The Arsenic Labyrinth

by Martin Edwards

  ‘Yes?’

  Colouring, he said, ‘As a matter of fact, Miranda and I are splitting up.’

  After a pause she said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, well. It’s been on the cards for a while. Miranda doesn’t want to spend the best part of her life buried away in the countryside. Tarn Fold is a cul-de-sac and, as far as she’s concerned, that sums up the Lake District. It’s a nice place to spend a few days in summer, but slogging through a wet winter isn’t for her.’

  ‘I thought it was Miranda’s idea to move here. She talked you into it.’

  ‘I didn’t need much persuading. As for Miranda, she changed her mind. It happens, I suppose.’

  Hannah wriggled out of the path of a couple of fat women who were coming into the coffee shop for a sit down, a drink, and maybe a muffin or two. Suddenly she wanted to prolong the conversation, but she couldn’t think of anything to say that wasn’t nosey or crass. Better leave it.

  ‘Thanks again for your help. Let’s keep in touch.’

  He looked straight at her. ‘Yes, please.’

  * * *

  Striding back to Divisional HQ, Hannah tried to airbrush Daniel’s face out of her mind. It was a mistake to be distracted, she had more than enough on her plate. He might be out of a relationship, but she wasn’t. She and Marc had been together a long time. He wasn’t to blame that she felt there must be more to life than what she had. It was her fault. She could hear her dead mother’s gentle voice, urging her to count her blessings.

  She called in Les Bryant and Bob Swindell and briefed them on the news about William Inchmore. Les scratched his armpit as he studied Edith’s handwritten confession.

  ‘Very helpful, that Professor Kind.’

  ‘He’s not a professor,’ she snapped, hoping that she hadn’t blushed.

  ‘Whatever. He’s as good at detective work as his old man.’

  ‘There’s no comparison,’ Hannah said. ‘Ben was a professional. Daniel is … an amateur.’

  ‘Shrewd, though.’ His face was straight, but he was teasing her, no question.

  ‘Yes.’ Her expression said leave it.

  With a wary glance at both of them, Bob Swindell launched into an update on the latest from Fern Larter’s team. It made sense for both sets of investigators to liaise closely together. If Di Venuto was right and Koenig was the caller who had given the tip-off about the Arsenic Labyrinth, it was hard to believe that there was no connection between his death and the cold case investigation.

  ‘Koenig’s mother was a prostitute from Barrow who took an overdose when he was a toddler and there’s no father’s name on his birth certificate. He had no other family and Social Services took him into care. He turned into a Walter Mitty. But people seem to have liked him and he didn’t have any scruples about taking advantage. He would pretend to be a hot-shot entrepreneur and charm older women into investing in get-rich-quick schemes put together on the back of an envelope. But he was nowhere near as smart as he thought he was, and that’s why he finished up in the nick. Eventually, he either wised up or turned over a new leaf. For a few weeks he worked in Windermere, but then he upped and left and started travelling. Since then, he’s spent several years on the Continent. There are gaps in the story at present, but as far as we can tell, he kept out of trouble.’

  ‘Until someone thumped him with a torch and chucked him in the lake,’ Les said.

  ‘He told his landlady he’d just come over from France, but a couple of receipts in his bag indicate he spent time in Wales before he moved back to the Lakes. He liked spending money, doesn’t seem to have been too hot at keeping hold of it. He was clueless, a fantasist. If he did kill Emma Bestwick, it’s a miracle he ever got away with it.’

  Les’s cold had gone to his chest and he burst into a fit of coughing. When he’d recovered enough to speak, he said in a throaty wheeze, ‘But why would he want to kill her?’

  ‘He has no record of violence, all his crimes were about making money.’

  ‘Suppose someone paid him to murder Emma.’ Hannah said.

  ‘You’re assuming it was murder,’ Les objected. ‘If the guy was that much of a fuckwit, maybe her death was an accident.’

  ‘Then why arrange to meet in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘We can’t answer that until we find something that links him with Emma.’

  They turned to Bob, who shook his head. ‘Before Inchmore Hall burned down, Alex Clough was asked if Koenig had worked at the museum – as a volunteer guide, maybe – but she denied it. Of course, the records will now be ashes, so even if she was lying, we can’t prove it. But she’s in the clear for his murder. Her late father, too.’

