Lethal White

particularly descriptive, and added, “My family’ve known him for ages. My
brothers done a bit of work up at Chiswell House for years, on and off.”
“Yeah?” said Strike, who was making notes. “What did your brothers do?”
“Repairing fences, bit of gardening, but they’ve sold off most of the land
now,” said Tegan. “The garden’s gone wild.”
She picked up her coffee and took a sip, then said anxiously:
“My mum would do her nut if she knew I was meeting you. She told me to
keep well out of it.”

---

“Why’s that?”
“‘Least said, soonest mended,’ she always says. That and ‘least seen, most
admired.’ That’s what I got if I ever wanted to go to the young farmers’ disco.”
Robin laughed. Tegan grinned, proud to have amused her.
“How did you find Mrs. Chiswell as an employer?” asked Strike.
“All right,” said Tegan, yet again.
“Mrs. Chiswell liked to have someone sleeping at the house if she was away
for the night, is that right? To be near the horses?”
“Yeah,” said Tegan, and then, volunteering information for the first time,
“she’s paranoid.”
“Wasn’t one of her horses slashed?”
“You can call it slashed if you want,” said Tegan, “but I’d call it more of a
scratch. Romano managed to get his blanket off in the night. He was a sod for
doing that.”
“You don’t know anything about intruders in the garden, then?” asked Strike,
his pen poised over his notebook.
“Weelll,” said Tegan slowly, “she said something about it, but…”
Her eyes had strayed to Strike’s Benson & Hedges, which were lying beside
his beer glass.
“Can I have a smoke?” she asked, greatly daring.
“Help yourself,” said Strike, taking out a lighter and pushing it towards her.
Tegan lit up, took a deep drag on the cigarette, and said:
“I don’t think there was ever anyone in the gardens. That’s just Mrs.
Chiswell. She’s—” Tegan struggled to find the right word. “Well, if she was a
horse you’d call her spooky. I never heard anyone when I was there overnight.”
“You slept over at the house the night before Jasper Chiswell was found dead
in London, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you remember what time Mrs. Chiswell got back?”
“’Bout eleven. I got a right shock,” said Tegan. Now that her nerves were
wearing off, a slight tendency to garrulity was revealed. “Because she was
s’posed to be staying up in London. She went off on one when she walked in,
because I’d had a fag in front of the telly—she doesn’t like smoking—and I’d
had a couple of glasses of wine out the bottle in the fridge, as well. Mind, she’d
told me to help myself to anything I wanted before she left, but she’s like that,
always shifting the goalposts. What was right one minute was wrong the next.
You had to walk on eggshells, you really did.
“But she was already in a bad mood when she arrived. I could tell from the
way she came stomping down the hall. The fag and the wine, that just gave her

---

an excuse to have a go at me. That’s what she’s like.”
“But you stayed the night, anyway?”
“Yeah. She said I was too drunk to drive, which was rubbish, I weren’t
drunk, and then she told me to go and check on the horses, because she had a
phone call to make.”
“Did you hear her make the call?”
Tegan rearranged herself in the too-high chair, so that the elbow of her
smoking arm was cupped in her free hand, her eyes slightly narrowed against the
smoke, a pose she evidently thought appropriate while dealing with a tricky
private detective.
“I dunno if I should say.”
“How about I suggest a name and you can nod if it’s the right one?”
“Go on, then,” said Tegan, with the mingled mistrust and curiosity of one
who has been promised a magic trick.
“Henry Drummond,” said Strike. “She was leaving a message to say that she
wanted a valuation on a necklace?”
Impressed against her will, Tegan nodded.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s right.”
“So you went out to check on the horses…?”
“Yeah, and when I got back Mrs. Chiswell said I should stay over anyway,
because she needed me early, so I did.”
“And where did she sleep?” asked Robin.
“Well—upstairs,” said Tegan, with a surprised laugh. “Obviously. In her
bedroom.”
“You’re sure she was there all night?” asked Robin.
“Yeah,” said Tegan, with another little laugh. “Her bedroom was next to
mine. They’re the only two with windows that face the stables. I could hear her
going to bed.”
“You’re sure she didn’t leave the house during the night? Didn’t drive
anywhere, as far as you know?” asked Strike.
“No. I’d’ve heard the car. There are potholes everywhere round that house,
you can’t leave quietly. Anyway, I met her next morning on the landing, heading
for the bathroom in her nightie.”
“What time would that have been?”
“’Bout half-seven. We had breakfast together in the kitchen.”
“Was she still angry with you?”
“Bit ratty,” admitted Tegan.
“You didn’t happen to hear her take another call, round about breakfast
time?”

