Lethal White, Chapters 43-50: From Steda Cottage to Charlotte at Franco's

Chapter 43: Here Strike and Robin visit the Knight's old cottage and the associated dell. What I enjoy about this chapter is how Robin's farm girl upbringing comes through, with her knowledge about how to maneuver through thorns and nettles, to her making Strike a walking stick from a branch, to her ease in sliding down the bank to explore the dell and even her knowledge that dock leaves can be used to soothe nettle stings. Strike, despite his military training, is clearly not as comfortable in the outdoor environment as she is. 

Chapter 44:  I love this chapter, especially since I got to eat at the White Horse pub when I visited Uffington. The text description is spot on:

The country inn they reached five minutes later was the very image of picture-postcard England, a whited timbered building with leaded bay windows, moss-covered slate on the roof and climbing red roses around the door. A beer garden with parasols completed the picture. 

It is also "low-ceilinged" inside and, while they did not serve the chili and bleu cheeseburger that our favorite detectives enjoyed, I had a very delicious lamb pie with chips. 

Besides the bucolic setting, another reason to love this chapter is the renewal of Robin's and Strike's working relationship and their friendship. Strike puts it best: 

A pint, a hot day in August, a well-paid job, food on the way and Robin, sitting across from him, their friendship restored, if not entirely to what it had been before her honeymoon, then to perhaps as close as possible, now that she was married. Right now, in this sunny beer garden, and despite the pain in his leg, his tiredness and the unresolved mess that was his relationship with Lorelei, life felt simple and hopeful. 

Best of all, as they are leaving, Robin recalls the mysterious "for work" texts from the Flobberworm, which mean she won't be married much longer... a little over a week, in fact. 

Chapter 45: This chapter takes us through another typical Sunday, which Strike, being Strike, turns into a workday. One thing I appreciate about this series is that it doesn't skip all the drudgery that comes with many "glamorous" jobs. While being a private eye sounds exciting, sometimes you really do spend a full day paying expenses and tracking the wrong person across cyberspace. He also remembers how difficult Charlotte made days like this for him. Interestingly, Charlotte is sliding "in and out of his disengaged mind, like a stray cat."  A nice contrast to the dog metaphors that were used to described Strike's and Robin's attraction to each other.  He also gets the 1000-word email from Lorelei. While I do feel sorry for her and appreciate how used she felt, the email was clearly over the top, and I find it hard to respect anyone who gives an ultimatum and then refuses to accept the recipient's choice. 

Chapter 46: The following Thursday, Strike is hanging out at a pizza restaurant when Robin calls to let him know she's landed a trial day at the Wiccan jewelry shop where Flick is working. He reports that Della and Aamir went out in a taxi that morning (why didn't he tail them?) but have now returned and have since returned. He recognized Aamir as the Asian man who attended the first CORE meeting. Strike follows Aamir around the courner to his residence, and knocks on the door to interview him. Aamir is generally cagey with his answers, but lets Strike into his bathroom, where Strike discovers a White Horse of Uffington carved on the door. Then, he has an extreme emotional reaction when Strike start quizzing him about the estrangement from his family, and unwisely gets into a physical altercation. 

 One interesting side note is that Aamir has a Stieg Larsson paperback in his sitting room. While it could certainly be one of the Millennium Trilogy novels, it is also possible Aamir is reading The Expo Files, a set of nonfiction essays on Larsson's research into far-right organizations, which was published in January 2012.  That might well be recommended reading material for a young man working for a committed liberal minister. Stieg Larsson gets another mention in Troubled Blood, when Two-Times' girlfriend is spotted reading one if his novels in a cafe; presumably The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or one of its sequels. 

The BBC did a great job
with "Bobbi Cunliffe"

The next day, Chapter 47 takes us to Bobbi Cunliffe's trial day in the jewelry shop, where her boss, Ms. Mad Wiccan, is a member (along with Roy Carver, Jeff Whittaker, Jasper Chiswell and Mazu Wace) of the Unpleasant People with Body Odor Club. She is able to build some rapport with Flick with some fiction about her father, the Yorkshire trade unionist who died of black lung, about being unfairly fired from Amazon and about having a jerky married boyfriend. Meanwhile, Barclay reports two important developments with the Knight brothers:

1. Billy has been found and hospitalized.
2. Jimmy has lost an important handwritten note and suspects Flick of stealing it. 

She is able to overhear snatches of a phone conversation, and record a conversation between Flick and Jimmy when Flick brings him by the shop.

Singapore noodles!

Chapter 48: That evening, Strike, Robin and Barclay have a tasty Chinese takeout meal in the office, and a group debrief on the case. Barclay has clearly become Jimmy's right-hand man in a very short time, as he is the one Jimmy trusts to go with him to the hospital to see Billy and to go to Flick's apartment to search for the note. The Flobberworm has been "surprisingly accommodating" about the late-night meeting, and claims to be going out for curry with Tom. No doubt he's going out for a shag with Tom's fiancè, instead. Robin recognizes that: 

a casual listener would have taken their conversation to be that of two people connected merely by proximity or circumstance, with no particular liking for each other.

Contrast that to the opening of The Ink Black Heart:

Of all the couples sitting at the Rivoli Bar at the Ritz that evening, the couple having the most conspicuously good time was not, in fact, a couple. 

