Lethal White

… you have branded me, once for all—branded
me for life.
Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm
“Corm,” she said weakly, gaping at him over the rim of her glass. She was
pale, but Strike, who would have put nothing past her to stage a situation that she
could use to her advantage, including skipping food or applying white
foundation, merely nodded.
“Oh, you know each other?” said Drummond, surprised.
“I must go,” mumbled Charlotte, getting to her feet while the concerned
Lucinda hovered. “I’m late, I’m meeting my sister.”
“Are you sure you’re well enough?” said Lucinda.
Charlotte gave Strike a tremulous smile.
“Would you mind walking me up the road? It’s only a block.”
Drummond and Lucinda turned to Strike, clearly delighted to offload
responsibility for this wealthy, well-connected woman onto his shoulders.
“Not sure I’m the best person for the job,” said Strike, indicating his stick.
He felt Drummond and Lucinda’s surprise.
“I’ll give you plenty of warning if I think I’m actually going into labor,” said
Charlotte. “Please?”
He could have said “No.” He might have said, “Why don’t you get your
sister to meet you here?” A refusal, as she knew well, would make him appear
churlish in front of people he might need to talk to again.
“Fine,” he said, keeping his voice just the right side of brusque.
“Thanks so much, Lucinda,” said Charlotte, sliding down from the chair.
She was wearing a beige silk trench coat over a black T-shirt, maternity jeans
and sneakers. Everything she wore, even these casual things, was of fine quality.
She had always favored monochrome colors, stark or classic designs, against
which her remarkable beauty was thrown into relief.
Strike held open the door for her, reminded by her pallor of the occasion
when Robin had turned white and clammy at journey’s end, after deftly steering
a hire car out of what could have been a disastrous crash on black ice.
“Thank you,” he said to Henry Drummond.
“My pleasure,” said the art dealer formally.

---

“The restaurant’s not far,” Charlotte said, pointing up the slope as the gallery
door swung shut.
They walked side by side, passersby perhaps assuming that he was
responsible for her bulging stomach. He could smell what he knew was Shalimar
on her skin. She had worn it ever since she was nineteen and he had sometimes
bought it for her. Once again, he remembered walking this way towards the
argument with her father in an Italian restaurant so many years ago.
“You think I arranged this.”
Strike said nothing. He had no desire to become enmeshed in disagreement
or reminiscence. They had walked for two blocks before he spoke.
“Where is this place?”
“Jermyn Street. Franco’s.”
The moment she said the name, he recognized it as the very same one in
which they had met Charlotte’s father all those years previously. The ensuing
row had been short but exceedingly vicious, for a vein of incontinent spite ran
right through every member of Charlotte’s aristocratic family, but then she and
Strike had gone back to her flat and made love with an intensity and urgency that
he now wished he could expunge from his brain, the memory of her crying even
as she climaxed, hot tears falling onto his face as she shouted with pleasure.
“Ouch. Stop,” she said sharply.
He turned. Cradling her belly with both hands, she backed into a doorway,
frowning.
“Sit down,” he said, resenting even having to make suggestions to help her.
“On the step there.”
“No,” she said, taking deep breaths. “Just get me to Franco’s and you can
go.”
They walked on.
The maître d’hôtel was all concern: it was clear that Charlotte was not well.
“Is my sister here?” Charlotte asked.
“Not yet,” said the maître d’ anxiously, and like Henry Drummond and
Lucinda, he looked to Strike to share responsibility for this alarming and
unsought problem.
Barely a minute later, Strike was sitting in Amelia’s seat at the table for two
beside the window, and the waiter was bringing a bottle of water, and Charlotte
was still taking deep breaths, and the maître d’ was putting bread down between
them, saying uncertainly that Charlotte might feel better if she ate something, but
also suggesting quietly to Strike that he could call an ambulance at any moment,
if that seemed desirable.
At last they were left alone. Still, Strike did not speak. He intended to leave

---

the moment her color improved, or her sister arrived. All around them sat well-
heeled diners, enjoying wine and pasta amid tasteful wood, leather and glass,
with black and white prints on the geometric white and red wallpaper.
“You think I arranged this,” mumbled Charlotte again.
Strike said nothing. He was keeping lookout for Charlotte’s sister, whom he
had not seen for years and who doubtless would be appalled to find them sitting
together. Perhaps there would be another tight-lipped row, hidden from their
fellow diners, in which fresh aspersions would be cast upon his personality, his
background and his motives in escorting his wealthy, pregnant, married ex-
girlfriend to her dinner date.
Charlotte took a breadstick and began to eat it, watching him.
“I really didn’t know you were going to be there today, Corm.”
He didn’t believe it for a second. The meeting at Lancaster House had been
chance: he had seen her shock when their eyes met, but this was far too much of
a coincidence. If he hadn’t known it to be impossible, he would even have
supposed that she knew he had split up with his girlfriend that morning.
“You don’t believe me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, still scanning the street for Amelia.
“I got a real shock when Lucinda said you were there.”