---

Frankly admiring, Tegan said:
“You mean, from Mr. Chiswell? Yeah. She went out of the kitchen to take it.
All I heard was ‘No, I mean it this time, Jasper.’ Sounded like a row. I’ve told the
police this. I thought they must’ve argued in London and that’s why she’d come
home early instead of staying up there.
“Then I went outside to muck out, and she came out and she was schooling
Brandy, that’s one of her mares, and then,” said Tegan, with a slight hesitation,
“he arrived. Raphael, you know. The son.”
“And what happened then?” asked Strike.
Tegan hesitated.
“They had a row, didn’t they?” said Strike, mindful of how much of Tegan’s
break was slipping away.
“Yeah,” said Tegan, smiling in frank wonderment. “You know everything!”
“D’you know what it was about?”
“Same thing she was phoning that bloke about, night before.”
“The necklace? Mrs. Chiswell wanting to sell it?”
“Yeah.”
“Where were you when they were having the row?”
“Still mucking out. He got out of his car and went marching up to her in the
outdoor school—”
Robin, seeing Strike’s perplexity, muttered, “Like a paddock where you train
horses.”
“Ah,” he said.
“—yeah,” said Tegan, “that’s where she was schooling Brandy. First they
were talking and I couldn’t hear what they were saying and then it turned into a
proper shouting match and she dismounted and yelled at me to come and untack
Brandy—take off the saddle and bridle,” she added kindly, in case Strike hadn’t
understood, “and they marched off into the house and I could hear them still
having a go at each other as they disappeared.
“She never liked him,” said Tegan. “Raphael. Thought he was spoiled.
Always slagging him off. I thought he was all right, personally,” she said, with a
would-be dispassionate air at odds with her heightened color.
“Can you remember what they were saying to each other?”
“A bit,” said Tegan. “He was telling her she couldn’t sell it, that it belonged
to his dad or something, and she told him to mind his own business.”
“Then what happened?”
“They went inside, I kept mucking out, and after a bit,” said Tegan, faltering
slightly, “I saw a police car coming up the drive and… yeah, it was awful.
Policewoman come and asked me to go inside and help. I went in the kitchen

