Lethal White

must have run across Basil Plumley? They loathed him, yah, violent alcoholic,
but his wife did climb Kilimanjaro for Dogs Trust…
Torquil pushed the fat Labrador away from the biscuits and it ambled away
into a corner, where it flopped down for a doze. Fizzy sat down between her
husband and Izzy on the sofa.
“I don’t know whether Kinvara’s intending to come back,” said Izzy. “We
might as well get started.”
Strike asked whether the family had heard any more about the progress of
the police investigation. There was a tiny pause, during which the distant shrieks
of children echoed across the overgrown lawn.
“We don’t know much more than I’ve already told you,” said Izzy, “though I
think we all get the sense—don’t we?” she appealed to the other family
members, “that the police think it’s suicide. On the other hand, they clearly feel
they have to investigate thoroughly—”
“That’s because of who he was, Izz,” Torquil interrupted. “Minister of the

---

Crown, obviously they’re going to look into it more deeply than they would for
the bloke in the street. You should know, Cormoran,” he said portentously,
adjusting his substantial weight on the sofa, “sorry, gels, but I’m going to say it
—personally, I think it was suicide.
“I understand, of course I do, that that’s a hard thought to bear, and don’t
think I’m not happy you’ve been brought in!” he assured Strike. “If it puts the
gels’ minds at rest, that’s all to the good. But the, ah, male contingent of the
family—eh, Raff?—think there’s nothing more to it than, well, m’father-in-law
felt he couldn’t go on. Happens. Not in his right mind, clearly. Eh, Raff?”
repeated Torquil.
Raphael did not seem to relish the implicit order. Ignoring his brother-in-law,
he addressed Strike directly.
“My father was acting strangely in the last couple of weeks. I didn’t
understand why, at the time. Nobody had told me he was being blackm—”
“We’re not going into that,” said Torquil quickly. “We agreed. Family
decision.”
Izzy said anxiously:
“Cormoran, I know you wanted to know what Papa was being blackmailed
about—”
“Jasper broke no law,” said Torquil firmly, “and that’s the end of it. I’m sure
you’re discreet,” he said to Strike, “but these things get out, they always do. We
don’t want the papers crawling all over us again. We’re agreed, aren’t we?” he
demanded of his wife.
“I suppose so,” said Fizzy, who seemed conflicted. “No, of course we don’t
want it all over the papers, but Jimmy Knight had good reason to wish Papa
harm, Torks, and I think it’s important Cormoran knows that, at least. You know
he was here, in Woolstone, this week?”
“No,” said Torquil, “I didn’t.”
“Yah, Mrs. Ankill saw him,” said Fizzy. “He asked her whether she’d seen
his brother.”
“Poor little Billy,” said Izzy vaguely. “He wasn’t right. Well, you wouldn’t
be, would you, if you were brought up by Jack o’Kent? Papa was out with the
dogs one night years ago,” she told Strike and Robin, “and he saw Jack kicking
Billy, literally kicking him, all around their garden. The boy was naked. When he
saw Papa, Jack o’Kent stopped, of course.”
The idea that this incident should have been reported to either police or
social work seemed not to have occurred to Izzy, or indeed her father. It was as
though Jack o’Kent and his son were wild creatures in the wood, behaving,
regrettably, as such animals naturally behaved.

