The Arsenic Labyrinth (15 page)

‘I’m sorry, no. Why do you ask, I wonder?’

‘I heard on the news about those bodies up by the Arsenic Labyrinth. Driving here, there seems to be a police vehicle on every street corner.’

‘It’s very sad.’

She fingered the birthmark on her face. There were dark lines under her eyes and he guessed she hadn’t slept. According to Hannah, she had been close to Emma, and part of him shied away from adding to her misery. But curiosity held him captive.

‘I read about that woman who went missing ten years ago.’ He’d combed through the old cuttings as well as recent stuff by Tony Di Venuto. ‘Perhaps she’s one of the victims.’

‘I expect we’ll know soon enough.’

‘Poor woman,’ he persisted. ‘How dreadful, to die like that.’

Her face tightened, as if tempted to scold him for gossiping out of turn. But he was Daniel Kind, the historian, he’d been on TV, for God’s sake. For once it was a blessing to be nearly famous. She had to be polite.

‘As it happens, Emma Bestwick was a good friend of mine.’ Vanessa coughed. ‘She was a lovely woman. If – if one of the bodies is hers, then it’s an utter tragedy.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ He felt a pang of genuine remorse. Had his father felt like this, intruding into private grief? Did Hannah?

She took a breath, straightened her shoulders. ‘The only consolation is that she lives on, with us. Those of us who knew her, that is. Now, can I help with anything else?’

He couldn’t let go just yet. ‘Are you familiar with the Arsenic Labyrinth?’

‘I’ve never walked up that far beyond Coppermines Valley. People say there’s not much to see. Just a few lumps of stone dotted around a cold and windswept nook in the fells.’

‘I can’t believe Ruskin approved of a poison factory in his beloved Lakeland.’

‘He once gave a lecture about the fells in Kendal, but I never heard of him writing about the arsenic works. You ought to speak to Alban Clough, he owns the Museum of Myth and Legend down the road.’

‘Thanks, I’ll call there on my way home.’ He paused. ‘I’ve also arranged to meet up with the chairman of the Grizedale and Satterthwaite tomorrow, see if he or his colleagues can cast any light. He sounds very knowledgable, perhaps you know him? His name is Jeremy …’

‘Erskine,’ she said quickly. ‘As a matter of fact, I used to know Jeremy rather well. Though not as well as I thought I did. He was my first husband.’

Daniel felt his cheeks burning. Hannah had forgotten to mention this. ‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’

‘No problem, it was a long time ago. Jeremy went his way, I went mine. It wasn’t easy for a while, but in the end things worked out wonderfully well for me.’ She gestured towards the photographs. ‘It’s a long time since I last saw him. Time to bury the hatchet – and I don’t mean between his shoulder blades. Will you pass on my regards?’

He nodded. ‘Jeremy isn’t an expert in Ruskin by any chance?’

Vanessa fiddled with the publishers’ catalogues on her desk. ‘Not to my knowledge, but that shouldn’t stop him sharing his opinions with you. Jeremy believes he’s an expert in everything.’

‘So we have two bodies in the shafts below the labyrinth and both of them were buried there at different times –
decades
apart?’ Hannah said.

Grenville Jepson fiddled with his bright yellow
bow-tie
, a habit that irritated Hannah like a flea bite. The
bow-tie
was a fashion crime; she couldn’t believe that anyone would wish to draw attention to the thing.

‘No doubt about it, Detective Chief Inspector. No doubt about it whatsoever.’

He was a tiny man with a voice oddly high-pitched, verging on a squeak. This too got on her nerves. But Grenville was as capable as any forensic pathologist she’d ever met. He was never afraid to express a definite opinion, yet he didn’t shoot from the hip. Once he formed a conclusion, it took cross-examination worthy of Marshall Hall to shake it.

Les Bryant slurped loudly from a cup of water. ‘Could either of them have finished up there by accident? I mean, people are so bloody careless, aren’t they? If you’re wandering around an area riddled with mineshafts and you don’t look where you’re going, next thing you know, you’re arse over tip and …’

He made a throat-slitting gesture. Grenville turned his pointed nose up in distaste. The pathologist spent his working life in the company of the dead and decaying, but he prided himself on his refinement. He’d been known to hum Vivaldi while conducting a post-mortem.

