The Silkworm

“Great place,” said Strike, lowering himself onto one of the larger cubes of black leather and laying his crutches beside him. The compliment was insincere; his preference was for utilitarian comfort and Chard’s house seemed to him to be all surface and show.

“Yes, I worked closely with the architects,” said Chard, with a small flicker of enthusiasm. “There’s a studio”—he pointed through another discreet pair of doors—“and a pool.”

He too sat down, stretching out the leg that ended in the thick, strapped boot in front of him.

“How did it happen?” Strike asked, nodding towards the broken leg.

Chard pointed with the end of his crutch at the metal and glass spiral staircase.

“Painful,” said Strike, eyeing the drop.

“The crack echoed all through the space,” said Chard, with an odd relish. “I hadn’t realized one can actually hear it happening.

“Would you like a tea or coffee?”

“Tea would be great.”

Strike saw Chard place his uninjured foot on a small brass plate beside his seat. Slight pressure, and Manny emerged again from the kitchen.

“Tea, please, Manny,” said Chard with a warmth conspicuously absent in his usual manner. The young man disappeared again, sullen as ever.

“Is that St. Michael’s Mount?” Strike asked, pointing to a small picture hanging near the woodburner. It was a naive painting on what seemed to be board.

“An Alfred Wallis,” said Chard, with another minor glow of enthusiasm. “The simplicity of the forms…primitive and naive. My father knew him. Wallis only took up painting seriously in his seventies. You know Cornwall?”

“I grew up there,” said Strike.

But Chard was more interested in talking about Alfred Wallis. He mentioned again that the artist had only found his true métier late in life and embarked on an exposition of the artist’s works. Strike’s total lack of interest in the subject went unnoticed. Chard was not fond of eye contact. The publisher’s eyes slid from the painting to spots around the large brick interior, seeming to glance at Strike only incidentally.

“You’re just back from New York, aren’t you?” asked Strike when Chard drew breath.

“A three-day conference, yes,” said Chard and the flare of enthusiasm faded. He gave the impression of repeating stock phrases as he said, “Challenging times. The arrival of electronic reading devices has been a game changer. Do you read?” he asked Strike, point-blank.

“Sometimes,” said Strike. There was a battered James Ellroy in his flat that he had been intending to finish for four weeks, but most nights he was too tired to focus. His favorite book lay in one of the unpacked boxes of possessions on the landing; it was twenty years old and he had not opened it for a long time.

“We need readers,” muttered Daniel Chard. “More readers. Fewer writers.”

Strike suppressed the urge to retort, Well, you’ve got rid of one of them, at least.

Manny reappeared bearing a clear perspex tray on legs, which he set down in front of his employer. Chard leaned forward to pour the tea into tall white porcelain mugs. His leather furniture, Strike noted, did not emit the irritating sounds his own office sofa did, but then, it had probably cost ten times as much. The backs of Chard’s hands were as raw and painful-looking as they had been at the company party, and in the clear overhead lighting set into the underside of the hanging first floor he looked older than he had at a distance; sixty, perhaps, yet the dark, deep-set eyes, the hawkish nose and the thin mouth were handsome still in their severity.

“He’s forgotten the milk,” said Chard, scrutinizing the tray. “Do you take milk?”

“Yeah,” said Strike.

Chard sighed, but instead of pressing the brass plate on the floor he struggled back onto his one sound foot and his crutches, and swung off towards the kitchen, leaving Strike staring thoughtfully after him.

Those who worked with him found Daniel Chard peculiar, although Nina had described him as shrewd. His uncontrolled rages about Bombyx Mori had sounded to Strike like the reaction of an over-sensitive man of questionable judgment. He remembered the slight sense of embarrassment emanating from the crowd as Chard mumbled his speech at the anniversary party. An odd man, hard to read…

Strike’s eyes drifted upwards. Snow was falling gently onto the clear roof high above the marble angel. The glass must be heated in some way, to prevent the snow settling, Strike concluded. And the memory of Quine, eviscerated and trussed, burned and rotting beneath a great vaulted window, returned to him. Like Robin, he suddenly found the high glass ceiling of Tithebarn House unpleasantly reminiscent.

Chard reemerged from the kitchen and swung back across the floor on his crutches, a small jug of milk held precariously in his hand.

“You’ll be wondering why I asked you to come here,” said Chard finally, when he had sat back down and each of them held his tea at last. Strike arranged his features to look receptive.