‘No,’ said Orlando. ‘She just walked in and then she walked out and she saw me an’ she was crying.’
‘Yeah,’ said Leonora with a satisfied air. ‘She was tearful with me an’ all. Another one feeling guilty.’
‘When did she come over?’ Strike asked Leonora.
‘First thing Monday,’ said Leonora. ‘Wanted to see if she could help. Help! She’s done enough.’
Strike’s tea was so weak and milky it looked as though it had never known a teabag; his preference was for a brew the colour of creosote. As he took a polite, token sip, he remembered Elizabeth Tassel’s avowed wish that Quine had died when her Dobermann bit him.
‘I like her lipstick,’ announced Orlando.
‘You like everyone’s everything today,’ said Leonora vaguely, sitting back down with her own mug of weak tea. ‘I asked her why she done it, why she told Owen he couldn’t publish his book, and upset him like that.’
‘And what did she say?’ asked Strike.
‘That he’s gone and put a load of real people in it,’ said Leonora. ‘I dunno why they’re so upset about that. He always does it.’ She sipped her tea. ‘He’s put me in loads of ’em.’
Strike thought of Succuba, the ‘well-worn whore’, and found himself despising Owen Quine.
‘I wanted to ask you about Talgarth Road.’
‘I don’t know why he went there,’ she said immediately. ‘He hated it. He wanted to sell it for years but that Fancourt wouldn’t.’
‘Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that.’
Orlando had slid onto the chair beside him, one bare leg twisted underneath her as she added vibrantly coloured fins to a picture of a large fish with a pack of crayons she appeared to have pulled from thin air.
‘How come Michael Fancourt’s been able to block the sale all these years?’
‘It’s something to do with how it was left to ’em by that bloke Joe. Something about how it was to be used. I dunno. You’d have to ask Liz, she knows all about it.’
‘When was the last time Owen was there, do you know?’
‘Years ago,’ she said. ‘I dunno. Years.’
‘I want more paper to draw,’ Orlando announced.
‘I haven’t got any more,’ said Leonora. ‘It’s all in Daddy’s study. Use the back of this.’
She seized a circular from the cluttered work surface and pushed it across the table to Orlando, but her daughter shoved it away and left the kitchen at a languid walk, the orang-utan swinging from her neck. Almost at once they heard her trying to force the door of the study.
‘Orlando, no!’ barked Leonora, jumping up and hurrying into the hall. Strike took advantage of her absence to lean back and pour away most of his milky tea into the sink; it spattered down the bouquet clinging traitorously to the cellophane.
‘No, Dodo. You can’t do that. No. We’re not allowed – we’re not allowed, get off it—’
A high-pitched wail and then a loud thudding proclaimed Orlando’s flight upstairs. Leonora reappeared in the kitchen with a flushed face.
‘I’ll be paying for that all day now,’ she said. ‘She’s unsettled. Don’t like the police here.’
She yawned nervously.
‘Have you slept?’ Strike asked.
‘Not much. Cos I keep thinking, Who? Who’d do it to him? He upsets people, I know that,’ she said distractedly, ‘but that’s just how he is. Temperamental. He gets angry over little things. He’s always been like that, he don’t mean anything by it. Who’d kill him for that?
‘Michael Fancourt must still have a key to the house,’ she went on, twisting her fingers together as she jumped subject. ‘I thought that last night when I couldn’t sleep. I know Michael Fancourt don’t like him, but that’s ages ago. Anyway, Owen never did that thing Michael said he did. He never wrote it. But Michael Fancourt wouldn’t kill Owen.’ She looked up at Strike with clear eyes as innocent as her daughter’s. ‘He’s rich, isn’t he? Famous… he wouldn’t.’
Strike had always marvelled at the strange sanctity conferred upon celebrities by the public, even while the newspapers denigrated, hunted or hounded them. No matter how many famous people were convicted of rape or murder, still the belief persisted, almost pagan in its intensity: not him. It couldn’t be him. He’s famous.
‘And that bloody Chard,’ burst out Leonora, ‘sending Owen threatening letters. Owen never liked him. And then he signs the card and says if there’s anything he can do… where’s that card?’
The card with the picture of violets had vanished from the table.
‘She’s got it,’ said Leonora, flushing angrily. ‘She’s taken it.’ And so loudly that it made Strike jump she bellowed ‘DODO!’ at the ceiling.
It was the irrational anger of a person in the first raw stages of grief and, like her upset stomach, revealed just how she was suffering beneath the surly surface.