‘With regard to the older corpse, I would say it is out of the question. As to the younger body, it seems highly
improbable. The likelihood is that she was forced down the shaft, when either dead or unconscious, breaking an arm and a leg on her way to her resting place.’

‘And no doubt that the more recent deceased was Emma Bestwick?’ Hannah asked.

Grenville sat back in his chair, swinging his little legs back and forth. He took a packet of Polo mints out of his pocket and popped one in his mouth, as if to aid deliberation. It didn’t occur to him to offer them round.

‘Of course, we need to do further work on identification for the coroner’s benefit. There are no signs of surgical procedures, so we will have to fall back on dental records or DNA evidence. There is a sister, you said? Have the liaison officer take a swab from her. But off the record, this is not so much a working hypothesis, more a racing certainty. Everything fits. The clothing, the size of the bones.’

Hannah picked up a red marker pen and scribbled a couple of notes on the whiteboard. ‘How much older is the other corpse?’

‘If I were a betting man, I’d say by half a century, give or take. The contrast is stark. Virtually no clothing left, just a few skeletal remains and a tiny amount of skin around the finger ends. We have odds and ends yielding a few scraps of DNA, so identification may be possible one of these fine days. Already I can say with some confidence that the bones belong to a male rather than a female. The murder weapon is sure to be
the knife found lying a couple of yards away from the corpse.’

‘Two murders fifty years apart, with both victims stuffed down neighbouring mineshafts?’ Maggie Eyre asked. ‘Beggars belief, doesn’t it?’

‘Frankly, I don’t agree. To my mind, it’s not at all surprising.’ Grenville crunched his mint noisily, disappointed by the DC’s naiveté. ‘As you know, most murderers are lamentably lacking in originality and imagination. If one killer stumbles across an ideal location for the disposal of a body, hidden away in a remote corner of the fells, it is entirely within the bounds of possibility that years later, a second murderer might come up with the same bright idea.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Forgive me, DC Eyre, but this is more than mere supposition. Sixty years ago, the fells were lonely. Not like today, when they seem as crowded as Blackpool beach. One may speculate that the knife was taken to the scene with the express intention of killing the first victim. Regrettably, one presumes that even if we can pick up any identifying material from the knife or the soil surrounding the site where the body was dumped, the culprit is now safely interred in his grave as well.’

‘We ought to be glad,’ Hannah said. ‘Two crimes to clear up rather than one is a pain in the backside, but at least we don’t have to worry that we might have a serial killer prowling the Coniston fells.’

‘Unless …’ Grenville’s hand strayed to his bow-tie
again, setting Hannah’s teeth on edge. ‘There is always the distant possibility that the first crime was committed by someone in his teens. He might have kept his secret safe for a long time. But what if your Ms Bestwick stumbled across it? There would be a temptation to repeat the success of the earlier crime. But this would require a suspect with the ability and the will to commit murder in, say, his sixties. Unlikely in the extreme, one hopes.’

‘Unlikely, yes.’ Hannah considered. ‘But not impossible.’

‘In my younger days, I read a little Ruskin.’ Alban Clough waved towards the calfskin-bound tomes surrounding them; a regal gesture, suggestive of a monarch acknowledging his subjects. ‘I suspect I am the only Clough who so much as glanced beyond the titles of works such as
Fors Clavigera
, let alone ploughed through the damn things. Nowadays, I lack the patience. You will only catch me returning to Ruskin if in search of a cure for insomnia.’

He and Daniel were in his private library at Inchmore Hall, ensconced in hard leather armchairs opposite a mahogany desk and chair. Glass cases, crammed with enough first editions to make Marc Amos’s tongue hang out, lined all four walls, leaving precious little space for the door and a small mullioned window looking out on to the frosty fells.

‘Even though Ruskin shared your love of myth?’

