Lethal White

Then it’s true, thought Strike. He had too high an opinion of the Met to
imagine that they would be slapdash in confirming the movements of the wife
who had had easy access to the murder scene, and who had been prescribed the
drugs that had been found in the body.
“Who else knew Papa always drank orange juice in the mornings? Who else

---

had access to amitriptyline and the helium—?”
“Does she admit to buying the helium?” Strike asked.
“No,” said Izzy, “but she wouldn’t, would she? She just sits there doing her
hysterical little girl act.” Izzy affected a higher-pitched voice. “‘I don’t know
how it got into the house! Why are you all pestering me, leave me alone, I’ve
been widowed!’
“I told the police, she attacked Papa with a hammer, over a year ago.”
Strike froze in the act of raising his unappetizing tea to his lips.
“What?”
“She attacked Papa with a hammer,” said Izzy, her pale blue eyes boring into
Strike, willing him to understand. “They had a massive row, because—well, it
doesn’t matter why, but they were out in the stables—this was at home, at
Chiswell House, obviously—and Kinvara grabbed the hammer off the top of a
toolbox and smashed Papa over the head with it. She was bloody lucky she
didn’t kill him then. It left him with olfactory dysfunction. He couldn’t smell and
taste as well afterwards, and he got cross at the smallest things, but he insisted
on hushing it all up. He bundled her off into some residential center and told
everyone she was ill, ‘nervous exhaustion.’
“But the stable girl witnessed the whole thing and told us what had really
happened. She had to call the local GP because Papa was bleeding so badly. It
would have been all over the papers if Papa hadn’t got Kinvara admitted to a
psychiatric ward and warned the papers off.”
Izzy picked up her tea, but her hand was now shaking so badly that she was
forced to put it back down again.
“She isn’t what men think she is,” said Izzy vehemently. “They all buy the
little girl nonsense, even Raff. ‘She did lose a baby, Izzy…’ But if he heard a
quarter of what Kinvara says about him behind his back, he’d soon change his
tune.
“And what about the open front door?” Izzy said, jumping subject. “You
know all about that, it’s how you and Venetia got in, isn’t it? That door’s never
closed properly unless you slam it. Papa knew that. He’d have made sure he
closed it properly if he’d been in the house alone, wouldn’t he? But if Kinvara
was sneaking out early in the morning without wanting to be heard, she’d have
had to pull it to and leave it, wouldn’t she?
“She isn’t very bright, you know. She’d have tidied away all the
amitriptyline packaging, thinking it would incriminate her if she left it. I know
the police think the absence of packaging is odd, but I can tell they’re all leaning
towards suicide and that’s why I wanted to speak to you, Cormoran,” Izzy
finished, edging a little forward in her armchair. “I want to hire you. I want you

---

to investigate Papa’s death.”
Strike had known the request was coming almost from the moment the tea
had arrived. The prospect of being paid to investigate what was, in any case,
preoccupying Strike to the point of obsession, was naturally inviting. However,
clients who sought nothing but confirmation of their own theories were always
troublesome. He could not accept the case on Izzy’s terms, but compassion for
her grief led him to seek a gentler mode of refusal.
“The police won’t want me under their feet, Izzy.”
“They don’t have to know it’s Papa’s death you’re investigating,” said Izzy
eagerly. “We could pretend we want you to investigate all those stupid trespasses
into the garden that Kinvara claims have been going on. It would serve her
bloody well right if we took her seriously now.”
“Do the rest of the family know you’re meeting me?”
“Oh, yes,” said Izzy eagerly. “Fizzy’s all for it.”
“Is she? Does she suspect Kinvara, too?”
“Well, no,” said Izzy, sounding faintly frustrated, “but she agrees a hundred
percent that Papa couldn’t have killed himself.”
“Who does she think did it, if not Kinvara?”
“Well,” said Izzy, who seemed uneasy at this line of questioning, “actually,
Fizz has got this crazy idea that Jimmy Knight was involved somehow, but
obviously, that’s ridiculous. Jimmy was in custody when Papa died, wasn’t he?
You and I saw him being led away by the police the evening before, but Fizz
doesn’t want to hear that, she’s fixated on Jimmy! I’ve said to her, ‘how did
Jimmy Knight know where the amitriptyline and the helium were?’ but she
won’t listen, she keeps going on about how Knight was after revenge—”
“Revenge for what?”
“What?” said Izzy restlessly, though Strike knew she had heard him. “Oh—
that doesn’t matter now. That’s all over.”
Snatching up the teapot, Izzy marched away into the kitchen area, where she
added more hot water from the kettle.
“Fizz is irrational about Jimmy,” she said, returning with her teapot refilled
and setting it down with a bang on the table. “She’s never been able to stand him
since we were teenagers.”
She poured herself a second cup of tea, her color heightened. When Strike
said nothing, she repeated nervously:
“The blackmail business can’t have anything to do with Papa dying. That’s
all over.”
“You didn’t tell the police about it, did you?” asked Strike quietly.
There was a pause. Izzy turned steadily pinker. She sipped her tea, then said:

