Lethal White: Flints and Head Scratchers

• Revolver that is a Rifle?

Mike Garrison wrote:

A bit of a different subject, but I came across an odd mistake in Lethal White on page 585.  Its the scene where Strike and Robin are in the house with Kinvara after digging in the dell.  The text says “The door opened. Kinvara had returned, and to Robin’s consternation, she was carrying a revolver.” Strike then calls it a “Harrington & Richardson 7-shot”.  Four paragraphs later the text says “…then followed the Labrador back into the garden, Strike limping after her with the rifle.”

It seems like an odd mistake, calling it a revolver, then specifically identifying it  as a Harrington & Richardson 7-shot revolver, and then stating Strike “with the rifle…” I may be reaching too far here, but I wonder if there was initially a passing thought of linking this weapon to the rifle that Freddie used to shoot Spotty the miniature horse…? But then thought it was better to link this weapon to the one Raff would use to hold Robin hostage later so that Strike could have secretly removed the ammunition. Maybe too much of a reach, or just a simple mistake instead of failing to clean up loose ends!

I found pictures of this Harrington & Richardson pistol online. It’s a monster.

If Kinvarra had pulled the trigger, I’m pretty sure the ‘kick’ would have, well, surprised her (as in “knocked her lights out”).

The “rifle” mistake, as Mike suggests, is probably the sign of previous plot points work that shifted without a sufficient clean-up being done. But there’s a head scratcher, here, too, alongside the Flint.

I think we’re almost in The Land of Make Believe when Strike holds the weapon and immediately identifies it by name and shot number. Take a look at the number of revolvers this American gun maker produced.

It’s an antique weapon, almost certainly nothing Strike would have encountered as “military issue” when in SIB. And that Uncle Ted had one is as improbable. Pistols have essentially been illegal since 1920 in the UK.

Knowing the name is credible (it’s on the barrell) but how does he know on touch that the weapon is a seven shot revolver?

To know that, Cormoran either has an encyclopedic and eidetic memory for all handguns manufactured in the 20th Century (this gun would be about 90 years old and was American made) or he popped the cylinder open and made a count as soon as he grabbed it without the reader being told.

Remember, a seven shot pistol is borderline freakish. H&R according to Wikipedia only made two seven shot models out of more than sixty they manufactured.

It is a mystery as well when the grimacing man with the non-functioning prosthetic limb during his walk of the stables was able to unload the seven shot without Kinvarra seeing what he was up to. 

We’ll have to assume Kinvarra was just that tired and drunk that she didn’t notice the weight difference in the handgun Strike took from her and the one he left.

And that Raphael didn’t check to see if the gun was loaded and a round in the chamber? Hard to believe a man alone on a barge who is plotting murder and/or suicide would overlook that…

Perhaps one “unintended consequence” of the Draconian laws against firearms possession in the UK is that crime writers (and their editors) are essentially clueless about their nomenclature and operation. 

• Seven Half-Siblings?

Louise Freeman picked this up on her first read-through. Strike, super-hero of memory, seems to have forgotten how many brothers and sisters he has through his biological mother and father.

Chewing crisps by the handful, Strike reflected that whenever it came to a question of what ‘most people’ would think, he usually envisaged his half-sister Lucy, the only one of his seven half-siblings with whom he had shared his chaotic and peripatetic childhood. To him, Lucy represented the acme of all that was conventional and unimaginative, even though they had both grown up on intimate terms with the macabre, the dangerous and the frightening. (Ch 14, p 153)

The funny thing about this gaffe is that we thought the “eight half-siblings” mentioned in Cuckoo’s Calling (Part 2, ch 8, p 107) was a mistake because the Rokeby wikipedia page lists seven and we hadn’t yet heard of ‘Switch,’ Leda’s son with her second husband later in life. So in charity maybe we should assume one of Strike’s half-siblings has died and Galbraith has just neglected to tell us about it!

Joking aside, this may be a very big deal. Prof Freeman thinks Swich’s grandfather may have been Leda’s murderer:

• The Foreign Office Photographs of Gallows with White Horse of Uffington Engraving?

The police report version of Lethal White, the fabula we construct at the end of the story, reads that Raphael Chiswell told Felicity Purdue (‘Flick’) about the two Knight gallows that were sold to Zimbabwe and that the Foreign Office had pictures of the UK citizen swinging from one, perhaps. He has that much information from Kinvarra who learned it from Jaspar Chiswell, whom we have to guess (we’re not told) learned about the pictures only after the attempted blackmailing when he must have tried to learn all he could about the gallows (he had received payment for one but one had been hijacked). He told Strike at their first meeting there were no tell-tale marks or distinguishing features that he knew of.

Note that this requires Raff to have at least two encounters with Flick: first to tell her about the gallows to excite Jimmy into confronting Jasper for money and then, after Jasper makes enquiries and learns about the Foreign Office photographs (and tells Kinvarra who tells Raff…), to give her and Winn the information to make real blackmail work.

He tells Flick because he is sure she will tell Jimmy Knight and that he will seek payment for the gallows, and, that failing, will try to extort money out of Chiswell. Raff gives Flick the news that Jaspar needs a maid, again, because he is confident she will take the job to have access to Chiswell’s office. Raff gives Geraint Winn the story of the Zimbabwe gallows and the Home Office photographs — after Jimmy’s moves pressed Chiswell to see if there was any documentary evidence of his involvement — with even more surety that Geraint will do everything possible to make Chiswell’s life miserable in revenge for Freddie Chiswell’s role in Rhiannon’s suicide.

