Kathy had worked with Alex on several cases, and had found her rather intimidating at first. Slight in build, with a mop of black hair and unconventional, though stylish, taste in clothes, she exuded self-confidence. Some of the others in the team thought that Brock indulged her, but Kathy had to admit that she’d been pretty accurate in the past.
Kathy led Alex through the house, letting her take her time in each room, and filling her in on what they knew. They finished in the study, where they sat with Brock at Marion’s work table.
‘This house…’ Alex shook her head, looking around. ‘What do we know about it?’
‘Nothing yet. She moved in about three months ago. Forensics think she lived here alone.’
‘Maybe two people shared it before, and she just inherited it like this?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘Because otherwise… well, you pointed it out yourself, Kathy-the front rooms and the back, so different.’ She shrugged and opened a notebook and began jotting. ‘I’m doing a study of poisoners. They have a whole set of profiles to themselves, different from all the rest. This is my first arsenic suicide, in fact my first arsenic poisoner, so I’m really interested. You thought it was murder at first, yes?’
‘Yes. It’s taken us three days to find where she lived. She’d kept it pretty much secret.’
‘So did she intend for you to think she was murdered? But then, why leave that stuff in the kitchen where it would eventually be found? Why not clear it away and leave the mystery open? Did she then want you to have to search for the truth? Make a public spectacle of her death? I mean, if she wanted to take poison, why not just do it quietly at home? Why choose St James’s Square of all places?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then there’s the poison. My God, arsenic! Horrible stuff, a painful, lingering death. You mentioned she was interested in it?’
‘Maybe obsessed by it,’ Kathy said. ‘Her PhD supervisor told me she was making it the focus of her interpretation of the Pre-Raphaelite circle, against his advice. And she had been talking recently to a colleague of his in the science faculty about its basic chemistry.’
‘Her period, the nineteenth century, was the heyday of the arsenic poisoners, wasn’t it? She would have identified, is that what you’re saying?’
‘Something like that. But there’s another possibility. Dr Ringland, the scientist she spoke to, said she was like other arts students-not very good with formulae and numbers. I’m wondering if she was experimenting on herself, trying to experience the symptoms at first hand, without actually wanting to kill herself. But maybe she got the dose wrong.’
‘Mixed up her micrograms and her milligrams, you mean?’ Alex nodded. ‘Possible. Not so interesting, but possible.’
‘If she was experimenting on herself, this may not have been the first time,’ Brock said. ‘Sundeep might be able to find signs of that in her body.’
Alex was staring at the pinboard on the wall. ‘This is interesting. Have you had it photographed?’
‘Yes, the SOCO photographer did that.’
‘You see the symmetry. The man in the middle, Rossetti, has a woman on each side of him. Do we know who they are?’
‘His wife Lizzie Siddal on the left in the pose of Ophelia, and his mistress Jane Morris on the right. Yes, I noticed that.’
Alex nodded. ‘The victim wife and the mistress. Plain Jane and Naughty Nancy? Is that what you were thinking?’
‘What are you getting at, Alex?’ Brock said.
‘Suicide usually happens after a period of intense internal debate, a struggle between opposing instincts. I’m just wondering if this might be a case of Plain Jane being murdered by Naughty Nancy, or the other way around.’
‘Come off it,’ Brock protested. ‘That’s psychology babble.’
Alex gave him a tolerant smile. ‘It’s not impossible. Did you notice that Jane’s bedroom door has a lock on it, on the inside, whereas the other doesn’t? Almost as if Jane were afraid of Nancy, and wanted to keep her out. Marion may have been suffering from DID, dissociative identity disorder, what we used to call multiple personality disorder.’
‘Isn’t that a form of schizophrenia?’ Kathy asked.
‘No, that’s a brain disorder, quite different. DID isn’t brought on by substance abuse, either. It’s still a controversial diagnosis, but I have encountered several very dramatic examples that convinced me, where two or more quite distinct personalities coexisted within the one individual, taking turns to control their behaviour. There have also been cases of what you might call mutual self-harm-one personality trying to hurt another. I don’t recall a case of resulting suicide, but I can look into it. There’s generally accompanying memory loss, dissociative amnesia. Has anyone mentioned instances of Marion blanking out, losing time?’