‘DODO!’ shouted Leonora again. ‘What have I told you about taking things that don’t belong—?’
Orlando reappeared with startling suddenness in the kitchen, still cuddling her orang-utan. She must have crept back down without them hearing, as quiet as a cat.
‘You took my card!’ said Leonora angrily. ‘What have I told you about taking things that don’t belong to you? Where is it?’
‘I like the flowers,’ said Orlando, producing the glossy but now crumpled card, which her mother snatched from her.
‘It’s mine,’ she told her daughter. ‘See,’ she went on, addressing Strike and pointing to the longest handwritten message, which was in precise copperplate: ‘“Do let me know if there is anything you need. Daniel Chard.” Bloody hypocrite.’
‘Daddy didn’t like Dannulchar,’ said Orlando. ‘He told me.’
‘He’s a bloody hypocrite, I know that,’ said Leonora, who was squinting at the other signatures.
‘He give me a paintbrush,’ said Orlando, ‘after he touched me.’
There was a short, pregnant silence. Leonora looked up at her. Strike had frozen with his mug halfway to his lips.
‘What?’
‘I didn’t like him touching me.’
‘What are you talking about? Who touched you?’
‘At Daddy’s work.’
‘Don’t talk so silly,’ said her mother.
‘When Daddy took me and I saw—’
‘He took her in a month ago or more, because I had a doctor’s appointment,’ Leonora told Strike, flustered, on edge. ‘I don’t know what she’s on about.’
‘… and I saw the pictures for books that they put on, all coloured,’ said Leonora, ‘an’ Dannulchar did touch—’
‘You don’t even know who Daniel Chard is,’ said Leonora.
‘He’s got no hair,’ said Orlando. ‘And after Daddy took me to see the lady an’ I gave her my best picture. She had nice hair.’
‘What lady? What are you talking—?’
‘When Dannulchar touched me,’ said Orlando loudly. ‘He touched me and I shouted and after he gave me a paintbrush.’
‘You don’t want to go round saying things like that,’ said Leonora and her strained voice cracked. ‘Aren’t we in enough – Don’t be stupid, Orlando.’
Orlando grew very red in the face. Glaring at her mother, she left the kitchen. This time she slammed the door hard behind her; it did not close, but bounced open again. Strike heard her stamping up the stairs; after a few steps she started shrieking incomprehensibly.
‘Now she’s upset,’ said Leonora dully, and tears toppled out of her pale eyes. Strike reached over to the ragged kitchen roll on the side, ripped some off and pressed it into her hand. She cried silently, her thin shoulders shaking, and Strike sat in silence, drinking the dregs of his horrible tea.
‘Met Owen in a pub,’ she mumbled unexpectedly, pushing up her glasses and blotting her wet face. ‘He was there for the festival. Hay-on-Wye. I’d never heard of him, but I could tell he was someone, way he was dressed and talking.’
And a faint glow of hero worship, almost extinguished by years of neglect and unhappiness, of putting up with his airs and tantrums, of trying to pay the bills and care for their daughter in this shabby little house, flickered again behind her tired eyes. Perhaps it had rekindled because her hero, like all the best heroes, was dead; perhaps it would burn for ever now, like an eternal flame, and she would forget the worst and cherish the idea of him she had once loved… as long as she did not read his final manuscript, and his vile depiction of her…
‘Leonora, I wanted to ask you something else,’ Strike said gently, ‘and then I’ll be off. Have you had any more dog excrement through your letter box in the last week?’
‘In the last week?’ she repeated thickly, still dabbing her eyes. ‘Yeah. Tuesday we did, I think. Or Wednesday, was it? But yeah. One more time.’
‘And have you seen the woman you thought was following you?’
She shook her head, blowing her nose.
‘Maybe I imagined it, I dunno…’
‘And are you all right for money?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, blotting her eyes. ‘Owen had life insurance. I made him take it out, cos of Orlando. So we’ll be all right. Edna’s offered to lend me till it comes through.’
‘Then I’ll be off,’ said Strike, pushing himself back to his feet.
She trailed him up the dingy hall, still sniffing, and before the door had closed behind him he heard her calling:
‘Dodo! Dodo, come down, I didn’t mean it!’
The young policeman outside stood partially blocking Strike’s path. He looked angry.
‘I know who you are,’ he said. His mobile phone was still clutched in his hand. ‘You’re Cormoran Strike.’
‘No flies on you, are there?’ said Strike. ‘Out of the way now, sonny, some of us have got proper work to do.’