Troubled Blood: Chapters 45-50. A spa town, a funeral and a nurse.

 

Good for Robin for sending flowers from the agency. And for shooting down Morris's suggestion of "Rich Bitch" for the client nickname. Just aa in the last section, where we saw Strike run the gauntlet of emotions and general sensitivity, we get to see Robin really come into her own as second-in-command of the agency, making decisions about clients, assignments and the trip to Leamington Spa on her own. She heads to the spa village and discovers the church yard where Margot was supposedly spied perusing the cemetery has no cemetery. She then has a moment in a pub when she spies someone who looks like Strike from the back, which sends her into a spiral of self-exploration (some would say self-delusion) about her feelings for her partner, and again convinces herself she feels friendship and admiration for him, nothing more. This sentiment will stay with her until she learns he is dating Madeline in TIBH. 

In her hotel room, Robin does a three-card reading of her tarot deck, designed by local native Alastair Crowley. Her first card is the Prince of Cups, an "intensely secret, an artist in all his ways."  It makes her think of Creed; but I am inclined to think she is getting a reading of the "nature" of her most immediate problem: getting the truth out of Paul Satchwell. 

Her "cause of the problem" card is the Four of Cups, the luxury card that "implies a certain weaknessm an abandonment to desire." This is the major problem of the secret that Satchwell is trying to hide, the fact that he did see her a second time, gave her the Viking figure and tried to get her to abandon her family and run away with him.  

The last card is the Love card showing two entwined fish, representing the harmony of the male and female. I think this is meant to represent the Phipps' koi pond. While their union was far from harmonious at the tim Margot disappeared, she did remain loyal to her marriage and reject his offer. 

Chapter 46 gives us one of the most egregious continuity errors of the book, as Robin remembers attending only two funerals in her life, completely forgetting Mrs. Cunliffe's in The Silkworm. That was such a pivotal moment in Robin and Matthew's relationship---  we might even call it the beginning of the end. We know how significant it was because Robin brought it up when she needed a past transgression for her Revelation in The Running Grave.  Even the correction of this was inadequate, with "two" simply corrected to "three" and no mention of Robin's choice to risk missing her would-be mother-in-law's service.  Contrast this to the multi-chapter rewrites to insert Mia Thompson into Cuckoo's Calling. 

The next day, Robin is surprised and delighted to learn that Satchwell has come to the exhibit in person, and is able to secure a lunch interview with him. I think this interview shows Robin at her best. Up to now, we have either seen her interviewing women or men like Raff with whom she is reasonably familiar (and attractive to). She is able to extract information from this strange and ultimately hostile man, getting him to give away facts like him knowing "the nurse," that "someone" told him Roy was a mommy's boy, and finally, what the "pillow dream." was: the "mercy killing" of Satchwell's severely disabled sister by his mother. She "finished the artist's chips" in more ways than one. 

Chapter 48 takes us back to St. Mawes, to Joan's funeral, where we learn how touched Strike was by the floral tribute from his agency, which he, quite correctly, considers mainly from Robin. We also get confirmation that Strike's characterization of Luke is right on the money. The kid is at least 12, more likely 13, given that we know Jack is 11 here. And, he is running around throwing cake at little girls during his grandmother's funeral reception, behavior that would be appalling from a 7 year old. And Luke is 13, suggesting something very wrong with the brat. 

Strike, though unwilling to satisfy local ladies about his detective career, is more than happy to take a break from the wake and chat with Robin, and get an update on her Satchwell interview. He also has a chat with Polworth about Rokeby's party and his determination not to go. 

Thus ends Part 4 of the book. Part 5 begins with Robin dealing with a couple of dickhead men, with Matthew postponing mediation and Morris displaying his overly familiar and misogynistic tendencies along with his "toned abdomen," reminding us of Matthew in the rest area, when he deleted Strike's messages from Robin's phone. Happily, she gets a breakfast meeting for a catch-up with Strike for her troubles. Strike has located Mucky Ricci, whose very luxurious nursing home is going to be hard to penetrate, and spoken to C.B. Oakden, who is as scummy as they expected. Robin shares some of her insights from re-interpreting Talbot's notes with the Schmidt signs, which leads her to suspect Margot might have questioned Satchwell's mother about the death of his sister. She is also trying to decode the asteroid notes that Talbot appears to have been using at the end. They close with a phone conversation with Amanda White (who sounds a lot more like a 14 year old than someone in her mid-50's), which Strike concludes is "an asterid passing through the house of bollocks."

Chapter 50 details Strike's extensive second interview with Janice, which Robin, to his surprise, had declined to attend for unspecified reasons. As is typical, he gets a mixture of the truth and lies. She draws special attention to all the photos of dead people she has in her house and mentions a "rumor" that Margot's body was concealed in concrete. She claims to have only seen the Athorns once, and feigns dismay at the possibility of Deborah being "pimped out." She convinces Strike that Carl Oakden, who had visited recently, stole Joseph Brenner's obituary from her. Perhaps most importantly, she reports that, at the time Margot disappeared, Irene was having a brief fling with Paul Satchwell, and had seen him give her the Viking figure in a pub, then become angry when she declined to leave her husband for him. 

Finally, she shows that she agrees with Joan on one important point: Strike should stop smoking. He'll take both their advice in the next book.