‘Blame it on the boll weevils,’ Giselle Feeney said. ‘There was a huge outbreak of them in the States. They decimated the cotton crops and all at once, arsenic was the most popular poison you could find. In the late nineteenth century, it became the key ingredient in lethal pesticides. Farmers couldn’t get enough of it to control the boll weevils. And that wasn’t all. William Morris used it to create new dyes and paints. The military used arsenic to make their bullets more brittle. Before penicillin, doctors prescribed arsenical compounds for the treatment of syphilis – yuck. As for arsenic’s aphrodisiac properties, you really don’t want to know. Or do you?’
Hannah laughed and dodged the question. ‘Versatile stuff.’
They were lounging on the L-shaped leather sofa in Giselle’s fourth floor apartment, high above the River Kent. Her living room was so high-tech, with its plasma screen home cinema and gleaming sound system, that it wasn’t easy to guess that she was a forensic archaeologist. At least until you spotted the framed photograph of Giselle in Wellington boots standing in the middle of a mediaeval burial chamber on a Scottish island.
For a woman who liked to joke that her career lay in ruins, Giselle was doing fine. She might be wearing her boyfriend’s Newcastle United shirt and a pair of Primark loafers, but she could have afforded Calvin Klein. Big-boned, bouncy and ferociously bright, she’d given up university lecturing to set up her own consultancy. Her clients ranged from regeneration planners, required by law to survey ancient sites about to disappear forever beneath housing estates or retail parks, to police forces and the Ministry of Defence. She and Hannah had worked together once before, when fragments of a dead man kept turning up in different parts of the north of England. Giselle had reconstructed the body much as her colleagues might reassemble a clay pot. Her skill she ascribed to a youth spent putting together two-thousand-piece jigsaws. She was a nationally renowned authority on burial practices through the millennia and possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of pretty much everything else, but Hannah liked the way she didn’t allow her academic expertise to blind her to the priorities of criminal investigation. She’d expected Giselle to know about arsenic labyrinths, and she wasn’t disappointed.
‘Mine owners down in Devon and Cornwall couldn’t believe their luck. All of a sudden, a by-product they’d struggled to dispose of was in big demand. They heated up the arsenic to extract it from the ore and made a fortune in the process. A hundred feet in, the arsenic would have cooled and left dirty white crystalline deposits on the wall. Each month the works would be shut down and the door into the labyrinth opened. They’d send boys in to scrape the arsenic off the walls. As for health and safety, the kids shoved cotton wool up their nostrils and smeared clay over their skin.’
‘Lovely.’
‘The good old days, huh? You can imagine a mine owner in Coniston might fancy breaking the monopoly of the Cornish businesses. Never mind the plumes of sulphur spewing out of the chimney, or the occasional death by poisoning. Occupational hazards. But the arsenic wasn’t plentiful enough. The venture failed and brought down the copper-mining business with it. After that, everyone gave the place a wide berth.’
‘Excellent place to hide a body.’
‘Do you really expect to find this woman at Mispickel?’
Hannah shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. So you’re on board?’
‘Listen, arsenic may have gone out of fashion with murderers who want to get away with it. Too easy to detect with Marsh’s test. But it’s lethal stuff. One level teaspoon will kill four people. Six, if the arsenic’s refined. Taxidermists used to love arsenic, because it kills off the bacteria that hasten decomposition. But I’ve heard of museums that have to keep preserved rhinos stored under lock and key, because the toxicity of the arsenic makes them too dangerous to display in public. Dumping a body underneath the Arsenic Labyrinth strikes me as a pretty good idea. Creepy, too. Am I on board? Try and keep me away.’
Jeremy Erskine frowned at Hannah, as though she were a dense pupil who had handed in the wrong homework. His voice was loud and musical and she was sure he loved the sound of it.
‘Candidly, Chief Inspector, this is shoddy journalism. The reporter simply wants to make a name for himself. There was no good reason to write about my sister-in-law’s disappearance, he didn’t have a shred of fresh evidence. All he’s done is tear open old wounds. It took years for my wife to come to terms with what happened, and now thanks to this ghastly publicity, she’s back to square one.’
They were in the conservatory at the back of the Erskines’ immaculate home. From their armchairs, Hannah and Maggie Eyre could see a neatly kept winter garden bounded by a ring of oaks and sycamores. A ladder led up to a wooden tree house and the misty tops of the Langdale Pikes loomed in the distance. Outside it was freezing, but the conservatory was so snug it might have been midsummer. On the other side of the sliding doors to the main house, a boy and a girl in matching tee shirts and Nike trainers sprawled on the Axminster carpet and watched TV.