  ‘Their alibis stack up?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Alban fulfilled a speaking engagement in Grasmere on the night of Koenig’s death, addressing the Rotary Club on the topic of barghests and bogies of the Lakes. As for Alex, she went out for dinner with an old school chum and her husband at a swish restaurant in Cartmel. Plenty of witnesses, no chance that they could be mistaken.’

  Hannah groaned. The Cloughs had been good suspects. They had money and either father or daughter could have afforded to provide Emma Bestwick with the funds she needed to set up on her own as a reflexologist. Not that Hannah had any idea why they might wish to do so. Unless Emma had somehow discovered the truth behind William Inchmore’s death and needed to be kept quiet.

  While Bob departed to photocopy Edith’s journal, Hannah picked Les’s brain on next steps. They decided she should speak again to Alex about Edith’s journal, though even if Alex knew the truth about William’s murder, there was no chance of her admitting it.

  ‘You think Alban will have confided in her?’

  Les shook his head. ‘He sounds like a man who enjoyed keeping secrets. He’d have taken this one to his grave if Edith’s confession hadn’t come to light.’

  ‘Maggie’s arranged for me to call on Jeremy and Karen later this afternoon. What do you reckon to their alibis for the night of Koenig’s murder?’

  A derisive snort. ‘Not much.’

  Jeremy had told Maggie that he’d been upstairs in his study, marking student essays, while Karen watched TV and their children did their homework in their rooms. Monk Coniston was within walking distance of their house and, in any case, the mere fact that no vehicle had been seen in the car park didn’t mean that the murderer couldn’t have parked somewhere close by. Either husband or wife could have slipped out, committed the murder and then hurried back under cover of darkness. If a car had been used, it might have been accomplished inside thirty minutes. A return journey on foot would have taken a good hour. Jeremy or Karen might even have killed Koenig without the other realising what they had done. But what was the motive?

  Same question for Francis and Vanessa Goddard. They lived even closer to where Koenig had been killed and Fern’s team hadn’t yet established whether they could provide credible alibis. Hannah couldn’t forget that Francis had once been her personal prime suspect. But even if he had had an affair with Emma, would he – or Vanessa, for that matter – first have bought her off and then resorted to hiring Koenig to kill her?

  When she asked Les for his opinion, he pinched his nose and said, ‘Best take a closer look at Emma. What sort of woman was she? Might she have blackmailed someone? It would explain how she came into so much money.’

  ‘Alex was her lover. She’ll have understood her, if anyone did.’

  ‘Maybe.’ His expression was bleak and faraway and Hannah was sure he wasn’t thinking about Alex. ‘But sometimes it doesn’t help to be close to someone. You become blind to what’s going on inside their head. You think you understand them, when the fact is, you really don’t have a bloody clue.’

  Alex Clough had taken refuge in a postcard-pretty cottage on the outskirts of Newby Bridge. It belonged to a fiercely protective friend called Mina, a spiky-haired woman in a Greenpeace T-shirt and mud-stained jeans whose hallway bookcase overflowed with magazines and gui
des to self-sufficiency. Mina made it clear that, if it was up to her, the police wouldn’t be allowed near Alex until she’d had time to mourn in peace. But Alex, though pale and thinner than ever, was no longer the weeping wreck of the night before and she insisted that she was willing to talk to Hannah.

  Even in grief she remained immaculate: black velvet jacket, white blouse and clingy dark trousers. Silently she listened as Hannah explained how her father and grandmother had conspired to cover up the truth about the murder of William Inchmore. When she denied all knowledge of the family’s secret, Hannah believed her. And if she was lying, it could never be proved. Nobody was left alive to prosecute. A mystery had been solved by Daniel’s discovery, that was all.

  Alex pushed her hands deep into her pockets and strolled to the rain-flecked window that looked out over Mina’s large working garden, with its damp vegetable patch, hen coop and fruit trees. She pointed to a white bee hive in the distance, near the fence separating Mina’s land from a ploughed field.

  ‘If my father were here, he’d say that we should have told the bees everything that’s happened. Did you ever hear him recount the legend of Jenkins Syke? It was one of his favourite tales.’

