It Was the Chocolate Brownie and Not Strike That Made Her Happier

Hey, Everyone! Today we are deep diving into chapters 8-18 of Troubled Blood. We are in part 2 and today’s epigraph is, “Then came Autumne all in yellow clad”(68). A quick note about the epigraph before we get into it. Troubled Blood takes us through an entire year, we start and end the book in the Summer months. Autumn is often thought of as the harvest season, everything either starts the process of hibernating or leaves are dying off. With that we have the pairing of being yellow clad. Yellow, unless attached to bellies, is generally seen as a positive color and as both of our heroes were born in Autumn (a connection to the opening epigraph of Cuckoo’ Calling perhaps?) It seems as though this section will have both death and light everything we expect from the Strike novels. So let’s get into it, shall we? Chapter 8 Strike and Robin start this chapter on a sad and yet satisfying note, The Mrs. Tuftys are told of their husband’s bigamy and band together to have justice served, but also inform the press that the currently called Strike Detective Agency solved the case. I must say it does bother me that Robin solved the case but is not mentioned in the papers even if Robin herself does not want to be mentioned. Almost a full month goes by before DI George Layborn contacts Strike with news of the Bamborough file. He reveals that DI Talbot was on the case for six months before his wife called the hospital as he had a “Proper mental breakdown”. He also tells Strike that Ken Lawson took over but unfortunately shortly after she disappeared Lord Luncan disappeared. Here, Rowling again, shows us the meticulous research she has done as this was a real crime that happened. Richard Bingham the 7th Earl of Luncan disappeared on Nov. 8th, 1974 after his nanny was butchered. Layborn discusses with Strike the various reasons why Creed was a suspect (there was a white van) and the little ways that Talbot did not follow through on investigative work (he was too busy asking the former boyfriend where he was when one of Creed’s victims was taken). 

Strike goes home and after eating some dinner starts to read The Demon of Paradise Park, a biography on Creed. To try to sum it up quickly Creed started torturing women in 61 and continued through until 1976. He was born in a horrifically abusive and bordering incestual house. ( can it be considered incest if it is a step-father? Either way, it is still horrific)His teenage mother was able to escape but couldn’t take Dennis with her. The last thing of note is that his mother wished she had let her father kill him when he was minutes old. Strike’s reading is interrupted by a phone call from a drunk Charlotte who wants to talk to him as it is her twin’s first birthday and she is miserable. After a few minutes Strike hangs up. Chapter 9 It is the ninth chapter and the ninth of October and I desperately wish I could give Robin the birthday she deserves but she wakes up miserable. After all, it is the last year of her 20’s and as Katie, her cousin (who I am liking less and less) points out Robin is moving in a different direction. Robin begins the day contemplating the fact that she is lonely and as soon as she wonders if she will have a succession of lovers like Strike, she wonders if he called Charlotte. 

We get a description of her rented room, and her roommates Max and Wolfgang the elderly dachshund. It is interesting to note that while I adore the actor they got to play Max, I have a note that his physical description sounds like Brad Pitt to me. The only problem with Max is he seems to be suffering from some sort of depression which makes Robin’s living space not as good as it can be. She opens the gifts her family sent and dresses all in black, a move I have often done myself. She reads some of her own copy of Demon of Paradise Park as she rides the tube. Then She gets a text from Strike, asking if she can join him in interviewing Dr. Dinesh Gupta, a colleague of Margots. Unfortunately, she has to meet with the Weatherman about Postcard. Strike sends back “Right you are” and it is with those words and no wish of a happy birthday that Robin’s mood continues to sour as this is the second year in a row that Strike has forgotten. The man with amazing recall is so in denial about his feelings that he has forgotten her birthday twice. It makes me want to scream and possibly smack him upside the head, but I will leave that to the very capable hands of Ilsa. 

