Lethal White (A Cormoran Strike Novel)

Even if it had marked the end of a relationship he wanted to escape, the call with Lorelei had left its mark. He knew in his heart that he was, in the spirit if not in the letter, guilty of some of the charges she had laid against him. While he had told Lorelei at the outset that he sought neither commitment nor permanence, he had known perfectly well that she had understood him to mean “right now” rather than “never” and he had not corrected that impression, because he wanted a distraction and a defense against the feelings that had dogged him after Robin’s wedding.

However, the ability to section off his emotions, of which Charlotte had always complained, and to which Lorelei had dedicated a lengthy paragraph of the email dissecting his personality, had never failed him yet. Arriving two minutes early for his appointment with Henry Drummond, he transferred his attention with ease to the questions he intended to put to the late Jasper Chiswell’s old friend.

Pausing beside the black marble exterior of the gallery, he saw himself reflected in the window and straightened his tie. He was wearing his best Italian suit. Behind his reflection, tastefully illuminated, a single painting in an ornate golden frame stood on an easel behind the spotless glass. It featured a pair of what, to Strike, looked like unrealistic horses with giraffe-like necks and staring eyes, ridden by eighteenth-century jockeys.

The gallery beyond the heavy door was cool and silent, with a floor of highly polished white marble. Strike walked carefully with his stick among the sporting and wildlife paintings, which were illuminated discreetly around the white walls, all of them in heavy gilded frames, until a well-groomed young blonde in a tight black dress emerged from a side door.

“Oh, good afternoon,” she said, without asking his name, and walked away towards the back of the gallery, her stilettos making a metallic click on the tiles. “Henry! Mr. Strike’s here!”

A concealed door opened, and Drummond emerged: a curious-looking man, whose ascetic features of pinched nose and black brows were enclosed by rolls of fat around chin and neck, as though a puritan had been engulfed by the body of a jolly squire. With his mutton-chop whiskers and dark gray suit and waistcoat he had a timeless, irrefutably upper-class, appearance.

“How do you do?” he said, offering a warm, dry hand. “Come into the office.”

“Henry, Mrs. Ross just called,” said the blonde, as Strike walked into the small room beyond the discreet door, which was book-lined, mahogany-shelved and very tidy. “She’d like to see the Munnings before we close. I’ve told her it’s reserved, but she’d still like—”

“Let me know when she arrives,” said Drummond. “And could we have some tea, Lucinda? Or coffee?” he inquired of Strike.

“Tea would be great, thank you.”

“Do sit down,” said Drummond, and Strike did so, grateful for a large and sturdy leather chair. The antique desk between them was bare but for a tray of engraved writing paper, a fountain pen and an ivory and silver letter opener. “So,” said Henry Drummond heavily, “you’re looking into this appalling business for the family?”

“That’s right. D’you mind if I take notes?”

“Carry on.”

Strike took out his notebook and pen. Drummond swiveled gently from side to side in his rotating chair.

“Terrible shock,” he said softly. “Of course, one thought immediately of foreign interference. Government minister, eyes of the world on London with the Olympics and so forth…”

“You didn’t think he could have committed suicide?” asked Strike.

Drummond sighed heavily.

“I knew him for forty-five years. His life had not been devoid of vicissitudes. To have come through everything—the divorce from Patricia, Freddie’s death, resignation from the government, Raphael’s ghastly car accident—to end it now, when he was Minister for Culture, when everything seemed back on track…

“Because the Conservative Party was his life’s blood, you know,” said Drummond. “Oh, yes. He’d bleed blue. Hated being out, delighted to get back in again, rise to minister… we joked of him becoming PM in our younger days, of course, but that dream was gone. Jasper always said, ‘Tory faithful likes bastards or buffoons,’ and that he was neither one nor the other.”

“So you’d say he was in generally good spirits around the time he died?”

“Ah… well, no, I couldn’t say that. There were stresses, worries—but suicidal? Definitely not.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“The last time we met face to face was here, at the gallery,” said Drummond. “I can tell you exactly what date it was: Friday the twenty-second of June.”

This, Strike knew, was the day that he had met Chiswell for the first time. He remembered the minister walking away towards Drummond’s gallery after their lunch at Pratt’s.

“And how did he seem to you that day?”

“Extremely angry,” said Drummond, “but that was inevitable, given what he walked in on, here.”

Drummond picked up the letter opener and turned it delicately in his thick fingers.