Dark Mirror

by Dark Mirror (epub)

  ‘You know, many of the people in Bangladesh who have suffered from the poisoning of the tubewells regard it as fate, of a particularly cruel kind, as if there had been a curse upon them and the whole enterprise from the start. And it has occurred to me that Marion’s death could be seen as a vicious extension of that fate. Without the tubewells there would have been no research program at the university, and without Dr Ringland’s research program, his friend da Silva would have had no access to arsenic with which to murder Marion and Tina.’

  •

  ‘Did you believe him?’ Kathy asked.

  Brock scratched his beard. ‘Both he and Harry Sykes have solid alibis for the time of Tina’s poisoning, and both were a lot more convincing than Rafferty. What’s his game, anyway? Does he think there’s a reward?’

  ‘I think,’ Kathy said slowly, ‘that he may be hoping to get his hands on Marion’s house.’

  ‘Really? How did he work that out? I wouldn’t have thought he was smart enough.’

  ‘I suggested to his wife, Sheena, that Warrender might lose his claim on the place if he was implicated in Marion’s death.’

  Brock looked sharply at her. ‘Ah, did you indeed?’

  ‘We wanted to shake them up.’

  He gave a growl and she braced herself for a bollocking. But after a moment he shook his head and said, a little too calmly, ‘I think this case has become a bit personal for you, Kathy. I can understand your distaste for both Rafferty and Warrender, but it seems to me, on any objective measure, that Tony da Silva is still our prime suspect. Damn it, he has no alibi for the first murder and was actually at the scene of the second. He had access to arsenic at his friend Ringland’s laboratory, and he had a powerful motive—Marion was about to destroy his career. I think maybe we’re being too clever by half. We’ll have him in again, and do it the slow way, bit by bit, again and again, until we find the cracks.’

  •

  Sophie Warrender answered Kathy’s knock, her mood very different from when Kathy had last seen her. She looked drawn and worried, her forehead furrowed by lines that hadn’t been apparent before.

  ‘She says she wants to see you,’ Sophie said, ‘but she’s not at all well, so please be careful. It seemed to hit her on Friday, the day after Tina died. She’s hardly eaten a thing since then, or come out of her room. You’ll see the change in her. I’ve had the doctor look at her twice and he’s quite concerned. I even thought she might have been poisoned herself that day without realising it and was suffering the after-effects, but the doctor says not.’

  Emily was sitting in her mother’s office, curled up in a corner of a chesterfield sofa, a thick woollen cardigan over her shoulders although the room was very warm. She did look diminished, her eyes large and red-rimmed in her pale elfin face. She had an old leather-bound volume on her knee, gripped in slender white fingers.

  ‘Emily’s been digging about in her grandfather’s collection up in the belvedere, haven’t you, dear?’ Sophie’s bright, encouraging tone sounded strained. ‘What have you got?’

  Emily raised the book wordlessly for her mother to see.

  ‘Wilkie Collins, yes, well . . . We call it the belvedere’—she pointed to the spiral stair leading up into the Italianate tower visible from the street—‘because it was originally open, but Dougie’s father had it enclosed and turned it into his private library, his refuge.’ She seemed momentarily at a loss, then said, ‘Can I get you some tea, Inspector?’

  ‘That would be lovely, thanks.’

  ‘Right.’ She looked doubtfully at her daughter, then said, ‘Shan’t be a moment.’

  Kathy sat on the sofa, turning to face the girl. ‘Thanks for agreeing to see me again, Emily. I know it’s not easy, especially if you’re not feeling well.’

  ‘I want to help if I can.’ Her voice was barely a whisper.

  ‘Have you remembered anything else about that day at the British Library? Maybe noticing anyone at the café?’

  Emily shook her head, a loop of auburn hair dropping over an eye. ‘No, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Maybe you could take me through exactly what you did with Tina, that would have been on the Tuesday, when we met at Marion’s house, then on Wednesday and Thursday?’

  Kathy took notes as Emily haltingly described agreeing to help Tina on the Tuesday, then on the following day going around several libraries with Tina and Donald Fotheringham, trying to establish what Marion had been doing.

  Several of the librarians recognised Tina as having worked with Marion previously, and were sympathetic, supplying lists of requests, and what with those, and what Tina and Emily could remember of their own work with Marion, they had built up a considerable list.

  Kathy nodded. They had found library printouts in Tina’s bag at the British Library, as well as in her room at Stamford Street.

  ‘And on the rest of Wednesday and Thursday?’

  ‘Tina gave us topics to investigate. She and Donald were looking into an old archive in the India Office Records, and I was to try to find out more about the inquest into the death of Lizzie Siddal, Rossetti’s wife.’

  ‘Did Tina say what they were looking for in the India Office Records?’

  ‘Not really. She thought that Marion had found something important somewhere, and she knew she’d requested items from there.’

  ‘But she was obviously very interested in the events surrounding Lizzie’s death.’

