“It’s that one,” said Strike, pointing at a particularly sprawling house with many pointed, half-timbered gables. The double gates stood open, as did the front door. They turned into the drive and parked behind the blue Mazda3.
As soon as Robin switched off the engine, they heard shouting coming from inside the house: a male voice, intemperate and high pitched. Anna Phipps’s wife, Kim, tall, blonde and wearing jeans and a shirt as before, came striding out of the house toward them, her expression tense.
“Big scenes,” she said, as Strike and Robin got out of the car into the mist of rain.
“Would you like us to wait—?” Robin began.
“No,” Kim said, “he’s determined to see you. Come in.”
They walked across the gravel and entered Broom House. Somewhere inside, male and female voices continued to shout.
Every house has its own deep ingrained smell, and this one was redolent of sandalwood and a not entirely unpleasant fustiness. Kim led them through a long, large-windowed hall that seemed frozen in the mid-twentieth century. There were brass light fittings, watercolors and an old rug on polished floorboards. With a sudden frisson, Robin thought that Margot Bamborough had once walked this very floor, her metallic rose perfume mingling with the scents of polish and old carpet.
As they approached the door of the drawing room, the argument taking place inside became suddenly comprehensible.
“—and if I’m to be talked about,” a man was shouting, “I should have right of reply—my family deciding to investigate me behind my back, charming, charming, it really is—”
“Nobody’s investigating you, for God’s sake!” they heard Anna say. “Bill Talbot was incompetent—”
“Oh, was he really? Were you there? Did you know him?”
“I didn’t have to be there, Dad—”
Kim opened the door. Strike and Robin followed Kim inside.
It was like coming upon a tableau. The three people standing inside froze at their entrance. Cynthia’s thin fingers were pressed to her mouth. Anna stood facing her father across a small antique table.
The romantic-looking poet of 1974 was no more. Roy Phipps’s remaining hair was short, gray and clung only around his ears and the back of his head. In his knitted sweater vest, with his high, domed, shining pate and his wild eyes, slightly sunken in a blotchy face, he’d now be better suited to the role of mad scientist.
So furious did Roy Phipps look, that Robin quite expected him to start shouting at the newcomers, too. However, the hematologist’s demeanor changed when his eyes met Strike’s. Whether this was a tribute to the detective’s bulk, or to the aura of gravity and calm he managed to project in highly charged situations, Robin couldn’t tell, but she thought she saw Roy decide against yelling. After a brief hesitation, the doctor accepted Strike’s proffered hand, and as the two men shook, Robin wondered how aware men were of the power dynamics that played out between them, while women stood watching.
“Dr. Phipps,” said Strike.
Roy appeared to have found the gear change between intemperate rage and polite greeting a difficult one, and his immediate response was slightly incoherent.
“So you’re—you’re the detective, are you?” he said. Bluish-red blotches lingered in his pale cheeks.
“Cormoran Strike—and this is my partner, Robin Ellacott.”
Robin stepped forwards.
“How d’you do?” Roy said stiffly, shaking her hand, too. His was hot and dry.
“Shall I make coffee?” said Cynthia, in a half-whisper.
“Yes—no, why not,” said Roy, his ill-temper clearly jockeying with the nervousness that seemed to increase while Strike stood, large and unmoving, watching him. “Sit, sit,” he said, pointing Strike to a sofa, at right angles to another.
Cynthia hurried out of the room to make coffee, and Strike and Robin sat where they’d been instructed.
“Going to help Cyn,” muttered Anna and she hurried out of the room, and Kim, after a moment’s hesitation, followed her, leaving Strike and Robin alone with Roy. The doctor settled himself into a high-backed velvet armchair and glared around him. He didn’t look well. The flush of temper receded, leaving him looking wan. His socks had bunched up around his skinny ankles.
There ensued one of the most uncomfortable silences Robin had ever endured. Mainly to avoid looking at Roy, she allowed her eyes to roam around the large room, which was as old fashioned as the hall. A grand piano stood in the corner. More large windows looked out onto an enormous garden, where a long rectangular fish pond lay just beyond a paved area, at the far end of which lay a covered, temple-like stone structure where people could either sit and watch the koi carp, now barely visible beneath the rain-flecked surface of the water, or look out over the sweeping lawn, with its mature trees and well-tended flower-beds.
An abundance of leather-bound books and bronzes of antique subjects filled bookcases and cabinets. A tambour frame stood between the sofas, on which a very beautiful piece of embroidery was being worked in silks. The design was Japanese influenced, of two koi swimming in opposite directions. Robin was debating whether to pass polite comment on it, and to ask whether Cynthia was responsible, when Strike spoke.
“Who was the classicist?”
“What?” said Roy. “Oh. My father.”
His crazy-looking eyes roamed over the various small bronzes and marbles dotted around the room. “Took a first in Classics at Cambridge.”
“Ah,” said Strike, and the glacial silence resumed.
A squall of wind threw more rain at the window. Robin was relieved to hear the tinkling of teaspoons and the footsteps of the three returning women.
Cynthia, who re-entered the room first, set a tea tray down on the antique table standing between the sofas. It rocked a little with the weight. Anna added a large cake on a stand.
Anna and Kim sat down side by side on the free sofa, and when Cynthia had drawn up spindly side tables to hold everyone’s tea, and cut slices
