He told the taxi driver to take him to Fulham Palace Road, home of Elizabeth Tassel, took note of the route as he traveled and would have arrived at her house in a mere four minutes had he not spotted a Boots. He asked the driver to pull up and wait, and reemerged from the chemists shortly afterwards, walking much more easily with the aid of an adjustable stick.
This part is fascinating because the Boots aspect distracts the reader from the fact that Liz Tassel's home is so close to the crime scene. It also, as we are told later, "as good a murderer’s hideout as I’ve ever seen." There is certainly a Gothic air in its description:
Her home looked drab and dingy on this bleak winter’s day. Another redbrick Victorian house, but with none of the grandeur or whimsy of Talgarth Road, it stood on a corner, fronted by a dank garden overshadowed by overgrown laburnum bushes. Sleet fell again as Strike stood peering over the garden gate, trying to keep his cigarette alight by cupping it in his hand. There were gardens front and back, both well shielded from the public view by the dark bushes quivering with the weight of the icy downpour. The upper windows of the house looked out over the Fulham Palace Road Cemetery, a depressing view one month from midwinter, with bare trees reaching bony arms silhouetted into a white sky, old tombstones marching into the distance.
It also sets up an error that will appear in two future books: Strike consistently remembers that Robin bought him the walking stick. She didn't; she suggested they could find one at a chemist's in Chapter 25, but Strike bought it himself, after he parted from her.
The stick that "Stick" bought comes up again in Lethal White, in the restaurant with Charlotte:
“I’ve got to go,’ said Strike, pocketing the mobile and reaching for his walking stick, which had slipped and fallen under the table while he and Charlotte argued. Realising what he was after, she leaned sideways and succeeded in picking it up before he could reach it.
"Where’s the cane I gave you?" she said. "The Malacca one?"
“You kept it," he reminded her.
"Who bought you this one? Robin?”
Amidst all of Charlotte’s paranoid and frequently wild accusations, she had occasionally made uncannily accurate guesses.
"She did, as a matter of fact," said Strike, but instantly regretted saying it.
Of course, a detective like Strike will regret saying it, because he just made an error of fact. This same error will be repeated twice more in The Ink Black Heart where the "collapsible walking stick that Robin had bought him" is mentioned every time he uses it.
This is a really strange error to me, because we know, from corrections made in later editions, that Rowling (or at least her editors) track errors that they notice or that, perhaps, those to which fans alert them. There's the Mia Thompson business of CC, for instance. Early books claimed that a "DNA test" had forced Rokeby to accept paternity when Strike was about 5; unfortunately. that technology was not available in 1980. By TB, Dr. Gupta was explaining that "And even in the seventies, before DNA testing, the police did pretty well with fingerprints, blood groups and so forth." Hereafter, Strike's internal musings recall a paternity test, rather than a DNA test, because the 1980ish test would have had to be one based on HLA blood antigens, not DNA. (See here for a 1981 article that describes the then-cutting edge science).
So, why was the walking stick error not only left uncorrected in later Lethal White editions, but actually repeated in The Ink Black Heart? Could the error possibly be not the author's, but Strike's? Could the contrast with Charlotte, and the manipulating ways she displayed in the restaurant, cause him to remember Robin's kindness, and attribute an act of caregiving to her that she did not actually do? By Chapter 37 of The Silkworm, we have Strike explaining (to Robin, the psychology student, who really should know this already) how subconscious desires can cause memories to be rewritten.
“You say he claims Charles interrupted him with the sinkhole story while he was telling him about Quine coming into the shop?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Then it’s odds on Quine was in the shop on the first, not the eighth. He remembers those two bits of information as connected. Silly bugger’s got confused. He wanted to have seen Quine after he’d disappeared, he wanted to be able to help establish time of death, so he was subconsciously looking for reasons to think it was the Monday in the time frame for the murder, not an irrelevant Monday a whole week before anyone was interested in Quine’s movements.”
The question is, was Strike's own memory of how he got the walking stick similarly rewritten? In my guest post on the Strike & Ellacott Files blog, I wrote of how Strike's legendary memory seems to be faltering in The Ink Black Heart. I am currently pondering the possibility that at least some of what we assume are authorial continuity errors may be set-ups for some deliberate plot point involving memory lapses. Especially if there are some horrors from that Norfolk commune that Strike is, consciously or subconciously, forcing himself to forget.
On the other hand, none of this explains Robin forgetting Mrs. Cunliffe's funeral. or the Schrodinger's Cat state of Dave Polworth's mother. So my argument here may collapse as easily as Strike's cane.
A couple of more random thoughts before I close this session:
- Robin's amazing driving steals the show on the first read, but upon re-reading, I actually liked the conversation in the Burger King better. The principal reason was how Strike's tone contrasts to the talk they have at the racetrack in Lethal White. "Don't blame me if you don't like what you're about to hear!" versus “Well, bear in mind we want exactly the same thing while I’m saying the next bit, all right?” A nice example of how he relates to the "Robin-who-is-about-to-marry-Matthew" versus the "Robin-who-has-wised-up-and-dumped-the-Flobberworm."
