The Arsenic Labyrinth

by Martin Edwards

  ‘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.’

  ‘She never had much conversation. We weren’t on the same wavelength. But she asked after Karen and Sophie, made an effort to be pleasant. I had some good news for her. A few days earlier, our doctor had told Karen she was expecting another baby and I thought her sister deserved to know. Emma seemed genuinely thrilled for us, not in the least miserable or depressed. Besides, it must have occurred to her that a self-employed businesswoman needs to keep on the right side of her clients. She’d ploughed her money into the business, she had to work to make a success of it.’

  ‘The money, yes. I keep wondering where it really came from. You didn’t help her out with a loan, by any chance?’

  ‘Good God, no.’ Jeremy was startled at being suspected of casual generosity. ‘Why on earth should we?’

  ‘She was family.’ Families meant a lot to Maggie.

  ‘We had our own family to look after. At the time we were hoping for a second child. Emma was footloose and fancy free. Why should we subsidise her lifestyle?’

  ‘She hadn’t been well.’

  Jeremy made a scoffing noise. ‘I’m not accusing her of malingering …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘This stress she’d suffered from. What caused it? She can’t have been over-worked at Inchmore Hall. It’s not exactly Dove Cottage, the tourists don’t come flocking.’

  Karen turned to Hannah. ‘Where’s this leading, Chief Inspector? Surely it must be obvious that we can’t help you. Don’t forget, Emma isn’t the only victim here. We have our own lives to lead. And we have Jeremy’s reputation, his whole future, to think of. We really don’t want to get involved in a murder case.’

  ‘Your sister is dead, Mrs Erskine. You can’t help but be involved.’

  ‘That bloody journalist!’ Jeremy said. ‘If it hadn’t been for him …’

  ‘You still wouldn’t know your sister-in-law’s fate,’ Hannah interrupted. ‘Perhaps you owe Mr Di Venuto.’

  ‘Owe him?’ Karen’s face was red, her voice burning with contempt. ‘That preening, arrogant bastard? All he wants to do is to cause trouble.’

  Hannah said softly, ‘What makes you say he’s preening and arrogant?’

  Karen stared at her, then at her husband. In the silence, the only sound was the ticking of a black pyramid clock on the radiator shelf.

  ‘Well … it’s obvious, isn’t it? Jeremy summed him up in a single conversation.’

  Out of the corner of her eye, Hannah noticed Jeremy’s brow furrowing. ‘You haven’t spoken to Mr Di Venuto yourself?’

  Karen hesitated. ‘No … no, I haven’t.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Jeremy told him I wouldn’t want to discuss my sister with the Press.’

  Time to take a punt. What is there to lose? ‘It’s just that … I have the impression there’s something personal between Di Venuto and your husband.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Jeremy said. ‘I’ve never even met the fellow. We spoke over the telephone, not face to face. He’s a local hack who’s grown too big for his boots, that’s the top and bottom of it.’

  ‘Is it?’ Hannah asked.

  Silence.

  A clock in the living room chimed the hour, loud as the tolling of a funeral bell. Karen’s mouth was clamped shut. Her eyes were glued to her husband, as if imploring him for guidance. But he avoided her gaze.

  ‘You’re bound to find out, aren’t you?’ Karen asked. ‘Sooner or later?’

  Hannah nodded, suppressing the urge to shout: Find out what? Get on with it!

  ‘Years ago,’ Karen said slowly, ‘Tony Di Venuto and I were … close.’

  Hannah wished she had a camera. A snap of Jeremy’s slack-jawed features would have won a prize. Talk about gobsmacked. Obviously he’d had no idea. He made a small, indeterminate mewling noise. It was kinder to pretend not to have heard.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Karen said. ‘I should have mentioned it before.’

  Maggie looked as though she were about to choke. Hannah could read her mind. Is this woman for real? How can you not mention something like that?

  ‘I was determined to scrub him out of my life, like a nasty stain on a favourite blouse. And I thought I’d succeeded. I had the shock of my life when he turned up here again.’

  ‘What happened, Mrs Erskine?’

  Karen took a breath. ‘I met him in a nightclub when we were both twenty-one. He had those Italian good looks and I always adored the Scottish accent. He’d grown up in Glasgow, but come south of the border to train as a journalist. He had the gift of the gab. To listen to him, you’d have thought he was sure to finish up as a special correspondent on the nine o’clock news. You could say I was swept off my feet. Nothing was too good for me. He spent a fortune on presents, treated me like a queen. Of course, I was flattered. This drop-dead gorgeous man, who couldn’t get enough of me.’

