The Silkworm (26 page)

‘Owen couldn’t have known some of the things that are insinuated in
Bombyx Mori
unless he’d been fed information,’ said Chard, now staring at the side of his stone angel.

‘I think the police’s main interest in an accomplice,’ said Strike slowly, ‘would be because he or she might have a lead on the killer.’

It was the truth, but it was also a way of reminding Chard that a man had died in grotesque circumstances. The identity of the murderer did not seem of pressing interest to Chard.

‘Do you think so?’ asked Chard with a faint frown.

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, ‘I do. And they’d be interested in an accomplice if they were able to shed light on some of the more oblique passages in the book. One of the theories the police are bound to be following is that someone killed Quine to stop him revealing something that he had hinted at in
Bombyx Mori
.’

Daniel Chard was staring at Strike with an arrested expression.

‘Yes. I hadn’t… Yes.’

To Strike’s surprise, the publisher pulled himself up on his crutches and began to move a few paces backwards and forwards, swinging on his crutches in a parodic version of those first tentative physiotherapy exercises Strike had been given, years previously, at Selly Oak Hospital. Strike saw now that he was a fit man, that biceps rippled beneath the silk sleeves.

‘The killer, then—’ Chard began, and then ‘What?’ he snapped suddenly, staring over Strike’s shoulder.

Robin had re-emerged from the kitchen, a much healthier colour.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, pausing, unnerved.

‘This is confidential,’ said Chard. ‘No, I’m sorry. Could you return to the kitchen, please?’

‘I – all right,’ said Robin, taken aback and, Strike could tell, offended. She threw him a look, expecting him to say something, but he was silent.

When the swing doors had closed behind Robin, Chard said angrily:

‘Now I’ve lost my train of thought. Entirely lost—’

‘You were saying something about the killer.’

‘Yes. Yes,’ said Chard manically, resuming his backwards and forwards motion, swinging on his crutches. ‘The killer, then, if they knew about the accomplice, might want to target him too? And perhaps that’s occurred to him,’ said Chard, more to himself than to Strike, his eyes on his expensive floorboards. ‘Perhaps that accounts… Yes.’

The small window in the wall nearest Strike showed only the dark face of the wood close by the house; white flecks falling dreamily against the black.

‘Disloyalty,’ said Chard suddenly, ‘cuts at me like nothing else.’

He stopped his agitated thumping up and down and turned to face the detective.

‘If,’ he said, ‘I told you who I suspect to have helped Owen, and asked you to bring me proof, would you feel obliged to pass that information to the police?’

It was a delicate question, thought Strike, running a hand absently over his chin, imperfectly shaved in the haste of leaving that morning.

‘If you’re asking me to establish the truth of your suspicions…’ said Strike slowly.

‘Yes,’ said Chard. ‘Yes, I am. I would like to be sure.’

‘Then no, I don’t think I’d need to tell the police what I’m up to. But if I uncovered the fact that there was an accomplice and it looked like they might have killed Quine – or knew who had done it – I’d obviously consider myself duty bound to inform the police.’

Chard lowered himself back onto one of the large leather cubes, dropping his crutches with a clatter on the floor.

‘Damn,’ he said, his displeasure echoing off the many hard surfaces around them as he leaned over to check that he had not dented the varnished wood.

‘You know I’ve also been engaged by Quine’s wife to try and find out who killed him?’ Strike asked.

‘I had heard something of the sort,’ said Chard, still examining his teak floorboards for damage. ‘That won’t interfere with this line of enquiry, though?’

His self-absorption was remarkable, Strike thought. He remembered Chard’s copperplate writing on the card with the painting of violets:
Do let me know if there is anything you need.
Perhaps his secretary had dictated it to him.

‘Would you like to tell me who the alleged collaborator is?’ asked Strike.

‘This is extremely painful,’ mumbled Chard, his eyes flitting from Alfred Wallis to the stone angel and up to the spiral stairs.

Strike said nothing.

‘It’s Jerry Waldegrave,’ said Chard, glancing at Strike and away again. ‘And I’ll tell you why I suspect – how I know.

‘His behaviour has been strange for weeks. I first noticed it when he telephoned me about
Bombyx Mori
, to tell me what Quine had done. There was no embarrassment, no apology.’

‘Would you have expected Waldegrave to apologise for something Quine had written?’

The question seemed to surprise Chard.

‘Well – Owen was one of Jerry’s authors, so yes, I would have expected some regret that Owen had depicted me in that – in that way.’

And Strike’s unruly imagination again showed him the naked Phallus Impudicus standing over the body of a dead young man emitting supernatural light.

‘Are you and Waldegrave on bad terms?’ he asked.

‘I’ve shown Jerry Waldegrave a lot of forbearance, a considerable forbearance,’ said Chard, ignoring the direct question. ‘I kept him on full pay while he went to a treatment facility a year ago. Perhaps he feels hard done by,’ said Chard, ‘but I’ve been on his side, yes, on occasions when many another man, a more prudent man, might have remained neutral. Jerry’s personal misfortunes are not of my making. There is resentment. Yes, I would say that there is definite resentment, however unjustified.’

‘Resentment about what?’ asked Strike.

‘Jerry isn’t fond of Michael Fancourt,’ mumbled Chard, his eyes on the flames in the wood-burner. ‘Michael had a – a flirtation, a long time ago, with Fenella, Jerry’s wife. And as it happens, I actually
warned Michael off
, because of my friendship with Jerry. Yes!’ said Chard, nodding, deeply impressed by the memory of his own actions. ‘I told Michael it was unkind and unwise, even in his state of… because Michael had lost his first wife, you see, not very long before.

‘Michael didn’t appreciate my unsolicited advice. He took offence; he took off for a different publisher. The board was very unhappy,’ said Chard. ‘It’s taken us twenty-odd years to lure Michael back.

‘But after all this time,’ Chard said, his bald pate merely one more reflective surface among the glass, polished wood and steel, ‘Jerry can hardly expect his personal animosities to govern company policy. Ever since Michael agreed to come back to Roper Chard, Jerry has made it his business to – to undermine me, subtly, in a hundred little ways.

‘What I believe happened is this,’ said Chard, glancing from time to time at Strike, as though to gauge his reaction. ‘Jerry took Owen into his confidence about Michael’s deal, which we were trying to keep under wraps. Owen had, of course, been an enemy of Fancourt’s for a quarter of a century. Owen and Jerry decided to concoct this… this dreadful book, in which Michael and I are subjected to – to disgusting calumnies as a way of drawing attention away from Michael’s arrival and as an act of revenge on both of us, on the company, on anyone else they cared to denigrate.

‘And, most tellingly,’ said Chard, his voice echoing now through the empty space, ‘after I told Jerry, explicitly, to make sure the manuscript was locked safely away he allowed it to be read widely by anyone who cared to do so, and having made sure it’s being gossiped about all over London, he resigns and leaves me looking—’

‘When did Waldegrave resign?’ asked Strike.

‘The day before yesterday,’ said Chard, before plunging on: ‘and he was extremely reluctant to join me in legal action against Quine. That in itself shows—’

‘Perhaps he thought bringing in lawyers would draw more attention to the book?’ Strike suggested. ‘Waldegrave’s in
Bombyx Mori
himself, isn’t he?’

‘
That!
’ said Chard and sniggered. It was the first sign of humour Strike had seen in him and the effect was unpleasant. ‘You don’t want to take everything at face value, Mr Strike. Owen never knew about
that
.’

‘About what?’

‘The Cutter character is Jerry’s own work – I realised it on a third reading,’ said Chard. ‘Very, very clever: it looks like an attack on Jerry himself, but it’s really a way of causing Fenella pain. They are still married, you see, but very unhappily.
Very
unhappily.

‘Yes, I saw it all, on re-reading,’ said Chard. The spotlights in the hanging ceiling made rippled reflections on his skull as he nodded. ‘Owen didn’t write the Cutter. He barely knows Fenella. He didn’t know about that old business.’

‘So what exactly are the bloody sack and the dwarf supposed to—?’

‘Get it out of Jerry,’ said Chard. ‘Make him tell you. Why should I help him spread slander around?’

‘I’ve been wondering,’ Strike said, obediently dropping that line of enquiry, ‘why Michael Fancourt agreed to come to Roper Chard when Quine was working for you, given that they were on such bad terms?’

There was a short pause.

‘We were under no legal obligation to publish Owen’s next book,’ said Chard. ‘We had a first-look option. That was all.’

‘So you think Jerry Waldegrave told Quine that he was about to be dropped, to keep Fancourt happy?’