‘The
dark sayings of nature
, as he called them. But his tastes were classical compared with mine. My own love of ancient lore derives from nothing more sophisticated than a schoolboy’s wide-eyed fascination. I confess to a continuing
frisson
at the mere mention of Sunkenkirk Circle or the Fiend’s Fell.’

Daniel stretched in his chair and looked around. ‘This is an amazing place.’

Despite the stale air, for all the dust and the cobwebs, the idiosyncracies of Inchmore Hall had caught his fancy. To step over the threshold was like entering a time warp. A world of drowned churches and haunted mines, of sea ghosts and giants’ graves. Easy to forget that within walking distance was a modern murder scene, marked off with tape and crowded with men and women in white overalls, intent on discovering the names of the dead and how and why they had been killed.

‘Thank you, Mr Kind. In the company of an academic historian such as yourself – even a telly academic, if you will forgive me – I claim to be no more than a humble dabbler. A dilettante.’

Daniel offered a smile, but no flattery. Alban Clough’s ego was healthy enough without it. He wasn’t a historian, but a teller of tales. Lack of evidence didn’t worry him. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

‘I have little patience with the way Ruskin spent so long pondering the Symbolical Grotesque. But on one issue we would have agreed. I mentioned it last year to another
visitor researching Ruskin’s Coniston connections. Let me see if I can recall the reference.’

He opened the cabinet and pulled out a book, blinking at the puff of dust as he opened the cover, murmuring to himself as he leafed through the brittle pages.

‘Ah yes, I have it.’ He cleared his throat. ‘
Whenever you begin to seek the real authority for legends, you will generally find that the ugly ones have good foundation, and the beautiful ones none. Be prepared for this; and remember that a lovely legend is all the more precious when it has no foundation
.’

‘Did the curse of the Mispickel Scar have good foundation?’

‘Our little drama has clearly captivated you.’ Alban bared his teeth in a fearsome smile. ‘The scream of sirens and flashing blue lights almost persuaded me that I had been transported from Coniston to Chicago.’

Daniel rubbed his hands together, for warmth rather than because he shared the old man’s amusement. Thank God he’d kept on his outer jacket.

‘It isn’t every day that two bodies turn up, buried under a strange old site in the fells.’

‘How true. One’s first assumption is a tragic accident, sadly not uncommon in rocky terrain. Yet village whispers suggest the police are treating their finds as a double murder case. My goodness, if that is so, Coniston will not have seen such excitement since Donald Campbell met his tragic end.’

‘And Mispickel Scar?’ Daniel persisted.

‘Merely to visit Mispickel Scar is supposed to bring bad luck cascading down like Aira Force.’ Alban Clough spread his arms. ‘As for the origins of the jinx, they are lost in the mists of Lakeland. I doubt whether Collingwood mentions it, let alone Ruskin. Because of its obscurity, we give the story no more than passing mention in our displays, but I am sure it dates back long before George Inchmore’s arsenic business failed. It may reflect a yet more ancient fear.’

‘Of arsenic itself?’

‘Indeed. Arsenic is an extraordinary poison, attracting fear and fascination in equal measure for centuries. As you may know, the peasants of Styria had great faith in its aphrodisiac properties. So did James Maybrick, murder victim and one of the horde suspected of being Jack the Ripper. In Cumberland, the natives were wary of the stuff. Its dangers were common knowledge. No wonder our forebears said the Scar was cursed, before even a roof collapse brought copper mining there to an end. It explains why George found trouble recruiting decent staff for his enterprise, though in part it was due to his unpopularity.’

‘Why didn’t people take to him?’

‘He was spoiled and selfish and a sore disappointment to his father. Neither he nor his descendants were men of character. All were weak-willed and selfish to their bones.’

His voice burned with contempt. Daniel was puzzled. Why so scathing? After all, the Cloughs had profited from the Inchmores’ decline and fall.

‘I noticed those family trees near the front door.’