- For all everyone says about how nice and wonderful a person Jerry Waldegrave is, he seems to be a pretty unpleasant person in Simpsons-in-the-Strand, with the way he behaves in the restaurant and the foul language he uses on the phone. Yes, he's drunk, and has a lot to be upset about, but he seems to have had a drinking problem for some time. Are we supposed to believe that the "nicest man in publishing" as never let that side of him slip before? Especially when he is on the sauce?
- Finally, does anyone else besides me find it hard to believe that Strike, with his bum knee, could grab a tall and "surprisingly strong" Pippa, wait to be buzzed into a building, then drag her up two full stories of loud and rickety metal stairs without either her breaking away or screaming loud enough to summon help? As important as that scene is, the set-up for it strains credulity with me.
Regarding the Walkingstick: there is another possibility: Robin did buy him the stick that he is using in lethal white. Perhaps he mislaid the original one that he purchased for himself and needed another one and she ran out and got it for him. We don’t necessarily see all the action that goes on in the stories. But I like the theory that because she suggested it he attributes the purchase of it to her since had she been with them she would’ve been the one to run in and buy it for him. And of course it is a set up that adds to Charlotte‘s jealousy.
ReplyDeleteAnd I always found that scene with Strike and Pippa rather unbelievable as well. Strike so often has to hoist himself upstairs using the handrails, so how was he managing to hoist himself and a struggling Pippa at the same time?
And the only story explanation for Robin forgetting Mrs. Cunliffes’s funeral is that she’s blocking it out because she never liked Mrs. Cunliffe and the whole situation had nearly been a disaster (unlikely, because she was remembering Matthew holding her hand during her grandfather‘s funeral). But I think it’s just a rather surprising writing memory lapse.
I have long had this personal opinion about the walking stick.
ReplyDeleteStrike is of course the one buys it, but I think that in hindsight, he sees it as Robin getting it for him. It is Robin who suggests that he buys a stick at all, and she is the one who says that it could be bought at the chemist’s. He never used the useless Malacca stick and I think that before SW he had never used a stick, but only crutches (or a wheelchair in the early days).
As she is the one who raises the idea of it, and the practicality of where to get it, the stick is intrinsically associated with Robin for Strike, and after a few years he misremembers and thinks that she even did the actual buying.
I love it. Do you think his childhood nickname of "Stick" has any symbolic meaning? I've always thought it a bit odd that Lucy continues to use it after Strike's amputation.
DeleteI never connected Stick to a stick, so for me it did not feel weird. It can mean so many different things, and it likely comes from either a mispronunciation or an early memory or inside joke. I expect that neither of them get reminded of an actual stick when they hear the nickname.
DeleteI hope I didn’t pull in things from other chapters but here are the things that stuck out to me on relisten of this section:
ReplyDelete1) Strike’s poisonous skeleton memory. Is this resolved through the books resolution or does it point to a deeper memory yet to be revealed in a future book?
2) Robins quick jumping out of the car after their near miss crash to help a child in the other car while Strike is relatively helpless has similarities with the final showdown to save Flavia in IBH.
3) Daniel Chards inability to look Strike in the eye often reminded me a little of the Athorns in TB.
4) A little foreshadowing when Strike thinks the murderer must be like the Black Tip shark from his Polworth adventure and in the final confrontation with Elizabeth Tassel her eyes are described as shark eyes three times.
5) I picture Rowling smiling a bit while writing the Michael fancourt interview where he categorically states that the best writers of our time have all been childless. I’m thinking she had some experience being patronized with such a declaration in her past.
I think the poisoned skeleton refers to something earlier:
Delete“Maybe Quine was born four hundred years too late,” said Strike, still eating shortbread. “Elizabeth Tassel told me there’s a Jacobean revenge play featuring a poisoned skeleton disguised as a woman. Presumably someone shags it and dies. Not a million miles away from Phallus Impudicus getting ready to—”
“Don’t,” said Robin, with a half laugh and a shudder.
But Strike had not broken off because of her protest, or because of any sense of repugnance.
Something had flickered deep in his subconscious as he spoke. Somebody had told him…someone had said…but the memory was gone in a flash of tantalizing silver, like a minnow vanishing in pondweed.
“A poisoned skeleton,” Strike muttered, trying to capture the elusive memory, but it was gone.
The memory of Liz Tassel bringing up the poisoned skeleton is clearly in the forefront of his mind, not deep in his subconscious. I'm thinking that the memory is not of a poisoned skeleton, but from the next sentence "Someone shags it and dies." Maybe some sort of sexual crime in the Norfold commune?
I agree with the above comments about Robin and the walking stick. Because she was with him when he needed it the most, she suggested it and she was the one who fetched it from the alley after Strikes confrontation with Pippa, I also think I’m his mind, it’s the stick Robin got for him. I always though it was a beautiful symbol of his affection and love for Robin. His recognition of the things she does for him. A subconscious way of acknowledging and accepting how she cares for him.
ReplyDelete