‘Yes,’ said Chard, staring at his own fingernails. ‘I do. Also, I had offended Owen the last time I saw him, so the news that I might be about to drop him no doubt swept away any last vestige of loyalty he might once have felt towards me, because I took him on when every other publisher in Britain had given up on—’

‘How did you offend him?’

‘Oh, it was when he last came into the office. He brought his daughter with him.’

‘Orlando?’

‘Named, he told me, for the eponymous protagonist of the novel by Virginia Woolf.’ Chard hesitated, his eyes flickering to Strike and then back to his nails. ‘She’s – not quite right, his daughter.’

‘Really?’ said Strike. ‘In what way?’

‘Mentally,’ mumbled Chard. ‘I was visiting the art department when they came in. Owen told me he was showing her around – something he had no business doing, but Owen always made himself at home… great sense of entitlement and self-importance, always…

‘His daughter grabbed at a mock-up cover – grubby hands – I seized her wrist to stop her ruining it—’ He mimed the action in mid-air; with the remembrance of this act of near desecration came a look of distaste. ‘It was instinctive, you know, a desire to protect the image, but it upset her very much. There was a scene. Very embarrassing and uncomfortable,’ mumbled Chard, who seemed to suffer again in retrospect. ‘She became almost hysterical. Owen was furious. That, no doubt, was my crime. That, and bringing Michael Fancourt back to Roper Chard.’

‘Who,’ Strike asked, ‘would you think had most reason to be upset at their depiction in
Bombyx Mori
?’

‘I really don’t know,’ said Chard. After a short pause he said, ‘Well, I doubt Elizabeth Tassel was delighted to see herself portrayed as parasitic, after all the years of shepherding Owen out of parties to stop him making a drunken fool of himself, but I’m afraid,’ said Chard coldly, ‘I haven’t got much sympathy for Elizabeth. She allowed that book to go out unread. Criminal carelessness.’

‘Did you contact Fancourt after you’d read the manuscript?’ asked Strike.

‘He had to know what Quine had done,’ said Chard. ‘Better by far that he heard it from me. He was just home from receiving the Prix Prévost in Paris. I did not make that call with relish.’

‘How did he react?’

‘Michael’s resilient,’ muttered Chard. ‘He told me not to worry, said that Owen had done himself more harm than he had done us. Michael rather enjoys his enmities. He was perfectly calm.’

‘Did you tell him what Quine had said, or implied, about him in the book?’

‘Of course,’ said Chard. ‘I couldn’t let him hear it from anyone else.’

‘And he didn’t seem upset?’

‘He said, “The last word will be mine, Daniel. The last word will be mine.”’

‘What did you understand by that?’

‘Oh, well, Michael’s a famous assassin,’ said Chard, with a small smile. ‘He can flay anyone alive in five well chosen – when I say “assassin”,’ said Chard, suddenly and comically anxious, ‘naturally, I’m talking in literary—’

‘Of course,’ Strike reassured him. ‘Did you ask Fancourt to join you in legal action against Quine?’

‘Michael despises the courts as a means of redress in such matters.’

‘You knew the late Joseph North, didn’t you?’ asked Strike conversationally.

The muscles in Chard’s face tightened: a mask beneath the darkening skin.

‘A very – that was a very long time ago.’

‘North was a friend of Quine’s, wasn’t he?’

‘I turned down Joe North’s novel,’ said Chard. His thin mouth was working. ‘
That’s all I did.
Half a dozen other publishers did the same. It was a mistake, commercially speaking. It had some success, posthumously. Of course,’ he added dismissively, ‘I think Michael largely rewrote it.’

‘Quine resented you turning his friend’s book down?’

‘Yes, he did. He made a lot of noise about it.’

‘But he came to Roper Chard anyway?’

‘There was nothing personal in my turning down Joe North’s book,’ said Chard, with heightened colour. ‘Owen came to understand that, eventually.’

There was another uncomfortable pause.

‘So… when you’re hired to find a – a criminal of this type,’ said Chard, changing subject with palpable effort, ‘do you work with the police on that, or—?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Strike, with a wry remembrance of the animosity he had recently encountered from the force, but delighted that Chard had played so conveniently into his hands. ‘I’ve got great contacts at the Met.
Your
movements don’t seem to be giving them any cause for concern,’ he said, with faint emphasis on the personal pronoun.