But, even allowing for more than one Flick-Raff meeting, this is some involved story-telling with no clear passage even after the big reveal on the barge.

Jaspar didn’t know about the Uffington Horse symbol carved on the gallows by Billy, so Kinvarra doesn’t know, either, and she cannot tell Raff. Flick knows this from Jimmy (she yells it at the Chiswell limousine the night of the Paralympians Reception) and she may have told Raff at their second meeting. The sign of the horse carved into the gallows is something Raff would have to have known to believe the Foreign Office pictures he learns about through Kinvarra would reveal the sign and begin the blackmail scheme with both Winn and Knight.

Walk through it. I think we can get there —

(1) A British student on vacation is brutally murdered in Africa by being strung up on a gallows. Jasper Chiswell investigates because he knows one of the gallows he sold went to an African country but was stolen in transit. The Minister learns in hus researches about the existence of Foreign Office photographs of the gallows used to kill Samuel Murape, presumably the lost gallows he wasn’t paid for. He tells Kinvarra as he did Strike that there are no distinguishing characteristics that tie the gallows to his estate. 

(2) Raff sees the Stubbs painting in a Chiswell House damp bedroom and decides Jasper must die for Raff to become rich after selling the painting. He begins arcane plan for Jasper’s seeming suicide and his own inheritance of the painting through his step-mother. Raff convinces Kinvarra that he loves her, wants to marry her, and that Jasper must die for this to happen. She signs on with the plan to create great stress on Jasper so his suicide might happen or be faked credibly.

(2) Raff learns about the Knight gallows making business and that two were left over at Jack Knight’s death, which Jasper sold without paying the boys the Knight family share. Kinvarra tells Raff, too, about the Foreign Office photographs Jasper learned about when Murape died. She says in the group interview she knew nothing about it until Jimmy Knight appeared asking for money but she is lying.

(3) Raff seduces Flick Perdue, Jimmy’s girlfriend, and somehow conceals who he is from her (?) while passing on the information about Jimmy Knight’s being owed money by the Chiswells. Flick dutifully tells Jimmy, who in turn asks the Chiswells for half the money that two gallows sold for. He learns they only received money for one and asks for his half of that money. Request denied.

(4) Raff tells Winn about the gallows and the Foreign Office photographs; Raff is aware through his Drummond Art Gallery girlfriend, that Freddie Chiswell was largely responsible for Rhiannon Winn’s suicide.

(5) Flick has learned from Jimmy that Jack Knight always made Billy carve the horse into the gallows. Raff learns this on subsequent visits to Flick’s. Raff shares this “distinguishing characteristics” knowledge with Geraint Winn, which super-charges his determination to get the Foreign Office photographs.

(6) Winn tells Chiswell he knows about the gallows and presses Aamir Mallik to get the photographs with the evidence that they are Chiswell gallows which were used to kill Murape and many others. Knight changes his plan from a simple request for money he is due as a Knight heir (he’s unable to sue in court for it because of the litigation ban he’s under, not to mention the bad optics for a leftist) to the threat of exposure to the press, from whom he would get money for the story.

We’re left to asume that this information is something Jimmy Knight shared with Geraint as they forged their uneasy alliance — and how did that conjunction come about? — but, again, the genesis of the plan requires that Raff know both about the gallows and the Foreign Office photographs. That’s credible. The plan really doesn’t have any punch, though, until he learns from Flick or Jimmy that the gallows had a horse carved into them. The pictures themselves, as Chiswell knows, don’t pose a very great threat to him. Only the White Horse of Uffington carved signatures on the gallows revealed in those pictures would be sufficient evidence to hurt him politically.

So, not a gaffe, just a very, very weak link in the fabula beneath the syuzhet. It’s hard to believe that Raff would have started the plan rolling without knowledge of the signature carving being on the Foreign Office photographs.

• Murderer Mystery Writer Madness?

John Bristow in Cuckoo’s Calling is told by Strike he is “bat shit insane” for hiring him to investigate a murder he committed. Goblet of Fire turns on a Voldemort plan that requires Harry to touch the TriWizard Tournament Cup which has been made a Portkey, when, as a friend wrote me recently, Faux-Moody could have invited into his office for tea the first week and made the cup a Portkey. “Why so complicated?”

And both of these stories, texts that the murderer writes and everyone has to solve, mysteries that are risibly convoluted and over-involved certainly is the case in Lethal White. Raphael writes a compelling distractor story for everyone to puzzle over, stories with different angles for Flick, Kinvarra, Izzy, and the Police. But, again, why so complicated, right?

My thought was that he simply should have substituted his mother’s piebald horse painting for the Stubb’s (as he had) in the bedroom and waited for a year. His father would have sold that for the 5,000 pounds and the stolen painting could have been taken to the US (or Arab Emirates?) and been auctioned anonymously to the global Masters market. 

Still criminal, but no batshit insane convoluted murder that involves his having to move in with Kinvarra, et cetera, and several years waiting regardless.

But then again, we wouldn’t have the fun of the Robin-Cormoran back story as they “read” and solve the Raphael-written mystery. If this is a head-scratcher, I’ll live with it.

What do you think! Any more gaffes or head scratchers in Lethal White? What do you make of the ones above? Let me know in the comment boxes below!