The Silkworm

“She left soon after I told her that,” said Kathryn with satisfaction. “Horrible woman.”

“Michael Fancourt told me,” said Strike, and the eyes of Kathryn and Pippa were instantly riveted on him, eager to hear what the famous writer might have said, “that Owen Quine and Elizabeth Tassel once had an affair.”

One moment of stupefied silence and then Kathryn Kent burst out laughing. It was unquestionably genuine: raucous, almost joyful, shrieks filled the room.

“Owen and Elizabeth Tassel?”

“That’s what he said.”

Pippa beamed at the sight and sound of Kathryn Kent’s exuberant, unexpected mirth. She rolled against the back of the sofa, trying to catch her breath; brandy slopped onto her trousers as she shook with what seemed entirely genuine amusement. Pippa caught the hysteria from her and began to laugh too.

“Never,” panted Kathryn, “in…a…million…years…”

“This would have been a long time ago,” said Strike, but her long red mane shook as she continued to roar with unfeigned laughter.

“Owen and Liz…never. Never, ever…you don’t understand,” she said, now dabbing at eyes wet with mirth. “He thought she was awful. He would’ve told me…Owen talked about everyone he’d slept with, he wasn’t a gentleman like that, was he, Pip? I’d have known if they’d ever…I don’t know where Michael Fancourt got that from. Never,” said Kathryn Kent, with unforced merriment and total conviction.

The laughter had loosened her up.

“But you don’t know what the Cutter really meant?” Robin asked her, setting her empty brandy glass down on the pine coffee table with the finality of a guest about to take their leave.

“I never said I didn’t know,” said Kathryn, still out of breath from her protracted laughter. “I do know. It was just awful, to do it to Jerry. Such a bloody hypocrite…Owen tells me not to mention it to anyone and then he goes and puts it in Bombyx Mori…”

Robin did not need Strike’s look to tell her to remain silent and let Kathryn’s brandy-fueled good humor, her enjoyment of their undivided attention and the reflected glory of knowing sensitive secrets about literary figures do their work.

“All right,” she said. “All right, here it is…

“Owen told me as we were leaving. Jerry was very drunk that night and you know his marriage is on the rocks, has been for years…he and Fenella had had a really terrible row the night before the party and she’d told him that their daughter might not be his. That she might be…”

Strike knew what was coming.

“…Fancourt’s,” said Kathryn, after a suitably dramatic pause. “The dwarf with the big head, the baby she thought of aborting because she didn’t know whose it was, d’you see? The Cutter with his cuckold’s horns…

“And Owen told me to keep my mouth shut. ‘It’s not funny,’ he said, ‘Jerry loves his daughter, only good thing he’s got in his life.’ But he talked about it all the way home. On and on about Fancourt and how much he’d hate finding out he had a daughter, because Fancourt never wanted kids…All that bullshit about protecting Jerry! Anything to get at Michael Fancourt. Anything.”

46

Leander strived; the waves about him wound,

And pulled him to the bottom, where the ground

Was strewed with pearl…

Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander

Grateful for the effect of cheap brandy and to Robin’s particular combination of clearheadedness and warmth, Strike parted from her with many thanks half an hour later. Robin traveled home to Matthew in a glow of gratification and excitement, looking more kindly on Strike’s theory as to the killer of Owen Quine than she had done before. This was partly because nothing that Kathryn Kent had said had contradicted it, but mainly because she felt particularly warm towards her boss after the shared interrogation.

Strike returned to his attic rooms in a less elevated frame of mind. He had drunk nothing but tea and believed more strongly than ever in his theory, but all the proof he could offer was a single typewriter cassette: it would not be enough to overturn the police case against Leonora.

There were hard frosts overnight on Saturday and Sunday, but during the daytime glimmers of sunshine pierced the cloud blanket. Rain turned some of the accumulated snow in the gutters to sliding slush. Strike brooded alone between his rooms and his office, ignoring a call from Nina Lascelles and turning down an invitation to dinner at Nick and Ilsa’s, pleading paperwork but actually preferring solitude without pressure to discuss the Quine case.