The Arsenic Labyrinth Page 12

  Would Karen grieve? She was certainly restraining her curiosity about her sister’s fate.

  ‘You have nothing to fear from the media, surely?’

  ‘That’s just where you’re wrong!’ Karen grasped her husband’s hand. ‘The head at Grizedale retires in the summer. The deputy isn’t up to the job and the Governors have made it clear they would prefer to recruit internally. Jeremy is the obvious choice. He’s a first class historian and the results of his students are outstanding, half of them stroll into Oxford or Cambridge. He has marvellous ideas for raising the College’s profile, making it the leading independent in the North. But how will the governors react if our name features in a murder case? Parents care about these things. The sort of people who pay for their children to attend Grizedale don’t want to be associated with a high profile criminal investigation, even indirectly. This could ruin Jeremy’s career progression. Have you stopped to consider that?’

  No, it had never crossed Hannah’s mind. Her mother had taught in the state sector and Hannah went to the local comprehensive. Hannah didn’t begrudge others the right to educate their kids privately, but she couldn’t imagine doing it herself. Combing through rival prospectuses, weighing up which school might offer the best prospect of glittering prizes, treating education as one more luxury purchase, along with the Scandinavian hi-fi and designer kitchen?

  ‘What do you believe happened to Emma, Mrs Erskine?’

  Karen must have anticipated the question, but its bluntness threw her off balance. As if to cover her discomfort, she mimicked her husband’s truculence.

  ‘Well … don’t you think that if I knew that, I’d have mentioned it sooner?’

  ‘I’m not asking for hard evidence. Supposition is fine. You must have a theory?’

  ‘Emma was an unhappy person,’ Jeremy said before his wife could answer. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I deplore homophobia as much as the next man, but it’s a sad fact that many gay men and women lead unfulfilled lives. My impression is that she’d never found love. Above all, she was jealous of Karen.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Karen had a baby, Karen had a nice house, Karen was married to someone who adored her. She was younger and prettier and slimmer than Emma. My wife’s too kindhearted to say so, but the jealousy had been there since they were kids. As the years passed, it became a festering sore.’

  ‘You didn’t get on?’

  ‘I hardly knew her. There was no ill will, we did our best, we invited her to our wedding. She was in Liverpool at the time, but she made an excuse and the best she could do by way of a present for her only close living relative was to send a few Marks & Spencer gift vouchers. When our daughter Sophie was christened, we even invited her to be godmother, but it was the same old story. She said she didn’t believe in organised religion. As if that mattered.’

  ‘Was there ever a row between the two of you, Mrs Erskine?’

  A shake of the blonde head. ‘We were always civil to each other. Emma always kept her feelings buttoned up.’

  ‘You were sure she envied you?’

  Karen shrugged. ‘Emma never quite fitted in anywhere. Sad, really. I thought she might go abroad when she tired of Merseyside. Instead, she came back to the Lakes. She told me she felt homesick, but it was city living that she was sick of. There was nothing for her here.’

  ‘You met her at the museum, I believe?’

  ‘When she returned, Jeremy and I were determined to make an effort.’

  ‘Blood’s thicker than water, don’t forget,’ Jeremy sounded as though he wanted to make Hannah write it out one hundred times after school.

  ‘Was there any suggestion that she live with you?’

  ‘Good Heavens, no.’ Jeremy looked as startled as if she’d asked him to open up his home to an asylum seeker. ‘At the time we had a tiny semi in Ambleside, near Rothay Park. Very different from this place, I can assure you. I’d started teaching history at Grizedale College, but this was long before I was promoted to head of year. To have taken in Emma would have been impossible, even if she’d suggested it. Which, of course, she did not. She rented a bed-sit for a while and then moved in with the Goddards.’

  ‘Yes, I was going to ask you about that.’ Hannah made a show of scratching her head. ‘I know it’s a small world, but … it does seem amazing, that, of all the places where she might have found a roof over her head, she finished up with your ex-wife and her new husband?’

  ‘The Lakes is a small world, Chief Inspector, haven’t you noticed? Thirty miles across, and a population less than Bolton.’