Chapter 10 Strike is with Dr. Gupta and Mrs. Gupta starts the chapter with the third mention of a woman not being happy without babies in 10 chapters. This seems to be a very strong theme throughout this novel and makes me think at some point there will be a final incontrovertible statement on the will they/won’t they someday have kids argument. Of course as I type this I realize there will be arguments when that final say comes out because that is the genius of reading and loving books: the debates never end. Dr. Gupta liked Margot though they had strong differences of opinion. He described her as a feminist who improved those around her whether they wanted to or not. He also describes GP Joseph Brenner: a hard, and old fashioned doctor who acted as the third in their practice, and the practice secretary Dorothy Oakden who came with him from their last placement. We also hear about “Janice Beattie, the district nurse, who was the best nurse I ever worked with”(96), and a woman he still receives Christmas cards from. He also identifies two receptionists Irene Bull, and Gloria Conti. He ends the list of people to interview with the cleaning woman, whose name he struggles to remember. He describes the practice as an unhappy one and foreshadows that the team is everything, if a team doesn’t come together, all the experience in the world means nothing. Joseph Brenner was outright hostile to all of the ladies except Dorothy. Though it is interesting to note that he thought Brenner respected Janice for her efficient manner. The more Gupta talks the more he convinces himself that Brenner didn’t like people, which is surprising to Strike. Though I have to say as an introvert myself and a school teacher I was not surprised at all in that statement. Gupta also reveals that Brenner was addicted to barbiturates and over-ordered them in mass quantities. Oh if only I had noticed these clues before the end of the book. He discovered Brenner’s addictions when Janice told him of them. He then talks about a summer bar-b-que that Margot held in her home and Dorothy’s son. He remembers the cleaning lady’s name was Wilma and she was not there and that a broken punch bowl led to the bar-b-que not working the way that Margot wanted. He tells Strike how everyone felt after she disappeared and that Wilma’s husband was not a good man but he can’t remember why, though he does remember she was fired for drinking on the job after Margot disappeared. He tells Strike the details of the day she disappeared. The big thing being that there was an unregistered patient that Margot saw when Brenner refused and there was debate as to whether or not she was a lady. Gloria insisted that the patient was a woman even after Talbot pressured her. Gupta then talks about Roy, and informs Strike that he has a blood disorder and was very spoiled. The last piece of information that he has is that he thinks it was Creed as well after all, “He knew how to render his corpses mute”(107). Chapter 11 Strike contemplates the information that he learned from the interview and from an interview he watched with Helen Wardrop, the one woman who survived Creed. He thinks about what the interviewer said, that she must feel lucky to have survived and how he felt when people said that about his IED, and his thoughts for me ring true, if they had been lucky they never would have been there in the first place. After noting he missed his train he discovers two text messages and a voice mail. As the voice mail is from George Layborn he responds to that first. George has gotten a hold of the Bamborough file, it is a hot mess but it is all Strike’s for the taking he can drop it off at the office tomorrow. Strike attempts to call Robin with the happy news but is sent straight to voicemail and as he thinks she is meeting with Weatherman, he turns to the texts. Al, his half brother and the only one who continually, if sporadically, contacts him wants him to take a family picture for their dad, a man Strike has met twice. Strike closes the message without responding and then gets dork slapped by Ilsa in the form of this text, “It’s Robin’s birthday, you total dickhead” (112). Thank you Ilsa, my queen! Chapter 12. Robin has an ok meeting with Weatherman and his wife. There is a new postcard from the National Portrait Gallery, making Weatherman suspect an ex-girlfriend who had been to art school. After they leave, Robin looks over the card before taking a call from Strike. He finally wishes her a happy birthday and that he will be back in the office in an hour with her gift. She immediately knows he is just going to get her flowers at the first shop he passes and is rightfully annoyed by it. But then Strike tells her about the file and it instantly cheers her up. Robin hangs up with Strike and Pat takes pleasure in asking if he remembered her birthday yet. Ahhh Pat ,how I love you. Robin received an actual thoughtful gift from Pat, if not quite something she would have chosen herself. Barclay got her playing cards with Al-Qaeda members on them, which Robin says she can play poker with. It seems, with Barclay’s gift, that he is saying she is one of the boys and an equal in the team of detectives…something Pat tries to tone down by suggesting a game of Bridge. As they are leaving, Morris shows up with a gift for Robin and a Bond reference for Pat, that makes