Strike has tailed Geraint Winn, who is reportedly behaving like a "sad homing pigeon." They listen to the surreptitiously recorded conversation between Jimmy and Flick, and Robin presents her idea of Flick as Chiswell's Polish cleaning woman. We also get one of the first of Barclay's great wisecracks:

So they could run an exposè on the Real Socialist Party Website? That'll reach a good four or five people. 

Robin and Strike hang around a bit longer after Barclay leaves to discuss the case. Robin accidentally sees Lorelei's "restaurants and brothels" text to Strike, but with her usual tact, doesn't mention it. Strike and Robin chat about Aamir's possible motive. Then, when they are discussing means and opportunity Strike dances around at least a partial solution to the crime, raising the possibility of Raff as the killer, faking the phone call to his father. Strike has another flash of insight, the significance of which he doesn't recognize. When musing about the missing piece of the puzzle, he considers, then dismisses Freddie Chiswell:

In Strike's imagination, he saw tall, blond Freddie swaggering up a country lane, slumming it with Jimmy Knight and his mates. He saw Freddie in fencing garb, out on the piste, watched by the indistinct figure of  Rhiannon Winn, who was perhaps already entertaining suicidal thoughts. Disliked by his soldiers, revered by his father, could Freddie be the thing Strike sought, the element that tied everything together, that connected two blackmailers and the story of a strangled child? But the notion seemed to dissolve as he examined it, and the diverse strands of the investigation fell apart once more, stubbornly unconnected. 

The circle is the eye of the horse, 
where young Raff was strangled. 

Strike's imagination is shockingly on point here. Freddie did go up a country lane (the hike to the White Horse), having bought pot from Jimmy, and strangled little Raff at the chalk figure, traumatizing young Billy in the process. Freddie's and the other fencing team members' abuse of Rhiannon undoubtedly contributed to her suicide, and formed the basis for the Winn's grudge against the family. 

Robin heads home, and Strike heads upstairs, ignoring another call from Lorelei as he goes. 

On Saturday, in Chapter 49, Strike has his final phone conversation with Lorelei, where he refuses her the "public scene in a restaurant" that she thought he "owed" her, and is relieved when she finally hangs up on him. Armed with his collapsible walking stick, and the false memory that Robin bought it for him, he heads of to meet Henry Drummond at his gallery. 

Note:  The painting Strike saw in the gallery of the horses with "giraffe-like necks" being ridden by jockeys could well be a Stubbs. While Stubbs is known for his realism in equine paintings, some of his racehorses have weirdly elongated necks. Question is, did Strike recognize it and did that help him put the pieces together about Mare Mourning?

Personally, I knew Charlotte was turning up as soon as I heard about "Mrs. Ross's" visit from Lucinda. Despite claiming to know nothing about the blackmail, to remember Rhiannon Winn or to recognize the phrase "put the horse on them," Drummond is able to provide some very useful information, including the fact that Raphael was caught with "Francesca" in the bathroom on the day Strike met Chiswell at Pratt's, that Chiswell had had a near heart attack upon entering the bathroom, and that his marriage to Kinvara was in trouble, with Chiswell even confiding to Drummond in recent weeks that they could be splitting up soon.  There is also the mention of the painting of the "piebald mare and foal" that will be important to remember later. Finally, this chapter is one of the clearest and most specific echoes with The Running Grave, pairing with Strike's interview with Henry Worthington-Fields. In both cases, Strike is interviewing a man named Henry, an upscale seller of home decor to the rich and famous and who has Charlotte for a client. In both cases, Charlotte learns about the interview and ambushes Strike immediately afterwards, using probable lies about her health to manipulate him. 

Chapter 50: Charlotte is lying from the get-go here, and not just about meeting her sister. When asking Strike to walk her to the restaurant, she insists it is only a block away. However, as they make their way out to the restaurant, we are told "They had walked two blocks before Strike spoke." My take on Charlotte is that, in the absences of corroborating evidence, once should assume everything she says is a lie. I am convinced she intentionally skipped food/water to make herself ill for this occasion. I am convinced she was sleeping with Jago while she was still with Strike.  I am not convinced she was ever pregnant with Strike's child. 

The conversation at Franco's is also notable for a few other reasons. First, we have the mystery of the cane that Robin did not buy for Strike. Second, we see, perhaps more clearly than in any other point in the series. how toxic the relationship with Charlotte was. We learn that she wanted him to give up the agency to take a cushy job with her father; undoubtedly something with a fat salary that Strike would have hated. In this way, Charlotte is a lot like Matthew. We learn she resented his friendship with Dave Polworth; and what would Strike have done without Dave's support in the next book? And we see previews of her two most loathsome traits: her inability to love her children and her determination to make Strike responsible for preventing her suicide. See this:

"All that's kept me going through this pregnancy is the thought that, once I've had them, I can leave." 

"You're going to walk out on your kids the moment they exit the womb?"

and this:

"I don't want to be needed, I never did. I want to be free."

"To kill yourself?"

"Yes. Or to try and make you love me again."

As with Matthew, re-reading these scenes with Charlotte, then reminding myself she is gone for good always fills me with the same type of relief Strike must have felt when Lorelei finally hung up the phone. 

Back on Monday for Chapters 51-56. The pace is picking up: we have Flick's party, Strike's interviews with Della and Billy, and, best of all, the old heave-ho to the Flobberworm!

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