Jeremy was sitting with his wife on a wicker sofa. They were a good-looking couple, tanned and trim after a New Year spent sand-skiing in the dunes of Dubai. Jeremy was in his early forties, tall with a long jaw and flecks of grey around the temples, Karen a cool blonde in a pink short-sleeved shirt and black leather trousers. The bronzed skin was stretched tight over her cheekbones; unlike her sister, she didn’t carry a surplus ounce. Jeremy took hold of his wife’s hand, as if to comfort her in a moment of distress, but Hannah guessed it would take more than a newspaper article to rattle Karen Erskine.
‘You gave Tony Di Venuto short shrift when he spoke to you about Emma.’
‘You’d do the same in my shoes. He was appallingly persistent, wanted to come here to interview us, if you please. I said it was out of the question. A disgraceful intrusion. Frankly, I was on the point of making a formal protest to his editor. I thought there were laws to protect us from that sort of behaviour these days. Don’t hardworking middle class people have a right to privacy?’
Hannah stared at Karen. ‘Aren’t you curious about what happened to your sister?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But this publicity isn’t about discovering the truth.’
‘If the anonymous caller is telling the truth, then …’
‘What evidence do you have that he isn’t a figment of a fevered imagination?’ Jeremy interrupted. ‘My understanding was that a court of law requires proof.’
‘We’re not in a court of law.’ Hannah fought the instinct to snap that he wasn’t teaching Year 8 kids either. ‘Mr Di Venuto has no reason to lie to us. Wasting police time is a serious offence, as he and his editor are well aware.’
‘He’s out to cause trouble and sell newspapers. Quite irresponsible.’
‘It would be irresponsible for us to ignore what he has told us.’
‘Is this what we pay our taxes for?’
‘We’ll survey the site before deciding what action to take. Of course, we’ll keep you both informed. DC Eyre will act as liaison officer.’
Maggie gave a brisk nod. The Eyres were a farming family and Hannah knew few people as down to earth as her DC. Jeremy’s pomposity was perfectly calculated to get up Maggie’s nose, but her equable expression yielded no hint of distaste. Learning to hide your true feelings when interviewing witnesses was a step on the road to becoming a good police officer.
Jeremy turned to his wife. ‘Sorry, darling. Seems as though we have no say in the matter. All we can do is let events take their course.’
Karen’s sharp chin jutted forward. ‘This isn’t ever going to end, is it, Chief Inspector? If you don’t find a body, we’ll be at the mercy of anyone who wants to speculate about Emma and make a few quid on the side. And if by some miracle you do, that will just be the start. There’ll need to be an inquest, a funeral, you’ll be looking for this man who made the phone call. The media will turn it into a circus. It will be impossible for us to grieve in private.’
Would Karen grieve? She was certainly restraining her curiosity about her sister’s fate.
‘You have nothing to fear from the media, surely?’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong!’ Karen grasped her husband’s hand. ‘The head at Grizedale retires in the summer. The deputy isn’t up to the job and the Governors have made it clear they would prefer to recruit internally. Jeremy is the obvious choice. He’s a first class historian and the results of his students are outstanding, half of them stroll into Oxford or Cambridge. He has marvellous ideas for raising the College’s profile, making it the leading independent in the North. But how will the governors react if our name features in a murder case? Parents care about these things. The sort of people who pay for their children to attend Grizedale don’t want to be associated with a high profile criminal investigation, even indirectly. This could ruin Jeremy’s career progression. Have you stopped to consider that?’
No, it had never crossed Hannah’s mind. Her mother had taught in the state sector and Hannah went to the local comprehensive. Hannah didn’t begrudge others the right to educate their kids privately, but she couldn’t imagine doing it herself. Combing through rival prospectuses, weighing up which school might offer the best prospect of glittering prizes, treating education as one more luxury purchase, along with the Scandinavian hi-fi and designer kitchen?
‘What do you believe happened to Emma, Mrs Erskine?’
Karen must have anticipated the question, but its bluntness threw her off balance. As if to cover her discomfort, she mimicked her husband’s truculence.
‘Well … don’t you think that if I knew that, I’d have mentioned it sooner?’
‘I’m not asking for hard evidence. Supposition is fine. You must have a theory?’