  ‘Yes. She seemed to think that had been very important to Marion’s research. She also . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘She said we mustn’t tell anyone else what we were doing, especially anyone from the university.’

  Sophie Warrender returned at that point, carrying a tray of tea things, and followed by her mother-in-law, Lady Warrender, who was rather unsteadily bearing a large Dundee cake on a plate. Kathy got to her feet to help, and was introduced to the elderly woman.

  ‘Here we are.’ Sophie arranged the things on a side table and began to pour while Joan handed round the cake. Emily gave a sharp shake of her head.

  ‘It’s freshly baked, dear,’ Joan said. ‘I’ve been enjoying myself in the kitchen. And it’s your favourite. You must eat, you know.’

  Emily put a hand to her mouth, looking as if she might be sick. She got to her feet and ran out of the room.

  ‘Oh, darling . . .’ Sophie rose as if to follow her.

  ‘Delayed shock,’ Joan said briskly. ‘I’ve seen it many times before. Time will be the healer. Drugs only delay things.’ She chomped on a slab of cake and smacked her lips.

  Sophie sank down again. ‘Poor girl. She’s been very shaken up. Was she able to help?’

  ‘I think so. I’m trying to get a clearer idea of what Tina was doing in the forty-eight hours before she died.’

  ‘We almost saw her again, the evening before.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, she’d been going to come with Emily to our local book-shop where I was giving a talk about my last book. Apparently she was quite interested, and I told Emily she should come and have a meal with us afterwards. Only she decided at the last moment she couldn’t make it.’ She lifted the book Emily had been reading. ‘The Woman in White. Oh dear.’

  •

  Donald Fotheringham rang Kathy as she got into her car. He was back in Scotland now, and apologised for leaving without saying goodbye. ‘I got word that one of my flock had passed away suddenly, and it was important for me to be here. I felt I’d really told you as much as I could.’

  ‘I’m glad you called, Donald. I was going to ring you. I believe Tina had been intending to go to a talk given by Emily’s mother on the Wednesday evening, but didn’t. Do you know what happened?’

  ‘Oh aye. I was invited too, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea, and to tell the truth I was feeling pretty exhausted by that stage. But those young women were tireless. Tina especially, she just kept on going. That’s why she missed the talk that evening—she wanted to stay at the library till
it closed, though we’d been at it since first thing that morning. She said she thought she was getting somewhere, but as I told you, she didn’t share it with us.’

  ‘I see. And the next day?’

  ‘She seemed tired and frustrated. You know, I’ve been chatting to Bessie about what we were doing, following Marion’s trail all over London without really getting to the heart of the matter, and she said that it had been that way with Marion since she was a lassie. She would play hide-and-seek with her auntie, leaving little messages around the garden that Bessie had to follow. And later, as a teenager, she was awfy secretive. She had a china ornament in her room, an old balloon seller it was, and she hid letters inside it, though Bessie found them, sure enough.’

  ‘That ornament was in Marion’s house, Donald, but there was nothing hidden inside it.’

  ‘No, well, I’m sure her adult ways would have been more subtle. Perhaps we’ll never know the whole truth about Marion.’

  ‘We’ll certainly do our best. Thanks again, anyway.’

  ‘But there was something else I wanted to tell you about. I went to see Marion’s mother before I left, and gave her my phone number, just in case she needed to get in touch. Well, to my surprise she did, just an hour ago. It seems she’s become somewhat disenchanted with her husband Keith, and wanted to get something off her chest. She told me that he and his army friend, Crouch his name is, have a wee racket going, robbing the dead.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘They read the death notices in the paper, then visit the deceased’s house while everyone is at the funeral. A particularly unsavoury kind of thieving, you might say. Apparently they’ve been doing it for a long time—since they were in Ireland together with the army. Sheena has known about it for some time too, only now it’s become a little personal.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I rather gathered that Sheena is hoping for a windfall following her daughter’s death, and is concerned that Keith will try to get his hands on it. The thing is, when Keith studies the funeral notices, he marks the ones he intends to visit with a cross. Sheena has kept a note of many of their names. She wouldn’t want to contact you herself, but was quite happy for me to do it on her behalf, if you were interested.’

  ‘Oh yes, Donald,’ Kathy said. ‘I’m interested.’

  •

  Kathy couldn’t find Pip at first in the offices of the British Library, hidden behind a mound of books, and when she finally dug her out, the DC blinked and looked disoriented, as if surfacing from a great depth.

  ‘Blimey, you been here long, boss?’

  ‘No, just arrived. How’s it going? Brock said you were doing a great job.’

  ‘Did he?’ She brightened a little. ‘Not sure if I am, but still.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Pip took her through the books she’d checked so far, without discovering anything that looked significant.

  Kathy said, ‘I’ve just learned that Tina spent last Wednesday evening in here, working on something, and I’m wondering what it was.’

  ‘Wednesday . . . here we are.’ Pip showed her the printout. ‘Just two requests.’

  Kathy looked at the entries: the Haverlock diary and Sir Robert Harding’s second book about Bengal, After Midnight. ‘Have you looked at these?’

