine?’ Daniel asked.

  Hannah cradled the glass of Sancerre in her hand. The Café d’Art combined a small gallery with a framing workshop and a wine bar. They were sitting at a discreet corner table. The wall behind them was crowded with oils on canvas, purple fells and ochre sunsets. Jacques Brel crooned in the background, the candle burning on their table gave off a subtle lilac fragrance.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You look fine.’

  ‘What you mean is, I was an utter wreck when we last met.’

  He laughed. They both knew that wasn’t what he meant. Her hair was several shades lighter, he noticed. She was changing her look, but by degrees. In five years’ time, she’d be a dazzling blonde.

  ‘You’d had a tough time.’

  ‘Not just me. Both of us might have been killed.’ She was determined not to spoil their get-together by discussing her miscarriage. No more dwelling on what might have been.

  He took his cue. ‘That’ll teach me to poke my nose in.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to follow in Ben’s footsteps?’

  ‘I’d seen at first-hand how policing can mess up your home life. He left us for Cheryl when I was a kid, remember? My mum would have keeled over if I’d announced I wanted to become a detective. Besides, I was addicted to history. To be paid money to research it seemed like Heaven.’

  ‘Yet you gave it up.’

  ‘I gave up academic life, the back-biting of the Senior Common Room. I’ll never give up history. It’s in the blood.’

  ‘A passion for what’s dead and gone?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ He grinned. ‘The yearning to find out. The detective urge, if you like.’

  ‘Actually, I rather admire the way you walked away from Oxford.’

  ‘What’s to admire?’ She’d caught him off guard. ‘It ought to be a cause for shame, if anything. An admission of defeat. Failure.’

  Brel was singing ‘If We Only Have Love’. Hannah took another sip of wine, contemplating Daniel. Something about him appealed to her, was it the resemblance to his father? She’d cared a lot about Ben. Although he was dead, killed by a hit and run driver, she’d seen his face many times in her dreams.

  ‘Must have felt liberating, though.’

  ‘Very.’ He helped himself to a handful of salty peanuts from a bowl. ‘So that is what appeals to you? The notion of escape?’

  She nodded. ‘I love my job, most of the time. When I’m doing what I signed up to do – detecting crime. It’s the crap that gets in the way that I can’t bear. The politics, the management stuff, the need to keep the right people sweet. Don’t get me wrong, I can cope. But my oldest friend, Terri, is always complaining the job eats away at the soul.’

  ‘Ever thought of doing something else?’

  ‘I’m not qualified for anything else.’

  ‘Well, I made the break.’

  ‘For you it was easy.’ As the words left her mouth, she regretted their sting. ‘I mean, you can write from home. What would I do – become a private detective? A gumshoe in Grasmere, a shamus from Seatoller? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Forgive me.’ She wanted to reach across the table and touch his hand, but it wasn’t a good idea. ‘Marc keeps saying I’m too tense, I need to lighten up. Blame it on the job, it’s the usual suspect.’

  ‘What are you working on at present?’ He needed to steer the conversation to safe water. ‘Marc mentioned a case in Coniston.’

  ‘A missing woman. Ten years on, we may be about to find her.’

  ‘Can you
talk about it?’

  She knew she ought to say no, but it was a distraction from anything more personal. His dad had been the most honest man she’d ever met and she was sure Daniel was to be trusted. And another thing. Emma’s story would absorb him, and she wanted him to be absorbed in what she had to say.

  ‘Why not?’ She smiled through the candle’s flame. ‘What do you know about the Arsenic Labyrinth?’

  ‘Jeremy Erskine is a fan of yours,’ Hannah said forty minutes later, savouring the last of her wine. ‘His interest in history extends beyond teaching at a posh school. He has a copy of your book and he almost swooned when I said you’d moved to the Lakes. He’d love you to talk to his historical society.’

  ‘Not the Grizedale and Satterthwaite?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘I seem to remember an invitation from them whilst I was at Oxford. Shortly after Aimee died; I hadn’t got myself together.’

  ‘Takes a long time to get yourself together after something like that.’