---

“I think the less said about Jack o’Kent,” said Torquil, “the better. And you
say Jimmy had reason to wish your father harm, Fizz, but what he really wanted
was money, and killing your father certainly wasn’t going—”
“He was angry with Papa, though,” said Fizzy determinedly. “Maybe, when
he realized Papa wasn’t going to pay up, he saw red. He was a holy terror when
he was a teenager,” she told Strike. “Got into far-left politics early. He used to be
down in the local pub with the Butcher brothers, telling everybody that Tories
should be hung, drawn and quartered, trying to sell people the Socialist
Worker…”
Fizzy glanced sideways at her younger sister, who rather determinedly, Strike
thought, ignored her.
“He was trouble, always trouble,” Fizzy said. “The girls liked him, but—”
The drawing room door opened and, to the rest of the family’s evident
surprise, Kinvara strode in, flushed and agitated. After a little difficulty
extricating himself from his sagging armchair, Strike succeeded in standing up
and held out a hand.
“Cormoran Strike. How do you do?”
Kinvara looked as though she would have liked to ignore his friendly
overture, but shook the offered hand with bad grace. Torquil pulled up another
chair beside the ottoman, and Fizzy poured an extra cup of tea.
“Horses all right, Kinvara?” Torquil asked heartily.
“Well, Mystic’s taken another chunk out of Romano,” she said with a nasty
glance at Robin, “so I’ve had to call the vet again. He gets upset every time
somebody comes up the drive too fast, otherwise he’s absolutely fine.”
“I don’t know why you’ve put the stallions in together, Kinvara,” said Fizzy.
“It’s a myth that they don’t get along,” Kinvara snapped back. “Bachelor
herds are perfectly common in the wild. There was a study in Switzerland that
proved they can coexist peacefully once they’ve established the hierarchy among
themselves.”
She spoke in dogmatic, almost fanatic, tones.
“We were just telling Cormoran about Jimmy Knight,” Fizzy told Kinvara.
“I thought you didn’t want to go into—?”
“Not the blackmail,” said Torquil hastily, “but what a horror he was when he
was younger.”
“Oh,” said Kinvara, “I see.”
“Your stepdaughter’s worried that he may have had something to do with
your husband’s death,” said Strike, watching her for a reaction.
“I know,” said Kinvara, with apparent indifference, her eyes following
Raphael, who had just walked away from the grate to fetch a pack of Marlboro

---

Lights that lay beside a table lamp. “I never knew Jimmy Knight. The first time I
ever laid eyes on him was when he turned up at the house a year ago to speak to
Jasper. There’s an ashtray beneath that magazine, Raphael.”
Her stepson lit his cigarette and returned, carrying the ashtray, which he
placed on a table beside Robin, before resuming his position in front of the
empty fireplace.
“That was the start of it,” Kinvara continued. “The blackmail. Jasper wasn’t
actually there that night, so Jimmy talked to me. Jasper was furious when he
came home and I told him.”
Strike waited. He suspected that he wasn’t the only one in the room who
thought Kinvara might break the family vow of omerta and blurt out what
Jimmy had come to say. She refrained, however, so Strike drew out his
notebook.
“Would you mind if I run through a few routine questions? I doubt there’ll be
anything you haven’t already been asked by the police. Just a couple of points
I’d like clarified, if you don’t mind.
“How many keys are there, to the house in Ebury Street?”
“Three, as far as I’m aware,” said Kinvara. The emphasis suggested that the
rest of the family might have been hiding keys from her.
“And who had them?” asked Strike.
“Well, Jasper had his own,” she said, “and I had one and there was a spare
that Jasper had given to the cleaning woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“I’ve no idea. Jasper let her go a couple of weeks before he—he died.”
“Why did he sack her?” asked Strike.
“Well, if you must know, we got rid of her because we were tightening our
belts.”
“Had she come from an agency?”
“Oh no. Jasper was old-fashioned. He put up a card up in a local shop and
she applied. I think she was Romanian or Polish or something.”
“Have you got her details?”
“No. Jasper hired and fired her. I never even met her.”
“What happened to her key?”
“It was in the kitchen drawer at Ebury Street, but after he died we found out
that Jasper had removed it and locked it up in his desk at work,” said Kinvara.
“It was handed back by the ministry, with all his other personal effects.”
“That seems odd,” Strike said. “Anyone know why he’d have done that?”
The rest of the family looked blank, but Kinvara said:
“He was always security conscious and he’d been paranoid lately—except

