The Silkworm

Another snatch of the interior revelry reached them as the door to the garden opened and closed again. Uncertain footsteps, winding through the snow, and then a large shadow looming out of the darkness.

“What,” croaked Elizabeth Tassel, who was wrapped in a heavy coat with a fur collar, “is going on out here?”

The moment he heard her voice Fancourt made to move back inside. Strike wondered when was the last time they had come face to face in anything less than a crowd of hundreds.

“Wait a minute, will you?” Strike asked the writer.

Fancourt hesitated. Tassel addressed Strike in her deep, croaky voice.

“Pinks is missing Michael.”

“Something you’d know all about,” said Strike.

The snow whispered down upon leaves and onto the frozen pond where the cupid sat, pointing his arrow skywards.

“You thought Elizabeth’s writing ‘lamentably derivative,’ isn’t that right?” Strike asked Fancourt. “You both studied Jacobean revenge tragedies, which accounts for the similarities in your styles. But you’re a very good imitator of other people’s writing, I think,” Strike told Tassel.

He had known that she would come if he took Fancourt away, known that she would be frightened of what he was telling the writer out in the dark. She stood perfectly still as snow landed in her fur collar, on her iron-gray hair. Strike could just make out the contours of her face by the faint light of the club’s distant windows. The intensity and emptiness of her gaze were remarkable. She had the dead, blank eyes of a shark.

“You took off Elspeth Fancourt’s style to perfection, for instance.”

Fancourt’s mouth fell quietly open. For a few seconds the only sound other than the whispering snow was the barely audible whistle emanating from Elizabeth Tassel’s lungs.

“I thought from the start that Quine must’ve had some hold on you,” said Strike. “You never seemed like the kind of woman who’d let herself be turned into a private bank and skivvy, who’d choose to keep Quine and let Fancourt go. All that bull about freedom of expression…you wrote the parody of Elspeth Fancourt’s book that made her kill herself. All these years, there’s only been your word for it that Owen showed you the piece he’d written. It was the other way round.”

There was silence except for the rustle of snow on snow and that faint, eerie sound emanating from Elizabeth Tassel’s chest. Fancourt was looking from the agent to the detective, open-mouthed.

“The police suspected that Quine was blackmailing you,” Strike said, “but you fobbed them off with a touching story about lending him money for Orlando. You’ve been paying Owen off for more than a quarter of a century, haven’t you?”

He was trying to goad her into speech, but she said nothing, continuing to stare at him out of the dark empty eyes like holes in her plain, pale face.

“How did you describe yourself to me when we had lunch?” Strike asked her. “‘The very definition of a blameless spinster’? Found an outlet for your frustrations, though, didn’t you, Elizabeth?”

The mad, blank eyes swiveled suddenly towards Fancourt, who had shifted where he stood.

“Did it feel good, raping and killing your way through everyone you knew, Elizabeth? One big explosion of malice and obscenity, revenging yourself on everyone, painting yourself as the unacclaimed genius, taking sideswipes at everyone with a more successful love life, a more satisfying—”

A soft voice spoke in the darkness, and for a second Strike did not know where it was coming from. It was strange, unfamiliar, high-pitched and sickly: the voice a madwoman might imagine to express innocence, kindliness.

“No, Mr. Strike,” she whispered, like a mother telling a sleepy child not to sit up, not to struggle. “You poor silly man. You poor thing.”

She forced a laugh that left her chest heaving, her lungs whistling.

“He was badly hurt in Afghanistan,” she said to Fancourt in that eerie, crooning voice. “I think he’s shell-shocked. Brain damaged, just like little Orlando. He needs help, poor Mr. Strike.”

Her lungs whistled as she breathed faster.

“Should’ve bought a mask, Elizabeth, shouldn’t you?” Strike asked.

He thought he saw the eyes darken and enlarge, her pupils dilating with the adrenaline coursing through her. The large, mannish hands had curled into claws.

“Thought you had it all worked out, didn’t you? Ropes, disguise, protective clothing to protect yourself against the acid—but you didn’t realize you’d get tissue damage just from inhaling the fumes.”

The cold air was exacerbating her breathlessness. In her panic, she sounded sexually excited.

“I think,” said Strike, with calculated cruelty, “it’s driven you literally mad, Elizabeth, hasn’t it? Better hope the jury buys that anyway, eh? What a waste of a life. Your business down the toilet, no man, no children…Tell me, was there ever an abortive coupling between the two of you?” asked Strike bluntly, watching their profiles. “This ‘limp dick’ business…sounds to me like Quine might’ve fictionalized it in the real Bombyx Mori.”