  Jeremy’s gaze was locked upon her. For the first time, Hannah found it in her heart to feel sorry for the man. He’d actually believed he was the only man Karen had ever loved.

  ‘But?’

  ‘But it wasn’t a healthy relationship. He didn’t understand I needed to be my own person. I never met any man so selfish. He expected unquestioning devotion. Obedience. Worship, even. Whenever he didn’t get his own way, he had a wicked temper.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘One night we had an argument. He smacked my face, left a horrid mark. I couldn’t go out of the house for forty-eight hours, I was so ashamed. Afterwards, he was mortified, swore it was a one-off. A fortnight later, it happened again. That was it. I told him we were finished. He wept and begged me to change my mind. But I stood firm.’ She swallowed. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling as the memories flooded back. ‘For a while he stalked me. You know the sort of thing. Silent phone calls, parking his car outside my flat for hours on end. Keeping watch on me. It was a nightmare. And then – hey presto! – he disappeared from my life.’

  Jeremy reached for her. An instinctive gesture of shocked compassion. ‘I had no idea.’

  She didn’t take his hand. ‘When you and I met, I was determined not to let the past spoil things. By the time we were married and Sophie was born, I’d almost forgotten Tony. But then he came back.’

  ‘When was this?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘A week or two before Emma disappeared. One night when Jeremy was out at a parents’ evening, I heard a knock on the door. When I saw Tony, I almost fainted. He wanted to come in, but I refused. It turned out the reason he’d vanished from my life was that he’d found some other woman. But they’d split up. He said he couldn’t get me out of his head, but the soft soap didn’t work any more. I slammed the door in his face.’

  ‘And how did he take that?’

  ‘He stayed in his car outside the house until Jeremy came home. I was shivery, my teeth were chattering, I was so wound up. I pretended I was going down with flu. The next day Tony rang while I was alone with the baby. He said I’d never escape from him. There was a bond between us, we would always be bound together. He sounded creepy. I was terrified.’

  Jeremy muttered, ‘I remember, you weren’t yourself. You were coping with a small child, and you were pregnant. And I put it down to hormones …’

  ‘I told Tony I was expecting another baby. Hoping it would put him off. I don’t think he was ever into fatherhood. After that, I didn’t hear from him again. A few days later, Emma went missing and there was all that kerfuffle. Being questioned
by the police. Stuff in the newspapers. I’ve never spoken to him since.’

  ‘So telling him you were pregnant worked?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Hannah studied Karen’s chilly expression. ‘Or do you think there was some other reason why he went quiet?’

  Karen exhaled. ‘This seems a stupid thing to say.’

  Jeremy said, ‘What is it, darling?’

  She turned to him. ‘You know, there were days when I wondered whether Tony had something to do with Emma’s disappearance. Whether he’d harmed her to get back at me.’

  Despite the cold of the afternoon, Guy felt clammy in his fleece. As he turned out of Campbell Road, his walk had lost its swagger. His stomach was churning and he’d needed to empty his bladder twice in the last twenty minutes. He hadn’t felt so nervous since that unfortunate incident with the customs officer at Heathrow, how many years back? He wasn’t afraid of breaking a promise – he had plenty of experience of that. But this was different. He was going to make a call that would change his life.

  He’d rehearsed his lines, knowing the importance of striking the right note. How mortifying to be considered greedy, let alone threatening. He wanted the conversation to be pleasant and painless; this was a request for help, nothing more.

  Well, not much more. He’d sworn never to return to the Lakes, but that was the sort of promise you couldn’t keep forever. This was his native heath, he’d done remarkably well to stay away for ten years. Was it Fate that had lured him back? He didn’t really believe there was a God, but sometimes it was hard not to believe there was some mysterious design to life. If he’d booked into a plusher hotel, he might not have seen Di Venuto’s article and none of this would have happened. But he was pleased that it had. Emma would have a decent burial now and her sister could get on with the rest of her life. He’d brought happiness to Sarah and he’d saved her from her gambling habit. Now he deserved something for himself.

  The bottom line was that he needed money and he needed it fast. He couldn’t live on fresh air. He didn’t mean to make a habit of issuing demands, he wasn’t unreasonable, far less a parasite. With more luck in the past, he would be swanning around on the Continent now, not scuttling around the chilly streets of Coniston.