‘—as Quine should have known,’ agreed Strike, ‘because you and he were still ostensibly on good terms when you had mumps and he’d already made a jibe about it in The Balzac Brothers. And that makes the accusation contained in the Cutter even stranger, doesn’t it? As though it was written by someone who didn’t know that you were infertile. Didn’t any of this occur to you when you read the book?’
The snow fell thickly on the two men’s hair, on their shoulders.
‘I didn’t think Owen cared whether any of it was true or not,’ said Fancourt slowly, exhaling smoke. ‘Mud sticks. He was just flinging a lot around. I thought he was looking to cause as much trouble as possible.’
‘D’you think that’s why he sent you an early copy of the manuscript?’ When Fancourt did not respond, Strike went on: ‘It’s easily checkable, you know. Courier – postal service – there’ll be a record. You might as well tell me.’
A lengthy pause.
‘All right,’ said Fancourt, at last.
‘When did you get it?’
‘The morning of the sixth.’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘Burned it,’ said Fancourt shortly, exactly like Kathryn Kent. ‘I could see what he was doing: trying to provoke a public row, maximise publicity. The last resort of a failure – I was not going to humour him.’
Another snatch of the interior revelry reached them as the door to the garden opened and closed again. Uncertain footsteps, winding through the snow, and then a large shadow looming out of the darkness.
‘What,’ croaked Elizabeth Tassel, who was wrapped in a heavy coat with a fur collar, ‘is going on out here?’
The moment he heard her voice Fancourt made to move back inside. Strike wondered when was the last time they had come face to face in anything less than a crowd of hundreds.
‘Wait a minute, will you?’ Strike asked the writer.
Fancourt hesitated. Tassel addressed Strike in her deep, croaky voice.
‘Pinks is missing Michael.’
‘Something you’d know all about,’ said Strike.
The snow whispered down upon leaves and onto the frozen pond where the cupid sat, pointing his arrow skywards.
‘You thought Elizabeth’s writing “lamentably derivative”, isn’t that right?’ Strike asked Fancourt. ‘You both studied Jacobean revenge tragedies, which accounts for the similarities in your styles. But you’re a very good imitator of other people’s writing, I think,’ Strike told Tassel.
He had known that she would come if he took Fancourt away, known that she would be frightened of what he was telling the writer out in the dark. She stood perfectly still as snow landed in her fur collar, on her iron-grey hair. Strike could just make out the contours of her face by the faint light of the club’s distant windows. The intensity and emptiness of her gaze were remarkable. She had the dead, blank eyes of a shark.
‘You took off Elspeth Fancourt’s style to perfection, for instance.’
Fancourt’s mouth fell quietly open. For a few seconds the only sound other than the whispering snow was the barely audible whistle emanating from Elizabeth Tassel’s lungs.
‘I thought from the start that Quine must’ve had some hold on you,’ said Strike. ‘You never seemed like the kind of woman who’d let herself be turned into a private bank and skivvy, who’d choose to keep Quine and let Fancourt go. All that bull about freedom of expression… you wrote the parody of Elspeth Fancourt’s book that made her kill herself. All these years, there’s only been your word for it that Owen showed you the piece he’d written. It was the other way round.’
There was silence except for the rustle of snow on snow and that faint, eerie sound emanating from Elizabeth Tassel’s chest. Fancourt was looking from the agent to the detective, open-mouthed.
‘The police suspected that Quine was blackmailing you,’ Strike said, ‘but you fobbed them off with a touching story about lending him money for Orlando. You’ve been paying Owen off for more than a quarter of a century, haven’t you?’
He was trying to goad her into speech, but she said nothing, continuing to stare at him out of the dark empty eyes like holes in her plain, pale face.
‘How did you describe yourself to me when we had lunch?’ Strike asked her. ‘“The very definition of a blameless spinster”? Found an outlet for your frustrations, though, didn’t you, Elizabeth?’
The mad, blank eyes swivelled suddenly towards Fancourt, who had shifted where he stood.
‘Did it feel good, raping and killing your way through everyone you knew, Elizabeth? One big explosion of malice and obscenity, revenging yourself on everyone, painting yourself as the unacclaimed genius, taking sideswipes at everyone with a more successful love life, a more satisfying—’
A soft voice spoke in the darkness, and for a second Strike did not know where it was coming from. It was strange, unfamiliar, high-pitched and sickly: the voice a madwoman might imagine to express innocence, kindliness.
‘No, Mr Strike,’ she whispered, like a mother telling a sleepy child not to sit up, not to struggle. ‘You poor silly man. You poor thing.’
She forced a laugh that left her chest heaving, her lungs whistling.
‘He was badly hurt in Afghanistan,’ she said to Fancourt in that eerie, crooning voice. ‘I think he’s shell-shocked. Brain damaged, just like little Orlando. He needs help, poor Mr Strike.’
Her lungs whistled as she breathed faster.
‘Should’ve bought a mask, Elizabeth, shouldn’t you?’ Strike asked.
He thought he saw the eyes darken and enlarge, her pupils dilating with the adrenalin coursing through her. The large, mannish hands had curled into claws.
‘Thought you had it all worked out, didn’t you? Ropes, disguise, protective clothing to protect yourself against the acid – but you didn’t realise you’d get tissue damage just from inhaling the fumes.’
The cold air was exacerbating her breathlessness. In her panic, she sounded sexually excited.
‘I think,’ said Strike, with calculated cruelty, ‘it’s driven you literally mad, Elizabeth, hasn’t it? Better hope the jury buys that anyway, eh? What a waste of a life. Your business down the toilet, no man, no children… Tell me, was there ever an abortive coupling between the two of you?’ asked Strike bluntly, watching their profiles. ‘This “limp dick” business… sounds to me like Quine might’ve fictionalised it in the real Bombyx Mori.’
With their backs to the light he could not see their expressions, but their body language had given him his answer: the instantaneous swing away from each other to face him had expressed the ghost of a united front.
‘When was this?’ Strike asked, watching the dark outline that was Elizabeth. ‘After Elspeth died? But then you moved on to Fenella Waldegrave, eh, Michael? No trouble keeping it up there, I take it?’
Elizabeth emitted a small gasp. It was as though he had hit her.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ growled Fancourt. He was angry with Strike now. Strike ignored the implicit reproach. He was still working on Elizabeth, goading her, while her whistling lungs struggled for oxygen in the falling snow.
‘Must’ve really pissed you off when Quine got carried away and started shouting about the contents of the real Bombyx Mori in the River Café, did it, Elizabeth? After you’d warned him not to breathe a word about the contents?’
‘Insane. You’re insane,’ she whispered, with a forced smile beneath the shark eyes, her big yellow teeth glinting. ‘The war didn’t just cripple you—’
‘Nice,’ said Strike appreciatively. ‘There’s the bullying bitch everyone’s told me you are—’