Martin Edwards - The Arsenic Labyrinth

Daniel offered a smile, but no flattery. Alban Clough’s ego was healthy enough without it. He wasn’t a historian, but a teller of tales. Lack of evidence didn’t worry him. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

‘I have little patience with the way Ruskin spent so long pondering the Symbolical Grotesque. But on one issue we would have agreed. I mentioned it last year to another visitor researching Ruskin’s Coniston connections. Let me see if I can recall the reference.’

He opened the cabinet and pulled out a book, blinking at the puff of dust as he opened the cover, murmuring to himself as he leafed through the brittle pages.

‘Ah yes, I have it.’ He cleared his throat. ‘ Whenever you begin to seek the real authority for legends, you will generally find that the ugly ones have good foundation, and the beautiful ones none. Be prepared for this; and remember that a lovely legend is all the more precious when it has no foundation .’

‘Did the curse of the Mispickel Scar have good foundation?’

‘Our little drama has clearly captivated you.’ Alban bared his teeth in a fearsome smile. ‘The scream of sirens and flashing blue lights almost persuaded me that I had been transported from Coniston to Chicago.’

Daniel rubbed his hands together, for warmth rather than because he shared the old man’s amusement. Thank God he’d kept on his outer jacket.

‘It isn’t every day that two bodies turn up, buried under a strange old site in the fells.’

‘How true. One’s first assumption is a tragic accident, sadly not uncommon in rocky terrain. Yet village whispers suggest the police are treating their finds as a double murder case. My goodness, if that is so, Coniston will not have seen such excitement since Donald Campbell met his tragic end.’

‘And Mispickel Scar?’ Daniel persisted.

‘Merely to visit Mispickel Scar is supposed to bring bad luck cascading down like Aira Force.’ Alban Clough spread his arms. ‘As for the origins of the jinx, they are lost in the mists of Lakeland. I doubt whether Collingwood mentions it, let alone Ruskin. Because of its obscurity, we give the story no more than passing mention in our displays, but I am sure it dates back long before George Inchmore’s arsenic business failed. It may reflect a yet more ancient fear.’

‘Of arsenic itself?’

‘Indeed. Arsenic is an extraordinary poison, attracting fear and fascination in equal measure for centuries. As you may know, the peasants of Styria had great faith in its aphrodisiac properties. So did James Maybrick, murder victim and one of the horde suspected of being Jack the Ripper. In Cumberland, the natives were wary of the stuff. Its dangers were common knowledge. No wonder our forebears said the Scar was cursed, before even a roof collapse brought copper mining there to an end. It explains why George found trouble recruiting decent staff for his enterprise, though in part it was due to his unpopularity.’

‘Why didn’t people take to him?’

‘He was spoiled and selfish and a sore disappointment to his father. Neither he nor his descendants were men of character. All were weak-willed and selfish to their bones.’

His voice burned with contempt. Daniel was puzzled. Why so scathing? After all, the Cloughs had profited from the Inchmores’ decline and fall.

‘I noticed those family trees near the front door.’

‘My crude attempt to capture the genealogy of the Inchmores and the Cloughs, indeed.’ Alban strode to the desk and rummaged in a drawer, extracting two sheets of paper. ‘Take these copies with my compliments. I recall you have written about Victorian dynasties founded by entrepreneurs with half an eye on immortality?’

Daniel nodded. The family trees had been produced on an old-fashioned typewriter with several letters out of alignment. The museum literature, like the rest of the place, was past its sell-by date. He glanced at the Inchmore names and recalled Hannah mentioning that the youngest had been questioned after Emma Bestwick’s disappearance.

‘So the Inchmore line died out with Tom?’

‘Outlived by his grandmother, he failed to marry and had no children. A stupid young fellow — I have no qualms about speaking ill of the dead — but he had one thing in common with my daughter. She too is the last of her line. The Cloughs will be no more when she finally goes to meet her maker.’

The door swung open and Alexandra came in, carrying a tea tray. Her exaggerated blandness of manner made Daniel wonder if she had been listening outside.

‘Sorry it took a while.’ She set the tray down on the table.

Her father smirked. ‘We were discussing your eventual demise, my dear.’

Alex Clough gave Daniel a sidelong look as she poured. ‘You must forgive my father. His sense of humour is positively Mephistophelian.’

There was an odd note of pride in her voice. She might have been a mother, trying to be self-deprecating about the funny little ways of a favourite child.

‘I have disappointed Mr Kind,’ the old man confessed. ‘I cannot offer any juicy titbits concerning Ruskin’s relations with the Inchmores or my grandfather. But at least we have indulged ourselves in topical gossip about — ahem, the Arsenic Labyrinth.’

Alex frowned. ‘That’s a dreadful business.’

The old man gave a throaty laugh. ‘You must wonder why my daughter sounds so dismayed, Mr Kind. As it happens, the Coniston rumour mill indicates that one of the bodies belongs to a young woman who once worked in this very building.’

‘Good Lord,’ Daniel attempted an Oscar-winning look of amazement. ‘The woman who vanished? I read about her in the papers.’

Alex nodded. ‘Emma Bestwick.’

‘She and my daughter were very good friends,’ Alban said.

Daniel made sympathetic noises, but Alex waved them away with a flip of her small white hand.

‘It was — a long time ago.’

She was exquisitely made up, but the redness around her eyes made Daniel guess she had been crying. Distressed because Emma was dead — or because the body had been found? A phrase jumped into his head. Suspect everyone. The cliche his father amused himself by repeating, whenever young Daniel quizzed him on what a murder detective did.

‘And the second body? Someone Emma knew?’

Alban Clough rubbed his sparse stubble. He was struggling to suppress a smile, as if relishing a private joke. ‘There was never talk of anyone else disappearing from the village at the same time as Emma.’

‘We thought she’d gone of her own free will,’ Alex said. ‘She’d done it before, just upped and left the area.’

‘So who is the second person?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Erskine,’ Hannah said.

She and Maggie were back in the Erskines’ cosy conservatory. The children had been banished to watch TV in their bedrooms. Jeremy and Karen were squashed together on the sofa, his arm was wrapped tightly around her shoulder. Hannah wasn’t sure whether he was comforting her or making sure he kept her under his control.

‘How sure are you?’ Karen asked.

‘We will be asking you to come down and see if you can identify replicas of certain items of clothing discovered on the body. We will also want to compare your DNA with that of the deceased by taking a mouth swab. A straightforward matter of collecting skin cells from the lining of your mouth to obtain a profile.’

Karen flinched and Maggie gave a sympathetic smile. Early on in her career, Maggie had spent six months as a family liaison officer, and since the DC in Thornicroft’s team who had acted as FLO to the Erskines had left the force years ago, Maggie was an ideal successor to the role. It suited her down to the ground, now that her fiance had taken up a new job and bought a house in Torver. Her brief was to keep an eye on the couple while investigations continued, see if anything emerged to link either of them to the crime. Right now she could play the good cop while her boss asked the difficult questions.