Finishing up Lethal White, Chapters 66-Epilogue: Chiswell House, the sequel; the Met, the barge and the truth.

Chapter 66:  Sam, Strike and Robin have only a few minutes to speculate about the fate of the poor departed horsie and how it died before Kinvara releases the hounds. Strike and Robin take off for Chiswell House in hopes of both heading off the dogs and talking their way out of trespassing charges. Once again, we see Robin's farm girl skills with animals.  It's a shame she couldn't just pick Rattenbury up by the scruff of his neck the way she did Tigger.

Do you ever wonder what became of the dogs after Kinvara went to jail?  I suppose if the Stubbs was real the family would have renovated Chiswell House and Fizzy, as the oldest daughter and mother of Pringle would have moved her family in. While Chiswell clearly favored his male heirs, he does not seem to have any sort of title that could only be passed to a son. I never heard anyone call him Sir Jasper and he undoubtedly would have insisted on that if it was applicable. 

For that matter, was Kinvara looking after all those horses single-handedly after she fired Teagan? 

Robin has recklessly jumped into so many dangerous situations since Lethal White that I forgot how scary her search of the upper floor was the first time I read it, and how foolish it was for her to attempt to investigate the noise alone, even armed with a bronze frog. Strike's leg must have been killing him or I think he would have berated her a lot more for venturing upstairs.

Chapter 67: Given that Kinvara is supposed to be sleeping alone in a chilly house, the fact that she was wearing a slinky black nightie that displays a "canyon of cleavage" is a bit suspicious. Like Charlotte in Jago's apartment in TIBH, she is "dressed for seduction." This is probably one of the reasons Strike wasn't surprised to hear that someone is lurking upstairs. 

I wonder what excuse Raff gave for hiding the painting after the midnight visitors left?  Did he convince her he was worried men were sneaking through the woods in the middle of the night to steal a $5k pound painting, when there were clearly more valuable antiques in the home that belonged to little Pringle? To quote the TV Robin of TIBH, "I think she might actually be that stupid." 

Chapter 68:  Here we see a complete flip from the first three books, where Strike was in conflict with the Met during the course of the cases, and wound up humiliating them on all three occasions. This time, they join forces to resolve the case. 

It is interesting to look at what happens to the Strike & Ellacott/Met relationship over the next three books. In TB, the detectives again come through and solve a case where the Met failed, but given that the case had been cold for so long and both of the cops who messed it up were dead, there wasn't the same hostility,  In TIBH, relations were reasonably cordial, with the detectives' search for Anomie complementing the authorities' search for the Halvening. By TRG, the cooperative attitude has soured a bit, with Strike having to hold a burger summit, then threaten to go to the press in order to get the Met to take their concerns about Chapman Farm seriously. It will be interesting to see how the relationship shakes out in THM, especially if, as many people (including me!) have been speculating ever since the Freemason references started popping up in March, that the core mystery in some way connects to police corruption. 

Though we learn little about him in this chapter, apart from his eagerness to impress our heroes and his not wanting to share attention with Wardle, this is our first meeting with George Layborn, who will play a crucial role in Troubled Blood as the contact who gets the Bamborough file for the agency.  He also turns up at the burger summit in The Running Grave. 

It is delightful to see Robin school Sarah Shagsalot like she was Kinvara in the ring with one of her mares. It is odd that Sarah, like the Flobberworm, assures Robin the affair is over and appears to be wanting Robin to go back to her husband ("Matt's in pieces...") I wonder how long it took for Sarah and Matt to resume their coupling, and why Sarah chose to string along boring old Tom, who seemed to suspect something back at the housewarming ("You wanna pay more attention at home, Rob"), for another year and a half. 

I knew when I first saw "Matthew" type "not denying your sleeping with him" that something was seriously amiss; the Flobberworm, even upset, would not make that kind of error. It's also interesting to see the misdirection that is leading us at this point to think Jimmy will be the murderer, with the police talking about having him in custody soon and Robin telling Flick, "He'd have killed you next. You knew too much." After all, Barclay had earlier told us that Jimmy was only keeping Flick around because she knew so much. 

