The Silkworm

“He left behind a scribbled note with what looks like a bunch of possible character names on it. One of those names appears on a used typewriter cassette that came out of his study before the police sealed it off, but it’s nowhere in the finished manuscript.”

“So he changed his mind,” said Fancourt irritably.

“It’s an everyday name, not symbolic or archetypal like the names in the finished manuscript,” said Strike.

His eyes becoming accustomed to the darkness, Strike saw a look of faint curiosity on Fancourt’s heavy-featured face.

“A restaurant full of people witnessed what I think is going to turn out to be Quine’s last meal and his final public performance,” Strike went on. “A credible witness says that Quine shouted for the whole restaurant to hear that one of the reasons Tassel was too cowardly to represent the book was ‘Fancourt’s limp dick.’”

He doubted that he and Fancourt were clearly visible to the jittery people at the publisher’s table. Their figures would blend with the trees and statuary, but the determined or desperate might still be able to make out their location by the tiny luminous eye of Strike’s glowing cigarette: a marksman’s bead.

“Thing is, there’s nothing in Bombyx Mori about your dick,” continued Strike. “There’s nothing in there about Quine’s mistress and his young transgendered friend being ‘beautiful lost souls,’ which is how he told them he was going to describe them. And you don’t pour acid on silkworms; you boil them to get their cocoons.”

“So?” repeated Fancourt.

“So I’ve been forced to the conclusion,” said Strike, “that the Bombyx Mori everyone’s read is a different book to the Bombyx Mori Owen Quine wrote.”

Fancourt stopped shuffling his feet. Momentarily frozen, he appeared to give Strike’s words serious consideration.

“I—no,” he said, almost, it seemed, to himself. “Quine wrote that book. It’s his style.”

“It’s funny you should say that, because everyone else who had a decent ear for Quine’s particular style seems to detect a foreign voice in the book. Daniel Chard thought it was Waldegrave. Waldegrave thought it was Elizabeth Tassel. And Christian Fisher heard you.”

Fancourt shrugged with his usual easy arrogance.

“Quine was trying to imitate a better writer.”

“Don’t you think the way he treats his living models is strangely uneven?”

Fancourt, accepting the cigarette Strike offered him and a light, now listened in silence and with interest.

“He says his wife and agent were parasites on him,” Strike said. “Unpleasant, but the sort of accusation anyone could throw at the people who might be said to live off his earnings. He implies his mistress isn’t fond of animals and throws in something that could either be a veiled reference to her producing crap books or a pretty sick allusion to breast cancer. His transgendered friend gets off with a jibe about vocal exercises—and that’s after she claimed she showed him the life story she was writing and shared all her deepest secrets. He accuses Chard of effectively killing Joe North, and makes a crass suggestion of what Chard really wanted to do to him. And there’s the accusation that you were responsible for your first wife’s death.

“All of which is either in the public domain, public gossip or an easy accusation to sling.”

“Which isn’t to say it wasn’t hurtful,” said Fancourt quietly.

“Agreed,” said Strike. “It gave plenty of people reason to be pissed off at him. But the only real revelation in the book is the insinuation that you fathered Joanna Waldegrave.”

“I told you—as good as told you—last time we met,” said Fancourt, sounding tense, “that that accusation is not only false but impossible. I am infertile, as Quine—”

“—as Quine should have known,” agreed Strike, “because you and he were still ostensibly on good terms when you had mumps and he’d already made a jibe about it in The Balzac Brothers. And that makes the accusation contained in the Cutter even stranger, doesn’t it? As though it was written by someone who didn’t know that you were infertile. Didn’t any of this occur to you when you read the book?”

The snow fell thickly on the two men’s hair, on their shoulders.

“I didn’t think Owen cared whether any of it was true or not,” said Fancourt slowly, exhaling smoke. “Mud sticks. He was just flinging a lot around. I thought he was looking to cause as much trouble as possible.”

“D’you think that’s why he sent you an early copy of the manuscript?” When Fancourt did not respond, Strike went on: “It’s easily checkable, you know. Courier—postal service—there’ll be a record. You might as well tell me.”

A lengthy pause.

“All right,” said Fancourt, at last.

“When did you get it?”

“The morning of the sixth.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Burned it,” said Fancourt shortly, exactly like Kathryn Kent. “I could see what he was doing: trying to provoke a public row, maximize publicity. The last resort of a failure—I was not going to humor him.”