Barry Maitland - Dark Mirror

He came like a storm front through the ward, black coat flying, face dark, trolleys rattling in his wake. ‘How the hell are you?’

She smiled. ‘Completely fine.’

He subsided onto the chair beside her bed. ‘You’re white as a sheet. What are they giving you?’

‘Everything’s under control.’

‘That’s what Sundeep said, but I didn’t like the look on his face, as if he was already planning the PM.’

They lapsed into silence, and then she said, ‘Has Kathy explained?’

‘She gave me some sort of account. I understand you felt you had to check the story you got from your friend, about Warrender poisoning someone in India.’

‘I didn’t know if it was relevant. I had to be sure before I told you, David. I’m so sorry, after I promised-’

‘Hush.’ He took her hand. ‘My fault. I should have been a better listener. I’ve been taking you for granted.’

She shook her head. Another silence, while someone was wheeled past, groaning. Then Suzanne nodded at the parcel under Brock’s arm. ‘What’s that?’

‘Oh, when they told me to go away for an hour, I went for a walk and came across a bookshop.’ He handed her the package. ‘A get-well present.’

She peeled away the wrapping to reveal a thick volume, a biography of David Hockney. ‘Aha… lovely.’

‘I thought I’d give the nineteenth century a miss,’ he said. ‘And the girl assured me no one gets poisoned.’

She had turned to an image of palm trees against a blue sky, and said, ‘California… I believe there’s an antique dealers’ convention in Sacramento next month.’

She said it with a certain edge, reminding him of the last time she’d planned a big trip and he’d let her down.

‘Well then, we should go.’

•

They found more scraps of the wallpaper in the garden outhouse, and a tub in which, according to Sundeep, the paper had been soaked in vinegar, a weak acid, in order to dissolve the colouring of Paris Green, copper acetoarsenite, used in the William Morris print. The women had then apparently mixed washing soda with the solution, to precipitate the insoluble copper carbonate and leave a clear solution of arsenic trioxide, which could be concentrated and eventually collected as a fine white powder.

‘Emily was good at chemistry at school,’ Kathy said. ‘She was going to read it at Oxford. She must have discovered what was going on between her father and Marion, and when her parents went off to Corsica, she and her grandmother decided that something had to be done. She found the old books on the chemistry of arsenic in her grandfather’s eyrie, where he’d pondered over them, trying to understand what had gone wrong with his tubewell project in Bengal, and she realised that the arsenic-coated wallpaper being stripped from their walls, hidden under layers for over a hundred years, could be the instrument of retribution. It must have seemed like poetic justice somehow.’

But this was all conjecture, for neither Emily, in a hospital ward, nor Joan were saying a word. Douglas too, devastated by what had happened, denied all knowledge of the tale that Angela had told Suzanne. It seemed that forensic analysis of her homemade arsenic-laced chocolates would certainly support a charge of attempted murder by Joan against Suzanne, and possibly, though more circumstantially, of murder by Emily against Tina. But if they held their silence, there was frustratingly little evidence to connect them to Marion’s death, and Kathy could imagine the sympathetic effect of the two defendants on a jury, and the psychologists’ reports that the defence would call up, representing the crimes as desperate acts of temporary insanity by two essentially decent people.

There was still, Kathy felt, a void at the centre of the story, a darkness, like Sundeep’s arsenic mirror, hiding some crucial element that no one would admit.

•

The London Library was busy when Kathy arrived. A group of Welsh librarians on a trip to London were being given the tour, and Kathy waited for a while in the main hall for Gael Rayner to be free. It seemed such an improbable place for an act of violence, she thought, and yet, at the British Library, Marion had uncovered a little book which might have destroyed a man’s reputation and very nearly, perhaps, provided a motive for her murder. Maybe it wasn’t the only innocent-looking text she’d found.

‘Kathy! Hello. Any developments?’

‘I believe there are, Gael. We’ve charged Emily Warrender and her grandmother Joan with murder and attempted murder.’ She saw the astonishment register on the librarian’s face. ‘Yes, I know. It seems they didn’t like the idea of Marion and Emily’s father being lovers.’

‘Sophie Warrender’s husband? Oh my God!’ Gael shook her head, taking it in. ‘And is there something you need here? Evidence of some kind?’

‘Maybe, if I can find it. Tell me, do you have any books on balloons?’

‘Balloons?’ She stared at Kathy, then, seeing she was serious, collected herself and sat down at the computer. ‘How about The Aeronauts: A History of Ballooning, 1783-1903, by Rolt, L.T.C.?’

‘Could be.’

‘You want me to get it for you?’

‘I’d like to look at its place in the stacks.’

‘Its shelfmark is S for science, Ballooning. Come on, I’ll show you.’

They went through to the floors of book stacks at the back of the building, coming to the Science and Miscellaneous section, then working alphabetically through to S. Ballooning, between S. Astronomy and S. Biology against the long side wall. Kathy began to remove books, until she found what she was looking for, a small green volume tucked between two others, its shelfmark H. India.

‘This is in the wrong place,’ Gael said.

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Kathy said, and turned to page 213. It was intact. of unparalleled devotion to the service. There was, however, one incident in 1963 which cast a disastrous pall upon all our efforts, a potential scandal so serious indeed as to threaten a diplomatic rift at the highest level. One of our senior diplomats, let us call him W, had a son, a cheeky and unruly brat in his childhood, who had developed into a precocious youth, whose sense of seemly conduct left much to be desired. This youth, D, was raised by a devoted ayah, a modest Christian woman of impeccable character, who had a daughter, a year younger than D, who was flattered by his attentions. She became pregnant by him, and, so it was said, overcome with shame and unable to face her mother, she took her own life by eating arsenic, a horrible fate. Then a younger sister revealed the association with D, and rumours began to circulate that he had been with her on the night she took the poison, and that he had forced her to take it. Her family was incensed, their cause was taken up by opportunistic politicians in Dacca, and the affair threatened to take on the dimensions of an international incident. Fortunately I was able to call upon my extensive contacts in the Pakistani cabinet to bring the scandal under control. A compensation package was agreed between W and the girl’s mother, mediated principally by myself and a good friend in the Justice Ministry. W and his family were hastily posted back to London, and official references to the affair deleted from the records. For W it was an ignominious end to a meritorious, if somewhat unconventional, term in Bengal. On a more positive note, however, shortly after this unfortunate episode was concluded I convened a round table of Western diplomats to reach a consensus on our response to the new constitution for Pakistan promulgated by General Ayub Khan; a meeting, I think one can in all modesty claim, that was a triumph for British diplomacy.

•

‘Harding was a shit,’ Douglas Warrender said. ‘He was pompous, smug and dull, everything my father wasn’t, and he hated us as a result. The scandal over Vijaya’s death was a godsend for him, and he wallowed in it. When my father heard that he was publishing his memoirs in 1973, he demanded to see Harding’s manuscript, and threatened to sue if they didn’t remove page 213. It was a lie, you see, about my involvement in her death. Vijaya took the poison without telling me or anyone else. The book had been printed, a short run that Harding intended mainly for his friends, to big-note his mediocre career. In the end he agreed to cut out the offending page, but out of spite he kept one uncut copy which he presented to the London Library, where he was a member. Marion found it.