‘Delicious.’
‘Try another.’
•
‘Tell me,’ Kathy said.
‘You know. You’ve found her, haven’t you?’
A jangle of alarm sounded in Kathy’s head. Found who? ‘Emily, tell me quickly!’
But the girl suddenly clamped a hand over her mouth and jumped up. She clattered down the spiral staircase in a rush, and Kathy got up to follow her. By the time she reached the foot of the steps Emily was gone. Kathy looked at Rhonda, who was staring at her in consternation. ‘Where is she?’
Rhonda pointed at the door to the hall, and followed as Kathy ran out, calling Emily’s name. They heard a cupboard door bang in the kitchen, and found Emily standing at a bench holding a glass jar of white powder, which she was shovelling into her mouth.
Kathy cried out and lunged at the girl, jerking the jar out of her grip, then grabbed her by the hair and dragged her over to the sink where she used her free hand to turn on the tap and force Emily’s head under it, then stuck her hand in the girl’s mouth. She choked and struggled, but Kathy forced her fingers into her throat until she was sick. She turned back to Rhonda, who was looking horrified, and said, ‘Has she seen anyone else this morning?’
‘No, no one, only her grandmother.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She went out for her morning walk, as she always does, to St John’s church, up the hill.’
‘Call an ambulance, Rhonda, and don’t let anyone touch that powder.’
She half carried, half dragged Emily out to the hall and sat her in the chair beside the phone while Rhonda made the call. She didn’t want to leave Rhonda alone with Emily, but the girl looked utterly defeated, and Kathy was gripped by a terrible anxiety. She fired some more instructions at Rhonda, then flew out of the house and raced down the street, at the same time calling on her mobile for help. A man getting out of his car stared at her in surprise as she sprinted past, down to the corner, then up the long rise towards the stone spire of St John’s. As she drew closer, heart hammering in her chest, she made out two people sitting on a bench against the church wall. She thought she recognised the elderly figure in the burgundy hat and coat, and the other looked a little like Suzanne. Astonished, Kathy realised that it was Suzanne. She called out.
•
Suzanne heard the shout and looked up to see a fair-haired woman running up the hill towards them. She paused, her hand with the second chocolate almost at her mouth, then lowered it again. ‘Kathy?’
She turned to Lady Warrender, and was shocked by the curl of utter hatred on the old woman’s mouth, as if for the first time seeing the real face behind the genteel mask. thirty-one
S uzanne sat propped up against the pillows. It was absurd the fuss they were making. After the second bout of sickness had passed she’d been reasonably comfortable, though her stomach still ached. Dr Mehta had been in to see her, eagerly discussing symptoms with the A amp;E registrar. And Kathy, to whom she’d given a statement. But not yet Brock, though she knew he was pacing impatiently outside in the waiting room. Finally she took a deep breath and asked a nurse to let him in.
He came like a storm front through the ward, black coat flying, face dark, trolleys rattling in his wake. ‘How the hell are you?’
She smiled. ‘Completely fine.’
He subsided onto the chair beside her bed. ‘You’re white as a sheet. What are they giving you?’
‘Everything’s under control.’
‘That’s what Sundeep said, but I didn’t like the look on his face, as if he was already planning the PM.’
They lapsed into silence, and then she said, ‘Has Kathy explained?’
‘She gave me some sort of account. I understand you felt you had to check the story you got from your friend, about Warrender poisoning someone in India.’
‘I didn’t know if it was relevant. I had to be sure before I told you, David. I’m so sorry, after I promised-’
‘Hush.’ He took her hand. ‘My fault. I should have been a better listener. I’ve been taking you for granted.’
She shook her head. Another silence, while someone was wheeled past, groaning. Then Suzanne nodded at the parcel under Brock’s arm. ‘What’s that?’
‘Oh, when they told me to go away for an hour, I went for a walk and came across a bookshop.’ He handed her the package. ‘A get-well present.’
She peeled away the wrapping to reveal a thick volume, a biography of David Hockney. ‘Aha… lovely.’
‘I thought I’d give the nineteenth century a miss,’ he said. ‘And the girl assured me no one gets poisoned.’
She had turned to an image of palm trees against a blue sky, and said, ‘California… I believe there’s an antique dealers’ convention in Sacramento next month.’
She said it with a certain edge, reminding him of the last time she’d planned a big trip and he’d let her down.
‘Well then, we should go.’
•
They found more scraps of the wallpaper in the garden outhouse, and a tub in which, according to Sundeep, the paper had been soaked in vinegar, a weak acid, in order to dissolve the colouring of Paris Green, copper acetoarsenite, used in the William Morris print. The women had then apparently mixed washing soda with the solution, to precipitate the insoluble copper carbonate and leave a clear solution of arsenic trioxide, which could be concentrated and eventually collected as a fine white powder.
‘Emily was good at chemistry at school,’ Kathy said. ‘She was going to read it at Oxford. She must have discovered what was going on between her father and Marion, and when her parents went off to Corsica, she and her grandmother decided that something had to be done. She found the old books on the chemistry of arsenic in her grandfather’s eyrie, where he’d pondered over them, trying to understand what had gone wrong with his tubewell project in Bengal, and she realised that the arsenic-coated wallpaper being stripped from their walls, hidden under layers for over a hundred years, could be the instrument of retribution. It must have seemed like poetic justice somehow.’
But this was all conjecture, for neither Emily, in a hospital ward, nor Joan were saying a word. Douglas too, devastated by what had happened, denied all knowledge of the tale that Angela had told Suzanne. It seemed that forensic analysis of her homemade arsenic-laced chocolates would certainly support a charge of attempted murder by Joan against Suzanne, and possibly, though more circumstantially, of murder by Emily against Tina. But if they held their silence, there was frustratingly little evidence to connect them to Marion’s death, and Kathy could imagine the sympathetic effect of the two defendants on a jury, and the psychologists’ reports that the defence would call up, representing the crimes as desperate acts of temporary insanity by two essentially decent people.
There was still, Kathy felt, a void at the centre of the story, a darkness, like Sundeep’s arsenic mirror, hiding some crucial element that no one would admit.
•
The London Library was busy when Kathy arrived. A group of Welsh librarians on a trip to London were being given the tour, and Kathy waited for a while in the main hall for Gael Rayner to be free. It seemed such an improbable place for an act of violence, she thought, and yet, at the British Library, Marion had uncovered a little book which might have destroyed a man’s reputation and very nearly, perhaps, provided a motive for her murder. Maybe it wasn’t the only innocent-looking text she’d found.
‘Kathy! Hello. Any developments?’
‘I believe there are, Gael. We’ve charged Emily Warrender and her grandmother Joan with murder and attempted murder.’ She saw the astonishment register on the librarian’s face. ‘Yes, I know. It seems they didn’t like the idea of Marion and Emily’s father being lovers.’
‘Sophie Warrender’s husband? Oh my God!’ Gael shook her head, taking it in. ‘And is there something you need here? Evidence of some kind?’
‘Maybe, if I can find it. Tell me, do you have any books on balloons?’