me think he probably has as many STD’s as the famous spy. Morris has gotten her salted caramel truffles. Pat approves but Robin can’t help but remember that they were mentioned in Morris’s presence not as a thing she loved but as something that Strike can’t stop eating, although who can blame him… Robin then shops for new perfume, during which time she smells Margot’s scent Rive Gauche, and sees Sarah Shadlock’s signature scent, flowerbomb. She finally picks Fracas, a heady tuber-rose scent that makes Robin think this change will make her the kind of sophisticated woman who would be able to tell that a man doesn’t want her, breaking the hearts of all readers who see her as so much more amazing than merely sophisticated. Chapter 13 This chapter’s starting paragraphs go over the denial that Strike has through his gift giving to Robin. “I gave her a dress in which she looked like all of my dreams come true and so now I need to completely downplay every gift giving event ever in perpetuity.” OYE STRIKE!!!! It’s ok though because the florist has not a lot to pick from and roses send a message of interest that he just can’t give her. (FOR CRYING OUT LOUD YOU BOUGHT HER A DESIGNER DRESS THAT COSTS MORE THAN MOST WEDDING DRESSES WHEN YOU WERE HOMELESS YOU GIANT PAIN IN MY… sorry, right roses… )Too romantic. Sure. So he goes with the safe bet. Stargazer lilies. They are bright, bold, and have a very strong fragrance. That should be safe… too bad he didn’t ask her where her last bouquet of Stargazer’s came from. Also, I like the tie in. Stargazer lilies right before they are thrust into a year of astrology and exercises in mental anguish for Strike, serves him right for not facing his emotions. It is with all of this frustration that Robin joins Strike at the scene of the crime on Halloween afternoon. Strike takes Robin through everything he read about that last day. Who left the practice when, and what their alibis were. Gloria states that the mystery patient Theo was with Margot until quarter past 6. Strike and Robin realize that there are many good spots for someone to have lied in wait for the good doctor. They talk a bit about what was searched and that Irene said Margot got two threatening letters, of which there is no evidence. Robin asks about the phonebox that two women were struggling next to… and Strike, God love him, is surprised that she looked at the case notes. Oh Strike, Robin may not have training but she is no amateur. Strike mentions a teenager who thought she saw Margot. Then points out Albemarle Way, another street in which Margot could have been abducted from. It is at this point that Strike realizes the scent he thought were the lilies is in fact Robin’s new perfume and he is not a fan, in fact he thinks of how he liked her last scent, one he missed when she wasn’t in the office. They pass a garden covered in Maltese crosses and discuss how priests and doctors are hardwired to be trusted by everyone. Strike then takes her down a thought path of someone calling her into a house because she is a doctor, which Robin brilliantly shoots down. After all, a crime of passion would not have been able to have hidden a body so well for 40 years. She then reveals that she has also been reading Demon of Paradise Park. Strike hides behind employer responsibilities in asking if she should read the book. Strike and Robin go over the sighting of a white van, and where he would have gone based on the fact that witnesses also saw two women struggling in the rain next to a phone box. They continue to discuss how the sighting was debunked and how Talbot’s need for it to be Creed does not make sense. There was also one other sighting of a woman going into a church by a handyman but that also doesn’t fit. But now to the Three Kings Pub for a pint. Chapter 14 They enter the Three Kings, and as Strike goes to the bar Robin sees a picture of his father hanging by the mirror. Strike then goes over important paperwork with Robin, a picture of the mother and daughter who were struggling to get out of the rain. It was the first sign that the public was losing faith in DI Talbot’s abilities. They then come to an agreement that the last time Margot was alive is quarter to 6. Strike says that maybe Theo was a man, and Gloria’s accomplice, by using means vs. motif for this particular possibility. Strike then goes into the four men who could have a hand in her death. Roy Phipps, her husband, who suffers from Von Willebrand disease. However, he was too sick and in bed to have had anything to do with her disappearance. Robin then sees Talbot’s notes and they are covered in dates for the Creed murders and stars. Next is Wilma’s husband who was sentenced to jail on 2 counts of rape. The interest there being Wilma changed her story and said she sponged blood off the carpet in the spare room and that she had seen Roy walking that day. Cynthia Phipps was willing to back up Roy’s story however which leads Robin and Strike to both think of the ten year gap between them. That said Roy no longer cares about the age difference or the fact that they are cousins when he marries her 7 years later. Then there is Paul Satchwell, the ex-boyfriend and artist. Paul is quickly dismissed as he is very forthcoming and has a clear alibi. Last and not least is a man by the name of Steve Douthwaite. Steve was a patient at the