The stark light revealed a cold, bare bedroom with a brass bedstead and a single chest of drawers. The heavy curtains on their old fashioned brass rings had been drawn, hiding the grounds. On the double bed lay the painting, “Mare Mourning,” the brown and white mare forever nosing the pure white foal curled up in the straw.
Groping in the pocket of her jacket with the hand not holding the bronze paperweight, Robin found her mobile and took several photographs of the painting lying on the bedspread. It had the appearance of having been hastily placed there.
She had a sudden feeling that something had moved behind her. She whipped around, trying to blink away the shining impression of the gilded frame burned into her retina by the flash on her camera. Then she heard Strike’s and Kinvara’s voices growing louder in the garden and knew that they were returning to the drawing room.
Slapping off the light in the spare room, Robin ran as quietly as possible back across the landing and down the stairs. Fearing that she wouldn’t be able to reach the drawing room in time to greet them, she darted to the downstairs bathroom, flushed the toilet, and then ran back across the hall, reaching the drawing room just as her hostess re-entered it from the garden.
67
… I had good reason enough for so jealously drawing a veil of concealment over our compact.
The Norfolk terrier was struggling in Kinvara’s arms, its paws muddy. At the sight of Robin, Rattenbury set up a volley of barking again and struggled to get free.
“Sorry, I was dying for the loo,” panted Robin, the bronze frog hidden behind her back. The old cistern backed up her story, making loud gushing and clanking noises that echoed through the stone-flagged hallway. “Any luck?” Robin called to Strike, who was climbing back into the room behind Kinvara.
“Nothing,” said Strike, now haggard with pain. After waiting for the panting Labrador to hop back into the room, he closed the window, the revolver in his other hand. “There were definitely people out there, though. The dogs knew it, but I think they’ve taken off. What were the odds of us passing just as they were climbing over the wall?”
“Oh, do shut up, Rattenbury!” shouted Kinvara.
She set the terrier down and, when it refused to stop yapping at Robin, she threatened it with a raised hand, at which it whimpered and retreated into a corner to join the Labrador.
“Horses OK?” Robin asked, moving to the end table from which she had taken the bronze paperweight.
“One of the stable doors wasn’t fastened properly,” said Strike, wincing as he bent to feel his knee. “But Mrs. Chiswell thinks it might have been left like that. Would you mind if I sat down, Mrs. Chiswell?”
“I—no, I suppose not,” Kinvara said gracelessly.
She headed to a table of bottles sitting in the corner of the room, uncorked some Famous Grouse and poured herself a stiff measure of whisky. While her back was turned, Robin slid the paperweight back onto the table. She tried to catch Strike’s eyes, but he had sunk down onto the sofa with a faint groan, and now turned to Kinvara.
“I wouldn’t say no, if you’re offering,” he said shamelessly, wincing again as he massaged his right knee. “Actually, I think this is going to have to come off, do you mind?”
“Well—no, I suppose not. What do you want?”
“I’ll have a Scotch as well, please,” said Strike, setting the revolver down on the table beside the bronze frog, rolling up his trouser leg and signaling with his eyes that Robin, too, should sit down.
While Kinvara sloshed another measure into a glass, Strike started to remove the prosthesis. Turning to give him his drink, Kinvara watched in queasy fascination as Strike worked on the false leg, averting her eyes at the point it left the inflamed stump. Panting as he propped the prosthesis against the ottoman, Strike allowed his trouser leg to fall back over his amputated leg.
“Thanks very much,” he said, accepting the whisky from her and taking a swig.
Trapped with a man who couldn’t walk, to whom she ought in theory to be grateful, and to whom she had just given a drink, Kinvara sat down, too, her expression stony.
“Actually, Mrs. Chiswell, I was going to phone you to confirm a couple of things we heard from Tegan earlier,” said Strike. “We could go through them now if you like. Get them out of the way.”
With a slight shiver, Kinvara glanced at the empty fireplace, and Robin said helpfully, “Would you like me to—?”
“No,” snapped Kinvara. “I can do it.”
She went to the deep basket standing beside the fireplace, from which she grabbed an old newspaper. While Kinvara built a structure of small bits of wood over a mound of newspaper and a firelighter, Robin succeeded in catching Strike’s eye.
“There’s somebody upstairs,” she mouthed, but she wasn’t sure he had understood. He merely raised his eyebrows quizzically, and turned back to Kinvara.
A match flared. Flames erupted around the little pile of paper and sticks in the fireplace. Kinvara picked up her glass and returned to the drinks table, where she topped it up with more neat Scotch, then, coat wrapped more tightly around herself, she returned to the log basket, selected a large piece of wood, dropped it on top of the burgeoning fire, then fell back onto the sofa.
“Go on, then,” she said sullenly to Strike. “What do you want to know?”
“As I say, we spoke to Tegan Butcher today.”
“And?”
“And we now know what Jimmy Knight and Geraint Winn were blackmailing your husband about.”
Kinvara evinced no surprise.
“I told those stupid girls you’d find out,” she said with a shrug. “Izzy and Fizzy. Everyone round here knew what Jack o’Kent was doing in the barn. Of course somebody was going to talk.”
She took a gulp of whisky.
“I suppose you know all of it, do you? The gallows? The boy in Zimbabwe?”
“You mean Samuel?” asked Strike, taking a punt.
“Exactly, Samuel Mu—Mudrap or something.”
The fire caught suddenly, flames leaping up past the log, which shifted in a shower of sparks.
“Jasper was worried they were his gallows the moment we heard the boy had been hanged. You know all of it, do you? That there were two sets? But only one made it to the government. The other lot went astray, the lorry was hijacked or something. That’s how they ended up in the middle of nowhere.
“The photographs are pretty grisly, apparently. The Foreign Office thinks it was probably a case of mistaken identity. Jasper didn’t see how they could be traced to him, but Jimmy said he could prove they were.
“I knew you’d find out,” said Kinvara, with an air of bitter satisfaction. “Tegan’s a horrible gossip.”
“So, to be clear,” said Strike, “when Jimmy Knight first came here to see you, he was asking for his and Billy’s share for two sets of gallows his father had left completed when he died?”
“Exactly,” said Kinvara, sipping her whisky. “They were worth eighty thousand for the pair. He wanted forty.”
“But presumably,” said Strike, who remembered that Chiswell had talked of Jimmy returning a week after his first attempt to get money, and asking for a reduced amount, “your husband told him he’d only ever received payment for one of them, as one set got stolen en route?”
“Yes,” said Kinvara, with a shrug. “So then Jimmy asked for twenty, but we’d spent it.”
“How did you feel about Jimmy’s request, when he first came asking for money?” Strike asked.
Robin wasn’t sure whether Kinvara had turned a little pinker in the face, or whether it was the effects of the whisky.