The most mysterious passage in The Silkworm is a flash from Strike’s subconscious about a “poisoned skeleton,” an image that the Amazing Memory Man is unable to recall:
Maybe Quine was born four hundred years too late,’ said Strike, still eating shortbread. ‘Elizabeth Tassel told me there’s a Jacobean revenge play featuring a poisoned skeleton disguised as a woman. Presumably someone shags it and dies. Not a million miles away from Phallus Impudicus getting ready to—’
‘Don’t,’ said Robin, with a half laugh and a shudder.
But Strike had not broken off because of her protest, or because of any sense of repugnance. Something had flickered deep in his subconscious as he spoke. Somebody had told him… someone had said… but the memory was gone in a flash of tantalising silver, like a minnow vanishing in pondweed.
‘A poisoned skeleton,’ Strike muttered, trying to capture the elusive memory, but it was gone.
I wrote on the Moderator Channel back in 2016 that this passage seemed to be the equivalent of Dumbledore’s “gleam of triumph” in the Goblet of Fire denouement, the scene where the Headmaster learned that Voldemort has reconstituted his body using Harry’s blood. Ink Black Heart, which echoes The Silkworm in many ways (which Rowling recently confirmed), would be the natural place to look for an echo of this elusive insight, even for an answer to the question it raises.
After the jump, then, a look at the probable Jacobean Revenge Drama from which Rowling-Galbraith drew the “poisoned skeleton” image, a review of its possible place as just a marker for The Silkworm‘s murderer, and a quick list of possible correspondences in Ink Black Heart across the series-ring’s turtle-back line. [Read more…]
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