  ‘Even so.’

  Jeremy sucked in a breath. ‘Vanessa and I met and married not long after I qualified as a teacher. She was a librarian, full of ideals about educating the disadvantaged, people who had never opened a book in their lives. I taught at a comprehensive on the Furness Peninsula. Plenty of deprivation in that neck of the woods, since the steelworks closed and shipbuilding went out of fashion. When you meet Vanessa, Chief Inspector, you see a middle-aged woman with an unsightly birthmark on her face, so you may find this difficult to understand – but I found her passion thrilling.’

  ‘No, I don’t find that so difficult to understand,’ Hannah said softly and for a moment, despite everything, she warmed to him.

  ‘Within weeks, we were walking down the aisle. Looking back, it was a mistake. I was young, naïve. Vanessa and I could have been such good friends, but … when I met Karen, I realised she was the woman for me.’

  ‘Love at first sight,’ Karen said with a complacent smile. ‘It knocked the breath out of both of us.’

  ‘Vanessa took our break-up very hard. She blamed Karen for seducing me, but that was unfair. It was my fault, if you like. My decision, I take full responsibility.’

  He gave a defiant nod and then lifted his head, so Hannah could see that the nobility of his profile matched his character. The admiration in Karen’s eyes depressed her. It wasn’t his adultery that made her cringe, it was his conceit.

  Jeremy cleared his throat. ‘I was thrilled for Vanessa when she met Francis. He sounds a decent chap and he’s certainly made her happy. Even given her a child, the one thing I could never achieve.’

  You patronising sod. But Hannah could do hypocrisy too and she coated her smile with sugar.

  ‘I gather their boy is a pupil at Grizedale.’

  ‘We call them students.’ He corrected her with a little laugh. Hannah would have found it less offensive if he’d rapped her on the knuckles with a steel rule. ‘At present he’s a year off senior school, so our paths don’t yet cross. When they do, it won’t be a problem. Vanessa is a decent woman, I’m sure he’s a fine lad.’

  Hannah gritted her teeth, and Jeremy sailed on.

  ‘Unfortunately, I suspect Vanessa resents poor Karen to this day. As for taking in Emma as a lodger, well, I don’t wish to be unkind …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I suspect that it suited her to make friends with Emma.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Evidently she found out that Emma and Karen were far from close.’

  ‘Are you suggesting there was an attraction between her and Emma?’

  ‘Good grief, no.’ He was genuinely amused. ‘Vanessa is voraciously heterosexual in her appetites, I can assure you of that.’

  Hannah cast a glance at Karen. Could a smirk be coy? If so, hers was.

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘You wish me to be frank?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Very well, if I must. I have no wish to be unkind to Vanessa, but in my opinion, she wanted to hear bad things about Karen, to make her feel better about losing me.’

  Hannah noticed that, while her husband was talking about his first wife, Karen yawned and stretched out her legs. A woman at ease with herself, confident that she’d got her man exactly where she wanted him.

  ‘Darling, this is old news. None of it matters any more.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ her husband said with a
n unexpected stab at humour, ‘my subject is history.’

  ‘And cold case work involves exploring the past,’ Hannah said. ‘After she left the Goddards, Emma bought her bungalow. How could she afford it?’

  ‘She told us she’d had a big win on the lottery. It was only after she disappeared that we found out from your people she’d lied about that. Goodness knows why.’

  ‘So where did the money really come from?’

  Jeremy coughed. ‘As it happens, I have an idea.’

  He sounded so proud that Hannah had to force herself not to mime applause. She could tell that Maggie was close to bursting with suppressed laughter.

  ‘I’d love to hear it.’

  ‘Well, once Emma’s relationship with Alexandra Clough ended, she fell ill. Depression, stress, one of those ailments fashionable among people who don’t want to go into work. The Cloughs are wealthy, perhaps she threatened to sue them.’

  ‘They deny it.’

  ‘Is that surprising, if they’d mistreated her?’

  ‘Did Emma tell you that they had?’

