Barry Maitland: Dark Mirror

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At the end of the following week Brock invited Suzanne and Kathy, along with Alex Nicholson and Sundeep Mehta, to dinner in a newly refurbished restaurant not far from Rossetti’s house in Chelsea. Both Joan and Emily Warrender had been charged with the murders of Marion and Tina, while Bren had arrested Keith Rafferty and Brendan Crouch on a string of burglary charges arising from the information passed on by Donald Fotheringham. It was important, Brock felt, to acknowledge the end of the business and move on, and while he might have done this with Suzanne alone, and no doubt would in time, for the moment he sought safety in numbers. Despite their good humour, there was, he felt, an air of mortality about the occasion, only heightened by the stylishness of the surroundings and the size of the eventual bill. Earlier in the day there had been a painful interview with Sophie Warrender, and her distress lingered on, for Brock at least, like a shadow in the background. She had reminded him of her comment when they had first met, that their work was similar, searching for the truth beneath the surface of things, but now she realised the bitter fallacy of the comparison. The difference between probing the past and the present was pain.

But Sundeep was in good form. The son of his friend, who had made the initial misdiagnosis, was off the hook, and during the course of vetting Colin Ringland’s laboratory, Sundeep had become friendly with the scientist, to the extent of agreeing to collaborate on the medical ramifications of the research into the poisoned wells. Now he was debating with Alex about the death of Lizzie Siddal, and whether the doctor who examined her could really have mistaken arsenic for laudanum as the cause of death. Alex had been reading up about the case and was intrigued by a number of aspects. What was the nature of the insanity that grew in Rossetti after Lizzie’s death? And why did he insist that he must on no account be buried in the same cemetery as her? But Marion’s theory about the involvement of Madeleine Smith/Lena Wardle was frustratingly elusive. No complete copies of Marion’s paper to Cornell had surfaced, and without Haverlock’s diary it was impossible to test da Silva’s claim that it was nonsense.

It was almost midnight when they left the restaurant and went their separate ways. When Kathy got home she stripped the notes and images off her wall, then had a long shower. Only then did she look through the mail she’d picked up from her box. Among the envelopes was a letter from the UAE. It contained an airline ticket, first class, to Dubai and a very brief letter. Dear Kathy, it said, Forgive me. Please come and let me make it up to you. Love, Guy. She threw it in the bin.

Later, as she went around switching off the lights, she fished it out again, and looked at it for a while. Then she put it on the table and said softly, ‘Oh, what the hell.’