---

when it came to the horses, of course. All the keys to Ebury Street are a special
kind. Restricted. Impossible to copy.”
“Tricky to copy,” said Strike, making a note, “but not impossible, if you
know the right people. Where were the other two keys at the time of death?”
“Jasper’s was in his jacket pocket and mine was here, in my handbag,” said
Kinvara.
“The canister of helium,” said Strike, moving on. “Does anybody know
when it was purchased?”
Total silence greeted these words.
“Was there ever a party,” Strike asked, “perhaps for one of the children—?”
“Never,” said Fizzy. “Ebury Street was the place Papa used for work. He
never hosted a party there that I can remember.”
“You, Mrs. Chiswell,” Strike asked Kinvara. “Can you remember any
occasion—?”
“No,” she said, cutting across him. “I’ve already told the police this. Jasper
must have bought it himself, there’s no other explanation.”
“Has a receipt been found? A credit card bill?”
“He probably paid cash,” said Torquil helpfully.
“Another thing I’d like to clear up,” Strike said, working down the list he had
made himself, “is this business of the phone calls the minister made on the
morning of his death. Apparently he called you, Mrs. Chiswell, and then you,
Raphael.”
Raphael nodded. Kinvara said:
“He wanted to know whether I meant it when I said I was leaving and I said
yes, I did. It wasn’t a long conversation. I didn’t know—I didn’t know who your
assistant really was. She appeared out of nowhere and Jasper was odd in his
manner when I asked about her and I—I was very upset. I thought there was
something going on.”
“Were you surprised that your husband waited until the morning to call you
about the note you’d left?” asked Strike.
“He told me he hadn’t spotted it when he came in.”
“Where had you left it?”
“On his bedside table. He was probably drunk when he got back. He’s been
—he was—drinking heavily. Ever since the blackmail business started.”
The Norfolk terrier that had been shut out of the house suddenly popped up
at one of the long windows and began barking at them again.
“Bloody dog,” said Torquil.
“He misses Jasper,” said Kinvara. “He was Jasper’s d-dog—”
She stood up abruptly and walked away to snatch some tissues from a box

---

sitting on top of the gardening books. Everybody looked uncomfortable. The
terrier barked on and on. The sleeping Labrador woke and let out a single deep
bark in return, before one of the tow-headed children reappeared on the lawn,
shouting for the Norfolk terrier to come and play ball. It bounded off again.
“Good boy, Pringle!” shouted Torquil.
In the absence of barking, Kinvara’s small gulps and the sounds of the
Labrador flopping down to sleep again filled the room. Izzy, Fizzy and Torquil
exchanged awkward glances, while Raphael stared rather stonily ahead. Little
though she liked Kinvara, Robin found the family’s inaction unfeeling.
“Where did that picture come from?” asked Torquil, with an artificial air of
interest, squinting at the equine painting over Raphael’s head. “New, isn’t it?”
“That was one of Tinky’s,” said Fizzy, squinting up at it. “She brought a
bunch of horsey junk over from Ireland with her.”
“See that foal?” said Torquil, staring critically at the picture. “You know
what it looks like? Lethal white syndrome. Heard of it?” he asked his wife and
sister-in-law. “You’ll know all about that, Kinvara,” he said, clearly under the
impression that he was graciously offering a way back into polite conversation.
“Pure white foal, seems healthy when it’s born, but defective bowel. Can’t pass
feces. M’father bred horses,” he explained to Strike. “They can’t survive, lethal
whites. The tragedy is that they’re born alive, so the mare feeds them, gets
attached and then—”
“Torks,” said Fizzy tensely, but it was too late. Kinvara blundered out of the
room. The door slammed.
“What?” said Torquil, surprised. “What have I—?”
“Baby,” whispered Fizzy.
“Oh, Lord,” he said, “I clean forgot.”
He got to his feet, hitched up his mustard corduroys, embarrassed and
defensive.
“Oh, come on,” he said, to the room at large. “I couldn’t expect her to take it
that way. Horses in a bloody painting!”
“You know what she’s like,” said Fizzy, “about anything connected with
birth. Sorry,” she said to Strike and Robin. “She had a baby that didn’t survive,
you see. Very sensitive on the subject.”
Torquil approached the painting and squinted over Raphael’s head at words
etched on a small plaque set into the frame.
“‘Mare Mourning,’” he read. “There you are, you see,” he said, with an air of
triumph. “Foal is dead.”
“Kinvara likes it,” said Raphael unexpectedly, “because the mare reminds
her of Lady.”