‘Emma was an unhappy person,’ Jeremy said before his wife could answer. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I deplore homophobia as much as the next man, but it’s a sad fact that many gay men and women lead unfulfilled lives. My impression is that she’d never found love. Above all, she was jealous of Karen.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Karen had a baby, Karen had a nice house, Karen was married to someone who adored her. She was younger and prettier and slimmer than Emma. My wife’s too kindhearted to say so, but the jealousy had been there since they were kids. As the years passed, it became a festering sore.’
‘You didn’t get on?’
‘I hardly knew her. There was no ill will, we did our best, we invited her to our wedding. She was in Liverpool at the time, but she made an excuse and the best she could do by way of a present for her only close living relative was to send a few Marks & Spencer gift vouchers. When our daughter Sophie was christened, we even invited her to be godmother, but it was the same old story. She said she didn’t believe in organised religion. As if that mattered.’
‘Was there ever a row between the two of you, Mrs Erskine?’
A shake of the blonde head. ‘We were always civil to each other. Emma always kept her feelings buttoned up.’
‘You were sure she envied you?’
Karen shrugged. ‘Emma never quite fitted in anywhere. Sad, really. I thought she might go abroad when she tired of Merseyside. Instead, she came back to the Lakes. She told me she felt homesick, but it was city living that she was sick of. There was nothing for her here.’
‘You met her at the museum, I believe?’
‘When she returned, Jeremy and I were determined to make an effort.’
‘Blood’s thicker than water, don’t forget,’ Jeremy sounded as though he wanted to make Hannah write it out one hundred times after school.
‘Was there any suggestion that she live with you?’
‘Good Heavens, no.’ Jeremy looked as startled as if she’d asked him to open up his home to an asylum seeker. ‘At the time we had a tiny semi in Ambleside, near Rothay Park. Very different from this place, I can assure you. I’d started teaching history at Grizedale College, but this was long before I was promoted to head of year. To have taken in Emma would have been impossible, even if she’d suggested it. Which, of course, she did not. She rented a bed-sit for a while and then moved in with the Goddards.’
‘Yes, I was going to ask you about that.’ Hannah made a show of scratching her head. ‘I know it’s a small world, but … it does seem amazing, that, of all the places where she might have found a roof over her head, she finished up with your ex-wife and her new husband?’
‘The Lakes is a small world, Chief Inspector, haven’t you noticed? Thirty miles across, and a population less than Bolton.’
‘Even so.’
Jeremy sucked in a breath. ‘Vanessa and I met and married not long after I qualified as a teacher. She was a librarian, full of ideals about educating the disadvantaged, people who had never opened a book in their lives. I taught at a comprehensive on the Furness Peninsula. Plenty of deprivation in that neck of the woods, since the steelworks closed and shipbuilding went out of fashion. When you meet Vanessa, Chief Inspector, you see a middle-aged woman with an unsightly birthmark on her face, so you may find this difficult to understand – but I found her passion thrilling.’
‘No, I don’t find that so difficult to understand,’ Hannah said softly and for a moment, despite everything, she warmed to him.
‘Within weeks, we were walking down the aisle. Looking back, it was a mistake. I was young, naïve. Vanessa and I could have been such good friends, but … when I met Karen, I realised she was the woman for me.’
‘Love at first sight,’ Karen said with a complacent smile. ‘It knocked the breath out of both of us.’
‘Vanessa took our break-up very hard. She blamed Karen for seducing me, but that was unfair. It was my fault, if you like. My decision, I take full responsibility.’
He gave a defiant nod and then lifted his head, so Hannah could see that the nobility of his profile matched his character. The admiration in Karen’s eyes depressed her. It wasn’t his adultery that made her cringe, it was his conceit.
Jeremy cleared his throat. ‘I was thrilled for Vanessa when she met Francis. He sounds a decent chap and he’s certainly made her happy. Even given her a child, the one thing I could never achieve.’
You patronising sod. But Hannah could do hypocrisy too and she coated her smile with sugar.
‘I gather their boy is a pupil at Grizedale.’
‘We call them students.’ He corrected her with a little laugh. Hannah would have found it less offensive if he’d rapped her on the knuckles with a steel rule. ‘At present he’s a year off senior school, so our paths don’t yet cross. When they do, it won’t be a problem. Vanessa is a decent woman, I’m sure he’s a fine lad.’
Hannah gritted her teeth, and Jeremy sailed on.
‘Unfortunately, I suspect Vanessa resents poor Karen to this day. As for taking in Emma as a lodger, well, I don’t wish to be unkind …’
‘But?’
