Page 158 of Troubled Blood

One of the budgerigars made the 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,” he said. “Bluey’s cleverer’n Billy Bob.”

Strike waited for them to lose interest in the budgerigars, which took a couple of minutes. When both Athorns’ attention had returned to their hot chocolates, he said,

“Dr. Bamborough disappeared and I’m trying to find out what happened to her. I’ve been told that Gwilherm talked about Dr. Bamborough, after she went missing.”

Deborah didn’t respond. It was hard to know whether she was listening, or deliberately ignoring him.

“I heard,” said Strike—there was no point not saying it; this was the whole reason he was here, after all—“that Gwilherm told people he killed her.”

Deborah glanced at Strike’s left ear, then back at her hot chocolate.

“You’re like Tudor,” she said. “You know what’s what. He probably did,” she added placidly.

“You mean,” said Strike carefully, “he told people about it?”

She didn’t answer.

“… or you think he killed the doctor?”

“Was My-Dad-Gwilherm doing magic on her?” Samhain inquired of his mother. “My-Dad-Gwilherm didn’t kill that lady. My uncle Tudor told me what really happened.”

“What did your uncle tell you?” asked Strike, turning from mother to son, but Samhain had just crammed his mouth full of chocolate biscuit, so Deborah continued the story.

“He woke me up one time when I was asleep,” said Deborah, “and it was dark. He said, ‘I killed a lady by mistake.’ I said, ‘You’ve had a bad dream.’ He said, ‘No, no, I’ve killed her, but I didn’t mean it.’”

“Woke you up to tell you, did he?”

“Woke me up, all upset.”

“But you think it was just a bad dream?”

“Yes,” said Deborah, but then, after a moment or two, she said, “but maybe he did kill her, because he could do magic.”

“I see,” said Strike untruthfully, turning back to Samhain.

“What did your Uncle Tudor say happened to the lady doctor?”

“I can’t tell you that,” said Samhain, suddenly grinning. “Uncle Tudor said not to tell. Never.” But he grinned with a Puckish delight at having a secret. “My-Dad-Gwilherm did that,” he went on, pointing at the ankh on the wall.

“Yes,” said Strike, “your mum told me.”

“I don’t like it,” said Deborah placidly, looking at the ankh. “I’d like it if the walls were all the same.”

“I like it,” said Samhain, “because it’s different from the other walls… you silly woman,” he added abstractedly.

“Did Uncle Tudor—” began Strike, but Samhain, who’d finished his biscuit, now got to his feet and left the room, pausing in the doorway to say loudly,

“Clare says it’s nice I still got things of Gwilherm’s!”

He disappeared into his bedroom and closed the door firmly behind him. With the feeling he’d just seen a gold sovereign bounce down a grate, Strike turned back to Deborah.

“Do you know what Tudor said happened to the doctor?”

She shook her head, uninterested. Strike looked hopefully back toward Samhain’s bedroom door. It remained closed.

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