Page 140 of Troubled Blood

She drove on for a few moments before becoming aware that Strike was looking at her again.

“What?” she asked, for a third time.

“Why’re you sensitive about second wives?”

“Because—oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? I told Morris.” She’d tried not to think, since, about her drunken Boxing Day spent texting, of the small amount of comfort she had derived from it, or the immense load of discomfort. “Matthew and Sarah Shadlock are together officially now. She left her fiancé for him.”

“Shit,” said Strike, still watching her profile. “No, you didn’t tell me.”

But he mentally docketed the fact that she’d told Morris, which didn’t fit with the idea that he’d formed of Robin and Morris’s relationship. From what Barclay had told him about Morris’s challenges to Robin’s authority, and from Robin’s generally lukewarm comments on his new hire, he’d assumed that Morris’s undoubted sexual interest in Robin had fizzled out for lack of a return. And yet she’d told Morris this painful bit of personal information, and not told him.

As they drove in silence toward Church Road, he wondered what had been going on in London while he had been in Cornwall. Morris was a good-looking man and he, like Robin, was divorcing. Strike wondered why he hadn’t previously considered the implications of this obvious piece of symmetry. Comparing notes on lawyers, on difficult exes, on the mechanics of splitting two lives: they’d have plenty to talk about, plenty of opportunities for mutual sympathy.

“Straight up here,” he said, and they drove in silence across the Royal Paddocks, between high, straight red walls.

“Nice street,” commented Robin, twenty minutes after they’d left Hampton Court Palace, as she turned the Land Rover into a road that might have been deep in countryside. To their left was dense woodland, to the right, several large, detached houses that stood back from the road behind high hedges.

“It’s that one,” said Strike, pointing at a particularly sprawling house with many pointed, half-timbered gables. The double gates stood open, as did the front door. They turned into the drive and parked behind the blue Mazda3.

As soon as Robin switched off the engine, they heard shouting coming from inside the house: a male voice, intemperate and high pitched. Anna Phipps’s wife, Kim, tall, blonde and wearing jeans and a shirt as before, came striding out of the house toward them, her expression tense.

“Big scenes,” she said, as Strike and Robin got out of the car into the mist of rain.

“Would you like us to wait—?” Robin began.

“No,” Kim said, “he’s determined to see you. Come in.”

They walked across the gravel and entered Broom House. Somewhere inside, male and female voices continued to shout.

Every house has its own deep ingrained smell, and this one was redolent of sandalwood and a not entirely unpleasant fustiness. Kim led them through a long, large-windowed hall that seemed frozen in the mid-twentieth century. There were brass light fittings, water­colors and an old rug on polished floorboards. With a sudden frisson, Robin thought that Margot Bamborough had once walked this very floor, her metallic rose perfume mingling with the scents of polish and old carpet.

As they approached the door of the drawing room, the argument taking place inside became suddenly comprehensible.

“—and if I’m to be talked about,” a man was shouting, “I should have right of reply—my family deciding to investigate me behind my back, charming, charming, it really is—”

“Nobody’s investigating you, for God’s sake!” they heard Anna say. “Bill Talbot was incompetent—”

“Oh, was he really? Were you there? Did you know him?”

“I didn’t have to be there, Dad—”

Kim opened the door. Strike and Robin followed Kim inside.

It was like coming upon a tableau. The three people standing inside froze at their entrance. Cynthia’s thin fingers were pressed to her mouth. Anna stood facing her father across a small antique table.

The romantic-looking poet of 1974 was no more. Roy Phipps’s remaining hair was short, gray and clung only around his ears and the back of his head. In his knitted sweater vest, with his high, domed, shining pate and his wild eyes, slightly sunken in a blotchy face, he’d now be better suited to the role of mad scientist.

So furious did Roy Phipps look, that Robin quite expected him to start shouting at the newcomers, too. However, the hematologist’s demeanor changed when his eyes met Strike’s. Whether this was a tribute to the detective’s bulk, or to the aura of gravity and calm he managed to project in highly charged situations, Robin couldn’t tell, but she thought she saw Roy decide against yelling. After a brief hesitation, the doctor accepted Strike’s proffered hand, and as the two men shook, Robin wondered how aware men were of the power dynamics that played out between them, while women stood watching.

“Dr. Phipps,” said Strike.

Roy appeared to have found the gear change between intemperate rage and polite greeting a difficult one, and his immediate response was slightly incoherent.

“So you’re—you’re the detective, are you?” he said. Bluish-red blotches lingered in his pale cheeks.

“Cormoran Strike—and this is my partner, Robin Ellacott.”

Robin stepped forwards.