‘I suspect that it suited her to make friends with Emma.’
‘Evidently she found out that Emma and Karen were far from close.’
‘Are you suggesting there was an attraction between her and Emma?’
‘Good grief, no.’ He was genuinely amused. ‘Vanessa is voraciously heterosexual in her appetites, I can assure you of that.’
Hannah cast a glance at Karen. Could a smirk be coy? If so, hers was.
‘What, then?’
‘You wish me to be frank?’
‘Please.’
‘Very well, if I must. I have no wish to be unkind to Vanessa, but in my opinion, she wanted to hear bad things about Karen, to make her feel better about losing me.’
Hannah noticed that, while her husband was talking about his first wife, Karen yawned and stretched out her legs. A woman at ease with herself, confident that she’d got her man exactly where she wanted him.
‘Darling, this is old news. None of it matters any more.’
‘Don’t forget,’ her husband said with an unexpected stab at humour, ‘my subject is history.’
‘And cold case work involves exploring the past,’ Hannah said. ‘After she left the Goddards, Emma bought her bungalow. How could she afford it?’
‘She told us she’d had a big win on the lottery. It was only after she disappeared that we found out from your people she’d lied about that. Goodness knows why.’
‘So where did the money really come from?’
Jeremy coughed. ‘As it happens, I have an idea.’
He sounded so proud that Hannah had to force herself not to mime applause. She could tell that Maggie was close to bursting with suppressed laughter.
‘I’d love to hear it.’
‘Well, once Emma’s relationship with Alexandra Clough ended, she fell ill. Depression, stress, one of those ailments fashionable among people who don’t want to go into work. The Cloughs are wealthy, perhaps she threatened to sue them.’
‘They deny it.’
‘Is that surprising, if they’d mistreated her?’
‘Did Emma tell you that they had?’
‘We didn’t see anything of her while she was ill. A quick word on the phone was as close as we came. She may have been poorly, but I’m sure she wasn’t at death’s door. And of course, she got better.’
‘You visited her bungalow?’
Karen nodded. ‘The week after she moved in. She was pale, but she told me she’d lost a stone and a half and she was looking all the better for it. I hadn’t even known she was interested in reflexology. But that was Emma. She was prone to fits of enthusiasm, but they never lasted. Look at the way she kept changing jobs. That’s why I wasn’t too surprised when she upped sticks and left the district without a word.’
‘Without her car and her passport?’
‘She didn’t consult me before she moved to Liverpool, either. So she had form, isn’t that the word detectives use? And it wasn’t so strange if she wanted to start a brand new life. Travel, see the world. After paying out on the bungalow and a new car, there wasn’t much cash left. The building society repossessed the house, you know, because she wasn’t around to keep up the monthly payments.’
Hannah had already found that out. Pity, it removed a possible motive. She’d wondered if Karen had planned to have Emma declared dead so that, as nearest living relative, she would inherit her sister’s estate. But there wasn’t much left to inherit.
‘Surely she would have contacted you during a period of ten years?’
‘Emma could be frustrating. Unreliable. And don’t forget, she’d had the benefit of listening to Vanessa Goddard’s opinions of me. Views based on prejudice and envy. Could I help the fact the poor woman had a disfigurement?’
Hannah noticed Maggie’s eyes narrowing, sensed her DC was losing patience. Easy to believe in Vanessa’s bitterness over the betrayal, but was it credible that she’d poisoned Emma’s mind to such an extent that she would break off all contact – not only with Karen but with Vanessa herself and everyone else?
‘You saw her the day before she disappeared, Mr Erskine?’
‘You’ve read my statement. It was an entirely innocent visit.’
‘Of course. You had a bad back.’
His lips pursed, but if he detected irony, he was too smart to make an issue of it. ‘I’ve been a martyr to my vertebrae over the years. The legacy of an old rugby injury, it flares up every now and then. Karen mentioned it when she called on Emma and Emma reckoned she could help. Admittedly, for a few days after my visit, I felt better. But she didn’t achieve a lasting solution. These days I see an osteopath in Keswick, he’s first class.’
‘What did you talk about while you there?’ Maggie asked suddenly.
‘Good grief, Constable, you can’t expect me to remember a casual conversation at this distance of time.’
Maggie gave him the sort of baleful look her father might reserve for a mongrel worrying sheep. ‘She was your sister-in-law and it was the last time you spoke to her. Wouldn’t the conversation stick in your mind?’