‘My crude attempt to capture the genealogy of the Inchmores and the Cloughs, indeed.’ Alban strode to the desk and rummaged in a drawer, extracting two sheets of paper. ‘Take these copies with my compliments. I recall you have written about Victorian dynasties founded by entrepreneurs with half an eye on immortality?’

Daniel nodded. The family trees had been produced on an old-fashioned typewriter with several letters out of alignment. The museum literature, like the rest of the place, was past its sell-by date. He glanced at the Inchmore names and recalled Hannah mentioning that the youngest had been questioned after Emma Bestwick’s disappearance.

‘So the Inchmore line died out with Tom?’

‘Outlived by his grandmother, he failed to marry and had no children. A stupid young fellow – I have no qualms about speaking ill of the dead – but he had one thing in common with my daughter. She too is the last of her line. The Cloughs will be no more when she finally goes to meet her maker.’

The door swung open and Alexandra came in, carrying a tea tray. Her exaggerated blandness of manner made Daniel wonder if she had been listening outside.

‘Sorry it took a while.’ She set the tray down on the table.

Her father smirked. ‘We were discussing your eventual demise, my dear.’

Alex Clough gave Daniel a sidelong look as she
poured. ‘You must forgive my father. His sense of humour is positively Mephistophelian.’

There was an odd note of pride in her voice. She might have been a mother, trying to be self-deprecating about the funny little ways of a favourite child.

‘I have disappointed Mr Kind,’ the old man confessed. ‘I cannot offer any juicy titbits concerning Ruskin’s relations with the Inchmores or my grandfather. But at least we have indulged ourselves in topical gossip about – ahem, the Arsenic Labyrinth.’

Alex frowned. ‘That’s a dreadful business.’

The old man gave a throaty laugh. ‘You must wonder why my daughter sounds so dismayed, Mr Kind. As it happens, the Coniston rumour mill indicates that one of the bodies belongs to a young woman who once worked in this very building.’

‘Good Lord,’ Daniel attempted an Oscar-winning look of amazement. ‘The woman who vanished? I read about her in the papers.’

Alex nodded. ‘Emma Bestwick.’

‘She and my daughter were very good friends,’ Alban said.

Daniel made sympathetic noises, but Alex waved them away with a flip of her small white hand.

‘It was – a long time ago.’

She was exquisitely made up, but the redness around her eyes made Daniel guess she had been crying. Distressed because Emma was dead – or because the body had been found? A phrase jumped into his head.
Suspect everyone.
The cliché his father amused himself by repeating, whenever young Daniel quizzed him on what a murder detective did.

‘And the second body? Someone Emma knew?’

Alban Clough rubbed his sparse stubble. He was struggling to suppress a smile, as if relishing a private joke. ‘There was never talk of anyone else disappearing from the village at the same time as Emma.’

‘We thought she’d gone of her own free will,’ Alex said. ‘She’d done it before, just upped and left the area.’

‘So who is the second person?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Erskine,’ Hannah said.

She and Maggie were back in the Erskines’ cosy conservatory. The children had been banished to watch TV in their bedrooms. Jeremy and Karen were squashed together on the sofa, his arm was wrapped tightly around her shoulder. Hannah wasn’t sure whether he was comforting her or making sure he kept her under his control.

‘How sure are you?’ Karen asked.

‘We will be asking you to come down and see if you can identify replicas of certain items of clothing discovered on the body. We will also want to compare your DNA with that of the deceased by taking a mouth swab. A straightforward matter of collecting skin cells from the lining of your mouth to obtain a profile.’

Karen flinched and Maggie gave a sympathetic smile.
Early on in her career, Maggie had spent six months as a family liaison officer, and since the DC in Thornicroft’s team who had acted as FLO to the Erskines had left the force years ago, Maggie was an ideal successor to the role. It suited her down to the ground, now that her fiancé had taken up a new job and bought a house in Torver. Her brief was to keep an eye on the couple while investigations continued, see if anything emerged to link either of them to the crime. Right now she could play the good cop while her boss asked the difficult questions.

