Page 68 of Troubled Blood

That euery matter worse was for her melling.

Edmund Spenser

The Faerie Queene

Irene Hickson’s house lay in a short, curving Georgian terrace of yellow brick, with arched windows and fanlights over each black front door. It reminded Robin of the street where she’d spent the last few months of her married life, in a rented house that had been built for a sea merchant. Here, too, were traces of London’s trading past. The lettering over an arched window read Royal Circus Tea Warehouse.

“Mr. Hickson must’ve made good money,” said Strike, looking up at the beautifully proportioned frontage as he and Robin crossed the street. “This is a long way from Corporation Row.”

Robin rang the doorbell. They heard a shout of “Don’t worry, I’ll get it!” and a few seconds later, a short, silver-haired woman opened the door to them. Dressed in a navy sweater, and trousers of the kind that Robin’s mother would have called “slacks,” she had a round pink and white face. Blue eyes peeked out from beneath a blunt fringe that Robin suspected she might have cut herself.

“Mrs. Hickson?” asked Robin.

“Janice Beattie,” said the older woman. “You’re Robin, are you? An’ you’re—’

The retired nurse’s eyes swept down over Strike’s legs in what looked like professional appraisal.

“—Corm’ran, is that ’ow you say it?” she asked, looking back up into his face.

“That’s right,” said Strike. “Very good of you to see us, Mrs. Beattie.”

“Oh, no trouble at all,” she said, backing away to let them in. “Irene’ll be wiv us in a mo.”

The naturally upturned corners of the nurse’s mouth and the dimples in her full cheeks gave her a cheerful look even when she wasn’t smiling. She led them through a hall that Strike found oppressively over-decorated. Everything was dusky pink: the flowered wallpaper, the thick carpet, the dish of pot-pourri that sat on the telephone table. The distant sound of a flush told them exactly where Irene was.

The sitting room was decorated in olive green, and everything that could be swagged, flounced, fringed or padded had been. Family photographs in silver frames were crowded on side tables, the largest of which showed a heavily tanned forty-something blonde who was cheek to cheek over fruit-and-umbrella-laden cocktails with a florid gentlemen who Robin assumed was the late Mr. Hickson. He looked quite a lot older than his wife. A large collection of porcelain figurines stood upon purpose-built mahogany shelves against the shiny olive-green wallpaper. All represented young women. Some wore crinolines, others twirled parasols, still others sniffed flowers or cradled lambs in their arms.

“She collects ’em,” said Janice, smiling as she saw where Robin was looking. “Lovely, aren’t they?”

“Oh yes,” lied Robin.

Janice didn’t seem to feel she had the right to invite them to sit down without Irene present, so the three of them remained standing beside the figurines.

“Have you come far?” she asked them politely, but before they could answer, a voice that commanded attention said,

“Hello! Welcome!”

Like her sitting room, Irene Hickson presented a first impression of over-embellished, over-padded opulence. Just as blonde as she’d been at twenty-five, she was now much heavier, with an enormous bosom. She’d outlined her hooded eyes in black, penciled her sparse brows into a high, Pierrot-ish arch and painted her thin lips in scarlet. In a mustard-colored twinset, black trousers, patent heels and a large quantity of gold jewelry, which included clip-on earrings so heavy that they were stretching her already long lobes, she advanced on them in a potent cloud of amber perfume and hairspray.

“How d’you do?” she said, beaming at Strike as she offered her hand, bracelets jangling. “Has Jan told you? What happened this morning? So strange, with you coming today; so strange, but I’ve lost count of the number of times things like that happen to me.” She paused, then said dramatically, “My Margot shattered. My Margot Fonteyn, on the top shelf,” she said, pointing to a gap in the china figurines. “Fell apart into a million pieces when I ran the feather duster over her!”

She paused, waiting for astonishment.

“That is odd,” said Robin, because it was clear Strike wasn’t going to say anything.

“Isn’t it?” said Irene. “Tea? Coffee? Whatever you want.”

“I’ll do it, dear,” said Janice.

“Thank you, my love. Maybe make both?” said Irene. She waved Strike and Robin graciously toward armchairs. “Please, sit down.”

The armchairs placed Strike and Robin within view of a window framed in tasseled curtains, through which they could see a garden with intricate paving and raised beds. It had an Elizabethan air, with low box hedges and a wrought iron sundial.

“Oh, the garden was all my Eddie,” said Irene, following their gaze. “He loved his garden, bless his heart. Loved this house. It’s why I’m still here, although it’s too big for me now, really… Excuse me. I haven’t been well,” she added in a loud whisper, making quite a business of lowering herself onto the sofa and placing cushions carefully around herself. “Jan’s been a saint.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Strike. “That you’ve been unwell, I mean, not that your friend’s a saint.”

Irene gave a delighted peal of laughter and Robin suspected that if Strike had been sitting slightly nearer, Irene might have playfully cuffed him. With an air of giving Strike privileged information, she half-mouthed: