“Could you pass me my sunglasses?” asked Robin. “In my bag there.”
He handed them over.
“Want a tea?”
“I’ll wait,” said Robin, “you carry on.”
He reached into the back for the thermos and poured himself a plastic cup full. The tea was exactly as he liked it.
“I asked Izzy about Chiswell’s will last night,” Strike told Robin.
“Did he leave a lot?” asked Robin, remembering the shabby interior of the house in Ebury Street.
“Much less than you might’ve thought,” said Strike, taking out the notebook in which he had jotted everything Izzy had told him. “Oliver was right. The Chiswells are on their uppers—in a relative sense, obviously,” he added.
“Apparently Chiswell’s father spent most of the capital on women and horses. Chiswell had a very messy divorce from Lady Patricia. Her family was wealthy and could afford better lawyers. Izzy and her sister are all right for cash through their mother’s family. There’s a trust fund, which explains Izzy’s smart flat in Chelsea.
“Raphael’s mother walked away with hefty child support, which seems to have nearly cleaned Chiswell out. After that, he plunged the little he had left into some risky equities advised by his stockbroker son-in-law. ‘Torks’ feels pretty bad about that, apparently. Izzy would rather we didn’t mention it today. The 2008 crash virtually wiped Chiswell out.
“He tried to do some planning against death duties. Shortly after he lost most of his cash, some valuable family heirlooms and Chiswell House itself were made over to the eldest grandson—”
“Pringle,” said Robin.
“What?”
“Pringle. That’s what they call the eldest grandson. Fizzy’s got three children,” Robin explained, “Izzy was always banging on about them: Pringle, Flopsy and Pong.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Strike. “It’s like interviewing the Teletubbies.”
Robin laughed.
“—and otherwise, Chiswell seems to have been hoping he could put himself right by selling off land around Chiswell House and objects of less sentimental value. The house in Ebury Street’s been remortgaged.”
“So Kinvara and all her horses are living in her step-grandson’s house?” said Robin, changing up a gear to overtake a lorry.
“Yeah, Chiswell left a letter of wishes with his will, asking that Kinvara has the right to remain in the house lifelong, or until she remarries. How old’s this Pringle?”
“About ten, I think.”
“Well, it’ll be interesting to see whether the family honor Chiswell’s request given that one of them thinks Kinvara killed him. Mind you, it’s a moot point whether she’ll have enough money to keep the place running, from what Izzy told me last night. Izzy and her sister were each left fifty grand, and the grandchildren get ten grand apiece, and there’s hardly enough cash to honor those bequests. That leaves Kinvara with what’s left from the house in Ebury Street once it’s sold off and all other personal effects, minus the valuable stuff that was already put into the grandson’s name. Basically, he’s leaving her with the junk that wasn’t worth selling and any personal gifts he gave her during the marriage.”
“And Raphael gets nothing?”
“I wouldn’t feel too sorry for him. According to Izzy, his glamorous mother’s made a career out of asset-stripping wealthy men. He’s in line to inherit a flat in Chelsea from her.
“So all in all, it’s hard to make a case for Chiswell being killed for his money,” said Strike. “What
“Sophia,” said Robin, amused.
“Right, well, we can rule her out. I’ve checked, she was taking a Riding for the Disabled lesson in Northumberland on the morning he died. Raphael had nothing to gain from his father’s death, and Izzy thinks he knew it, although we’ll need to check that. Izzy herself got what she called ‘a bit squiffy’ at Lancaster House and felt a bit fragile the following day. Her neighbor can vouch for the fact that she was having tea in the shared courtyard behind their flats at the time of death. She told me that quite naturally last night.”
“Which leaves Kinvara,” said Robin.
“Right. Now, if Chiswell didn’t trust her with the information that he’d called in a private detective, he might not have been honest about the state of the family finances, either. It’s possible she thought she was going to get a lot more than she has, but—”
“—she’s got the best alibi in the family,” said Robin.
“Exactly,” said Strike.
They had now left behind the clearly man-made border shrubs and bushes that had lined the motorway as it passed Windsor and Maidenhead. There were real old trees left and right now, trees that had predated the road, and which would have seen their fellows felled to make way for it.
“Barclay’s call was interesting,” Strike went on, turning a couple of pages in his notebook. “Knight’s been in a nasty mood ever since Chiswell died, though he hasn’t told Barclay why. On Wednesday night he was goading Flick, apparently, said he agreed with her ex-flatmate that Flick had bourgeois instincts—d’you mind if I smoke? I’ll wind down the window.”
