“And it was strange: there was no packaging for the amitriptyline anywhere in the house. No empty boxes, no blister packs, nothing. Of course, a box would have Kinvara’s name on it. Kinvara’s the one who’s prescribed amitriptyline. She’s been taking them for over a year.”

Izzy glanced at Strike to see what effect her words had had. When he said nothing, she plunged on.

“Papa and Kinvara rowed the night before, at the reception, right before I came over to talk to you and Charlie. Papa had just told us he’d asked Raff to come over to the Ebury Street house next morning. Kinvara was furious. She asked why and Papa wouldn’t tell her, he just smiled, and that infuriated her.”

“Why would—?”

“Because she hates all of us,” said Izzy, correctly anticipating Strike’s question. Her hands were clutched together, the knuckles white. “She’s always hated anything and anyone that competed with her for Papa’s attention or his affection, and she particularly hates Raff, because he looks just like his mother, and Kinvara’s always been insecure about Ornella, because she’s still very glamorous, but Kinvara doesn’t like that Raff’s a boy, either. She’s always been frightened he’d replace Freddie, and maybe get put back in the will. Kinvara married Papa for his money. She never loved him.”

“When you say ‘put back’—”

“Papa wrote Raff out of his will when Raff ran—when he did the thing—in the car. Kinvara was behind that, of course, she was egging Papa on to have nothing more to do with Raff at all—anyway, Papa told us at Lancaster House he’d invited Raff around next day and Kinvara went quiet, and a couple of minutes later she suddenly announced that she was leaving and walked out. She claims she went back to Ebury Street, wrote Papa a farewell note—but you were there. Maybe you saw it?”

“Yes,” said Strike. “I did.”

“Yes, so, she claims she wrote that note, packed her bag, then caught the train back to Woolstone.

“The way the police were questioning us, they seemed to think Kinvara leaving him would have made Papa kill himself, but that’s just too ridiculous for words! Their marriage has been in trouble for ages. I think he’d been able to see through her for months and months before then. She’s been telling crazy fibs and doing all kinds of melodramatic things to try and keep Papa’s interest. I promise you, if Papa had believed she was about to leave him, he’d have been relieved, not suicidal, but of course, he wouldn’t have taken that note seriously, he’d have known perfectly well it was more play-acting. Kinvara’s got nine horses and no income. She’ll have to be dragged out of Chiswell House, just like Tinky the First—my Grandpa’s third wife,” Izzy explained. “The Chiswell men seem to have a thing for women with big boobs and horses.”

Flushed beneath her freckles, Izzy drew breath, and said:

“I think Kinvara killed Papa. I can’t get it out of my head, can’t focus, can’t think about anything else. She was convinced there was something going on between Papa and Venetia—she was suspicious from the first moment she saw Venetia, and then the Sun snooping around convinced her she was right to be worried—and she probably thought Papa reinstating Raff proved that he was getting ready for a new era, and I think she ground up her anti-depressants and put them in his orange juice when he wasn’t looking—he always had a glass of juice first thing, that was his routine—then, when he became sleepy and couldn’t fight her off, she put the bag over his head and then, after she’d killed him, she wrote that note to try and make it look as though she was the one who was going to divorce him and I think she sneaked out of the house after she’d done it, went home to Woolstone and pretended she’d been there when Papa died.”

Running out of breath, Izzy felt for the cross around her neck and played with it nervously, watching for Strike’s reaction, her expression both nervous and defiant.

Strike, who had dealt with several military suicides, knew that survivors were nearly always left with a particularly noxious form of grief, a poisoned wound that festered even beyond that of those whose relatives had been dispatched by enemy bullets. He might have his own doubts about the way in which Chiswell had met his end, but he was not about to share them with the disoriented, grief-stricken woman beside him. What struck him chiefly about Izzy’s diatribe was the hatred she appeared to feel for her stepmother. It was no trivial charge that she laid against Kinvara, and Strike wondered what it was that convinced Izzy that the rather childish, sulky woman with whom he had shared five minutes in a car could be capable of planning what amounted to a methodical execution.

“The police,” he said at last, “will have looked into Kinvara’s movements, Izzy. In a case like this, the spouse is usually the first one to be investigated.”

“But they’re accepting her story,” said Izzy feverishly. “I can tell they are.”

Then it’s true, thought Strike. He had too high an opinion of the Met to imagine that they would be slapdash in confirming the movements of the wife who had had easy access to the murder scene, and who had been prescribed the drugs that had been found in the body.

“Who else knew Papa always drank orange juice in the mornings? Who else had access to amitriptyline and the helium—?”

“Does she admit to buying the helium?” Strike asked.

“No,” said Izzy, “but she wouldn’t, would she? She just sits there doing her hysterical little girl act.” Izzy affected a higher-pitched voice. “‘I don’t know how it got into the house! Why are you all pestering me, leave me alone, I’ve been widowed!’

“I told the police, she attacked Papa with a hammer, over a year ago.”

Strike froze in the act of raising his unappetizing tea to his lips.

“What?”

“She attacked Papa with a hammer,” said Izzy, her pale blue eyes boring into Strike, willing him to understand. “They had a massive row, because—well, it doesn’t matter why, but they were out in the stables—this was at home, at Chiswell House, obviously—and Kinvara grabbed the hammer off the top of a toolbox and smashed Papa over the head with it. She was bloody lucky she didn’t kill him then. It left him with olfactory dysfunction. He couldn’t smell and taste as well afterwards, and he got cross at the smallest things, but he insisted on hushing it all up. He bundled her off into some residential center and told everyone she was ill, ‘nervous exhaustion.’

“But the stable girl witnessed the whole thing and told us what had really happened. She had to call the local GP because Papa was bleeding so badly. It would have been all over the papers if Papa hadn’t got Kinvara admitted to a psychiatric ward and warned the papers off.”

Izzy picked up her tea, but her hand was now shaking so badly that she was forced to put it back down again.

“She isn’t what men think she is,” said Izzy vehemently. “They all buy the little girl nonsense, even Raff. ‘She did lose a baby, Izzy…’ But if he heard a quarter of what Kinvara says about him behind his back, he’d soon change his tune.

“And what about the open front door?” Izzy said, jumping subject. “You know all about that, it’s how you and Venetia got in, isn’t it? That door’s never closed properly unless you slam it. Papa knew that. He’d have made sure he closed it properly if he’d been in the house alone, wouldn’t he? But if Kinvara was sneaking out early in the morning without wanting to be heard, she’d have had to pull it to and leave it, wouldn’t she?