Please note here that the last thing Strike and Robin do in this chapter is to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and read a news article that calls Strike the "illegitimate son of rock star Jonny Rokeby."  This makes Robin's worry on the way to the American Bar in Troubled Blood that she has let Strike know "for the very first time" that she knew who his father was one of the more egregious gaffes of the series. In truth, Strike knew that she knew much earlier, and Robin should have known that he knew that she knew: 

• In front of Strike, she spoke of "Mr. Rokeby" on the phone to Peter Gillespie at the end of CC.
• She met his brother Al Rokeby in SW, and presumably understood that it was Al's celebrity connections that got Strike into places like the River Cafe and the Chelsea Arts Club. 
• They talked about Leda and "old Jonny" extensively when Whittaker was a suspect in CoE. 
• The unwanted press coverage that has hounded them for over two years now mentions Strike's parentage in nearly every article. 
• Rokeby irritated Strike by announcing in the media that they had a cordial relationship. 

There is simply no logical reason Robin would think her knowledge of Strike's paternity is a secret even here in summer 2012, much less by summer 2014, in Troubled Blood.  

Chapter 69:  The chapter opens with a nice echo to The Silkworm: the reminder that Robin's middle name comes from the place of her conception. Then, on the way to Little Venice, Robin

saw a police car speeding across the top of the street. The sight of it gave her strength. It felt like a friendly wave from what she knew now was her real life, sent to remind her of what she was meant to be, and how incompatible that was with being the wife of Matthew Cunliffe. 

Of course, we'll learn later that the car was much more than a "friendly wave." It was actually sent by Strike and the Met to search for her, once Strike recognized the trap into which she had walked. 

It is nice, for a change, for Robin to get to be the one to confront the killer and give us all the explanations, instead of Strike, even if she is held at gunpoint at the time. I hope she gets another chance in THM.

If you are interested in what Raff's substitute horse picture looked like, I found this Frederick Herring painting of mares and foals that is actually for sale for about $8K.  He was darn lucky his mom owned a painting similar enough to Mare Mourning to make the swap. 

There has, of course, been lots written about parallels between Lethal White and Goblet of Fire, but one of my favorite turns up in this scene. Robin spies the movement of her rescuers through the boat's portal, just like Harry sees his rescuers through the Foe-Glass in Moody's office just before his rescuers crash through the door. 

I also like the way Robin, although she does not succumb to a full fledged panic attack, zones out a bit after Raff is arrested, and "comes to" with awareness of Strike by her side, much as she had at the verge. 

Nothing seemed real. Now the police were stomping in and out of the barge, but it was all noise and echo, and now she realized that Strike was standing beside her, and he seemed the only person with any reality.

And both times, Strike winds up putting his arm around her. 

 

Epilogue

I must say, Izzy really gets on my nerves in the Epilogue. From bringing up Charlotte, even after the tabloid stories that had appeared about her and Strike, to the ways she minimized her family's horrific behavior, saying Freddie was "naughty" and her father "not kind ot Raff" and said "there are more important things than money" when she is sitting with someone who has recently been sleeping rough and is still living in poverty. Then there is this:

"Tinky had awful, kitschy taste, even in horses."

Really, Izz?  OK, well, if you really feel that way, I'm sure she has a blood relative out there---  or her first husband does-- who would be happy to take that tacky 30-million-pound painting off your hands. I get why Raff refused to see her, and why Strike takes his dig at the upper classes as he and Robin head out. 

And, speaking of exit lines, this book finishes with one of the best:

Head bowed against the rain, [Robin] had no attention left to spare for the magnificent mansion past which she was walking, its rain-specked windows facing the great river, its front doors engraved with twin swans. 

This is, so far, the only book that ends with a focus solely on Robin, and links the ending of the book to the beginning. We began with the disaster of a wedding, with the two swans that would not swim together, and we end with Robin on her own, focused on her job but looking forward to curry with Strike later. The door to true romance may be closed, for now, but the swans are together. Now we get to look forward to The Hallmarked Man, with the swan image in the Freemason temple. Only two months to go!!

I'll be taking a break from blogging until mid-July, when I'll pick up with Troubled Blood, my last planned re-read before The Hallmarked Man makes its long-awaited debut.  The reading schedule will be posted soon. 

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