Kathy shook her head. ‘She does seem to have been very secretive though, hiding all sorts of things from people who were supposed to be close to her.’
‘It’s possible that was a defence mechanism, if she recognised that inexplicable things were happening in her life.’
Alex pointed at the photograph of a third face on the board, a young Victorian woman directly over Rossetti’s image. She stared straight at the camera, her face framed by thick dark hair finished in a braid across the crown of her head. There was no name.
‘She looks determined, doesn’t she?’ Alex said. ‘And familiar. Know who she is?’
Kathy shook her head.
Brock’s phone trilled in his pocket. He spoke into it briefly, checked his watch, then rang off. ‘I’m going to have to get back. Stay as long as you like, Alex. I thought you might find this one intriguing. Perhaps you have got something with your Jane and Nancy theory. Maybe she hated herself for what she’d had to become in order to survive. We might get you to write something for our report to the coroner.’
Alex said she’d get a lift back with him to the West End. As they made to leave she said, ‘If I had more time, I’d love to deconstruct that pinboard and try to work out exactly how she related her own life to it.’
‘Couldn’t it just be her work for her PhD?’ Kathy said, thinking that this was all getting rather fanciful.
‘That too. But you’re free to pick your own PhD subject, aren’t you? Your choice reflects your own preoccupations. You’re exploring yourself as well as your topic, and it can become pretty obsessive. Believe me, I know. Just make sure you’ve got it all recorded, Kathy. Did her computer not tell you anything?’
‘It seems she used the machines in her department. We’re in the process of accessing her email account.’
‘What, there wasn’t a computer of her own here, or at the library where she collapsed?’
‘No.’
‘What about disks, memory sticks?’
‘We haven’t found anything.’
‘Oh, come on! All that gorgeous kitchen equipment and no laptop? This girl was a serious scholar! She’d have at least one computer of her own, and masses of back-up.’
‘Yes,’ Brock said. ‘There are a few loose ends still to tie up.’
Kathy thanked Alex at the front door and returned to Marion’s study. She sat there for a long while, looking at the pinboard, the book titles, going through the drawers once again. She came across a framed photo of Marion, and set it up on the table in front of her, as if she could interrogate the face that gazed calmly back at her through the glass. It was a black and white image, like the Victorian photographs on the wall, as if reflected in an arsenic mirror. She took in the enigmatic smile on the lips; the clear, intelligent gaze of the eyes; the humour creases at their corners; and she asked it softly, How on earth could you do a thing like that?
She lifted a piece of blank paper and placed it in front of the picture, covering one half of Marion’s portrait. The person she saw was open, warm, outgoing. Then she moved the sheet of paper to cover the other side, and now she was confronted by an eye half-closed, reserved, and a half-mouth tight with suspicio
n. She took the paper away and the two halves merged into a single image, ambiguous now and more difficult to read. It was a simple trick, which worked for anyone’s face. You didn’t need to have DID to contain two personalities-everyone did. Two contradictory propositions-which was the real one? The answer, of course, was both.
Kathy sighed and dropped the photo in her bag and pulled out her phone. She rang Nicole’s number and explained the situation.
‘I knew it,’ Nicole said. ‘I told you so, didn’t I?’
‘I suppose you cancelled my flight?’
‘Of course not. Meet me after work tonight and we’ll get ourselves organised.’
•
They met in a bar in Victoria near both their offices, a place so crowded that they had to stand jammed together at the front window, shouting questions and answers at each other over the roar of conversation. At one point a young man in a dark suit bumped Nicole’s arm, sending her sheaf of Prague and easyJet brochures flying across the floor, and they had to scrabble to gather them up. ‘I told you we needed to get out of London,’ Nicole yelled. ‘Did I mention the very attractive Czech that Rusty’s got lined up for you?’ eleven
P erhaps it was a mistake to take the M25, Kathy thought, as they crept towards the third clogged junction in a row on the orbital motorway the next morning. She checked her watch again, calculating their narrowing margin of time. Nicole caught the gesture and said calmly, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll make it.’
