Page 330 of Troubled Blood

Robin stood to receive her tribute, but Strike, not wanting to disarrange the cat, received his hug awkwardly while sitting.

“And here I go again!” said Oonagh, laughing as she straightened up, and wiping her eyes. “I swear to God, it’s loike being on a roller­coaster. Up one minute, down the next—”

“I did the same, when I saw them,” said Anna, laughing at Oonagh. Roy’s smile, Robin noticed, was nervous and a little fixed. What did it feel like, she wondered, to be face to face with his dead wife’s best friend, after all these years? Did the physical changes in Oonagh make him wonder what Margot would have looked like, had she lived to the age of seventy? Or was he wondering anew, as he must have done over all the intervening years, whether his marriage would have survived the long stretch of icy silence that had followed her drink with Paul Satchwell, whether the strains and tensions in the relationship could have been overcome, or whether Margot would have taken Oonagh up on her offer of refuge in her flat?

They’d have divorced, Robin thought, with absolute certainty, but then she wondered whether she wasn’t tangling up Margot with herself, as she’d tended to do all through the case.

“Oh, hello,” said a breathless voice, from the doorway, and everyone looked around to see Cynthia, on whose thin, sallow face was a smile that didn’t quite reach her anxious, mottled eyes. She was wearing a black dress, and Robin wondered whether she’d consciously put it on to suggest mourning. “Sorry, I was—how are you both?”

“Fine,” said Robin.

“Great,” said Strike.

Cynthia let out one of her nervous, breathless laughs, and said,

“Yes, no—so wonderful—”

Was it wonderful for Cynthia, Robin wondered, as Anna’s stepmother pulled up a chair, and she declined a piece of the cake which, it transpired, Oonagh had gone out in the rain to purchase. How did it feel to have Margot Bamborough back, even in the form of a skeleton in a box? Did it hurt to see her husband so shaken and emotional, and to have to receive Oonagh, Margot’s best friend, into the heart of the family, like a newly discovered aunt? Robin, who seemed to be on something of a clairvoyant streak, felt sure that if Margot had never been killed, but had simply divorced Roy, Cynthia would never have been the hematologist’s choice of second wife. Margot would probably have begged the young Cynthia to accompany her into her new life, and continue looking after Anna. Would Cynthia have agreed, or would her loyalties have lain with Roy? Where would she have gone, and who would she have married, once there was no place for her at Broom House?

The second cat now entered the room, staring at the unusually large group it found inside. She picked her way past the armchairs, the ottoman and the sofa, jumped up onto the windowsill and sat with her back to them, watching the raindrops sliding down the window.

“Now, listen,” said Kim, from the upright chair she’d brought out of a corner of the room, “we really do want to pay you for the extra month you put in. I know you said no—”

“It was our choice to keep working on the case,” said Strike. “We’re glad to have helped and we definitely don’t want more money.”

He and Robin had agreed that, as the Margot Bamborough case looked likely to pay for itself three times over in terms of publicity and extra work, and as Strike felt he really should have solved it sooner, taking more cash from Anna and Kim felt unnecessarily greedy.

“Then we’d like to make a donation to charity,” said Kim. “Is there one you’d like us to support?”

“Well,” said Strike, clearing his throat, “if you’re serious, Macmillan nurses…”

He saw a slight look of surprise on the family’s faces.

“My aunt died this year,” he explained, “and the Macmillan nurse gave her a lot of support.”

“Oh, I see,” said Kim, with a slight laugh, and there was a little pause, in which the specter of Janice Beattie seemed to rise up in the middle of them, like the wisp of steam issuing from the teapot spout.

“A nurse,” said Anna quietly. “Who’d suspect a nurse?”

“Margot,” said Roy and Oonagh together.

They caught each other’s eye, and smiled: a rueful smile, doubtless surprised at finding themselves in agreement at long last, and Robin saw Cynthia look away.

“She didn’t like that nurse. She told me so,” said Oonagh, “but I got the woman confused with that blonde at the Christmas party who made a scene.”

“No, she never took to the nurse,” said Roy. “She told me, too, when she joined the practice. I didn’t take much notice…”

He seemed determined to be honest, now, however much it hurt.

“… I thought it was a case of two women being too similar: both working class, both strong characters. When I met the woman at the barbecue, I actually thought she seemed quite… well… decent. Of course, Margot never told me her suspicions…”

There was another silence, and everyone in the room, Strike was sure, was remembering that Roy hadn’t spoken to his wife at all in those few weeks before her murder, which was precisely the time period during which Margot’s suspicions of Janice must have crystallized.

“Janice Beattie’s probably the best liar I’ve ever met,” Strike said, into the tense atmosphere, “and a hell of an actress.”

“I’ve had the most extraordinary letter,” said Anna, “from her son, Kevin. Did you know he’s coming over from Dubai to testify against her?”

“We did,” said Strike, who George Layborn was briefing regularly on the progress of the police investigation.