  ‘After Midnight is here somewhere. Brock asked me about that. I haven’t seen the diary yet. Shall I ask them to get it?’

  ‘Yes, do that, and I’ll buy you a coffee while we’re waiting.’

  When they returned from the café there was a note waiting on the desk: Request for Diary, author H. Haverlock, Add. 507861.86 . . . . . . NOT AVAILABLE.

  They found a library assistant who said, ‘May be lost, or withdrawn for repairs.’

  ‘Or on loan to someone else?’ Kathy suggested.

  The woman shook her head. ‘It’d say.’ She tapped at her computer for a moment. ‘No, it’s down as not yet returned by the last person who requested it.’

  ‘That would be Tina Flowers.’

  Another shake of the head, her finger running across the screen. ‘She returned it last thing on Wednesday. The final request was the following day, the twelfth, at eight minutes past nine, as soon as we opened. By a Dr Anthony da Silva.’

  Kathy thought. ‘Did he request anything else that day?’

  Another search, then the woman showed them the entry on the screen: After Midnight: A Memoir of Bengal, 1947–71, author R. Harding, Add. 507861.103.

  ‘But we have that here,’ Kathy said. ‘Unless there’s more than one copy.’

  ‘No, that’s it. It was returned later that morning.’

  ‘So he asked for both the books that Tina had been investigating the previous evening, and now one of them is missing.’

  ‘How would he know what she’d requested?’ Pip asked. ‘Could he have accessed her records?’

  ‘No.’ More tapping. ‘But he was here that evening. See? He requested several books—about arsenic by the looks of it. Maybe he met her, saw what she was reading.’

  ‘It makes sense,’ Kathy said when they returned to Pip’s table. ‘He had finally traced the source of Marion’s revelations in her paper to the Cornell conference, and he knew that Tina had found it too.’

  ‘So he stole the book and murdered her. Kind of explains everything, doesn’t it?’ Pip said.

  ‘Looks like it.’ Kathy reached for the Harding memoir from the book pile, and opened it to a handwritten dedication on the inside cover: To my very dear friend Toby Havelock, a mischievous memoir, from one old India hand to another. Bob Harding. She flicked through the book. ‘And this, about the twentieth century, would have been of no interest to him.’

  ‘Brock found a reference to the Warrenders in there,’ Pip told her, and Kathy nodded.

  ‘Yes, he showed me a copy.’ She checked the index and read the passage again. ‘Marion must have found this while she was searching through that family collection, and noticed the reference.’ Kathy tried to imagine Marion’s method, skimming hundreds of books for obscure clues and trails, scanning their chapter headings, their indexes, for her key words. Arsenic, for instance. She looked it up in the index of Harding’s book, and there it was, page 213. She turned to the place, and found no such page. It had been very neatly sliced away, close to the binding. ‘Look at this,’ she said, showing Pip.

  ‘You think da Silva vandalised it before he returned it?’

  ‘Who knows? I’d better tell Brock what we’ve discovered.’

  When she got through to him and described the sequence they had uncovered, he was grimly pleased.

  ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘I thought the answer must lie in those books somewhere. We’d better have him in.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You sound unsure.’

  ‘No, I’m just wondering what was in that missing page of the Harding book. It may be nothing at all to do with da Silva of course, but I’m wondering. Suppose there was something there about using arsenic as a poison, some traditional Indian preparation perhaps that Harding described, which maybe Marion discovered and told her tutor about, and then da Silva used it on his two victims.’

  ‘I see, yes. Another link. All right, but there are other copies of that book, aren’t there? I seem to remember it appeared on the lists of both the National Archives and the London Library borrowings. I remember wondering why they needed to look at it in three different places.’

  ‘I’ll check.’

  Kathy rang off, still uneasy. She hadn’t mentioned it to Brock, but what had really unsettled her was her session with the Warrenders. She was haunted by Emily’s sickly appearance, the unhealthy glitter in her eye and air of despair, and her mother’s comment that she thought she may have been poisoned too. And the terrible thought Not another one, please God, had been followed by an even more shocking one: Three young women, following obsessively in each other’s footsteps, like a suicide chain.

  No, Kathy told herself, not that. Brock’s right
, da Silva’s the one.

  ‘Come on,’ she told Pip. ‘Let’s take a drive. Where was the next place that Marion found this After Midnight book, after she discovered it in the archives here?’

  Pip checked. ‘The National Archives.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll go there.’

  twenty-nine

  The National Archives, housing nine hundred years of official records back to the Domesday Book, is housed in a modern building on a curve of the river near the botanical gardens at Kew. They found their way to a member of staff who listened to what they were after, intrigued by the request, and got to work on her computer.

  ‘Yes, it’s here.’

  ‘Do you have its borrowing record?’

  ‘I can get that.’ They waited a moment, then, ‘Not terribly popular, only two calls in the past year: T. Flowers within the past week, and before that M. Summers last August.’