---

“Who?” said Torquil.
“The mare that got laminitis.”
“What’s laminitis?” asked Strike.
“A disease of the hoof,” Robin told him.
“Oh, do you ride?” asked Fizzy keenly.
“I used to.”
“Laminitis is serious,” Fizzy told Strike. “It can cripple them. They need a
lot of care, and sometimes nothing can be done, so it’s kindest—”
“My stepmother had been nursing this mare for weeks,” Raphael told Strike,
“getting up in the middle of the night and so on. My father waited—”
“Raff, this really hasn’t got anything to do with anything,” said Izzy.
“—waited,” continued Raphael doggedly, “until Kinvara went out one day,
called in the vet without telling her and had the horse put down.”
“Lady was suffering,” said Izzy. “Papa told me what a state she was in. It
was pure selfishness, keeping her alive.”
“Yeah, well,” said Raphael, his eyes on the lawn beyond the windows, “if I’d
gone out and come back to the corpse of an animal I loved, I might’ve reached
for the nearest blunt instrument as well.”
“Raff,” said Izzy, “please!”
“You’re the one who wanted this, Izzy,” he said, with grim satisfaction.
“D’you really think Mr. Strike and his glamorous assistant aren’t going to find
Tegan and talk to her? They’ll soon know what a shit Dad could—”
“Raff!” said Fizzy sharply.
“Steady on, old chap,” said Torquil, something that Robin had never thought
to hear outside a book. “This whole thing’s been bloody upsetting, but there’s no
need for that.”
Ignoring all of them, Raphael turned back to Strike.
“I suppose your next question was going to be, what did my father say to me,
when he called me that morning?”
“That’s right,” said Strike.
“He ordered me down here,” said Raphael.
“Here?” repeated Strike. “Woolstone?”
“Here,” said Raphael. “This house. He told me he thought Kinvara was
going to do something stupid. He sounded wooly. A bit odd. Like he had a heavy
hangover.”
“What did you understand by ‘something stupid’?” asked Strike, his pen
poised over his pad.
“Well, she’s got form at threatening to top herself,” said Raff, “so that, I
suppose. Or he might’ve been afraid she was going to torch what little he had

---

left.” He gestured around the shabby room. “As you can see, that wasn’t much.”
“Did he tell you she was leaving him?”
“I got the impression that things were bad between them, but I can’t
remember his exact words. He wasn’t very coherent.”
“Did you do as he asked?” asked Strike.
“Yep,” said Raphael. “Got in my car like an obedient son, drove all the way
here and found Kinvara alive and well in the kitchen, raging about Venetia—
Robin, I mean,” he corrected himself. “As you may have gathered, Kinvara
thought Dad was fucking her.”
“Raff!” said Fizzy, sounding outraged.
“There’s no need,” said Torquil, “for that kind of language.”
Everybody was carefully avoiding catching Robin’s eye. She knew she had
turned red.
“Seems odd, doesn’t it?” Strike asked. “Your father asking you to come all
the way down to Oxfordshire, when there were people far closer he could have
asked to keep an eye on his wife? Didn’t I hear that there was someone here
overnight?”
Izzy piped up before Raphael could answer.
“Tegan was here that night—the stable girl—because Kinvara won’t leave
the horses without a sitter,” she said, and then, correctly anticipating Strike’s
next question, “I’m afraid nobody’s got any contact details for her, because
Kinvara had a row with her right after Papa died, and Tegan walked out. I don’t
actually know where she’s working now. Don’t forget, though,” said Izzy,
leaning forwards and addressing Strike earnestly, “Tegan was probably fast
asleep when Kinvara claims she came back here. This is a big house. Kinvara
could have claimed to have come back any time and Tegan might not have
known.”
“If Kinvara was there with him in Ebury Street, why would he tell me to
come and find her here?” Raphael asked, exasperated. “And how do you explain
how she got here ahead of me?”
Izzy looked as though she would like to make a good retort to this, but
appeared unable to think of one. Strike knew now why Izzy had said that the
content of Chiswell’s phone call to his son “didn’t matter”: it further undermined
the case for Kinvara as murderer.
“What’s Tegan’s surname?” he asked.
“Butcher,” said Izzy.
“Any relation to the Butcher brothers Jimmy Knight used to hang around
with?” Strike asked.
Robin thought the three on the sofa seemed to be avoiding each other’s eyes.