---

and Mrs. Chiswell was white as a sheet and all over the place. They wanted me
to show them where the teabags were. I made her a hot drink and he—Raphael
—made her sit down. He was really nice to her,” said Tegan, “considering she’d
just been calling him every name under the sun.”
Strike checked his watch.
“I know you haven’t got long. Just a couple more things.”
“All right,” she said.
“There was an incident over a year ago,” said Strike, “where Mrs. Chiswell
attacked Mr. Chiswell with a hammer.”
“Oh, God, yeah,” said Tegan. “Yeah… she really lost it. That was right after
Lady was put down, start of the summer. She was Mrs. Chiswell’s favorite mare
and Mrs. Chiswell come home and the vet had already done it. She’d wanted to
be there when it happened and she went crazy when she come back and seen the
knacker’s van.”
“How long had she known that the mare would have to be put down?” asked
Robin.
“Those last two, three days, I think we all knew, really,” said Tegan sadly.
“But she was such a lovely horse, we kept hoping she’d pull through. The vet
had waited for hours for Mrs. Chiswell to come home, but Lady was suffering
and he couldn’t wait around all day, so…”
Tegan made a gesture of hopelessness.
“Any idea what made her go up to London that day, if she knew Lady was
dying?” asked Strike.
Tegan shook her head.
“Can you talk us through exactly what happened, when she attacked her
husband? Did she say anything first?”
“No,” said Tegan. “She come into the yard, seen what had happened, ran
towards Mr. Chiswell, grabbed the hammer and just swung for him. Blood
everywhere. It was horrible,” said Tegan, with patent sincerity. “Awful.”
“What did she do after she’d hit him?” asked Robin.
“Just stood there. The expression on her face… it was like a demon or
something,” said Tegan unexpectedly. “I thought he was dead, thought she’d
killed him.
“They put her away for a couple of weeks, you know. She went off to some
hospital. I had to do the horses alone…
“We were all gutted about Lady. I loved that mare and I thought she was
going to make it, but she’d given up, she lay down and wouldn’t eat. I couldn’t
blame Mrs. Chiswell for being upset, but… she could’ve killed him. Blood
everywhere,” she repeated. “I wanted to leave. Told my mum. Mrs. Chiswell

---

scared me, that night.”
“So what made you stay?” asked Strike.
“I dunno, really… Mr. Chiswell wanted me to, and I was fond of the horses.
Then she came out of hospital and she was really depressed and I suppose I felt
sorry for her. I kept finding her crying in Lady’s empty stall.”
“Was Lady the mare that Mrs. Chiswell wanted to—er—what’s the right
term?” Strike asked Robin.
“Put in foal?” Robin suggested.
“Yeah… put in foal to the famous stallion?”
“Totilas?” said Tegan, with the ghost of an eye roll. “No, it was Brandy she
wanted to breed from, but Mr. Chiswell was having none of it. Totilas! He costs
a fortune.”
“So I heard. She didn’t by any chance mention using a different stallion?
There’s one called ‘Blanc de Blancs,’ I don’t know whether—”
“Never heard of him,” said Tegan. “No, it had to be Totilas, he was the best,
she was fixated on using him. That’s what she’s like, Mrs. Chiswell. When she
gets an idea in her head you can’t shift it. She was going to breed this beautiful
Grand Prix horse and… you know she lost a baby, don’t you?”
Strike and Robin nodded.
“Mum felt sorry for her, she thought the thing about getting a foal was, you
know, a sort of substitute. Mum thinks it was all to do with the baby, how Mrs.
Chiswell’s mood went up and down all the time.
“Like, one day, a few weeks after she came out of hospital, I remember, she
was manic. I think it was the drugs they had her on. High as a kite. Singing in
the yard. And I said to her, ‘You’re cheerful, Mrs. C,’ and she laughed and said,
‘Oh, I’ve been working on Jasper and I think I’m nearly there, I think he’s going
to let me use Totilas after all.’ It was all rubbish. I asked him and he was really
grumpy about it, said it was wishful thinking and he could hardly afford as many
horses as she’d already got.”
“You don’t think he might’ve surprised her,” said Strike, “by offering her a
different stallion to breed from? A cheaper one?”
“That would just’ve annoyed her,” said Tegan. “It was Totilas or nothing.”
She stubbed out the cigarette Strike had given her, checked her watch and said
regretfully, “I’ve only got a couple more minutes.”
“Two more things, and we’re done,” said Strike. “I’ve heard that your family
knew a girl called Suki Lewis, years ago? She was a runaway from care—”
“You know everything!” said Tegan again, delightedly. “How did you know
that?”
“Billy Knight told me. D’you happen to know what happened to Suki?”

