The Silkworm

“I don’t know. Maybe. But shit,” he said, thumping himself on the forehead, “we didn’t even find out why she was bloody singing in the book!”

“I think I might know,” said Robin after a short burst of typing and reading the results on her computer monitor. “Singing to soften the voice…vocal exercises for transgendered people.”

“Was that all?” asked Strike in disbelief.

“What are you saying—that she was wrong to take offense?” said Robin. “Come on—he was jeering at something really personal in a public—”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Strike.

He frowned out of the window, thinking. The snow was falling thick and fast.

After a while he said:

“What happened at the Bridlington Bookshop?”

“God, yes, I nearly forgot!”

She told him all about the assistant and his confusion between the first and the eighth of November.

“Stupid old sod,” said Strike.

“That’s a bit mean,” said Robin.

“Cocky, wasn’t he? Mondays are always the same, goes to his friend Charles every Monday…”

“But how do we know whether it was the Anglican bishop night or the sinkhole night?”

“You say he claims Charles interrupted him with the sinkhole story while he was telling him about Quine coming into the shop?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Then it’s odds on Quine was in the shop on the first, not the eighth. He remembers those two bits of information as connected. Silly bugger’s got confused. He wanted to have seen Quine after he’d disappeared, he wanted to be able to help establish time of death, so he was subconsciously looking for reasons to think it was the Monday in the time frame for the murder, not an irrelevant Monday a whole week before anyone was interested in Quine’s movements.”

“There’s still something odd, though, isn’t there, about what he claims Quine said to him?” asked Robin.

“Yeah, there is,” said Strike. “Buying reading matter because he was going away for a break…so he was already planning to go away, four days before he rowed with Elizabeth Tassel? Was he already planning to go to Talgarth Road, after all those years he was supposed to have hated and avoided the place?”

“Are you going to tell Anstis about this?” Robin asked.

Strike gave a wry snort of laughter.

“No, I’m not going to tell Anstis. We’ve got no real proof Quine was in there on the first instead of the eighth. Anyway, Anstis and I aren’t on the best terms just now.”

There was another long pause, and then Strike startled Robin by saying:

“I’ve got to talk to Michael Fancourt.”

“Why?” she asked.

“A lot of reasons,” said Strike. “Things Waldegrave said to me over lunch. Can you get on to his agent or whatever contact you can find for him?”

“Yes,” said Robin, making a note for herself. “You know, I watched that interview back just now and I still couldn’t—”

“Look at it again,” said Strike. “Pay attention. Think.”

He lapsed into silence again, glaring now at the ceiling. Not wishing to break his train of thought, Robin merely set to work on the computer to discover who represented Michael Fancourt.

Finally Strike spoke over the tapping of her keyboard.

“What does Kathryn Kent think she’s got on Leonora?”

“Maybe nothing,” said Robin, concentrating on the results she had uncovered.

“And she’s withholding it ‘out of compassion’…”

Robin said nothing. She was perusing the website of Fancourt’s literary agency for a contact number.

“Let’s hope that was just more hysterical bullshit,” said Strike.

But he was worried.

38

That in so little paper

Should lie th’ undoing…

John Webster, The White Devil

Miss Brocklehurst, the possibly unfaithful PA, was still claiming to be incapacitated by her cold. Her lover, Strike’s client, found this excessive and the detective was inclined to agree with him. Seven o’clock the following morning found Strike stationed in a shadowy recess opposite Miss Brocklehurst’s Battersea flat, wrapped up in coat, scarf and gloves, yawning widely as the cold penetrated his extremities and enjoying the second of three Egg McMuffins he had picked up from McDonald’s on his way.