---

Fizzy then answered.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, but—”
“I suppose I could try and contact the family, see whether they’ll give me
Tegan’s number,” said Izzy. “Yes, I’ll do that, Cormoran, and let you know how I
get on.”
Strike turned back to Raphael.
“So, did you set off immediately after your father asked you to go to
Kinvara?”
“No, I ate something, first, and showered,” said Raphael. “I wasn’t exactly
looking forward to dealing with her. She and I aren’t each other’s favorite
people. I got here around nine.”
“How long did you stay?”
“Well, in the end, I was here for hours,” said Raphael quietly. “A couple of
police arrived to break the news that Dad was dead. I could hardly walk out after
that, could I? Kinvara nearly coll—”
The door reopened and Kinvara walked back in, returned to her hard-backed
chair, her face set, tissues clutched in her hand.
“I’ve only got five minutes,” she said. “The vet’s just called, he’s in the area,
so he’ll pop in to see Romano. I can’t stay.”
“Could I ask something?” Robin asked Strike. “I know it might be nothing at
all,” she said, to the room at large, “but there was a small blue tube of
homeopathic pills on the floor beside the minister when I found him.
Homeopathy didn’t seem to be the kind of thing he’d—”
“What kind of pills?” asked Kinvara sharply, to Robin’s surprise.
“Lachesis,” said Robin.
“In a small blue tube?”
“Yes. Were they yours?”
“Yes, they were!”
“You left them in Ebury Street?” asked Strike.
“No, I lost them weeks ago… but I never had them there,” she said,
frowning, more to herself than to the room. “I bought them in London, because
the pharmacy in Woolstone didn’t have any.”
She frowned, clearly reconstructing events in her mind.
“I remember, I tasted a couple outside the chemists, because I wanted to
know whether he’d notice them in his feed—”
“Sorry, what?” asked Robin, unsure she had heard correctly.
“Mystic’s feed,” said Kinvara. “I was going to give them to Mystic.”
“You were going to give homeopathic tablets to a horse?” said Torquil,
inviting everyone else to agree that this was funny.

---

“Jasper thought it was a ludicrous idea, too,” said Kinvara vaguely, still lost
in recollection. “Yes, I opened them up right after I’d paid for them, took a
couple, and,” she mimed the action, “put the tube in my jacket pocket, but when
I got home, they weren’t there any more. I thought I must have dropped them
somehow…”
Then she gave a little gasp and turned red. She seemed to be boggling at
some inner, private realization. Then, realizing that everybody was still watching
her, she said:
“I traveled home from London with Jasper that day. We met at the station,
got the train together… he took them out of my pocket! He stole them, so I
couldn’t give them to Mystic!”
“Kinvara, don’t be so utterly ridiculous!” said Fizzy, with a short laugh.
Raphael suddenly ground out his cigarette in the china ashtray at Robin’s
elbow. He seemed to be refraining from comment with difficulty.
“Did you buy more?” Robin asked Kinvara.
“Yes,” said Kinvara, who seemed almost disoriented with shock, though
Robin thought her conclusion as to what had happened to her pills very strange.
“They were in a different bottle, though. That blue tube, that’s the one I bought
first.”
“Isn’t homeopathy just placebo effect?” Torquil inquired of the room at
large. “How could a horse—?”
“Torks,” muttered Fizzy, through gritted teeth. “Shut up.”
“Why would your husband have stolen a tube of homeopathic pills from
you?” asked Strike curiously. “It seems—”
“Pointlessly spiteful?” asked Raphael, arms folded beneath the picture of the
dead foal. “Because you’re so convinced you’re right, and the other person’s
wrong, that it’s OK to stop them doing something harmless?”
“Raff,” said Izzy at once, “I know you’re upset—”
“I’m not upset, Izz,” said Raphael. “Very liberating, really, going back
through all the shitty things Dad did while he was alive—”
“That’s enough, boy!” said Torquil.
“Don’t call me ‘boy,’” said Raphael, shaking another cigarette out of his
packet. “All right? Don’t fucking call me ‘boy.’”
“You’ll have to excuse Raff,” Torquil told Strike loudly, “he’s upset with
m’late father-in-law because of the will.”
“I already knew I’d been written out of the will!” snapped Raphael, pointing
at Kinvara. “She saw to that!”
“Your father didn’t need any persuasion from me, I promise you!” said
Kinvara, scarlet in the face now. “Anyway, you’ve got plenty of money, your

