Kinvara looked pointedly at the grandfather clock, which was now showing three in the morning, but Strike refused to take the hint.
“Mrs. Chiswell, there’s one last thing I want to ask and I’m afraid it’s quite personal.”
“What?” she said crossly.
“I spoke to Mrs. Winn recently. Della Winn, you know, the—”
“Della-Winn-the-Minister-for-Sport,” said Kinvara, just as her husband had done, the first time Strike met him. “Yes, I know who she is. Very odd woman.”
“In what way?”
Kinvara wriggled her shoulders impatiently, as though it should be obvious.
“Never mind. What did she say?”
“That she met you in a state of considerable distress a year ago and that from what she could gather, you were upset because your husband had admitted to an affair.”
Kinvara opened her mouth then closed it again. She sat thus for a few seconds, then shook her head as though to clear it and said:
“I… thought he was being unfaithful, but I was wrong. I got it all wrong.”
“According to Mrs. Winn, he’d said some fairly cruel things to you.”
“I don’t remember what I said to her. I wasn’t very well at the time. I was overemotional and I got everything wrong.”
“Forgive me,” said Strike, “but, as an outsider, your marriage seemed—”
“What a dreadful job you’ve got,” said Kinvara shrilly. “What a really nasty, seedy job you do. Yes, our marriage was going wrong, what of it? Do you think, now he’s dead, now he’s killed himself, I want to relive it all with the pair of you, perfect strangers whom my stupid stepdaughters have dragged in, to stir everything up and make it ten times worse?”
“So you’ve changed your mind, have you? You think your husband committed suicide? Because when we were last here, you suggested Aamir Mallik—”
“I don’t know what I said then!” she said hysterically. “Can you not understand what it’s been like since Jasper killed himself, with the police and the family and you? I didn’t think this would happen, I had no idea, it didn’t seem real—Jasper was under enormous pressure those last few months, drinking too much, in an awful temper—the blackmail, the fear of it all coming out—yes, I think he killed himself and I’ve got to live with the fact that I walked out on him that morning, which was probably the final straw!”
The Norfolk terrier began to yap furiously again. The Labrador woke with a start and started barking, too.
“Please leave!” shouted Kinvara, getting to her feet. “Get out! I never wanted you mixed up in this in the first place! Just go, will you?”
“Certainly,” said Strike politely, setting down his empty glass. “Would you mind waiting while I get my leg back on?”
Robin had already stood up. Strike strapped the false leg back on while Kinvara watched, chest heaving, glass in hand. At last, Strike was ready to stand, but his first attempt had him falling back onto the sofa. With Robin’s assistance, he finally achieved a standing position.
“Well, goodbye, Mrs. Chiswell.”
Kinvara’s only answer was to stalk to the window and fling it open again, shouting at the dogs, which had got up excitedly, to stay put.
No sooner had her unwelcome guests stepped out onto the gravel path than Kinvara slammed the window behind them. While Robin put her Wellington boots back on, they heard the shriek of the brass curtain rings as Kinvara dragged the drapes shut, then called the dogs out of the room.
“Not sure I’m going to be able to make it back to the car, Robin,” said Strike, who wasn’t putting weight on his prosthesis. “In retrospect, the digging might’ve… might’ve been a mistake.”
Wordlessly, Robin took his arm and placed it over her shoulders. He didn’t resist. Together they moved slowly off across the grass.
“Did you understand what I mouthed at you back there?” asked Robin.
“That there was someone upstairs? Yeah,” he said, wincing horribly every time he put down his false foot. “I did.”
“You don’t seem—”
“I’m not surpr—wait,” he said abruptly, still leaning on her as he came to a halt. “You didn’t go up there?”
“Yes,” said Robin.
“For fuck’s sake—”
“I heard footsteps.”
“And what would’ve happened if you’d been jumped?”
“I took a weapon and I wasn’t—and if I hadn’t gone up there, I wouldn’t have seen this.”
Taking out her mobile, Robin brought up the photo of the painting on the bed, and handed it to him.
“You didn’t see Kinvara’s expression, when she saw the blank wall. Cormoran, she didn’t realize that painting had been moved until you asked about it. Whoever was upstairs tried to hide it while she was outside.”
Strike stared at the phone screen for what felt like a long time, his arm heavy on Robin’s shoulders. Finally, he said:
“Is that a piebald?”
“Seriously?” said Robin, in total disbelief. “Horse colors? Now?”
“Answer me.”
“No, piebalds are black and white, not brown and—”
“We need to go to the police,” said Strike. “The odds on another murder just went up exponentially.”
“You aren’t serious?”
“I’m completely serious. Get me back to the car and I’ll tell you everything… but don’t ask me to talk till then, because my leg’s fucking killing me.”
68
I have tasted blood now…
Three days later, Strike and Robin received an unprecedented invitation. As a courtesy for having chosen to aid rather than upstage the police in passing on information about Flick’s stolen note and “Mare Mourning,” the Met welcomed the detective partners into the heart of the investigation at New Scotland Yard. Used to being treated by the police as either inconveniences or showboaters, Strike and Robin were surprised but grateful for this unforeseen thawing of relations.
On arrival, the tall blonde Scot who was heading the team ducked out of an interrogation room for a minute to shake hands. Strike and Robin knew that the police had brought two suspects in for questioning, although nobody had yet been charged.
“We spent the morning on hysterics and flat denial,” DCI Judy McMurran told them, “but I think we’ll have cracked her by the end of the day.”
“Any chance we could give them a little look, Judy?” asked her subordinate, DI George Layborn, who had met Strike and Robin at the door and brought them upstairs. He was a pudgy man who reminded Robin of the traffic policeman who had thought he was such a card, back on the hard shoulder where she’d had her panic attack.
“Go on, then,” said DCI McMurran, with a smile.
Layborn led Strike and Robin around a corner and through the first door on their right into a dark and cramped area, of which half one wall was a two-way mirror into an interrogation room.
Robin, who had only ever seen such spaces in films and on TV, was mesmerized. Kinvara Chiswell was sitting on one side of a desk, beside a thin-lipped solicitor in a pinstriped suit. White-faced, devoid of makeup, wearing a pale gray silk blouse so creased she might have slept in it, Kinvara was weeping into a tissue. Opposite her sat another detective inspector in a far cheaper suit than the solicitor’s. His expression was impassive.
As they watched, DCI McMurran re-entered the room and took the vacant chair beside her colleague. After what felt like a very long time, but was probably only a minute, DCI McMurran spoke.