  ‘We didn’t see anything of her while she was ill. A quick word on the phone was as close as we came. She may have been poorly, but I’m sure she wasn’t at death’s door. And of course, she got better.’

  ‘You visited her bungalow?’

  Karen nodded. ‘The week after she moved in. She was pale, but she told me she’d lost a stone and a half and she was looking all the better for it. I hadn’t even known she was interested in reflexology. But that was Emma. She was prone to fits of enthusiasm, but they never lasted. Look at the way she kept changing jobs. That’s why I wasn’t too surprised when she upped sticks and left the district without a word.’

  ‘Without her car and her passport?’

  ‘She didn’t consult me before she moved to Liverpool, either. So she had form, isn’t that the word detectives use? And it wasn’t so strange if she wanted to start a brand new life. Travel, see the world. After paying out on the bungalow and a new car, there wasn’t much cash left. The building society repossessed the house, you know, because she wasn’t around to keep up the monthly payments.’

  Hannah had already found that out. Pity, it removed a possible motive. She’d wondered if Karen had planned to have Emma declared dead so that, as nearest living relative, she would inherit her sister’s estate. But there wasn’t much left to inherit.

  ‘Surely she would have contacted you during a period of ten years?’

  ‘Emma could be frustrating. Unreliable. And don’t forget, she’d had the benefit of listening to Vanessa Goddard’s opinions of me. Views based on prejudice and envy. Could I help the fact the poor woman had a disfigurement?’

  Hannah noticed Maggie’s eyes narrowing, sensed her DC was losing patience. Easy to believe in Vanessa’s bitterness over the betrayal, but was it credible that she’d poisoned Emma’s mind to such an extent that she would break off all contact – not only with Karen but with Vanessa herself and everyone else?

  ‘You saw her the day before she disappeared, Mr Erskine?’

  ‘You’ve read my statement. It was an entirely innocent visit.’

  ‘Of course. You had a bad back.’

  His lips pursed, but if he detected irony, he was too smart to make an issue of it. ‘I’ve been a martyr to my vertebrae over the years. The legacy of an old rugby injury, it flares up every now and then. Karen mentioned it when she called on Emma and Emma reckoned she could help. Admittedly, for a few days after my visit, I felt better. But she didn’t achieve a lasting solution. These days I see an osteopath in Keswick, he’s first class.’

  ‘What did you talk about while you there?’ Maggie asked suddenly.

  ‘Good grief, Constable, you can’t expect me to remember a casual conversation at this distance of time.’

  Maggie gave him the sort of baleful look her father might reserve for a mongrel worrying sheep. ‘She was your sister-in-law and it was the last time you spoke to her. Wouldn’t the conversation stick in your mind?’

  Jeremy folded his arms. ‘Not my mind. Even when your people interviewed me before, I couldn’t recall details. She was pleasant, without being chatty. As if her mind was far away. On other things.’

  Hannah said, ‘In your original statement, you suggested that she might have planned to leave the area and do something else.’

  ‘It seems a perfectly rational inference to draw.’

  His careful syntax was getting under Hannah’s skin. She suspected him of yearning to give her a detention the moment she split an infinitive.

  ‘You said that she seemed – excited about something.’

  ‘Did I? Perhaps, but it is so long ago. Our conversation was superficial, the usual small talk, nothing beyond that.’

  ‘There was no argument between you? No difficulties between Emma and your wife?’

  ‘What would we argue about?’ Jeremy asked. ‘She lived a very different life from Karen and me. Each to his own, we weren’t judgmental.’

  ‘Any further light you can shed on Emma or what might have given rise to her disappearance?’

  She asked the question for form’s sake, rather than in the hope of eliciting fresh information. The Erskines were hard work. Talk about blood and stones.

  ‘Nothing whatever,’ Karen said, as her husband slipped his arm around her shoulder.

  No point in probing further without more to go on. Jeremy showed them out and as he led them through the living room, Hannah noticed a familiar glossy hardback on the coffee table. Daniel Kind had written it to accompany his series on BBC Television.

  ‘You’re a keen historian in your spare time as well as at work, Mr Erskine?’

