The Arsenic Labyrinth (11 page)

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.’

‘Why?’

‘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.