Troubled Blood Chapters 34-38: The Phipps and the Athorns

Strike returns from Cornwall, glad to have visited but emotionally drained, grieving and stressed, craving only solitude as he returns to London and gets back to work. Alone in his flat on a Sunday evening, while making dinner and reviewing reports, he gets another message from Prudence, to which he responds quite reasonably, expressing interest in meeting her at some point but not in having anything to do with Rokeby. He dreams that night of having a fistfight with his father on a sailing ship and both get tossed into the sea. This is an odd bit of imagery, and as I read through this time, I wonder if this is some sort of foreshadowing of the silver neff sailing ship that was one of JKR's twitter headers for The Hallmarked Man.  Will that piece of hallmarked silver have some connection to Strike's father? Or does the dream symbolize Ted's boat, with Strike trying to stay afloat with his Nancarrow parents while fighting off his biological father's intrusion? 

The next morning, while Strike is on his way to meet Robin for the trip to Hampton Court. Al follows up with a phone call, again begging Strike to be part of the family portrait and party, and refusing to take no for an answer. Al insists that Rokeby wants to reconcile and didn't know about Peter Gillespie's past harassment. Al is upset that Strike has no interest. Strike finally hangs up on him, and is still in a foul mood when Robin shows up in the Land Rover. Honestly, I'm glad Robin calls him out on his rudeness this time. 

Strike tells Robin more about what he has learned about Ruby Elliot's report of two women grappling, and whether or not those people could have ben Fiona Fleury and her mother. Turns out, Ruby saw something else possibly relevant to the case: a sighting of a woman resembling Theo getting into a transit van in front of the Albemarle Way phone booth. He also, reluctantly, tells her abut the snuff film, clearly worried about her PTSD triggers. 

The Privy Kitchen Café

Things remain tense until they reach Hampton Court.  This is another place I visited in 2023 specifically because I had read about it in Strike. The astrological clock is most impressive, and I even stopped by the Privy Kitchen Café, where Strike and Robin interviewed Cynthia Phipps. One error I noticed this time: Cynthia claimed to be 18 when Margot disappeared in 1974.  With a birth date in July 1957, she would have been only 17.  And she's in her late 50's now, a little old to be playing Anne Boleyn, who was, at most, in her early 30's when she was beheaded. 

Robert Glenister does a lot of great voices for the audiobooks, but I think the snorty laugh he does for Cynthia Phipps is one of his best. 

You know you're a Strike fan when 
you see this ornament in the Hampton
Court gift shop and think "Cynthia Phipps!"

The most exciting part of the Cynthia Phipps interview is the surprise phone call from Roy, telling them he knows about the investigation and insisting they come to Broom House. 

On the way, we get that lovely little moment where Robin admits her prejudice against Cynthia, because she is feeling "a bit sensitive about second wives right now." The knowledge that she had shared the news about the Flobberworm and Sarah Shagsalot with Morris and not him definitely arouses some jealousy in Strike, an unexpected (but potentially quite beneficial) side effect of Robin's Boxing Day indulgence. 

Onto Broom House, where Roy Phipps comes across as sort of a hybrid between the grouchy but sometimes cartoonishly funny Jasper Chiswell of Lethal White and the completely reprehensible Inigo Upcott of The Ink Black Heart.  Strike and Robin have one of their wonderful "quarreling family" interviews, made all the more amusing by Strike scarfing down coffee-walnut cake in the midst of the mayhem. Roy is quite bad-tempered at the start. For instance, he speaks of the "atrocious" children at the barbecue; in reality, Carl Oakden was the only troublemaker, if Dr. Gupta is to be believed. Gupta described Kevin Beattie as well-behaved and it sounded like his girls spent the day peacefully playing badminton. And he seems to have a real horder's tendency; more upset about his mother's broken punch bowl 40 years ago than by his wife's disappearance and probable torture and murder by a serial killer. 

But, ultimately, he is able to do something neither Chiswell or Upcott was able to do: acknowledge wrongdoing and accept blame. He finally breaks down and weeps over Margot, acknowledging his emotional cruelty to her and the problems in the marriage, and his belief that Creed abducted her while she was walking and distracted by her thoughts about ending the marriage. Psychologist Kim Sullivan sounds a lot like psychologist Prudence Dunleavy, as she speaks about Roy's breakthrough in much the same language Prudence applies to Flora Brewster's.

After the waterworks at Broom House, we move to the wettest part of this very soggy book, fitting for the albedo section of this alchemical twin to Deathly Hallows. As historic floods plague the UK and prevent Strike and Lucy from visiting Joan, Strike tries to make up for his earlier absences by taking over a lot of the night surveillance. He discovers Elinor Dean has a second client, tails him to his house and assigns Morris to find out more about the guy. 

Then, he talks with Ted and learns that Polworth has braved the flood waters to bring Ted and Joan food, which increases both Strike's gratitude to his old friend and his guilt about not traveling to Cornwall before the flood. He texts a quick thank-you, then immediately receives what he expects to be a response from Dave, but instead is a message from his brother Al, trying to arrange a phone call with the Deadbeat Dad. Furious, he drives off to Clerkenwell to get some breakfast, then texts Al an emphatic "no!" 

He perks up some with a catch-up call with Robin, where she reports that 1) Gloria's husband has sent a message saying she does not want to speak about Margot 2) One of Wilma's Bayliss's daughters is close to agreeing to an interview and 3) Julie Wilkes, a Redcoat quoted in Oakden's book had drowned at the holiday camp shortly after the interview, making her the third woman to die horribly in the vicinity of Steve Douthwaite. Robin also invites Strike to a Valentine's dinner at her flat, so her actor landlord Max can talk to an ex-soldier in preparation for his new BBC role. 

He has a phone conversation with a very annoying Irene, in which she slips and gives away that she (and Janice) did know that Douthwaite had been at the holiday camp in the mid 1980's. when they had earlier claimed they never knew where he had gone after he fled London. 

Strike then has probably the luckiest break of his entire career, as he sits down by the café window, gearing up to pound the pavement for the needle-in-a-haystack search for any information about. the family of the mysterious "Applethorpe," who once claimed to have killed Margot. Samhain Athorn, the very individual he is looking for, happens to walk in front of the café twice, and Strike is able to recognize him from the description Irene gave him of a "really funny looking kid with big ears." I guess that, after enduring annoyances from Morris, Al and Irene, as well as all the St. Mawes stress, the universe owed him a break. 

Though at the opposite end of the socioeconomic spectrum, the Athorn home resembles the Phipps in being largely unchanged since the 1970's. Strike hits pay dirt. learning not just the name of Gwillherm Athorn but the fact that Samhain's uncle Tudor had told him that "Nico and his boys," not Gwilherm, had killed Margot. He also manages to nick a page from a book that has a blood stain on it and learns that "Old Joe Brenner was a dirty old man." Upon re-reading, it is remarkable how salient the giant ottoman is. Attention is call to its size multiple times, and it is apparently also hard and heavy enough for Samhain to hurt his foot when kicking it. There is also a semi-clairvoyant moment when Strike, as if reading a tarot, states the nature in of the problem. 

"She died," said Deborah.

"Yes," said Strike, surprised. "People think she died but no one knows for su--"

One of the budgerigars made a little bell hanging from the top of its cage tinkle.  Both Deborah and Samhain looked around, smiling.

"Which one was it?" Deborah asked Samhain. 

"Bluey. Bluey's cleverer than Billy Bob."

This response should reassure us that "Bluey" (Strike) will solve the mystery that "Billy Bob" (Bill Talbot) failed to solve. 

Coming up on Monday:  The Dinner Party from Hell.