Martin Edwards - The Arsenic Labyrinth

Jeremy folded his arms. ‘Not my mind. Even when your people interviewed me before, I couldn’t recall details. She was pleasant, without being chatty. As if her mind was far away. On other things.’

Hannah said, ‘In your original statement, you suggested that she might have planned to leave the area and do something else.’

‘It seems a perfectly rational inference to draw.’

His careful syntax was getting under Hannah’s skin. She suspected him of yearning to give her a detention the moment she split an infinitive.

‘You said that she seemed — excited about something.’

‘Did I? Perhaps, but it is so long ago. Our conversation was superficial, the usual small talk, nothing beyond that.’

‘There was no argument between you? No difficulties between Emma and your wife?’

‘What would we argue about?’ Jeremy asked. ‘She lived a very different life from Karen and me. Each to his own, we weren’t judgmental.’

‘Any further light you can shed on Emma or what might have given rise to her disappearance?’

She asked the question for form’s sake, rather than in the hope of eliciting fresh information. The Erskines were hard work. Talk about blood and stones.

‘Nothing whatever,’ Karen said, as her husband slipped his arm around her shoulder.

No point in probing further without more to go on. Jeremy showed them out and as he led them through the living room, Hannah noticed a familiar glossy hardback on the coffee table. Daniel Kind had written it to accompany his series on BBC Television.

‘You’re a keen historian in your spare time as well as at work, Mr Erskine?’

‘As it happens, I’m this year’s chairman of the Grizedale and Satterthwaite Historical Association. The oldest society of its kind in Cumbria.’

‘So you know all about the Arsenic Labyrinth?’

He gave a little laugh, probably meant to be self-deprecating. ‘Well, I wouldn’t claim to be an authority, but of course I am aware of it.’

‘Someone was telling me it formed part of an unsuccessful business.’

‘Yes, the arsenic works ruined the Inchmores. At one time they were one of the richest families in the county. You only have to look at the hall to see the scale of Clifford Inchmore’s ambition. It may lack Brantwood’s glamour, but to my mind it’s an even more remarkable building. Sir Clifford dreamed of establishing a dynasty. Hubris, perhaps. But his son George blew it.’

‘Because of trading in arsenic?’

‘Not only that. He fell out with Albert Clough, whom Clifford had taken into partnership. Albert was a consummate businessman and George didn’t like the idea of playing second fiddle to him once Clifford retired. The outcome was that Albert left the firm and set up on his own in direct competition, the worst of all possible worlds from the Inchmores’ perspective. As their star fell, Albert’s rose.’

‘Must have been painful for them to sell the hall to Albert.’

‘Indeed. No wonder it’s been said that Mispickel Scar is cursed. A load of superstitious nonsense, no doubt, but local folk used to take it seriously.’

‘What’s the story of the curse?’

Jeremy resembled a High Court judge, invited to choose the winner of an end of pier talent show. ‘I really could not say. Folklore is scarcely history. You’d need to ask Alban Clough, he’s the expert. Of course, he’s always revelled in the triumph of his family over the Inchmores.’

‘He did give a job to young Tom Inchmore.’

‘Humiliating the Inchmores through unforced acts of generosity became a family tradition for the Cloughs. It started when George’s son William Inchmore had to accept charity from Armstrong Clough and take up a sinecure in the Cloughs’ booming firm. By all accounts, William was an idler, who preferred wine, women and song to the hard graft that made his family’s fortune. Yet even he must have found it a bitter pill, to see Cloughs living it up in the house his grandfather built.’

‘Clogs to clogs in three generations?’

‘Precisely.’ He noticed her gaze lingering on the glossy cover of Daniel’s book. ‘Does your own interest in history extend beyond cold case work, Chief Inspector? Perhaps you saw these programmes? They were quite tolerable, not the dumbed-down rubbish we usually get in return for our licence fee.’

‘You know that Daniel Kind has moved to the Lakes? He lives in Brackdale.’

‘Really?’ An opportunist spark flared in Jeremy’s eyes. ‘I wonder if he’d be interested in talking to the Association. Do I gather that you are acquainted with him?’

‘Our paths have crossed. His father was a police officer, that’s the connection.’

‘Good Lord. You don’t happen to know how I can get in touch with him?’

Hannah was conscious of Maggie’s solid presence beside her. Perhaps it was embarrassment that caused

her to lie — though this was absurd, what was there to be embarrassed about?

‘Sorry, I don’t have his number.’

‘What do you make of those two, then?’ Hannah asked as they were driving back.

Maggie shifted in the passenger seat. You could almost hear wheels turning as she weighed up pros and cons. She didn’t do flair, but at this stage of her career she was none the worse for it. Hannah was encouraging her to reason more laterally, whilst desperately striving to avoid Lauren-speak like thinking outside the box .

‘He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in my old school.’

‘Nor mine. And Karen?’

‘Thank God she’s not my sister.’

They both laughed and then Maggie said, ‘Can I ask a question?’

‘Fire away.’

‘It isn’t about the Erskines, but Les.’

‘Les Bryant?’

‘Is he all right?’

‘Any reason to believe he isn’t?’

‘Well, I dunno. He doesn’t seem himself to me, that’s all.’

‘Can’t say I’d noticed. Hasn’t he always been a grumpy old sod? The time to worry is if he starts singing the ACC’s praises and buying the first round when we go to the pub. Then I’ll know for sure he’s sickening for something.’

‘Sorry, perhaps I’m imagining things. Forget I mentioned it.’

Hannah frowned as traffic lights ahead turned to red just as she was tempted to rush through on amber. Maggie didn’t imagine things, that was the point. Better keep an eye on Les. Just in case.

Guy and Sarah stayed in bed until mid-day. After she finally got up, he lingered under the warm duvet while she busied herself in the kitchen, making them a scratch lunch. He’d assumed she would be out of condition and her reserves of stamina had come as a surprise. She was never satisfied for long and the endless exertion, coupled with a night broken by memories of the Arsenic Labyrinth, had left him listless and unable to stop yawning. He’d drunk too much the previous evening and his throat was dry. When he moved, his body protested and he worried that he might have put his back out.

When he hobbled downstairs, she flung her arms around his neck, pressing herself into him as they embraced. Her tongue was large and insistent. He caught her glancing at the kitchen table and he wondered if she entertained fantasies of emulating Jessica Lange in The Postman Always Rings Twice . Not this bloody postman, he thought, I’m knackered. As gently as he could, he disengaged from her.

‘Thought you’d be hungry,’ she said with a provocative smile.

‘I wouldn’t say no to a couple of slices of toast. Any chance of some soup?’

‘Rob Stevenson, what are you like!’ She pretended to cuff his ear. ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’

It was weird, he thought, as he watched her stretching up into the cupboards above her head, mauve leggings so tight over her ample backside that they must be in danger of splitting. The thrill of the chase meant far more than the triumph of conquest and it wouldn’t be long before his interest fizzled out. Nothing personal, it had been the same with Megan, with Farfalla, with Maryell and with all the rest.