  ‘As it happens, I’m this year’s chairman of the Grizedale and Satterthwaite Historical Association. The oldest society of its kind in Cumbria.’

  ‘So you know all about the Arsenic Labyrinth?’

  He gave a little laugh, probably meant to be self-deprecating. ‘Well, I wouldn’t claim to be an authority, but of course I am aware of it.’

  ‘Someone was telling me it formed part of an unsuccessful business.’

  ‘Yes, the arsenic works ruined the Inchmores. At one time they were one of the richest families in the county. You only have to look at the hall to see the scale of Clifford Inchmore’s ambition. It may lack Brantwood’s glamour, but to my mind it’s an even more remarkable building. Sir Clifford dreamed of establishing a dynasty. Hubris, perhaps. But his son George blew it.’

  ‘Because of trading in arsenic?’

  ‘Not only that. He fell out with Albert Clough, whom Clifford had taken into partnership. Albert was a consummate businessman and George didn’t like the idea of playing second fiddle to him once Clifford retired. The outcome was that Albert left the firm and set up on his own in direct competition, the worst of all possible worlds from the Inchmores’ perspective. As their star fell, Albert’s rose.’

  ‘Must have been painful for them to sell the hall to Albert.’

  ‘Indeed. No wonder it’s been said that Mispickel Scar is cursed. A load of superstitious nonsense, no doubt, but local folk used to take it seriously.’

  ‘What’s the story of the curse?’

  Jeremy resembled a High Court judge, invited to choose the winner of an end of pier talent show. ‘I really could not say. Folklore is scarcely history. You’d need to ask Alban Clough, he’s the expert. Of course, he’s always revelled in the triumph of his family over the Inchmores.’

  ‘He did give a job to young Tom Inchmore.’

  ‘Humiliating the Inchmores through unforced acts of generosity became a family tradition for the Cloughs. It started when George’s son William Inchmore had to accept charity from Armstrong Clough and take up a sinecure in the Cloughs’ booming firm. By all accounts, William was an idler, who preferred wine, women and song to the hard graft that made his family’s fortune. Yet even he must have found it a bitter pill, to see Cloughs living it up in the house his grandfather built.’<
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  ‘Clogs to clogs in three generations?’

  ‘Precisely.’ He noticed her gaze lingering on the glossy cover of Daniel’s book. ‘Does your own interest in history extend beyond cold case work, Chief Inspector? Perhaps you saw these programmes? They were quite tolerable, not the dumbed-down rubbish we usually get in return for our licence fee.’

  ‘You know that Daniel Kind has moved to the Lakes? He lives in Brackdale.’

  ‘Really?’ An opportunist spark flared in Jeremy’s eyes. ‘I wonder if he’d be interested in talking to the Association. Do I gather that you are acquainted with him?’

  ‘Our paths have crossed. His father was a police officer, that’s the connection.’

  ‘Good Lord. You don’t happen to know how I can get in touch with him?’

  Hannah was conscious of Maggie’s solid presence beside her. Perhaps it was embarrassment that caused

  her to lie – though this was absurd, what was there to be embarrassed about?

  ‘Sorry, I don’t have his number.’

  ‘What do you make of those two, then?’ Hannah asked as they were driving back.

  Maggie shifted in the passenger seat. You could almost hear wheels turning as she weighed up pros and cons. She didn’t do flair, but at this stage of her career she was none the worse for it. Hannah was encouraging her to reason more laterally, whilst desperately striving to avoid Lauren-speak like thinking outside the box.

  ‘He wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in my old school.’

  ‘Nor mine. And Karen?’

  ‘Thank God she’s not my sister.’

  They both laughed and then Maggie said, ‘Can I ask a question?’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘It isn’t about the Erskines, but Les.’

  ‘Les Bryant?’

  ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘Any reason to believe he isn’t?’

  ‘Well, I dunno. He doesn’t seem himself to me, that’s all.’

  ‘Can’t say I’d noticed. Hasn’t he always been a grumpy old sod? The time to worry is if he starts singing the ACC’s praises and buying the first round when we go to the pub. Then I’ll know for sure he’s sickening for something.’