---

“No.”
Then she said, in a rush, “I’m sorry, I can imagine how you and Venetia feel
about that, but we’re more concerned about Papa’s legacy now. We can’t face it
all getting into the press, Cormoran. The only way the blackmail can have any
bearing on his death is if it drove him to suicide, and I just don’t believe he’d
have killed himself over that, or anything else.”
“Della must have found it easy to get her super-injunction,” said Strike, “if
Chiswell’s own family were backing her up, saying nobody was blackmailing
him.”
“We care more about how Papa’s remembered. The blackmail… that’s all
over and done with.”
“But Fizzy still thinks Jimmy might’ve had something to do with your
father’s death.”
“That’s not—that would be a separate matter, from what he was blackmailing
about,” said Izzy incoherently. “Jimmy had a grudge… it’s hard to explain…
Fizz is just silly about Jimmy.”
“How does the rest of the family feel about bringing me in again?”
“Well… Raff isn’t awfully keen, but it’s nothing to do with him. I’d be
paying you.”
“Why isn’t he keen?”
“Because,” said Izzy, “well, because the police questioned Raff more than
any of the rest of us, because—look, Raff doesn’t matter,” she repeated. “I’ll be
the client, I’m the one who wants you. Just break Kinvara’s alibis, I know you
can do it.”
“I’m afraid,” said Strike, “I can’t take the job on those terms, Izzy.”
“Why not?”
“The client doesn’t get to tell me what I can and can’t investigate. Unless
you want the whole truth, I’m not your man.”
“You are, I know you’re the best, that’s why Papa hired you, and that’s why I
want you.”
“Then you’ll need to answer questions when I ask them, instead of telling me
what does and doesn’t matter.”
She glared at him over the rim of her teacup, then, to his surprise, gave a
brittle laugh.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised. I knew you were like this. Remember
when you argued with Jamie Maugham in Nam Long Le Shaker? Oh, you must
remember. You wouldn’t back down—the whole table was at you at one point—
what was the argument about, d’you—?”
“The death penalty,” said Strike, caught off guard. “Yeah. I remember.”

---

For the space of a blink, he seemed to see, not Izzy’s clean, bright sitting
room, with its relics of a wealthy English past, but the louche, dimly lit interior
of a Vietnamese restaurant in Chelsea where, twelve years previously, he and
one of Charlotte’s friends had got into an argument over dinner. Jamie
Maugham’s face was smoothly porcine in his memory. He had wanted to show
up the oik whom Charlotte had insisted on bringing to dinner instead of Jamie’s
old friend, Jago Ross.
“… and Jamie got rilly, rilly angry with you,” Izzy said. “He’s quite a
successful QC now, you know.”
“Must’ve learned to keep his temper in an argument, then,” said Strike, and
Izzy gave another little giggle. “Izzy,” he said, returning to the main issue, “if
you mean what you say—”
“—I do—”
“—then you’ll answer my questions,” said Strike, drawing a notebook out of
his pocket.
Irresolute, she watched him take out a pen.
“I’m discreet,” said Strike. “In the past couple of years, I’ve been told the
secrets of a hundred families and not shared one of them. Nothing irrelevant to
your father’s death will ever be mentioned again outside my agency. But if you
don’t trust me—”
“I do,” said Izzy desperately, and to his slight surprise, she leaned forward
and touched him on the knee. “I do, Cormoran, honestly, but it’s… it’s hard…
talking about Papa…”
“I understand that,” he said, readying his pen. “So let’s start with why the
police questioned Raphael so much more than the rest of you.”
He could tell that she didn’t want to answer, but after a moment’s hesitation
she said:
“Well, I think it was partly because Papa phoned Raff early on the morning
he died. It was the last call he made.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing that mattered. It can’t have had anything to do with Papa dying.
But,” she rushed on, as though wanting to extinguish any impression her last
words might have made, “I think the main reason Raff isn’t keen on me hiring
you is that he rather fell for your Venetia while she was in the office and now,
well, obviously, he feels a bit of an idiot that he poured his heart out to her.”
“Fell for her, did he?” said Strike.
“Yes, so it’s hardly surprising he feels everyone’s made a fool of him.”
“The fact remains—”
“I know what you’re going to say, but—”

