Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

This, Strike knew, was the day that he had met Chiswell for the first time. He remembered the minister walking away towards Drummond’s gallery after their lunch at Pratt’s.

‘And how did he seem to you that day?’

‘Extremely angry,’ said Drummond, ‘but that was inevitable, given what he walked in on, here.’

Drummond picked up the letter opener and turned it delicately in his thick fingers.

‘His son – Raphael – had just been caught, for the second time – ah—’

Drummond balked for a second.

‘— in flagrante ,’ he said, ‘with the other young person I employed at that time, in the bathroom behind me.’

He indicated a discreet black door.

‘I had already caught them in there, a month prior to that. I hadn’t told Jasper the first time, because I felt he had quite enough on his plate.’

‘In what way?’

Drummond fingered the ornate ivory, cleared his throat and said:

‘Jasper’s marriage isn’t – wasn’t . . . I mean to say, Kinvara is a handful. Difficult woman. She was badgering Jasper to put one of her mares in foal to Totilas at the time.’

When Strike looked blank, Drummond elucidated:

‘Top dressage stallion. Nigh on ten thousand for semen.’

‘Christ,’ said Strike.

‘Well, quite,’ said Drummond. ‘And when Kinvara doesn’t get what she wants . . . one doesn’t know whether it’s temperament or something deeper – actual mental instability – anyway, Jasper had a very difficult time with her.

‘Then he’d been through the ghastly business of Raphael’s, ah, accident – that poor young mother killed – the press, and so on and so forth, his son in jail . . . as a friend, I didn’t want to add to his troubles.

‘I’d told Raphael the first time it happened that I wouldn’t inform Jasper, but I also said he was on a final warning and if he stepped out of line again, he would be out on his ear, old friend of his father’s or not. I had Francesca to consider, too. She’s my goddaughter, eighteen years old and completely smitten with him. I didn’t want to have to tell her parents.

‘So when I walked in and heard them, I really had no choice. I’d thought I was safe to leave Raphael in charge for an hour because Francesca wasn’t at work that day, but of course, she’d sneaked in specially to see him, on her day off.

‘Jasper arrived to find me pounding on the door. There was no way to hide what was going on. Raphael was trying to block my entrance to the bathroom here while Francesca climbed out of the window. She couldn’t face me. I rang her parents, told them everything. She never came back.

‘Raphael Chiswell,’ said Drummond heavily, ‘is a Bad Lot. Freddie, the son who died – my godchild too, incidentally – was worth a million of . . . well, well,’ he said, turning the penknife over and over in his fingers, ‘one shouldn’t say it, I know.’

The office door opened and the young blonde in the black dress entered with a tea tray. Strike compared it mentally to the tea he had in the office as she set down two silver pots, one containing hot water, bone china cups and saucers and a sugar bowl complete with tongs.

‘Mrs Ross has just arrived, Henry.’

‘Tell her I’m tied up for the next twenty minutes or so. Ask her to wait, if she’s got time.’

‘So I take it,’ said Strike, when Lucinda had left, ‘that there wasn’t much time for conversation that day?’

‘Well, no,’ said Drummond, unhappily. ‘Jasper had come to see Raphael at work, believing that all was going splendidly, and to arrive in the middle of that scene . . . Totally on my side, obviously, once he grasped what was going on. He was the one who actually shoved the boy out of the way to get the bathroom door open. Then he turned a nasty colour. He had a heart problem, you know, it had been grumbling on for years. Sat down on the toilet rather suddenly. I was very worried, but he wouldn’t let me call Kinvara . . .

‘Raphael had the decency to be ashamed of himself, then. Tried to help his father. Jasper told him to get out of it, made me close the door, leave him in there . . . ’

Now sounding gruff, Drummond broke off and poured himself and Strike tea. He was evidently in some distress. As he added three lumps to his own cup, the teaspoon rattled against the cup.

‘’Pologise. Last time I ever saw Jasper, you see. He came out of the bathroom, ghastly colour, still, shook my hand, apologised, said he’d let his oldest friend . . . let me down.’

Drummond coughed again, swallowed and continued with what seemed an effort:

‘None of it was Jasper’s fault. Raphael learned such morals as he’s got from the mother, and she’s best described as a high-class . . . well, well. Meeting Ornella was really the start of all Jasper’s problems. If he’d only stayed with Patricia . . .

‘Anyway, I never saw Jasper again. I had some difficulty bringing myself to shake Raphael’s hand at the funeral, if you want the truth.’

Drummond took a sip of tea and Strike tried his own. It was far too weak.

‘All sounds very unpleasant,’ the detective said.

‘You may well say so,’ sighed Drummond.

‘You’ll appreciate that I have to ask about some sensitive matters.’

‘Of course,’ said Drummond.

‘You’ve spoken to Izzy. Did she tell you that Jasper Chiswell was being blackmailed?’

‘She mentioned it,’ said Drummond, with a glance to check that the door was shut. ‘He hadn’t breathed a word to me. Izzy said it was one of the Knights . . . one remembers a family in the grounds. The father was an odd-job man, yes? As for the Winns, well, no, I don’t think there was much liking between them and Jasper. Strange couple.’

‘The Winns’ daughter Rhiannon was a fencer,’ said Strike. ‘She was on the junior British fencing team with Freddie Chiswell—’

‘Oh yes, Freddie was awfully good,’ said Drummond.

‘Rhiannon was a guest at Freddie’s eighteenth birthday party, but she was a couple of years younger. She was only sixteen when she killed herself.’

‘How ghastly,’ said Drummond.

‘You don’t know anything about that?’

‘How should I?’ said Drummond, a fine crease between his dark eyes.

‘You weren’t at the eighteenth?’

‘I was, as a matter of fact. Godfather, you know.’

‘You can’t remember Rhiannon?’

‘Goodness, you can’t expect me to remember all the names! There were upwards of a hundred young people there. Jasper had a marquee in the garden and Patricia ran a treasure hunt.’

‘Really?’ said Strike.

His own eighteenth birthday party, in a rundown pub in Shoreditch, had not included a treasure hunt.

‘Just in the grounds, you know. Freddie always liked a competition. A glass of champagne at every clue, it was rather jolly, got things off with a swing. I was manning clue three, down by what the children always used to call the dell.’

‘The hollow in the ground by the Knights’ cottage?’ asked Strike casually. ‘It was full of nettles when I saw it.’

‘We didn’t put the clue in the dell, we put it under Jack o’Kent’s doormat. He couldn’t be trusted to take care of the champagne, because he had a drink problem. I sat on the edge of the dell in a deck chair and watched them hunt and everyone who found the clue got a glass of champagne and off they went.’

‘Soft drinks for the under-eighteens?’ asked Strike.

Faintly exasperated by this killjoy attitude, Drummond said:

‘Nobody had to drink champagne. It was an eighteenth, a celebration.’

‘So Jasper Chiswell never mentioned anything to you that he wouldn’t want to get into the press?’ asked Strike, returning to the main point.