Jeremy folded his arms. ‘Not my mind. Even when your people interviewed me before, I couldn’t recall details. She was pleasant, without being chatty. As if her mind was far away. On other things.’
Hannah said, ‘In your original statement, you suggested that she might have planned to leave the area and do something else.’
‘It seems a perfectly rational inference to draw.’
His careful syntax was getting under Hannah’s skin. She suspected him of yearning to give her a detention the moment she split an infinitive.
‘You said that she seemed – excited about something.’
‘Did I? Perhaps, but it is so long ago. Our conversation was superficial, the usual small talk, nothing beyond that.’
‘There was no argument between you? No difficulties between Emma and your wife?’
‘What would we argue about?’ Jeremy asked. ‘She lived a very different life from Karen and me. Each to his own, we weren’t judgmental.’
‘Any further light you can shed on Emma or what might have given rise to her disappearance?’
She asked the question for form’s sake, rather than in the hope of eliciting fresh information. The Erskines were hard work. Talk about blood and stones.
‘Nothing whatever,’ Karen said, as her husband slipped his arm around her shoulder.
No point in probing further without more to go on. Jeremy showed them out and as he led them through the living room, Hannah noticed a familiar glossy hardback on the coffee table. Daniel Kind had written it to accompany his series on BBC Television.
‘You’re a keen historian in your spare time as well as at work, Mr Erskine?’
‘As it happens, I’m this year’s chairman of the Grizedale and Satterthwaite Historical Association. The oldest society of its kind in Cumbria.’
‘So you know all about the Arsenic Labyrinth?’
He gave a little laugh, probably meant to be self-deprecating. ‘Well, I wouldn’t claim to be an authority, but of course I am aware of it.’
‘Someone was telling me it formed part of an unsuccessful business.’
‘Yes, the arsenic works ruined the Inchmores. At one time they were one of the richest families in the county. You only have to look at the hall to see the scale of Clifford Inchmore’s ambition. It may lack Brantwood’s glamour, but to my mind it’s an even more remarkable building. Sir Clifford dreamed of establishing a dynasty. Hubris, perhaps. But his son George blew it.’
‘Because of trading in arsenic?’
‘Not only that. He fell out with Albert Clough, whom Clifford had taken into partnership. Albert was a consummate businessman and George didn’t like the idea of playing second fiddle to him once Clifford retired. The outcome was that Albert left the firm and set up on his own in direct competition, the worst of all possible worlds from the Inchmores’ perspective. As their star fell, Albert’s rose.’
‘Must have been painful for them to sell the hall to Albert.’
‘Indeed. No wonder it’s been said that Mispickel Scar is cursed. A load of superstitious nonsense, no doubt, but local folk used to take it seriously.’
‘What’s the story of the curse?’
Jeremy resembled a High Court judge, invited to choose the winner of an end of pier talent show. ‘I really could not say. Folklore is scarcely history. You’d need to ask Alban Clough, he’s the expert. Of course, he’s always revelled in the triumph of his family over the Inchmores.’
‘He did give a job to young Tom Inchmore.’
‘Humiliating the Inchmores through unforced acts of generosity became a family tradition for the Cloughs. It started when George’s son William Inchmore had to accept charity from Armstrong Clough and take up a sinecure in the Cloughs’ booming firm. By all accounts, William was an idler, who preferred wine, women and song to the hard graft that made his family’s fortune. Yet even he must have found it a bitter pill, to see Cloughs living it up in the house his grandfather built.’
‘Clogs to clogs in three generations?’
‘Precisely.’ He noticed her gaze lingering on the glossy cover of Daniel’s book. ‘Does your own interest in history extend beyond cold case work, Chief Inspector? Perhaps you saw these programmes? They were quite tolerable, not the dumbed-down rubbish we usually get in return for our licence fee.’
‘You know that Daniel Kind has moved to the Lakes? He lives in Brackdale.’
‘Really?’ An opportunist spark flared in Jeremy’s eyes. ‘I wonder if he’d be interested in talking to the Association. Do I gather that you are acquainted with him?’
‘Our paths have crossed. His father was a police officer, that’s the connection.’
‘Good Lord. You don’t happen to know how I can get in touch with him?’
Hannah was conscious of Maggie’s solid presence beside her. Perhaps it was embarrassment that caused
her to lie – though this was absurd, what was there to be embarrassed about?
‘Sorry, I don’t have his number.’
