Strike, who judged it impossible to answer such a question, however rhetorical, without giving offence, said nothing.
‘It started when Orlando was born,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Owen had managed to get through all the money he’d ever made and Leonora was in intensive care for two weeks after the birth, and Michael Fancourt was screaming to anybody who’d listen that Owen had murdered his wife.
‘Owen was a pariah. Neither he nor Leonora had any family. I lent him money, as a friend, to get baby things. Then I advanced him money for a mortgage on a bigger house. Then there was money for specialists to look at Orlando when it was clear that she wasn’t developing quite as she should, and therapists to help her. Before I knew it, I was the family’s personal bank. Every time royalties came in Owen would make a big fuss about repaying me, and sometimes I’d get a few thousand back.
‘At heart,’ said the agent, the words tumbling out of her, ‘Owen was an overgrown child, which could make him unbearable or charming. Irresponsible, impulsive, egotistical, amazingly lacking in conscience, but he could also be fun, enthusiastic and engaging. There was a pathos, a funny fragility about him, however badly he behaved, that made people feel protective. Jerry Waldegrave felt it. Women felt it. I felt it. And the truth is that I kept on hoping, even believing, that one day he’d produce another Hobart’s Sin. There was always something, in every bloody awful book he’s written, something that meant you couldn’t completely write him off.’
A waiter came over to take away their plates. Elizabeth waved away his solicitous enquiry as to whether there had been something wrong with her soup and asked for a coffee. Strike accepted the offer of the dessert menu.
‘Orlando’s sweet, though,’ Elizabeth added gruffly. ‘Orlando’s very sweet.’
‘Yeah… she seemed to think,’ said Strike, watching her closely, ‘that she saw you going into Quine’s study the other day, while Leonora was in the bathroom.’
He did not think that she had expected the question, nor did she seem to like it.
‘She saw that, did she?’
She sipped water, hesitated, then said:
‘I’d challenge anyone depicted in Bombyx Mori, given the chance of seeing what other nasty jottings Owen might have left lying around, not to take the opportunity of having a look.’
‘Did you find anything?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘because the place was a tip. I could see immediately that it would take far too long to search and,’ she raised her chin defiantly, ‘to be absolutely frank, I didn’t want to leave fingerprints. So I left as quickly as I walked in. It was the – possibly ignoble – impulse of a moment.’
She seemed to have said everything she had come to say. Strike ordered an apple and strawberry crumble and took the initiative.
‘Daniel Chard wants to see me,’ he told her. Her olive-dark eyes widened in surprise.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Unless the snow’s too bad, I’m going down to visit him in Devon tomorrow. I’d like to know, before I meet him, why he’s portrayed as the murderer of a young blond man in Bombyx Mori.’
‘I’m not providing a key to that filthy book for you,’ retorted Elizabeth with a return of all her former aggression and suspicion. ‘No. Not doing it.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Strike, ‘because people are talking.’
‘Am I likely to compound my own egregious mistake in sending the damn thing out into the world by gossiping about it?’
‘I’m discreet,’ Strike assured her. ‘Nobody needs to know where I got my information.’
But she merely glared at him, cold and impassive.
‘What about Kathryn Kent?’
‘What about her?’
‘Why is the cave of her lair in Bombyx Mori full of rat skulls?’
Elizabeth said nothing.
‘I know Kathryn Kent’s Harpy, I’ve met her,’ said Strike patiently. ‘All you’re doing by explaining is saving me some time. I suppose you want to find out who killed Quine?’
‘So bloody transparent,’ she said witheringly. ‘Does that usually work on people?’
‘Yeah,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘it does.’
She frowned, then said abruptly and not altogether to his surprise:
‘Well, after all, I don’t owe Kathryn Kent any loyalty. If you must know, Owen was making a fairly crude reference to the fact that she works at an animal-testing facility. They do disgusting things there to rats, dogs and monkeys. I heard all about it at one of the parties Owen brought her to. There she was, falling out of her dress and trying to impress me,’ said Elizabeth, with contempt. ‘I’ve seen her work. She makes Dorcus Pengelly look like Iris Murdoch. Typical of the dross – the dross—’
Strike managed several mouthfuls of his crumble while she coughed hard into her napkin.
‘—the dross the internet has given us,’ she finished, her eyes watering. ‘And almost worse, she seemed to expect me to be on her side against the scruffy students who’d attacked their laboratories. I’m a vet’s daughter: I grew up with animals and I like them much better than I like people. I found Kathryn Kent a horrible person.’
‘Any idea who Harpy’s daughter Epicoene’s supposed to be?’ asked Strike.
‘No,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Or the dwarf in the Cutter’s bag?’
‘I’m not explaining any more of the wretched book!’