Martin Edwards - The Arsenic Labyrinth

‘He’d prefer Emma to be quietly forgotten. All that bothers him is the effect a cold case investigation may have on his career prospects. He may be a fellow historian, but you don’t have much else in common.’

‘You never know.’

She flushed. ‘Sorry, that sounds as though I know you inside out. Very presumptuous. Pay no attention, you and Jeremy may get on like a house on fire.’

He put down his coffee cup. ‘When I was a boy, people said I took after my father. How true it was, who knows? But if you think he’d have disliked Jeremy …’

‘Ben would have detested him.’

‘I’ll talk to him. For all I know he’s an expert on John Ruskin and I can pick his brains as part of my research.’

‘You’re working on something new?’

When he explained about his thirst for more information about Ruskin’s Coniston years, she shook her head and said, ‘I can’t offer you any local knowledge. I was taken round Brantwood as a teenager and all I remember is the gorgeous gardens. And that poor old Ruskin was a loser in love.’

‘Like Emma Bestwick, by the sound of it. She had all that money — however she came by it — but nobody to love.’

‘That’s why Sid Thornicroft thought she’d done a runner. He argued that she’d found someone new and followed them, perhaps abroad. Or else gone in search of a new life.’

‘Ten years is a long time to maintain radio silence.’

‘It does happen. You know all about beginning a new life. Tell me, do you ever yearn for the old days, town and gown?’

‘Never.’

‘So it’s worked out perfectly, starting afresh?’

‘Nothing’s ever perfect, is it?’ He smiled. ‘Miranda hated the Lakeland winter. At dead of night, Tarn Fold is too quiet for her. She has trouble sleeping, she’s accustomed to London, the eternal rumble of traffic in the distance. Not to worry. Ruskin said imperfection is essential to life; who am I to argue?’

‘Did Ruskin have an opinion on everything, then?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Any words of wisdom for a hard-pressed law enforcement officer, investigating a suspected murder?’

‘You won’t be encouraged. He deplored fascination with death, saw it as a sign of the ills of Victorian England. He put the boot into Charles Dickens for being morbid, said far too many respectable characters met grotesque ends in Bleak House . God knows what he’d make of late night TV and the vogue for autopsy close-ups. Ruskin reckoned a good society was interested in life, not death.’

‘Nothing would please me more than for Emma to walk through that door right now and demand to know what all the fuss is about.’

‘Not going to happen, is it?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What do you believe went on?’

‘Assuming she’s dead, we have to look at the possibilities of accident or suicide before ruling them out. If the call to the journalist isn’t a hoax and we do find she’s buried under the Arsenic Labyrinth, it’s hard to imagine that she got there by chance.’

‘Sex murder?’

‘Perhaps. But not committed by the obvious suspect.’

‘The late Tom Inchmore?’

‘Yes, some of my colleagues had him in the frame. It would have been quite an end for the Inchmore dynasty, if the last in the line turned out to be a murderer.’

‘If Emma is dead, presumably the anonymous caller is the culprit?’

‘He might be an accomplice. Or someone the murderer confided in. But yes, the chances are, he killed her. What we don’t know is why. Or why he’s decided to break his silence. We can’t link him to the original investigation. If it was a sexually motivated murder, it doesn’t fit the usual pattern. Did she go to the Arsenic Labyrinth of her own free will? And if so, why?’

‘You say the place is off the beaten track,’ Daniel said. ‘Suitable for a secret assignation. A tryst. Perhaps she went to meet someone. Possibly not the person she actually met. Maybe she went looking for love and finished up dead.’

Hannah laughed. ‘You’re incorrigible. A real chip off the old block.’

‘The difference is, my father actually became a detective. All I do is speculate from an armchair.’

‘He’d have been proud of you,’ she said suddenly. ‘I wish you’d met him before he died.’

There was a long pause as they looked at each other across the table. As Daniel opened his mouth to speak, Hannah glanced at her watch.

‘God, I’m late, I’ll have to skedaddle.’

He wanted to protest, even as she rose to her feet, but all he managed to say was, ‘Good to see you again.’

Not looking at him, she said, ‘Don’t leave it so long next time.’

‘Not much of a labyrinth,’ Les sniffed.

He was wearing a greatcoat and Cossack hat that made him look like an extra from Dr Zhivago . Hannah, Maggie and Giselle Feeney were standing close to him on a long ledge of rock at Mispickel Scar, surveying the hollow that a glacier had scooped out between the fells. Snow had fallen during the night and ice underfoot had made the climb slow and treacherous. For the last half hour Les had lagged behind the three younger women, puffing and grunting and making it plain that he wished he was back home with his feet up in front of the fire. He’d sneezed once or twice and mumbled that he was starting with a cold.

‘This was never going to be Hampton Court Maze.’ Hannah rubbed her gloved hands together, as much to keep warm as to engender enthusiasm. ‘So what exactly do we have here?’

The random scattering of stones was a bleak monument to Mispickel Scar’s industrial heritage, but Giselle contemplated the scene as lovingly as if it were a personal Eden.

‘Mispickel is another name for arsenopyrite. A silvery-white sulphide of iron and arsenic. I suppose when the works were built, George Inchmore expected it would make him more money than copper had made for his father. But the vein was poor. The cost of digging into the Scar far exceeded the value of what he extracted. His mistake was not to throw in the towel more quickly. He must have had an obstinate streak. The works kept going for six or seven years.’

Maggie opened out a photocopy of an old plan Bob Swindell had found, and jerked a thumb towards a heap of rubble forty yards away.

‘So the chimney was over there?’

Giselle nodded. ‘It had to be out in the open, far enough away from the face of the fells, so they could get a good draught. Picture plumes of mucky sulphur belching out in the middle of the Lake District. Not very green.’

‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’ Les grumbled.

Giselle winked at Hannah. ‘Next to the stack was a cube-shaped building, designed on a square plan. Two storeys, hipped roof with a ventilator set in. Ore was fed into a big hopper on the top floor and from there it was spread down on top of a pan that rotated slowly inside a small chamber below. The chamber was heated by two coal-fired furnaces to a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature high enough to draw off the arsenic. It was sucked down a flue attached to the chimney stack. Although the flue was a thousand feet long, it folded back on itself every ten yards or so. That’s why it was called an arsenic labyrinth.’

Les stamped his feet. ‘Blot on the bleeding landscape if you ask me. No wonder they say it’s cursed.’

‘Is the lack of vegetation an after-effect of the poison?’ Hannah asked.

Maggie nodded. ‘I spoke to health and safety and they don’t regard the arsenical traces as a serious risk to our people. Everyone will have protective clothing and it’ll be incinerated once we’re done.’

Les blew his nose loudly and said, ‘You can’t do better than have a damn good shower.’