‘What do you make of those two, then?’ Hannah asked as they were driving back.
Maggie shifted in the passenger seat. You could almost hear wheels turning as she weighed up pros and cons. She didn’t do flair, but at this stage of her career she was none the worse for it. Hannah was encouraging her to reason more laterally, whilst desperately striving to avoid Lauren-speak like thinking outside the box.
‘He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in my old school.’
‘Nor mine. And Karen?’
‘Thank God she’s not my sister.’
They both laughed and then Maggie said, ‘Can I ask a question?’
‘Fire away.’
‘It isn’t about the Erskines, but Les.’
‘Les Bryant?’
‘Is he all right?’
‘Any reason to believe he isn’t?’
‘Well, I dunno. He doesn’t seem himself to me, that’s all.’
‘Can’t say I’d noticed. Hasn’t he always been a grumpy old sod? The time to worry is if he starts singing the ACC’s praises and buying the first round when we go to the pub. Then I’ll know for sure he’s sickening for something.’
‘Sorry, perhaps I’m imagining things. Forget I mentioned it.’
Hannah frowned as traffic lights ahead turned to red just as she was tempted to rush through on amber. Maggie didn’t imagine things, that was the point. Better keep an eye on Les. Just in case.
Guy and Sarah stayed in bed until mid-day. After she finally got up, he lingered under the warm duvet while she busied herself in the kitchen, making them a scratch lunch. He’d assumed she would be out of condition and her reserves of stamina had come as a surprise. She was never satisfied for long and the endless exertion, coupled with a night broken by memories of the Arsenic Labyrinth, had left him listless and unable to stop yawning. He’d drunk too much the previous evening and his throat was dry. When he moved, his body protested and he worried that he might have put his back out.
When he hobbled downstairs, she flung her arms around his neck, pressing herself into him as they embraced. Her tongue was large and insistent. He caught her glancing at the kitchen table and he wondered if she entertained fantasies of emulating Jessica Lange in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Not this bloody postman, he thought, I’m knackered. As gently as he could, he disengaged from her.
‘Thought you’d be hungry,’ she said with a provocative smile.
‘I wouldn’t say no to a couple of slices of toast. Any chance of some soup?’
‘Rob Stevenson, what are you like!’ She pretended to cuff his ear. ‘That’s not what I meant at all.’
It was weird, he thought, as he watched her stretching up into the cupboards above her head, mauve leggings so tight over her ample backside that they must be in danger of splitting. The thrill of the chase meant far more than the triumph of conquest and it wouldn’t be long before his interest fizzled out. Nothing personal, it had been the same with Megan, with Farfalla, with Maryell and with all the rest.
His head was throbbing, the air was stale. He might be suffering from a touch of claustrophobia, maybe even the early stages of flu. All through lunch, she never stopped chattering about her younger days before the marriage that went wrong. It was as if she were trying to suck him into her existence, make him understand every little thing about her. She didn’t seem to appreciate that affairs like theirs were transient. You savoured the moment and then got on with the rest of your life. He hardly spoke, although she hadn’t reached the stage of chastising him for having so little to say to her. The blissful look would give way to a reproachful frown and she would click her tongue each time he fell short of expectations. Nobody ever realised how difficult it was, when you made up an identity for yourself. You had to take such care to avoid making a mistake, a careless remark that revealed you were not the man you claimed to be.
As soon as they’d finished eating, he made an excuse about phoning a colleague and hurried out before she could ask any tricky questions. So far his vagueness about his working life had given him the freedom to spend his time as he pleased, but she was starting to take a closer interest. Soon she would be interfering, making demands on his time. She ought to be content to trust him. To allow him, as he liked to say, to do all the worrying for her.
He walked quickly, keen to put distance between himself and the stuffiness of the Glimpse. By the time he’d reached the short, low wooden pier at Monk Coniston, the pain in his back had eased and his head had cleared. He prided himself on being a man who was never cast down for long. Time to look on the bright side.
He stood by the water’s edge, remembering. This was where he’d collected a small fortune ten years ago. The world had been at his feet, he’d felt as though he could achieve anything. And now he was back here and about to get lucky again. Sarah was eating out of the palm of his hand. She only harped on because she was happy. He’d made fantastic progress and soon he would be rolling in money. Think of the classy, secluded hotels that he might grace with his presence. He deserved a few treats.
