Роберт Гэлбрейт - Lethal White

‘Yeah, well,’ said Raphael, his eyes on the lawn beyond the windows, ‘if I’d gone out and come back to the corpse of an animal I loved, I might’ve reached for the nearest blunt instrument as well.’

‘Raff,’ said Izzy, ‘please!’

‘You’re the one who wanted this, Izzy,’ he said, with grim satisfaction. ‘D’you really think Mr Strike and his glamorous assistant aren’t going to find Tegan and talk to her? They’ll soon know what a shit Dad could—’

‘Raff!’ said Fizzy sharply.

‘Steady on, old chap,’ said Torquil, something that Robin had never thought to hear outside a book. ‘This whole thing’s been bloody upsetting, but there’s no need for that.’

Ignoring all of them, Raphael turned back to Strike.

‘I suppose your next question was going to be, what did my father say to me , when he called me that morning?’

‘That’s right,’ said Strike.

‘He ordered me down here,’ said Raphael.

‘Here?’ repeated Strike. ‘Woolstone?’

‘ Here ,’ said Raphael. ‘This house. He told me he thought Kinvara was going to do something stupid. He sounded woolly. A bit odd. Like he had a heavy hangover.’

‘What did you understand by “something stupid”?’ asked Strike, his pen poised over his pad.

‘Well, she’s got form at threatening to top herself,’ said Raff, ‘so that, I suppose. Or he might’ve been afraid she was going to torch what little he had left.’ He gestured around the shabby room. ‘As you can see, that wasn’t much.’

‘Did he tell you she was leaving him?’

‘I got the impression that things were bad between them, but I can’t remember his exact words. He wasn’t very coherent.’

‘Did you do as he asked?’ asked Strike.

‘Yep,’ said Raphael. ‘Got in my car like an obedient son, drove all the way here and found Kinvara alive and well in the kitchen, raging about Venetia – Robin, I mean,’ he corrected himself. ‘As you may have gathered, Kinvara thought Dad was fucking her.’

‘Raff!’ said Fizzy, sounding outraged.

‘There’s no need,’ said Torquil, ‘for that kind of language.’

Everybody was carefully avoiding catching Robin’s eye. She knew she had turned red.

‘Seems odd, doesn’t it?’ Strike asked. ‘Your father asking you to come all the way down to Oxfordshire, when there were people far closer he could have asked to keep an eye on his wife? Didn’t I hear that there was someone here overnight?’

Izzy piped up before Raphael could answer.

‘Tegan was here that night – the stable girl – because Kinvara won’t leave the horses without a sitter,’ she said, and then, correctly anticipating Strike’s next question, ‘I’m afraid nobody’s got any contact details for her, because Kinvara had a row with her right after Papa died, and Tegan walked out. I don’t actually know where she’s working now. Don’t forget, though,’ said Izzy, leaning forwards and addressing Strike earnestly, ‘Tegan was probably fast asleep when Kinvara claims she came back here. This is a big house. Kinvara could have claimed to have come back any time and Tegan might not have known.’

‘If Kinvara was there with him in Ebury Street, why would he tell me to come and find her here?’ Raphael asked, exasperated. ‘And how do you explain how she got here ahead of me?’

Izzy looked as though she would like to make a good retort to this, but appeared unable to think of one. Strike knew now why Izzy had said that the content of Chiswell’s phone call to his son ‘didn’t matter’: it further undermined the case for Kinvara as murderer.

‘What’s Tegan’s surname?’ he asked.

‘Butcher,’ said Izzy.

‘Any relation to the Butcher brothers Jimmy Knight used to hang around with?’ Strike asked.

Robin thought the three on the sofa seemed to be avoiding each other’s eyes. Fizzy then answered.

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, but—’

‘I suppose I could try and contact the family, see whether they’ll give me Tegan’s number,’ said Izzy. ‘Yes, I’ll do that, Cormoran, and let you know how I get on.’

Strike turned back to Raphael.

‘So, did you set off immediately after your father asked you to go to Kinvara?’

‘No, I ate something, first, and showered,’ said Raphael. ‘I wasn’t exactly looking forward to dealing with her. She and I aren’t each other’s favourite people. I got here around nine.’

‘How long did you stay?’

‘Well, in the end, I was here for hours,’ said Raphael quietly. ‘A couple of police arrived to break the news that Dad was dead. I could hardly walk out after that, could I? Kinvara nearly coll—’

The door reopened and Kinvara walked back in, returned to her hard-backed chair, her face set, tissues clutched in her hand.

‘I’ve only got five minutes,’ she said. ‘The vet’s just called, he’s in the area, so he’ll pop in to see Romano. I can’t stay.’

‘Could I ask something?’ Robin asked Strike. ‘I know it might be nothing at all,’ she said, to the room at large, ‘but there was a small blue tube of homeopathic pills on the floor beside the minister when I found him. Homeopathy didn’t seem to be the kind of thing he’d—’

‘What kind of pills?’ asked Kinvara sharply, to Robin’s surprise.

‘Lachesis,’ said Robin.

‘In a small blue tube?’

‘Yes. Were they yours?’

‘Yes, they were!’

‘You left them in Ebury Street?’ asked Strike.

‘No, I lost them weeks ago . . . but I never had them there ,’ she said, frowning, more to herself than to the room. ‘I bought them in London, because the pharmacy in Woolstone didn’t have any.’

She frowned, clearly reconstructing events in her mind.

‘I remember, I tasted a couple outside the chemists, because I wanted to know whether he’d notice them in his feed—’

‘Sorry, what?’ asked Robin, unsure she had heard correctly.

‘Mystic’s feed,’ said Kinvara. ‘I was going to give them to Mystic.’

‘You were going to give homeopathic tablets to a horse ?’ said Torquil, inviting everyone else to agree that this was funny.

‘Jasper thought it was a ludicrous idea, too,’ said Kinvara vaguely, still lost in recollection. ‘Yes, I opened them up right after I’d paid for them, took a couple, and,’ she mimed the action, ‘put the tube in my jacket pocket, but when I got home, they weren’t there any more. I thought I must have dropped them somehow . . . ’

Then she gave a little gasp and turned red. She seemed to be boggling at some inner, private realisation. Then, realising that everybody was still watching her, she said:

‘I travelled home from London with Jasper that day. We met at the station, got the train together . . . he took them out of my pocket! He stole them, so I couldn’t give them to Mystic!’

‘Kinvara, don’t be so utterly ridiculous!’ said Fizzy, with a short laugh.

Raphael suddenly ground out his cigarette in the china ashtray at Robin’s elbow. He seemed to be refraining from comment with difficulty.

‘Did you buy more?’ Robin asked Kinvara.

‘Yes,’ said Kinvara, who seemed almost disorientated with shock, though Robin thought her conclusion as to what had happened to her pills very strange. ‘They were in a different bottle, though. That blue tube, that’s the one I bought first.’

‘Isn’t homeopathy just placebo effect?’ Torquil enquired of the room at large. ‘How could a horse —?’

‘Torks,’ muttered Fizzy, through gritted teeth. ‘Shut up.’

‘Why would your husband have stolen a tube of homeopathic pills from you?’ asked Strike curiously. ‘It seems—’