‘It’s not painful, honestly.’ When Karen snorted in disbelief, Maggie added, ‘Mild discomfort at worst, I promise. DCI Scarlett and I have both given samples, it’s routine for police officers’ DNA to be recorded for elimination purposes at crime scenes.’

‘How sure are you that Emma is dead?’

Hannah said, ‘It’s our working assumption. I can’t tell you any more.’

Karen exhaled. ‘Well, well, well.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Hannah repeated.

‘I don’t know what to say, Chief Inspector. Even after all this time, even after I’d come to the conclusion that she must be dead – it’s still devastating, to have the truth confirmed.’

Grief did strange things to people. But there wasn’t the faintest tremor in Karen’s voice, and upper lips seldom came stiffer. If she was telling the truth, she was coping with her devastation with bravery verging on the heroic.

‘Was it an accident?’ Jeremy asked. ‘These things do
happen, people go up into the hills unprepared for bad weather and next thing you know they’ve plunged down a ravine. Emma wasn’t an experienced fell-walker, who knows what misfortune may have befallen her?’

‘We don’t think it was an accident, Mr Erskine.’

He wore a faraway look, as if solving a sudoku in his head. ‘This other body. Could it be someone whom Emma knew?’

‘Unlikely.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss that. But we have no reason to believe the two deaths are connected.’

‘Coincidence?’ A bitten-off laugh. ‘Forgive me, Chief Inspector, but that seems pretty hard to swallow.’

‘We’ll see what the coroner is prepared to swallow in due course,’ Hannah murmured. ‘In the meantime, we are bound to treat Emma’s death as suspicious.’

‘Oh no,’ Karen said. ‘Seriously?’

‘It’s hard to see how she can have finished up at the bottom of that shaft unaided.’

‘Dear God!’ Jeremy said. ‘As if we haven’t had enough to contend with over this whole wretched business.’

Emma’s face loomed in Hannah’s mind. The pale skin, the slightly parted lips. A woman looking for answers. Whatever she’d been searching for, she hadn’t found it beneath the Arsenic Labyrinth. Poor, dead Emma. To Jeremy and Karen, she was little more than a source of continuing irritation.

‘May I ask you both a few questions?’

‘What on earth for?’ Karen demanded. ‘I mean, this isn’t a good time.’

‘If you don’t feel up to it, we can talk to each of you tomorrow morning.’

‘Listen, I hope this isn’t all down to the police wanting to tick a few boxes, to cover their own backs. We’re ordinary, decent people, trying to get on with our lives and being subjected to a Spanish Inquisition doesn’t help.’

Jeremy patted Karen’s white hand. She might have been a five-year-old who’d woken from dreaming of the Bogeyman. ‘Please, Chief Inspector. You can see how distressed my wife is at the loss of her sister.’

Hannah assumed a sorrowful expression and said, ‘I imagined you might prefer to discuss the situation here and now. We wanted to be helpful, we thought you might not want us to call at your school. But of course if you prefer …’

Jeremy extricated himself from Karen and got to his feet. ‘There’s absolutely no need for you to come anywhere near the College.’

‘Why on earth do you need to speak to my husband, anyway?’ Karen snapped. ‘We’ve given every cooperation to the police from day one. Jeremy hardly knew Emma. We’re decent, law-abiding folk, what more can we say? Do you realise how damaging it can be to a potential head’s career prospects, to have the police turning up at his place of work? Parents don’t shell out handsome fees for that sort of thing, you know.’

‘This is a murder inquiry,’ Hannah said. ‘And Mr
Erskine was one of the last people known to have seen the victim alive.’

‘What are you suggesting?’ Jeremy’s voice rose. ‘I was suffering pain and in need of treatment. The woman was my sister-in-law. Everything was open and above board.’

Maggie said, ‘Can you remember anything that might help us to understand what happened to Emma? Something she said, did she seem excited or afraid …?’

He pursed his lips. ‘I was more interested in what she could do for my back.’

‘Surely there was something?’

Jeremy pondered. ‘I suppose she was more animated than usual.’

‘Yes?’ A dogged smile, meant to coax a fatal indiscretion. ‘Go on.’