By the time they finally arrived at Gatwick, dropped the car in the long-term car park and sprinted to departures, Nicole had lost her cool.
‘Oh damn!’ They saw the huge queues at the easyJet counters.
A young man standing at the back of the queue turned to them. ‘Where’re you off to?’
‘Prague,’ Nicole panted.
‘Me too. Come on.’ He took hold of Nicole’s arm and led them to the front of the queue, pushing in as a couple moved away from the check-in desk. He had a brisk conversation with the man, who nodded, asked for identification, and bundled them through.
‘Brilliant!’ Nicole shook his hand as they cleared security and headed to the gate.
He gave her a warm smile. ‘Practice.’ He turned to Kathy. ‘Maybe I’ll see you in Prague.’ He waved and walked away.
‘He’s gorgeous, and he likes you,’ Nicole said. ‘Did you see the way he looked at you?’
Kathy laughed. ‘I thought you’d fixed me up with a Czech.’ But her eyes strayed after the young man.
A couple of hours later, Kathy found herself, with a slight sense of unreality, walking briskly along the bank of the Vltava River, sparkling sunlight reflecting off freshly painted and restored buildings, Nicole chatting at her side. They paused at the Jirasek Bridge to take in Frank Gehry’s extraordinary Ginger and Fred building, its forms dancing around the corner to point the way into the New Town area of Prague, the Nove M sto. They headed that way, in towards Charles Square, following the directions to the cafe where Rusty was to meet them.
He was already there, sitting alone at a table. They exchanged hugs and sat down, Nicole chattering to her brother about arrangements for the weekend. Despite the novelty and interest of the city, and the crispness of the spring morning, Kathy was finding it hard to get Marion Summers out of her head. What else should she have done? What signs had she misinterpreted? Then Nicole gave a cry of delight and pointed across the street at a figure with a camera, and Kathy realised it was the man who’d rescued them at Gatwick.
Nicole said, ‘Go on, ask him over. He fancies you.’
‘No, I’m not interested.’
‘Well it’s time you were. I’ll ask him then.’ Nicole jumped to her feet and ran across the street. Kathy watched the look of incomprehension change to a smile as he realised who she was, then he gave a shrug and followed her.
‘Hello again.’ He grinned at Kathy. ‘I guess tourists all go to the same places.’ He spoke with the slightly amused, calm voice she remembered from the airport.
‘Sit down!’ Nicole commanded. ‘We’re going to buy you a drink for saving us.’
Despite her embarrassment at Nicole’s overemphatic welcome, Kathy thought he did seem quite pleasant. He had a certain poise. Rusty pulled a chair over from another table and they made introductions. His name was Guy Hamilton, and he was alone, driven by a sudden impulse to get out of London for the weekend.
‘Well, you must come and see Rusty’s show tonight,’ Nicole insisted, giving Kathy a nudge under the table.
•
In London, Brock sat at his desk, nursing a cup of strong coffee. His office window was cracked half open, allowing a breath of cool spring air into the room, and with it the muffled thump and bray of a military band, out on The Mall, perhaps, or Horse Guards Parade. He had intended to concentrate on the office paperwork that had backed up during the week, approving timesheets, the Action Manager’s estimate of resources needed, costs, but instead he had the Summers file open in front of him, reading through Kathy’s reports. Despite his revulsion at the girl’s public suicide, he found himself drawn back to her, wanting to understand.
The phone at his elbow rang; the duty officer. ‘Got a woman on the line, sir, says she’s got information about Marion Summers. Very insistent on speaking to the senior officer on the case. Says her name is Sophie Warrender. Sounds posh.’ He sounded sceptical, understandably, after so many hoax calls and nutters. ‘Shall I put her through to the hotline?’
‘No,’ Brock said. Warrender. The name had been in the file somewhere. ‘I’ll take it, thanks.’ A click, then he went on, ‘Good morning, this is Detective Chief Inspector Brock. Can I help you?’