Half way between Brantwood and Nibthwaite, he emerged from the forest path and strode towards the shore, feet crunching over the narrow strip of clean shingle in front of the trees. He paused and gazed across the lake towards Torver Beck Common, the Old Man and the Yewdale Fells. The sky was clear and he could make out the silvery water of the White Lady cascade. Impossible to see Mispickel Scar from here, it was masked by familiar peaks. He could almost believe that the Arsenic Labyrinth was one more figment of his vivid imagination.
‘So you’re fine?’ Daniel asked.
Hannah cradled the glass of Sancerre in her hand. The Café d’Art combined a small gallery with a framing workshop and a wine bar. They were sitting at a discreet corner table. The wall behind them was crowded with oils on canvas, purple fells and ochre sunsets. Jacques Brel crooned in the background, the candle burning on their table gave off a subtle lilac fragrance.
‘I think so.’
‘You look fine.’
‘What you mean is, I was an utter wreck when we last met.’
He laughed. They both knew that wasn’t what he meant. Her hair was several shades lighter, he noticed. She was changing her look, but by degrees. In five years’ time, she’d be a dazzling blonde.
‘You’d had a tough time.’
‘Not just me. Both of us might have been killed.’ She was determined not to spoil their get-together by discussing her miscarriage. No more dwelling on what might have been.
He took his cue. ‘That’ll teach me to poke my nose in.’
‘Didn’t you want to follow in Ben’s footsteps?’
‘I’d seen at first-hand how policing can mess up your home life. He left us for Cheryl when I was a kid, remember? My mum would have keeled over if I’d announced I wanted to become a detective. Besides, I was addicted to history. To be paid money to research it seemed like Heaven.’
‘Yet you gave it up.’
‘I gave up academic life, the back-biting of the Senior Common Room. I’ll never give up history. It’s in the blood.’
‘A passion for what’s dead and gone?’
‘Uh-uh.’ He grinned. ‘The yearning to find out. The detective urge, if you like.’
‘Actually, I rather admire the way you walked away from Oxford.’
‘What’s to admire?’ She’d caught him off guard. ‘It ought to be a cause for shame, if anything. An admission of defeat. Failure.’
Brel was singing ‘If We Only Have Love’. Hannah took another sip of wine, contemplating Daniel. Something about him appealed to her, was it the resemblance to his father? She’d cared a lot about Ben. Although he was dead, killed by a hit and run driver, she’d seen his face many times in her dreams.
‘Must have felt liberating, though.’
‘Very.’ He helped himself to a handful of salty peanuts from a bowl. ‘So that is what appeals to you? The notion of escape?’
She nodded. ‘I love my job, most of the time. When I’m doing what I signed up to do – detecting crime. It’s the crap that gets in the way that I can’t bear. The politics, the management stuff, the need to keep the right people sweet. Don’t get me wrong, I can cope. But my oldest friend, Terri, is always complaining the job eats away at the soul.’
‘Ever thought of doing something else?’
‘I’m not qualified for anything else.’
‘Well, I made the break.’
‘For you it was easy.’ As the words left her mouth, she regretted their sting. ‘I mean, you can write from home. What would I do – become a private detective? A gumshoe in Grasmere, a shamus from Seatoller? I don’t think so.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean …’
‘Forgive me.’ She wanted to reach across the table and touch his hand, but it wasn’t a good idea. ‘Marc keeps saying I’m too tense, I need to lighten up. Blame it on the job, it’s the usual suspect.’
‘What are you working on at present?’ He needed to steer the conversation to safe water. ‘Marc mentioned a case in Coniston.’
‘A missing woman. Ten years on, we may be about to find her.’
‘Can you talk about it?’
She knew she ought to say no, but it was a distraction from anything more personal. His dad had been the most honest man she’d ever met and she was sure Daniel was to be trusted. And another thing. Emma’s story would absorb him, and she wanted him to be absorbed in what she had to say.
‘Why not?’ She smiled through the candle’s flame. ‘What do you know about the Arsenic Labyrinth?’
‘Jeremy Erskine is a fan of yours,’ Hannah said forty minutes later, savouring the last of her wine. ‘His interest in history extends beyond teaching at a posh school. He has a copy of your book and he almost swooned when I said you’d moved to the Lakes. He’d love you to talk to his historical society.’
‘Not the Grizedale and Satterthwaite?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘I seem to remember an invitation from them whilst I was at Oxford. Shortly after Aimee died; I hadn’t got myself together.’
‘Takes a long time to get yourself together after something like that.’