  Hannah shook her head, said nothing.

  ‘The Syke is a narrow beck not far from St Andrew’s Church. In olden days, folk said that if someone died, the bees must be told. The custom in these parts was to hang a black ribbon on the hives. The bees formed part of the community, and needed to be treated with respect. Failing to do so brought bad luck. The story goes that the coffin bearing the body of a man called Jenkins slipped from the sled on which it was being carried along the old Coniston corpse road and fell into the stream. My father’s theory was that his family only had themselves to blame. They must have neglected to tell the bees of his passing.’ Her voice broke. ‘Perhaps I’d better go outside and put them in the picture.’

  Hannah said softly, ‘What will you do next?’

  Alex cleared her throat. ‘Time for a fresh start. The hall was only insured for a fraction of its value, the premiums were crippling. But something nice may be happening between Mina and me. Years ago, long before Emma came on the scene, Mina and I were close, but she and my father never hit it off. Now, well, who knows? We’ll take it one day at a time.’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about Emma. Did she ever mention a man called Guy Koenig?’

  Alex frowned. ‘Isn’t he …?’

  ‘You may have heard on the news, his body was found in the lake. He’d been hit on the head.’

  ‘And there’s a connection with Emma?’

  ‘We think so.’

  Alex’s bewilderment surely couldn’t have been feigned. ‘His name meant nothing to me. If Emma knew him, she never told me.’

  ‘Any more ideas about how she came into so much cash?’

  She lifted her head and stared into the distance. ‘It’s a mystery to me. I thought I knew her, but I was deceiving myself. We all keep something back, don’t we, Chief Inspector? As Edith Inchmore did, as my father and grandmother did. As Mina and I are bound to do. Whatever the reasons, we never allow anyone else to know the whole of our personal history. I suppose we’re afraid of what they might think of us. But there’s more to it than that. We are terrified of what they might do with the knowledge.’

  The rain was easing as Hannah drove past the Blawith Fells, through a landscape of muted greens and browns. Next stop was chez Erskine. She’d arranged to meet Maggie there. Jeremy needed to know about Edith’s journal, but she also wanted to seek out any connection between the Erskines and Guy Koenig. ‘At this Time’ was playing on the CD player and, like a detective in anguish, Elvis Costello wanted to know who are these people who keep telling us lies. When her in-car mobile rang and Terri’s number showed on the screen, she pulled on to the verge overlooking the lake. A chat with Terri demanded her full attention.

  ‘Just ringing to check you’re still OK for tonight.’

  Shit. She’d forgotten that Terri had arranged a get-together of girls they’d known in the sixth form. Love Rivals Reunited, Terri called it.

  ‘Actually …’

  ‘Oh, Hannah!’

  ‘Sorry. I mean, I’ll see what I can do, but we’re still working on this case out at Coniston. I’m on my way into the village right now. We’ve solved one of the murders, but not the other.’

  ‘Fifty per cent success rate in the space of a few days sounds pretty good to me. Surely you’re entitled to a night off?’

  ‘I can’t promise to make it to the pizzeria for seven o’clock’

  An exaggerated sigh gusted down the line. ‘You know something? I never thought I’d feel sorry for Marc. But I’m starting to think he leads a dog’s life. Never knowing from one moment to the next whether you’ll be around. No wonder he spends most of his time with his nose stuck in some musty old tome. You’d better watch out. If you don’t keep your eye on him, some other woman will start checking out his catalogue.’

  Terri must be pissed off if she was taking Marc’s side. She’d always maintained that any man who spent his life surrounded by damp and smelly books must be pretty sad. Her preference was for hunks, although with her track record of matrimonial disasters, maybe she wasn’t ideally qualified to advise on preserving a relationship. Then again, hers was the voice of bitter experience.

  ‘I’ll pop in for a quick drink later on, OK?’

  A sulky sniff. ‘I suppose that’ll have to do.’

  ‘Terri, I didn’t mean to mess you about.’

  ‘It’s just that … as a matter of fact, I’ve got a bit of news for you. I wanted to tell you face to face, but …’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Actually, you’ll never believe this.’