practice. First Robin sees articles that accuse him of being at the center of a colleague’s wife’s suicide. Robin tells Strike the articles are not fair as they speculate about his health. Then she sees Margot’s reports which are that he is under severe strain and has signs of anxiety. He had also been the victim of an attack. That said he did angrily leave the office shortly before Margot disappeared. Robin identifies a spot of Pitman shorthand on Talbot’s notes about Douthwaite and has Pat translate it. Robin then gets annoyed at Strike. Which leads to Strike thinking it is the first time she has called him by his last name and there is something in it more intimate than his first name. Something he loves. But they quickly go back to the crime and that Douthwaite’s alibi doesn’t hold up with either man. They talk about a few more possibilities when Pat calls to say the pitmans is about baphomet, signs and Robin recognizes the stars on Talbot’s notes as pentagrams. Part 3 Chapter 15 We now come to the winter months, clothed in frieze or a course, plain, woolen, weave. Tragically, Joan is taking a turn for the worse so Strike heads back to St. Mawes. Robin leads the team meeting without Strike and there quickly becomes tension in the ranks. Morris does not want to take instructions from Robin. The most telling thing of this is that Morris is a misogynist that thinks it is ok to call her late and night to say he won’t do what she asks and that according to Robin’s copy of DPP Margot may have had an abortion. Chapter 16 Strike comes home from St. Mawes and immediately calls Robin to ask if she wants to go to breakfast. I did not notice this in the 3,585,001 readings of this book but he never says it is a business meeting (IT’S A BREAKFAST DATE LET’S MAKE THIS CANON!!!)and Robin, bless her heart, says she has Bamborough news turning it into one. Boo… But when she walks into the Notes cafe she realizes that she seemed to have forgotten how large he is, like a black bear and she likes the way he looked. Funny, doesn't Strike often forget just how tall Robin is??? THESE TWO just can’t stop won’t stop will they?!? Robin tells Strike that everyone she is looking for is either dead or has disappeared and Strike tells her he was able to locate 4 people. Bill Talbot’s son who wants to meet, Janice Beattie and Irene (nee Bull) Hutchinson, and finally Oonagh Kennedy who was Margot’s best friend and the woman she was supposed to meet. The last woman though is a retired vicar so Strike isn’t as sure on that one. Robin then shows Strike a part to Demon of Paradise Park that he hadn’t read. The bit about the abortion. Robin also tells Strike that Dorothy’s son, Carl, wrote a tell all book that Roy and Oonagh brought a lawsuit against him for. It is at this point that Al text’s Strike about the party again. Strike’s mood has obviously changed as he is annoyed that they are not listening to him say no he will not attend. Robin then goes to the Portrait Gallery, even though she feels silly doing so and spends most of the time thinking Strike got a text from Charlotte. Oh Robin if only you would ask him. Chapter 17 Strike contemplates his non-existent relationship with Johnny Rokeby and spends more time than is warranted trying to craft a final no to his brother Al. Then he sees Barclay who says that he likes Pat but alludes to Morris not taking direction from Robin. Strike tells Morris what he is to do about Shifty and then goes to meet with Gregory Talbot. He finds they are foster parents to 4 children, a desire that Strike does not understand. Gregory tells Strike that his dad suffered a breakdown from having an overactive and undiagnosed thyroid problem, and that he still thought it was Creed after he recovered. They talk a bit about the case and Strike finally convinces Talbot that he is actually interested in the truth, not just the occult stuff that Talbot was following in his sick state. So Greg gives Strike his father's notebook. Chapter 18 Robin is forced to take two days off at Strike’s insistence, but they are not pleasant ones as she has errands and a meeting with her divorce attorney. On the way she gets a call from Wilma Bayliss’ daughter saying they will not talk to the detectives at all and to leave her younger sister out of it as she has cancer. Robin walks into the solicitor's office already discouraged and the news just keeps piling on. Her lawyer feels it is time to go to mediation even though Matthew is just trying to make Robin walk away with nothing. Robin finally agrees to go to mediation even though she doesn’t want to and leaves the office. It is as she is indulging in a latte and brownie that Strike calls with the news that Irene and Janice would like to meet on Saturday and he thinks they should both go. Robin checks her calendar and sees that she is supposed to follow Twinkle Toes and that it is Strike’s birthday. When she tells him she has to follow TT he says, “Sod that, Morris can do it.” and asks her to drive… and we all know that it is the chocolate brownie and not Strike wanting to spend his birthday with her, enough to say sod that and change the schedule, that makes her feel so much happier. And that is it for me everyone. The next post will be with Louise as she asks the hard hitting questions like was it really lamb bhuna? father’s personal notes on the Bamborough case.