‘Yes, I hope so. My name is Sophie Warrender. I know Marion Summers, the victim in that terrible poisoning case. I’m sure it must be the same person-twenty-six, a PhD student at London University?’
‘That’s her. How are you connected, Mrs Warrender?’
‘She’s been doing work for me, research for my next book. I’m an author, you see.’ That rang a bell. ‘We’ve been out of the country, just flew back last night, and I hadn’t heard. I thought I should speak to you.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Notting Hill, Lansdowne Gardens.’
‘Ah yes.’ Brock was scanning the list of Marion’s telephone contact numbers. ‘Can I have your phone number, please?’
She gave him a couple of numbers, which matched those on the list.
‘And you have some information for us?’
‘Well, I’m not altogether sure, but yes, I think I should speak to you. Do you want me to come to see you?’
‘Did Marion visit your house in Notting Hill?’
‘Yes, this is where I have my office. She was here quite often.’
‘Then I think I’d like to come to you.’
He rang off and called for a car. As he prepared to leave, his mobile rang, Suzanne on the other end. He felt a familiar warmth as he heard her voice.
‘Are we still on for tonight?’
He patted his wallet with the tickets for the National Theatre. ‘Of course. Is Ginny lined up to look after the kids?’
‘Yes, she’ll stay at my place for the weekend.’
‘Good. Where do you want to meet?’
‘At the Long Bar? Can we eat afterwards?’
‘Certainly. Tell me, I’ve just had someone on the phone. Her name sounded familiar, but I wasn’t sure. An author. I wondered if you’d heard of her-Sophie Warrender?’
‘I certainly have heard of her. I gave you her last book at Christmas. Don’t you remember?’
‘Ah, yes, of course. The one with the odd title.’
‘ How Pleasant to Know Mr Lear. I thought you told me you read it?’
‘Er, most of it. I ran out of time in the end, but it was interesting. She writes biographies, then?’
‘That’s right, great Victorians usually. She’s highly regarded. Are you going to speak to her again?’
‘Yes, I
’m on my way to her house now.’
‘In Notting Hill?’
‘How the hell did you know that?’
She laughed. ‘Maybe you should appoint me as a consultant, David. I wish I were going with you. I want you to tell me all about it tonight, especially about the house.’
•
He turned into Lansdowne Gardens: old-fashioned lantern streetlights, Jaguars and BMWs in the parking bays, mature trees budding into life. The houses, two and three storeys, were late Georgian or early Victorian, Brock judged, with classical porches at the front doors, pale cream stuccoed ground-floor walls and yellow London brick above, with cornices and pediments over the windows. They stood shoulder to shoulder addressing the streets, while behind, he could see in passing glimpses, the backs opened onto shared gardens like long thin private parks lying between the rows of houses.
The Warrenders’ house was at a corner with a cross street, and the picturesque tendency that had been apparent in its neighbours, but hidden beneath their classical symmetry, was here given freer rein. Arched attic windows peered over the parapets between the tall chimneys, and a conservatory-like room with a flamboyant double-curved ogee lead roof was attached to the side, surmounted by a small Italianate tower.
A truck and skip stood outside, laden with builders’ debris, and Brock had to wait at the balustered front wall while men in white overalls came out of the house carrying drop sheets and pots of paint. When they’d passed, he went to the portico and pressed a brass bell-push.
A middle-aged woman came to the door. Brock’s first impression was of bright, intelligent eyes scrutinising him over the top of slender glasses, and auburn hair pulled back. She had a full, attractive mouth with which she formed a careful smile when he said who he was.
‘And I’m Sophie Warrender. Do please come in.’ She led him through the hallway, the smell of fresh paint very strong, and down a short corridor towards the conservatory room that Brock had noticed from the street. It had tall windows on three sides to the garden, the walls in between lined with bookshelves. In one corner a woman was typing at a computer on a large, book-covered desk; in another, a few seats were arranged around a coffee table as for a meeting; in the third stood another writing station, and in the fourth a spiral stair led up into the tower.
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