  Hannah waited, watching a lonely gull circle above the lake. Terri enjoyed building suspense. A lifetime of TV soap operas had taught her all the tricks of the trade.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, have you got your ears pinned back? My date last night just happens to be a millionaire!’

  Already the sulkiness had disappeared from her voice and she sounded full of herself. She was never downcast for more than five minutes, it was one of the things Hannah loved about her. She was a make-up artist with her own beauty salon and her moods changed as rapidly as her appearance.

  ‘Wow. Tell me more.’

  ‘Well, he built up a successful business selling artificial limbs and now he’s sold out, he wants to enjoy life. He was telling me all about this wonderful house of his up near Blencathra. He’s created a brand new garden from scratch. Pergolas and fountains and rare azaleas, blah, blah, blah. It’s his way of getting up close and personal with Mother Nature, after too many years in the rat race.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll help him get closer to nature.’

  A whoop of laughter exploded in Hannah’s ear. ‘You bet! Thank God I had the presence of mind to put on my shortest skirt. Not that I misbehaved, I’ll have you know. Other than flashing a glimpse of stocking-top as I climbed into my taxi at the end of the evening. All Denzil got from me was a peck on the cheek and I made it clear that I was otherwise engaged tonight. Of course I didn’t mention that I’ve already lined up four more blokes through the website! Might as well see what’s around, eh? Besides, it doesn’t do to let a man get too many ideas too soon.’

  Hannah laughed. ‘Wonderful. So he’s hooked?’

  ‘I think so,’ Terri said complacently. ‘Who knows where it might lead? He told me it was a great sadness that his ex-wife hadn’t been able to have children. I felt really sorry for him. He’d make a wonderful father, he has a very gentle way with him.’

  Terri had once famously declared that she’d rather have all her teeth pulled out than endure the indignity of childbirth, but Hannah knew better than to remind her.

  ‘And would you …?’

  ‘Look, I know what you’re thinking. But the fact is, I’ve never met the right bloke before. It would be irresponsible to bring a
baby into the world when your marriage was on the rocks. I may have been too hasty in what I said. The more time passes, I can’t help thinking, it might be quite nice, to have a couple of little kids running around the place. I mean, the clock keeps ticking. I don’t want to grow into a frumpy old maid.’

  ‘No danger of that.’

  ‘You know what I’m saying.’ Uncharacteristically, Terri paused. ‘When you told me about your miscarriage, it set me thinking. I always saw you as a career cop, I never pictured you as a wife and mother. But I could tell how much it meant to you. That sense of loss.’

  Typical Terri. She had a scary genius for saying exactly what was in her mind. Hannah gazed out across the grey expanse of water. Sometimes all she wanted was to empty her mind of everything. All the memories, all the frustrated hopes and desires. She didn’t speak.

  ‘Anyway, I started to wonder how I might feel if I fell pregnant. And I wasn’t as horrified by the idea as I’d expected … are you still there?’

  ‘Let’s talk some more tonight.’

  ‘Come by taxi, so you don’t have to worry about how much you drink, OK? I’ll make sure they put the Chablis on ice.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘And I can tell you all about Denzil. I only hope he doesn’t think I’m a pushover. If so, he’ll be sorely disappointed. I’m going to make him sweat for his rewards, just you wait and see. One thing I’ve learned about men, they never value anything if you give it to them on a plate.’

  Jeremy Erskine was seldom lost for words, but as Hannah described Edith’s confession to the murder of her husband, his eyes widened like a child’s on seeing a sci-fi monster on TV. Edith’s journal belonged to the Association and there was no point in keeping quiet about the involvement of Betty or Alban. As she answered his questions, she could almost see cogs turning in Jeremy’s brain. A pamphlet describing the decline and fall of the Inchmore empire would cement his reputation as a local historian.

  The climate in the conservatory was Mediterranean. The Erskines’ home was smart and secure, this room sealed off from the world outside. At barely four o’clock, already the sky was midnight black. Through the sliding PVC doors, Hannah could see the children, squatting on the carpet in the sitting room beyond, glued to a Buffy DVD, hear their muffled shrieks of merriment. Family tableaux didn’t come cosier. She felt a stirring of emotion and hoped it wasn’t jealousy.