---

“Yeah, she went to Aberdeen. She was in our Dan’s class at school. Her mum
was a nightmare: drink and drugs and all sorts. Then the mum goes on a real
bender and that’s how Suki got put into care. She ran away to find her dad. He
worked on the North Sea rigs.”
“And you think she found her father, do you?” asked Strike.
With a triumphant air, Tegan reached into her back pocket for her mobile.
After a few clicks, she presented Strike with the Facebook page she had brought
up for a beaming brunette, who stood posing with a posse of girlfriends in front
of a swimming pool in Ibiza. Through the tan, the bleached smile and the false
eyelashes, Strike discerned the palimpsest of the thin, buck-toothed girl from the
old photograph. The page was captioned “Susanna McNeil.”
“See?” said Tegan happily. “Her dad took her in with his new family.
‘Susanna’ was her proper name but her mum called her ‘Suki.’ My mum’s
friends with Susanna’s auntie. Says she’s doing great.”
“You’re quite sure this is her?” asked Strike.
“Yeah, of course,” said Tegan. “We were all pleased for her. She was a nice
girl.”
She checked her watch again.
“’M’sorry, but that’s my break over, I’ve got to go.”
“One more question,” said Strike. “How well did your brothers know the
Knight family?”
“Quite well,” said Tegan. “The boys were in different years at school but
yeah, they knew them through working at Chiswell House.”
“What do your brothers do now, Tegan?”
“Paul’s managing a farm over near Aylesbury now and Dan’s up in London
doing landscape—why are you writing this down?” she said, alarmed for the
first time at the sight of Strike’s pen moving across his notebook. “You mustn’t
tell my brothers I’ve spoken to you! They’ll go mad if they think I’ve talked
about what went on up at the house!”
“Really? What did go on up there?” Strike asked.
Tegan looked uncertainly from him to Robin and back again.
“You already know, don’t you?”
And when neither Strike nor Robin responded she said:
“Listen, Dan and Paul just helped out with transporting them. Loading them
up and that. And it was legal back then!”
“What was legal?” asked Strike.
“I know you know,” said Tegan, half-worried, half-amused. “Someone’s been
talking, haven’t they? Is it Jimmy Knight? He was back not long ago, sniffing
around, wanting to talk to Dan. Anyway, everyone knew, locally. It was

---

supposed to be hush-hush, but we all knew about Jack.”
“Knew what about him?” asked Strike.
“Well… that he was the gallows maker.”
Strike absorbed the information without so much as a quiver of the eyelid.
Robin wasn’t sure her own expression had remained as impassive.
“But you already knew,” said Tegan. “Didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” said Strike, to reassure her. “We knew.”
“Thought so,” said Tegan, relieved and sliding down, inelegantly, from her
chair. “But if you see Dan, don’t tell him I said. He’s like Mum. ‘Least said,
soonest mended.’ Mind, none of us think there was anything wrong with it. This
country’d be better with the death penalty, if you ask me.”
“Thanks for meeting us, Tegan,” said Strike. She blushed slightly as she
shook first his hand, then Robin’s.
“No problem,” she said, now seeming reluctant to leave them. “Are you
going to stay for the races? Brown Panther’s running in the two-thirty.”
“We might,” said Strike, “we’ve got a bit of time to kill before our next
appointment.”
“I’ve got a tenner on Brown Panther,” Tegan confided. “Well… bye, then.”
She had gone a few steps when she wheeled around and returned to Strike,
now even pinker in the face.
“Can I have a selfie with you?”
“Er,” said Strike, carefully not catching Robin’s eye, “I’d rather not, if it’s all
the same to you.”
“Can I have your autograph, then?”
Deciding that this was the lesser of two evils, Strike wrote his signature on a
napkin.
“Thanks.”
Clutching her napkin, Tegan departed at last. Strike waited until she had
disappeared into the bar before turning to Robin, who was already busy on her
phone.
“Six years ago,” she said, reading from the mobile screen, “an EU directive
came in banning member states from exporting torture equipment. Until then, it
was perfectly legal to export British-made gallows abroad.”
64