The Silkworm

With their backs to the light he could not see their expressions, but their body language had given him his answer: the instantaneous swing away from each other to face him had expressed the ghost of a united front.

“When was this?” Strike asked, watching the dark outline that was Elizabeth. “After Elspeth died? But then you moved on to Fenella Waldegrave, eh, Michael? No trouble keeping it up there, I take it?”

Elizabeth emitted a small gasp. It was as though he had hit her.

“For Christ’s sake,” growled Fancourt. He was angry with Strike now. Strike ignored the implicit reproach. He was still working on Elizabeth, goading her, while her whistling lungs struggled for oxygen in the falling snow.

“Must’ve really pissed you off when Quine got carried away and started shouting about the contents of the real Bombyx Mori in the River Café, did it, Elizabeth? After you’d warned him not to breathe a word about the contents?”

“Insane. You’re insane,” she whispered, with a forced smile beneath the shark eyes, her big yellow teeth glinting. “The war didn’t just cripple you—”

“Nice,” said Strike appreciatively. “There’s the bullying bitch everyone’s told me you are—”

“You hobble around London trying to get in the papers,” she panted. “You’re just like poor Owen, just like him…how he loved the papers, didn’t he, Michael?” She turned to appeal to Fancourt. “Didn’t Owen adore publicity? Running off like a little boy playing hide-and-seek…”

“You encouraged Quine to go and hide in Talgarth Road,” said Strike. “That was all your idea.”

“I won’t listen to any more,” she whispered and her lungs were whistling as she gasped the winter air and she raised her voice: “I’m not listening, Mr. Strike, I’m not listening. Nobody’s listening to you, you poor silly man…”

“You told me Quine was a glutton for praise,” said Strike, raising his voice over the high-pitched chant with which she was trying to drown out his words. “I think he told you his whole prospective plot for Bombyx Mori months ago and I think Michael here was in there in some form—nothing as crude as Vainglorious, but mocked for not getting it up, perhaps? ‘Payback time for both of you,’ eh?”

And as he had expected, she gave a little gasp at that and stopped her frantic chanting.

“You told Quine that Bombyx Mori sounded brilliant, that it would be the best thing he’d ever done, that it was going to be a massive success, but that he ought to keep the contents very, very quiet in case of legal action, and to make a bigger splash when it was unveiled. And all the time you were writing your own version. You had plenty of time on your hands to get it right, didn’t you, Elizabeth? Twenty-six years of empty evenings, you could have written plenty of books by now, with your first from Oxford…but what would you write about? You haven’t exactly lived a full life, have you?”

Naked rage flickered across her face. Her fingers flexed, but she controlled herself. Strike wanted her to crack, wanted her to give in, but the shark’s eyes seemed to be waiting for him to show weakness, for an opening.

“You crafted a novel out of a murder plan. The removal of the guts and the covering of the corpse in acid weren’t symbolic, they were designed to screw forensics—but everyone bought it as literature.

“And you got that stupid, egotistical bastard to collude in planning his own death. You told him you had a great idea for maximizing his publicity and his profits: the pair of you would stage a very public row—you saying the book was too contentious to put out there—and he’d disappear. You’d circulate rumors about the book’s contents and finally, when Quine allowed himself to be found, you’d secure him a big fat deal.”

She was shaking her head, her lungs audibly laboring, but her dead eyes did not leave his face.

“He delivered the book. You delayed a few days, until bonfire night, to make sure you had lots of nice diversionary noise, then you sent out copies of the fake Bombyx to Fisher—the better to get the book talked about—to Waldegrave and to Michael here. You faked your public row, then you followed Quine to Talgarth Road—”

“No,” said Fancourt, apparently unable to help himself.

“Yes,” said Strike, pitiless. “Quine didn’t realize he had anything to fear from Elizabeth—not from his coconspirator in the comeback of the century. I think he’d almost forgotten by then that what he’d been doing to you for years was blackmail, hadn’t he?” he asked Tassel. “He’d just developed the habit of asking you for money and being given it. I doubt you ever even talked about the parody anymore, the thing that ruined your life…

“And you know what I think happened once he let you in, Elizabeth?”

Against his will, Strike remembered the scene: the great vaulted window, the body centered there as though for a grisly still life.