---

mother spoils you rotten.” She turned to Robin. “His mother left Jasper for a
diamond merchant, after taking Jasper for everything she could lay her hands on
—”
“Could I ask another couple of questions?” said Strike loudly, before a
plainly fuming Raphael could speak.
“The vet will be here for Romano in a minute,” said Kinvara. “I need to get
back to the stable.”
“Just a couple, and I’m done,” Strike assured her. “Did you ever miss any
amitriptyline pills? I think you were prescribed them, weren’t you?”
“The police asked me this. I might have lost some,” said Kinvara, with
irritating vagueness, “but I can’t be sure. There was a box I thought I’d lost and
then I found it again and it didn’t have as many pills in as I remembered, and I
know I meant to leave a pack at Ebury Street in case I ever forgot when I was
coming up from London, but when the police asked me I couldn’t remember
whether I’d actually done it or not.”
“So you couldn’t swear to it that you had pills missing?”
“No,” said Kinvara. “Jasper might have stolen some, but I can’t swear to it.”
“Have you had any more intruders in your garden since your husband died?”
asked Strike.
“No,” said Kinvara. “Nothing.”
“I heard that a friend of your husband’s tried to call him early the morning
that he died, but couldn’t get through. D’you happen to know who the friend
was?”
“Oh… yes. It was Henry Drummond,” said Kinvara.
“And who’s—?”
“He’s an art dealer, very old friend of Papa’s,” interrupted Izzy. “Raphael
worked for him for a little while—didn’t you, Raff?—until he came to help Papa
at the House of Commons.”
“I can’t see what Henry’s got to do with anything,” said Torquil, with an
angry little laugh.
“Well, I think that’s everything,” said Strike, ignoring this comment as he
closed his notebook, “except that I’d be glad to know whether you think your
husband’s death was suicide, Mrs. Chiswell.”
The hand grasping the tissue contracted tightly.
“Nobody’s interested in what I think,” she said.
“I assure you, I am,” said Strike.
Kinvara’s eyes flickered from Raphael, who was scowling at the lawn
outside, to Torquil.
“Well, if you want my opinion, Jasper did a very stupid thing, right before he

---

—”
“Kinvara,” said Torquil sharply, “you’d be best advised—”
“I’m not interested in your advice!” said Kinvara, turning on him suddenly,
eyes narrowed. “After all, it’s your advice that brought this family to financial
ruin!”
Fizzy shot her husband a look across Izzy, warning him against retorting.
Kinvara turned back to Strike.
“My husband provoked somebody, somebody I warned him he shouldn’t
upset, shortly before he died—”
“You mean Geraint Winn?” asked Strike.
“No,” said Kinvara, “but you’re close. Torquil doesn’t want me to say
anything about it, because it involves his good friend Christopher—”
“Bloody hell!” exploded Torquil. He got to his feet, again hitching up his
mustard corduroys, and looking incensed. “My God, are we dragging total
outsiders into this fantasy, now? What the bloody hell has Christopher got to do
with anything? M’father-in-law killed himself!” he told Strike loudly, before
rounding on his wife and sister-in-law. “I’ve tolerated this nonsense because you
gels want peace of mind, but frankly, if this is where it’s going to lead—”
Izzy and Fizzy set up an outcry, both trying to placate him and justify
themselves, and in the midst of this mêlée, Kinvara got to her feet, tossed back
her long red hair and walked towards the door, leaving Robin with the strong
impression that she had lobbed this grenade into the conversation deliberately.
At the door she paused, and the others’ heads turned, as though she had called to
them. In her high, clear, childish voice, Kinvara said:
“You all come back here and treat this house as though you’re the real
owners and I’m a guest, but Jasper said I could live here as long as I’m alive.
Now I need to see the vet and when I get back, I’d like you all to have gone
home. You aren’t welcome here any more.”

---

43