---

“—if you want me to investigate, it’ll be me who decides what matters, Izzy.
Not you. So I want to know,” he ticked off all the times she had said that
information “didn’t matter” on his fingers as he named them, “what your father
called Raphael about the morning he died, what your father and Kinvara were
rowing about when she hit him around the head with a hammer—and what your
father was being blackmailed about.”
The sapphire cross winked darkly as Izzy’s chest rose and fell. When at last
she spoke, it was jerkily.
“It’s not up to me to tell you about what Papa and Raff said to each other, the
last t-time they spoke. That’s for Raff to say.”
“Because it’s private?”
“Yes,” she said, very pink in the face. He wondered whether she was telling
the truth.
“You said your father had asked Raphael over to the house in Ebury Street
the day he died. Was he rearranging the time? Canceling?”
“Canceling. Look, you’ll have to ask Raff,” she reiterated.
“All right,” said Strike, making a note. “What caused your stepmother to hit
your father around the head with a hammer?”
Izzy’s eyes filled with tears. Then, with a sob, she pulled a handkerchief out
of her sleeve and pressed it to her face:
“I d-didn’t want to tell you that b-because I d-didn’t want you to think badly
of Papa now he’s… now he’s… you see, he d-did something that…”
Her broad shoulders shook as she emitted unromantic snorts. Strike, who
found this frank and noisy anguish more touching than he would have found
delicate eye dabbing, sat in impotent sympathy while she tried to gasp out her
apologies.
“I’m—I’m s—”
“Don’t be silly,” he said gruffly. “Of course you’re upset.”
But she seemed deeply ashamed of this loss of control, and her hiccuping
return to calm was punctuated with further flustered “sorrys.” At last, she wiped
her face dry as roughly as though cleaning a window, said one final “I’m so
sorry,” straightened her spine and said with a forcefulness Strike rather admired,
given the circumstances:
“If you take the case… once we’ve signed on the dotted line… I’ll tell you
what Papa did that made Kinvara hit him.”
“I assume,” said Strike, “the same goes for the reason that Winn and Knight
were blackmailing your father?”
“Look,” she said, tears welling again, “don’t you see, it’s Papa’s memory, his
legacy, now. I don’t want those things to be the thing people remember about

---

him—please help us, Corm. Please. I know it wasn’t suicide, I know it
wasn’t…”
He let his silence do the work for him. At last, her expression piteous, she
said with a catch in her voice:
“All right. I’ll tell you all about the blackmail, but only if Fizz and Torks
agree.”
“Who’s Torks?” inquired Strike.
“Torquil. Fizzy’s husband. We swore we wouldn’t ever tell anyone, but I’ll t-
talk to them and if they agree, I’ll t-tell you everything.”
“Doesn’t Raphael get consulted?”
“He never knew anything about the blackmail business. He was in jail when
Jimmy first came to see Papa and anyway, he didn’t grow up with us, so he
couldn’t—Raff never knew.”
“And what about Kinvara?” asked Strike. “Did she know?”
“Oh, yes,” said Izzy, and a look of malice hardened her usually friendly
features, “but she definitely won’t want us to tell you. Oh, not to protect Papa,”
she said, correctly reading Strike’s expression, “to protect herself. Kinvara
benefited, you see. She didn’t mind what Papa was up to, so long as she reaped
the rewards.”
39