  Aimee had committed suicide by leaping from the Saxon tower in Cornmarket. A few months later, he’d met Miranda and left Oxford for good. Daniel knew why his sister disapproved. Louise thought he’d got involved on the rebound. He’d wanted to escape by taking up with someone as different from Aimee as he could find.

  ‘Suppose I’d better get in touch with your mate Jeremy.’

  ‘He’s no mate of mine. Truth is, he’s extraordinarily easy to dislike.’

  ‘Not a helpful witness?’

  ‘He’d prefer Emma to be quietly forgotten. All that bothers him is the effect a cold case investigation may have on his career prospects. He may be a fellow historian, but you don’t have much else in common.’

  ‘You never know.’

  She flushed. ‘Sorry, that sounds as though I know you inside out. Very presumptuous. Pay no attention, you and Jeremy may get on like a house on fire.’

  He put down his coffee cup. ‘When I was a boy, people said I took after my father. How true it was, who knows? But if you think he’d have disliked Jeremy …’

  ‘Ben would have detested him.’

  ‘I’ll talk to him. For all I know he’s an expert on John Ruskin and I can pick his brains as part of my research.’

  ‘You’re working on something new?’

  When he explained about his thirst for more information about Ruskin’s Coniston years, she shook her head and said, ‘I can’t offer you any local knowledge. I was taken round Brantwood as a teenager and all I remember is the gorgeous gardens. And that poor old Ruskin was a loser in love.’

  ‘Like Emma Bestwick, by the sound of it. She had all that money – however she came by it – but nobody to love.’

  ‘That’s why Sid Thornicroft thought she’d done a runner. He argued that she’d found someone new and followed them, perhaps abroad. Or else gone in search of a new life.’

  ‘Ten years is a long time to maintain radio silence.’

  ‘It does happen. You know all about beginning a new life. Tell me, do you ever yearn for the old days, town and gown?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘So it’s worked out perfectly, starting afresh?’

  ‘Nothing’s ever perfect, is it?’ He smiled. ‘Miranda hated the Lakeland winter. At dead of night, Tarn Fold is too quiet for her. She has trouble sleeping, she’s accustomed to London, the eternal rumble of traffic in the distance. Not to worry. Ruskin said imperfection is essential to life; who am I to argue?’

  ‘Did Ruskin have an opinion on everything, then?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Any words of wisdom for a hard-pressed law enforcement officer, investigating a suspected murder?’

  ‘You won’t be encouraged. He deplored fascination with death, saw it as a sign of the ills of Victorian England. He put the boot into Charles Dickens for being morbid, said far too many respectable characters met grotesque ends in Bleak House. God knows what he’d make of late night TV and the vogue for autopsy close-ups. Ruskin reckoned a good society was interested in life, not death.’

  ‘Nothing would please me more than for Emma to walk through that door right now and demand to know what all the fuss is about.’

  ‘Not going to happen, is it?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘What do you believe went on?’

  ‘Assuming she’s dead, we have to look at the possibilities of accident or suicide before ruling them out. If the call to the journalist isn’t a hoax and we do find she’s buried under the Arsenic Labyrinth, it’s hard to imagine that she got there by chance.’

  ‘Sex murder?’

  ‘Perhaps. But not committed by the obvious suspect.’

  ‘The late Tom Inchmore?’

  ‘Yes, some of my colleagues had him in the frame. It would have been quite an end for the Inchmore dynasty, if the last in the line turned out to be a murderer.’

  ‘If Emma is dead, presumably the anonymous caller is the culprit?’

  ‘He might be an accomplice. Or someone the murderer confided in. But yes, the chances are, he killed her. What we don’t know is why. Or why he’s decided to break his silence. We can’t link him to the original investigation. If it was a sexually motivated murder, it doesn’t fit the usual pattern. Did she go to the Arsenic Labyrinth of her own free will? And if so, why?’

  ‘You say the place is off the beaten track,’ Daniel said. ‘Suitable for a secret assignation. A tryst. Perhaps she went to meet someone. Possibly not the person she actually met. Maybe she went looking for love and finished up dead.’

