The Silkworm

“Why is the cave of her lair in Bombyx Mori full of rat skulls?”

Elizabeth said nothing.

“I know Kathryn Kent’s Harpy, I’ve met her,” said Strike patiently. “All you’re doing by explaining is saving me some time. I suppose you want to find out who killed Quine?”

“So bloody transparent,” she said witheringly. “Does that usually work on people?”

“Yeah,” he said matter-of-factly, “it does.”

She frowned, then said abruptly and not altogether to his surprise:

“Well, after all, I don’t owe Kathryn Kent any loyalty. If you must know, Owen was making a fairly crude reference to the fact that she works at an animal-testing facility. They do disgusting things there to rats, dogs and monkeys. I heard all about it at one of the parties Owen brought her to. There she was, falling out of her dress and trying to impress me,” said Elizabeth, with contempt. “I’ve seen her work. She makes Dorcus Pengelly look like Iris Murdoch. Typical of the dross—the dross—”

Strike managed several mouthfuls of his crumble while she coughed hard into her napkin.

“—the dross the internet has given us,” she finished, her eyes watering. “And almost worse, she seemed to expect me to be on her side against the scruffy students who’d attacked their laboratories. I’m a vet’s daughter: I grew up with animals and I like them much better than I like people. I found Kathryn Kent a horrible person.”

“Any idea who Harpy’s daughter Epicoene’s supposed to be?” asked Strike.

“No,” said Elizabeth.

“Or the dwarf in the Cutter’s bag?”

“I’m not explaining any more of the wretched book!”

“Do you know if Quine knew a woman called Pippa?”

“I never met a Pippa. But he taught creative writing courses; middle-aged women trying to find their raison d’être. That’s where he picked up Kathryn Kent.”

She sipped her coffee and glanced at her watch.

“What can you tell me about Joe North?” Strike asked.

She glanced at him suspiciously.

“Why?”

“Curious,” said Strike.

He did not know why she chose to answer; perhaps because North was long dead, or because of that streak of sentimentality he had first divined back in her cluttered office.

“He was from California,” she said. “He’d come over to London to find his English roots. He was gay, a few years younger than Michael, Owen and me, and writing a very frank first novel about the life he’d led in San Francisco.

“Michael introduced him to me. Michael thought his stuff was first class, and it was, but he wasn’t a fast writer. He was partying hard, and also, which none of us knew for a couple of years, he was HIV-positive and not looking after himself. There came a point when he developed full-blown AIDS.” Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Well, you’ll remember how much hysteria there was about HIV when it first emerged.”

Strike was inured to people thinking that he was at least ten years older than he was. In fact, he had heard from his mother (never one to guard her tongue in deference to a child’s sensibilities) about the killer disease that was stalking those who fucked freely and shared needles.

“Joe fell apart physically and all the people who’d wanted to know him when he was promising, clever and beautiful melted away, except—to do them credit—” said Elizabeth grudgingly, “Michael and Owen. They rallied round Joe, but he died with his novel unfinished.

“Michael was ill and couldn’t go to Joe’s funeral, but Owen was a pallbearer. In gratitude for the way they’d looked after him, Joe left the pair of them that rather lovely house, where they’d once partied and sat up all night discussing books. I was there for a few of those evenings. They were…happy times,” said Elizabeth.

“How much did they use the house after North died?”

“I can’t answer for Michael, but I’d doubt he’s been there since he fell out with Owen, which was not long after Joe’s funeral,” said Elizabeth with a shrug. “Owen never went there because he was terrified of running into Michael. The terms of Joe’s will were peculiar: I think they call it a restrictive covenant. Joe stipulated that the house was to be preserved as an artists’ refuge. That’s how Michael’s managed to block the sale all these years; the Quines have never managed to find another artist, or artists, to sell to. A sculptor rented it for a while, but that didn’t work out. Of course, Michael’s always been as picky as possible about tenants to stop Owen benefiting financially, and he can afford lawyers to enforce his whims.”

“What happened to North’s unfinished book?” asked Strike.

“Oh, Michael abandoned work on his own novel and finished Joe’s posthumously. It’s called Towards the Mark and Harold Weaver published it: it’s a cult classic, never been out of print.”

She checked her watch again.

“I need to go,” she said. “I’ve got a meeting at two thirty. My coat, please,” she called to a passing waiter.

“Somebody told me,” said Strike, who remembered perfectly well that it had been Anstis, “that you supervised work on Talgarth Road a while back?”