Page 142 of Troubled Blood

“Yes,” said Cynthia, “and then he smashed—”

“Crystal bowl of my mother’s and half a dozen glasses. Hit a cricket ball right across the barbecue area. The nurse cleaned it all up for me, because—decent of her. She knew I couldn’t—broken glass,” said Roy, with an impatient gesture.

“On the bright side,” said Cynthia, with the ghost of a laugh, “he’d smashed the punch, so nobody else got sick.”

“That bowl was art deco,” said Roy, unsmiling. “Bloody disaster, the whole thing. I said to Margot,” and he paused for a second after saying the name, and Robin wondered when he’d last spoken it, “‘I don’t know what you think this is going to achieve.’ Because he didn’t come, the one she was trying to conciliate—the doctor she didn’t get on with, what was his—?”

“Joseph Brenner,” said Robin.

“Brenner, exactly. He’d refused the invitation, so what was the point? But no, we still had to give up our Saturday to entertain this motley collection of people, and our reward was to have our drink stolen and our possessions smashed.”

Roy’s fists lay on the arms of his chair. He uncoiled the long fingers for a moment in a movement like a hermit crab unflexing its legs, then curled them tightly in upon themselves again.

“That same boy, Oakden, wrote a book about Margot later,” he said. “Used a photograph from that damn barbecue to add credibility to the notion that he and his mother knew all about our private lives. So, yes,” said Roy coldly, “not one of Margot’s better ideas.”

“Well, she was trying to make the practice work better together, wasn’t she?” said Anna. “You’ve never really needed to manage different personalities at work—”

“Oh, you know all about my work, too, do you, Anna?”

“Well, it wasn’t the same as being a GP, was it?” said Anna. “You were lecturing, doing research, you didn’t have to manage cleaners and receptionists and a whole bunch of non-medics.”

“They were quite badly behaved, Anna,” said Cynthia, hurrying loyally to support Roy. “No, they really were. I never told—I didn’t want to cause trouble—but one of the women sneaked upstairs into your mum and dad’s bedroom.”

“What?” barked Roy.

“Yes,” said Cynthia, nervously. “No, I went upstairs to change Anna’s nappy and I heard movement in there. I walked in and she was looking at Margot’s clothes in the wardrobe.”

“Who was this?” asked Strike.

“The blonde one. The receptionist who wasn’t Gloria.”

“Irene,” said Strike. “Did she know you’d seen her?”

“Oh yes. I walked in, holding Anna.”

“What did she say when she saw you?” asked Robin.

“Well, she was a bit embarrassed,” said Cynthia. “You would be, wouldn’t you? She laughed and said ‘just being nosy’ and walked back out past me.”

“Good God,” said Roy Phipps, shaking his head. “Who hired these people?”

“Was she really just looking?” Robin asked Cynthia. “Or d’you think she’d gone in there to—”

“Oh, I don’t think she’d taken anything,” said Cynthia. “And you never—Margot never missed anything, did she?” she asked Roy.

“No, but you should still have told me this at the time,” said Roy crossly.

“I didn’t want to cause trouble. You were already… well, it was a stressful day, wasn’t it?”

“About this alleged sighting,” said Strike, and he told the family the third-hand tale of Charlie Ramage, who claimed to have seen Margot wandering among graves in a churchyard in Leamington Spa.

“… and Robin’s now spoken to Ramage’s widow, who confirmed the basic story, though she couldn’t swear to it that it was Margot he thought he’d seen, and not another missing woman. The sighting doesn’t seem to have been passed to the police, so I wanted to ask whether Margot had any connection with Leamington Spa that you know of?”

“None,” said Roy, and Cynthia shook her head.

Strike made a note.

“Thank you. While we’re on the subject of sightings,” said Strike, “I wonder whether we could run through the rest of the list?”