  Hannah laughed. ‘You’re incorrigible. A real chip off the old block.’

  ‘The difference is, my father actually became a detective. All I do is speculate from an armchair.’

  ‘He’d have been proud of you,’ she said suddenly. ‘I wish you’d met him before he died.’

  There was a long pause as they looked at each other across the table. As Daniel opened his mouth to speak, Hannah glanced at her watch.

  ‘God, I’m late, I’ll have to skedaddle.’

  He wanted to protest, even as she rose to her feet, but all he managed to say was, ‘Good to see you again.’

  Not looking at him, she said, ‘Don’t leave it so long next time.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘Not much of a labyrinth,’ Les sniffed.

  He was wearing a greatcoat and Cossack hat that made him look like an extra from Dr Zhivago. Hannah, Maggie and Giselle Feeney were standing close to him on a long ledge of rock at Mispickel Scar, surveying the hollow that a glacier had scooped out between the fells. Snow had fallen during the night and ice underfoot had made the climb slow and treacherous. For the last half hour Les had lagged behind the three younger women, puffing and grunting and making it plain that he wished he was back home with his feet up in front of the fire. He’d sneezed once or twice and mumbled that he was starting with a cold.

  ‘This was never going to be Hampton Court Maze.’ Hannah rubbed her gloved hands together, as much to keep warm as to engender enthusiasm. ‘So what exactly do we have here?’

  The random scattering of stones was a bleak monument to Mispickel Scar’s industrial heritage, but Giselle contemplated the scene as lovingly as if it were a personal Eden.

  ‘Mispickel is another name for arsenopyrite. A silvery-white sulphide of iron and arsenic. I suppose when the works were built, George Inchmore expected it would make him more money than copper had made for his father. But the vein was poor. The cost of digging into the Scar far exceeded the value of what he extracted. His mistake was not to throw in the towel more quickly. He must have had an obstinate streak. The works kept going for six or seven years.’

  Maggie opened out a photocopy of an old plan Bob Swindell had found, and jerked a thumb towards a heap of rubble forty yards away.

  ‘So the chimney was over there?’

  Giselle nodded. ‘It had to be out in the open, far enough away from the face of the fells, so they could get a g
ood draught. Picture plumes of mucky sulphur belching out in the middle of the Lake District. Not very green.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’ Les grumbled.

  Giselle winked at Hannah. ‘Next to the stack was a cube-shaped building, designed on a square plan. Two storeys, hipped roof with a ventilator set in. Ore was fed into a big hopper on the top floor and from there it was spread down on top of a pan that rotated slowly inside a small chamber below. The chamber was heated by two coal-fired furnaces to a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature high enough to draw off the arsenic. It was sucked down a flue attached to the chimney stack. Although the flue was a thousand feet long, it folded back on itself every ten yards or so. That’s why it was called an arsenic labyrinth.’

  Les stamped his feet. ‘Blot on the bleeding landscape if you ask me. No wonder they say it’s cursed.’

  ‘Is the lack of vegetation an after-effect of the poison?’ Hannah asked.

  Maggie nodded. ‘I spoke to health and safety and they don’t regard the arsenical traces as a serious risk to our people. Everyone will have protective clothing and it’ll be incinerated once we’re done.’

  Les blew his nose loudly and said, ‘You can’t do better than have a damn good shower.’

  Maggie frowned at him and Hannah recalled their conversation in the car. ‘The challenge will be shifting all that stone so we can look for a body.’

  ‘Point out the shafts for us, will you?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘The whole area is a honeycomb,’ Giselle said. ‘Don’t forget, the Old Man of Coniston is nicknamed the Hollow Mountain. George saw an opportunity to exploit land that was otherwise useless. There were two main shafts here, according to the records. See that large boulder? One of them is underneath it. The stone looks suspiciously like the Sword of Damocles. You see it in old photographs. Until nine or ten years ago the Sword was a pinnacle balancing up on that ridge of rock. Very dangerous, it deterred all but the rashest fell-walkers.’