anyone living in the real world? Sounds to me like the ultimate academic put-down.’
‘You know Dr da Silva’s close friend at the university, Dr Colin Ringland, don’t you?’
Warrender looked up sharply. ‘How do you know that?’
‘You’re mentioned on the website of his research unit.’
‘Oh, the consultative committee. Yes, I do know him, although he has no idea that I was involved with Marion. But you’re thinking, “Dr Ringland equals arsenic”, yes? Well believe me, I’ve been nowhere near his laboratory during the time I’ve known Marion. My connection with Colin Ringland goes back four or five years, and arose out of my father’s will.’
‘I think you’d better explain that.’
‘My father was with the diplomatic service for many years, mostly in the Indian sub-continent. I was born out there, and we all had a tremendous affection for the place. We returned to the UK in the sixties, and then my father took a post with UNICEF in New York, where he particularly focused on their programs in Bengal and Bangladesh, which he knew well. One of his most ambitious projects was to bring clean drinking water to that area, because illness and death from contaminated water were widespread. He initiated the tubewell program, to tap clean aquifers deep below the surface. UNICEF financed the sinking of almost a million such wells, and the immediate health improvements were dramatic. Unfortunately, no one had any idea that the deep water was contaminated with naturally occurring arsenic. It took many years for its insidious effects to become apparent, and when the scale of the problem began to be realised there was some panic, scapegoats were sought. This was long after my father had retired, but a group of activists identified him as the main culprit and attempted to bring a case against him in the American courts. Things got out of hand. He was actually accused of being a murderer at one point. Quite absurd. It was all very tragic and he was devastated. He died before it was resolved, and left a provision in his will to establish a trust fund to sponsor research into solutions to the problems of groundwater contamination. I am now the chairman of that trust, and one of our principal beneficiaries for the past couple of years has been Dr Ringland and his research team. So naturally I’m acquainted with him, and meet him at several progress reviews each year.
‘You know, many of the people in Bangladesh who have suffered from the poisoning of the tubewells regard it as fate, of a particularly cruel kind, as if there had been a curse upon them and the whole enterprise from the start. And it has occurred to me that Marion’s death could be seen as a vicious extension of that fate. Without the tubewells there would have been no research program at the university, and without Dr Ringland’s research program, his friend da Silva would have had no access to arsenic with which to murder Marion and Tina.’
•
‘Did you believe him?’ Kathy asked.
Brock scratched his beard. ‘Both he and Harry Sykes have solid alibis for the time of Tina’s poisoning, and both were a lot more convincing than Rafferty. What’s his game, anyway? Does he think there’s a reward?’
‘I think,’ Kathy said slowly, ‘that he may be hoping to get his hands on Marion’s house.’
‘Really? How did he work that out? I wouldn’t have thought he was smart enough.’
‘I suggested to his wife, Sheena, that Warrender might lose his claim on the place if he was implicated in Marion’s death.’
Brock looked sharply at her. ‘Ah, did you indeed?’
‘We wanted to shake them up.’
He gave a growl and she braced herself for a bollocking. But after a moment he shook his head and said, a little too calmly, ‘I think this case has become a bit personal for you, Kathy. I can understand your distaste for both Rafferty and Warrender, but it seems to me, on any objective measure, that Tony da Silva is still our prime suspect. Damn it, he has no alibi for the first murder and was actually at the scene of the second. He had access to arsenic at his friend Ringland’s laboratory, and he had a powerful motive-Marion was about to destroy his career. I think maybe we’re being too clever by half. We’ll have him in again, and do it the slow way, bit by bit, again and again, until we find the cracks.’
•
Sophie Warrender answered Kathy’s knock, her mood very different from when Kathy had last seen her. She looked drawn and worried, her forehead furrowed by lines that hadn’t been apparent before.
‘She says she wants to see you,’ Sophie said, ‘but she’s not at all well, so please be careful. It seemed to hit her on Friday, the day after Tina died. She’s hardly eaten a thing since then, or come out of her room. You’ll see the change in her. I’ve had the doctor look at her twice and he’s quite concerned. I even thought she might have been poisoned herself that day without realising it and was suffering the after-effects, but the doctor says not.’
Emily was sitting in her mother’s office, curled up in a corner of a chesterfield sofa, a thick woollen cardigan over her shoulders although the room was very warm. She did look diminished, her eyes large and red-rimmed in her pale elfin face. She had an old leather-bound volume on her knee, gripped in slender white fingers.
‘Emily’s been digging about in her grandfather’s collection up in the belvedere, haven’t you, dear?’ Sophie’s bright, encouraging tone sounded strained. ‘What have you got?’
Emily raised the book wordlessly for her mother to see.
‘Wilkie Collins, yes, well… We call it the belvedere’-she pointed to the spiral stair leading up into the Italianate tower visible from the street-‘because it was originally open, but Dougie’s father had it enclosed and turned it into his private library, his refuge.’ She seemed momentarily at a loss, then said, ‘Can I get you some tea, Inspector?’
‘That would be lovely, thanks.’
‘Right.’ She looked doubtfully at her daughter, then said, ‘Shan’t be a moment.’
Kathy sat on the sofa, turning to face the girl. ‘Thanks for agreeing to see me again, Emily. I know it’s not easy, especially if you’re not feeling well.’
‘I want to help if I can.’ Her voice was barely a whisper.
‘Have you remembered anything else about that day at the British Library? Maybe noticing anyone at the cafe?’
Emily shook her head, a loop of auburn hair dropping over an eye. ‘No, I’m sorry.’
‘Maybe you could take me through exactly what you did with Tina, that would have been on the Tuesday, when we met at Marion’s house, then on Wednesday and Thursday?’
Kathy took notes as Emily haltingly described agreeing to help Tina on the Tuesday, then on the following day going around several libraries with Tina and Donald Fotheringham, trying to establish what Marion had been doing.
Several of the librarians recognised Tina as having worked with Marion previously, and were sympathetic, supplying lists of requests, and what with those, and what Tina and Emily could remember of their own work with Marion, they had built up a considerable list.
Kathy nodded. They had found library printouts in Tina’s bag at the British Library, as well as in her room at Stamford Street.
‘And on the rest of Wednesday and Thursday?’
‘Tina gave us topics to investigate. She and Donald were looking into an old archive in the India Office Records, and I was to try to find out more about the inquest into the death of Lizzie Siddal, Rossetti’s wife.’
‘Did Tina say what they were looking for in the India Office Records?’
‘Not really. She thought that Marion had found something important somewhere, and she knew she’d requested items from there.’
‘But she was obviously very interested in the events surrounding Lizzie’s death.’
‘Yes. She seemed to think that had been very important to Marion’s research. She also…’
‘Yes?’
‘She said we mustn’t tell anyone else what we were doing, especially anyone from the university.’
Sophie Warrender returned at that point, carrying a tray of tea things, and followed by her mother-in-law, Lady Warrender, who was rather unsteadily bearing a large Dundee cake on a plate. Kathy got to her feet to help, and was introduced to the elderly woman.
‘Here we are.’ Sophie arranged the things on a side table and began to pour while Joan handed round the cake. Emily gave a sharp shake of her head.
‘It’s freshly baked, dear,’ Joan said. ‘I’ve been enjoying myself in the kitchen. And it’s your favourite. You must eat, you know.’