Aimee had committed suicide by leaping from the Saxon tower in Cornmarket. A few months later, he’d met Miranda and left Oxford for good. Daniel knew why his sister disapproved. Louise thought he’d got involved on the rebound. He’d wanted to escape by taking up with someone as different from Aimee as he could find.
‘Suppose I’d better get in touch with your mate Jeremy.’
‘He’s no mate of mine. Truth is, he’s extraordinarily easy to dislike.’
‘He’d prefer Emma to be quietly forgotten. All that bothers him is the effect a cold case investigation may have on his career prospects. He may be a fellow historian, but you don’t have much else in common.’
‘You never know.’
She flushed. ‘Sorry, that sounds as though I know you inside out. Very presumptuous. Pay no attention, you and Jeremy may get on like a house on fire.’
He put down his coffee cup. ‘When I was a boy, people said I took after my father. How true it was, who knows? But if you think he’d have disliked Jeremy …’
‘Ben would have detested him.’
‘I’ll talk to him. For all I know he’s an expert on John Ruskin and I can pick his brains as part of my research.’
‘You’re working on something new?’
When he explained about his thirst for more information about Ruskin’s Coniston years, she shook her head and said, ‘I can’t offer you any local knowledge. I was taken round Brantwood as a teenager and all I remember is the gorgeous gardens. And that poor old Ruskin was a loser in love.’
‘Like Emma Bestwick, by the sound of it. She had all that money – however she came by it – but nobody to love.’
‘That’s why Sid Thornicroft thought she’d done a runner. He argued that she’d found someone new and followed them, perhaps abroad. Or else gone in search of a new life.’
‘Ten years is a long time to maintain radio silence.’
‘It does happen. You know all about beginning a new life. Tell me, do you ever yearn for the old days, town and gown?’
‘Never.’
‘So it’s worked out perfectly, starting afresh?’
‘Nothing’s ever perfect, is it?’ He smiled. ‘Miranda hated the Lakeland winter. At dead of night, Tarn Fold is too quiet for her. She has trouble sleeping, she’s accustomed to London, the eternal rumble of traffic in the distance. Not to worry. Ruskin said imperfection is essential to life; who am I to argue?’
‘Did Ruskin have an opinion on everything, then?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Any words of wisdom for a hard-pressed law enforcement officer, investigating a suspected murder?’
‘You won’t be encouraged. He deplored fascination with death, saw it as a sign of the ills of Victorian England. He put the boot into Charles Dickens for being morbid, said far too many respectable characters met grotesque ends in Bleak House. God knows what he’d make of late night TV and the vogue for autopsy close-ups. Ruskin reckoned a good society was interested in life, not death.’
‘Nothing would please me more than for Emma to walk through that door right now and demand to know what all the fuss is about.’
‘Not going to happen, is it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What do you believe went on?’
‘Assuming she’s dead, we have to look at the possibilities of accident or suicide before ruling them out. If the call to the journalist isn’t a hoax and we do find she’s buried under the Arsenic Labyrinth, it’s hard to imagine that she got there by chance.’
‘Sex murder?’
‘Perhaps. But not committed by the obvious suspect.’
‘The late Tom Inchmore?’
‘Yes, some of my colleagues had him in the frame. It would have been quite an end for the Inchmore dynasty, if the last in the line turned out to be a murderer.’
‘If Emma is dead, presumably the anonymous caller is the culprit?’
‘He might be an accomplice. Or someone the murderer confided in. But yes, the chances are, he killed her. What we don’t know is why. Or why he’s decided to break his silence. We can’t link him to the original investigation. If it was a sexually motivated murder, it doesn’t fit the usual pattern. Did she go to the Arsenic Labyrinth of her own free will? And if so, why?’
‘You say the place is off the beaten track,’ Daniel said. ‘Suitable for a secret assignation. A tryst. Perhaps she went to meet someone. Possibly not the person she actually met. Maybe she went looking for love and finished up dead.’
Hannah laughed. ‘You’re incorrigible. A real chip off the old block.’
‘The difference is, my father actually became a detective. All I do is speculate from an armchair.’
‘He’d have been proud of you,’ she said suddenly. ‘I wish you’d met him before he died.’
There was a long pause as they looked at each other across the table. As Daniel opened his mouth to speak, Hannah glanced at her watch.
‘God, I’m late, I’ll have to skedaddle.’
He wanted to protest, even as she rose to her feet, but all he managed to say was, ‘Good to see you again.’
Not looking at him, she said, ‘Don’t leave it so long next time.’