his house in Chelsea with a menagerie of kangaroos, wombats and armadillos.’
He was more relaxed now, slipping into the familiar account he might have entertained students or dinner guests with many times before.
‘Now, it’s conceivable that arsenic had something to do with all that. One of the revolutionary things about the Pre-Raphaelite painters-Rossetti, Millais, Holman Hunt and the others-was their use of the vivid new pigments that the chemical industry had recently developed, especially a brilliant green called Emerald Green, or Paris Green, made from arsenic. People were shocked by the blazing colour of their paintings, made possible by these new pigments-later the Impressionists used the same colours to achieve their dazzling effects-but they were quite dangerous. The painters absorbed the pigment through their skin, they breathed its fumes and held paintbrushes loaded with it in their mouths. It’s said that arsenic poisoning from Emerald Green was the cause of Monet’s blindness and Van Gogh’s madness. It was Cezanne’s favourite colour, and he developed severe diabetes, a symptom of chronic arsenic poisoning.’
It was developing into a lecture, and Kathy interrupted. ‘How does Marion fit in?’
‘Ah, well, yes. Marion found all this rather fascinating. Too fascinating, really.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It seems a little churlish to criticise her scholarship at a time like this.’
‘I’d appreciate a frank opinion; I believe you’re the world expert on this subject.’
Da Silva chuckled, letting her know he recognised outrageous flattery when he heard it, and didn’t mind in the least.
‘Marion was one of the brightest doctoral students I’ve ever had. She was extremely serious about her work, applied herself very diligently. She was quite passionate about her ideas. Rather too much so. It is a classic trap for a scholar to become too attached to a pet theory before all the evidence is in. Marion could be quite headstrong, and ambitious too, desperate to break new ground, achieve new insights. It sometimes made her rather extravagant in her formulations. I had to keep trying to rein her in.’
‘Can you tell me what her particular ideas about arsenic were?’
‘Oh…’ He flapped a hand, his sigh almost a groan. ‘She tried to extend what was probably just their ignorance about the dangers of paint pigments into a whole philosophy. She speculated that the Pre-Raphaelites cultivated a fascination with death, especially tragic, premature death, and that this was mixed up with their notions of romantic love and sexual freedom. Well, they certainly did have tangled sex lives, but Marion blew it out of all proportion. She was obsessed.’
‘It does sound ambitious.’
‘Quite impossible. Absurdly broad for a doctoral thesis.’ He leaned forward, punching the point home with his index finger, and Kathy saw another side to him, pugnacious and domineering. ‘She was wandering off into areas in which she had no expertise-forensic medicine, psychology, chemistry, you name it.’ He gave a snort. ‘The provisional title of her thesis was Sex and Death: A Pre-Raphaelite Discourse. You see what I mean?’ He spread his hands. ‘Somewhat melodramatic.’
‘But they were pretty melodramatic, the Pre-Raphaelites, weren’t they?’
He smiled at Kathy indulgently. ‘Well, yes, but Marion was writing an academic treatise, not a novel. That was our compromise title. Her first efforts were even more lurid-“lust” figured prominently, if I remember rightly.’
‘Was there much lust in Marion’s life, would you say?’
He held Kathy’s eye for a moment, then said, very deliberately, ‘I have absolutely no idea. She never talked about her private life.’
‘Did she have a job, apart from her studies? Some source of income?’
Again, he couldn’t say, and his mood changed, becoming impatient and bored. He checked his watch.
‘What were your movements last Tuesday, Dr da Silva?’
He frowned. ‘I was working at home. I’m preparing a paper for a conference in the States, and the deadline is coming up. There are too many interruptions here, so I stayed at home to get it finished.’
‘Was anyone with you?’
‘I’m afraid not.’ nine
T he phone went as Kathy slid behind the wheel. Her heart sank as she recognised Nicole’s voice. ‘Oh, hi.’
‘You didn’t ring me back. How did it go this morning?’
‘Not too well, I’m afraid. It didn’t work out as I’d hoped.’
‘You sound harassed.’
‘Sorry, I’ve been flat out with this murder case, that woman who was poisoned in St James’s Square.’
‘Oh, is that what you’re on?’
‘It’s my first murder since I made inspector, Nicole. I’ve got to get it right.’
‘And you will, but you’re not giving up on this weekend.’
‘It’s impossible. I’m really sorry. I was looking forward to it.’
‘Sounds like you need a break, Kathy. Anyway, maybe you’ll have cracked it by tonight.’
Kathy sighed. ‘No way. Cases either crack in the first day or they go on for weeks. We’ve passed the golden hour; it’s all hard slog now.’
She rang off, and immediately the phone rang again, this time with the librarian Gael Rayner on the line.
‘Oh, Inspector, we’re under siege here!’ She sounded excited.
‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s a contingent of foreign press outside, trying to get pictures and interviews about Marion’s death. We’ve had to bar them from coming in. I try to tell them this is the London Library, for goodness’ sake, not CSI Miami.’
‘Do you want me to talk to the local coppers?’
‘Oh no, it’s all right. They’re rather dishy, actually. I probably will let them in to shoot a bit of film, but I just don’t want them to turn us into the London Dungeon or something. No, it was another thing I thought I should mention to you.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I’m really not sure if it’s relevant. It concerns one of our readers. It may be nothing at all, and I’d hate to make trouble unnecessarily.’
‘Gael, this is a murder inquiry. You can trust me to handle any information with discretion, but you really can’t keep anything relevant to yourself.’
She sighed. ‘Oh well, yes.’
‘Should I come over there?’
‘Maybe that would be best. But not in a police car with sirens, please. It might be best if you were to come to our service entrance at the back, off Mason’s Yard. I’ll meet you there.’
Kathy followed Gael’s instructions and made her way to the library’s back entrance, past wire fencing surrounding the compound of the builders that Gael had spoken of. The librarian was waiting there, and took Kathy to a small staffroom. Coffee cups stood on a draining board, and a few magazines lay on a table at which they sat.
‘Can I get you anything? Tea, coffee?’
‘I’m fine. What did you want to tell me?’
‘Well, it was when the foreign film crew arrived. It caused a bit of excitement in the library, and people went to the windows to see what was going on. And I happened to notice Nigel Ogilvie there. I was struck because he was holding his mobile phone up, although he didn’t appear to be calling anyone.’
‘He was taking pictures?’
‘Exactly. And then I remembered… I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind, that dreadful scene up in the Reading Room, when Marion collapsed. I’ve gone over it so many times, and now it occurred to me that there was something… odd. You remember that it was Nigel Ogilvie who rang for the ambulance?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was paying most attention to Marion, of course, trying to do what I could-nobody else had much idea, and I’ve done the first-aid course. But at some point I looked up and saw Nigel. I thought it was strange, because he was still sitting in his chair, while everybody else was on their feet. And he was holding up his mobile phone. I assumed he was calling for help, but when I asked him he appeared rather surprised, as if that wasn’t what he was thinking at all, but then he said yes, and made the call. This all happened in a twinkling, you understand, and I was
