A Line to Kill

23 Keep Reading

Two days after I got back to London, I went to see my agent, Hilda Starke. I walked over to Greek Street in Soho, where her office was located on the fourth floor of a narrow building hemmed in between an Italian restaurant and an off-licence. There was no lift and the stairs creaked menacingly under my weight, as if warning me that I was not really welcome here. I think it’s true to say that Hilda preferred books to authors. In the three years I had been with her, I’d only gone to her office half a dozen times.

I arrived at a dusty landing where a door opened into a tiny reception area, made tinier by the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with books. A single window allowed a little daylight to seep through, but it was a room that devoured daylight. I gave my name to the receptionist and told him I had an appointment with Hilda.

‘What’s this about?’ he asked vaguely.

‘I’m one of her clients.’

‘Oh.’

Ten minutes later, I had squeezed into Hilda’s office. There was so little space in the building, all the furniture seemed to be in the way. She was behind her desk, holding a Sharpie and covering a manuscript with black markings. I wondered if she did the same with my work when she received it.

‘Have you been offered coffee?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Your receptionist didn’t even know you represented me.’

She wasn’t troubled. ‘He hasn’t been here long.’

‘How are you?’ I asked.

She looked at me, puzzled. ‘I’m fine. Why do you ask?’

According to Hawthorne, she had been on her way to the doctor, worrying about tests, when I’d met her seven weeks before. Could he have been wrong? The trouble was, if I told her what I knew, it would look as if I’d been prying. ‘I just thought you seemed a bit down when we last met,’ I said, trying to sound casual.

‘No. I’m perfectly well. How was Alderney?’

She was obviously keen to change the subject and I just hoped that whatever the problem was, it had sorted itself out. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said. Quickly, I described the festival and the two murders that had followed. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to write the third book in the series,’ I concluded.

‘Why ever not?’

‘I’ve just explained. Derek Abbott was the killer and he committed suicide rather than go back to prison.’

‘What’s the problem with that?’

‘Well, it’s just not a very satisfying ending. He was always the most obvious suspect, so it’s not much of a surprise, and he was a thoroughly unpleasant man, so who’s going to care? Worse than that, Hawthorne didn’t really solve the murder. I mean, he did – but most of the information was handed to him on a plate.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I thought you might have a word with Random House. Maybe I can write something else.’

She sighed. ‘I did warn you against starting this series of books,’ she said. ‘I always said it was bad idea.’

‘It wasn’t my idea!’

‘And you’ve got a problem now. Everyone at Random House loved meeting Hawthorne. Graham sent me a note to say how impressed he was. If you don’t want to write the third book, I’m afraid they’ll look for someone else who will.’

‘They can’t do that, can they?’

‘You don’t own Hawthorne, Anthony. If anything, he owns you.’

I sat there gloomily while she let this sink in.

‘Anyway, you shouldn’t be worrying about the third book,’ she continued, eventually. ‘You haven’t finished the second one yet. Have you got a title, by the way?’

‘Yes. I want to call it Another Word for Murder.’ She made no response so I added: ‘After all, it is a sequel to The Word is Murder.’

She nodded. ‘That’s the problem,’ she said. ‘It sounds like a sequel. People will think they have to read the first one. If I were you, I’d think of something else.’

‘But I like it,’ I protested.

‘I don’t.’

A few minutes later, I was back in the street. It hadn’t been a brilliant meeting. I’d been told my publishers preferred my main character to me. I’d lost the title of my second book. And Hilda wasn’t going to offer me any help with the third one.

My telephone rang. I looked at the screen. It was Hawthorne.

‘Yes?’

‘Tony, are you around?’

‘I’m in town.’

‘Do you fancy coming to Oxford? I’m taking that pen back to Anne Cleary and she’s invited me to lunch.’

‘Did she invite me?’

‘No. But she likes you. She’ll be glad to see you.’

‘What time are you leaving?’

‘There’s a train at eleven fifteen.’

It was ten fifteen now – but that was typical of Hawthorne. He had a sort of myopia that possibly extended to the entire world, but certainly to me. I would be available when he needed me, although of course it didn’t work the other way round. I was tempted to say no, to tell him I was busy – but what was the point? I was only twenty minutes from Paddington Station and I had nothing much to do.

‘I’ll meet you on the train,’ I said.

In fact, Hawthorne was waiting for me at the platform and we travelled together in silence. He was still reading The Little Stranger, the book he had brought with him to Southampton, and I noticed that he wasn’t many pages further in, but then I could imagine him being not just a slow reader but a methodical one, going over every sentence and every paragraph so that he would be up to scratch when he met with his book club.

It was only in the taxi, driving through Oxford, that I asked him: ‘Did you tell Anne I was coming?’

‘No. I’m sure she won’t mind.’

‘But if she’s making lunch—’

‘You can have mine!’

Anne Cleary lived in exactly the sort of house I would have imagined for her, part of a curving terrace in a quiet area of Oxford with lots of trees. It was Victorian, red brick, with sash windows and a flight of steps leading up to the front door, the kitchen and dining room below street level. Even before we went in, I knew it would have the original cornicing, stripped wooden floors and high ceilings. There’s something about Oxford that has always appealed to authors and it seems to me that it has somehow seeped into their work. Think of Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Iris Murdoch and, more recently, Philip Pullman. It’s hard to imagine them living anywhere else.

Anne was surprised, but seemed pleased to see me and led us both into a comfortable front room. She collected Wedgwood porcelain figurines – milkmaids, ballet dancers, Little Bo Peep. They were displayed on shelves along with books, photographs, an ornamental clock, piles of letters and perfumed candles. The room managed to be simple and cluttered at the same time. Anne looked very much at home here. She was the sort of woman who liked to be comfortable, who would wear clothes that were sensible, never expensive. I suspected she had lived there for most of her adult life.

As soon as we sat down, Hawthorne produced the Sakura fountain pen that he had retrieved from Marc Bellamy. Anne snatched it up with delight. ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to have this back,’ she said. ‘I’ve got other pens, but this one writes so beautifully. Are you going to tell me where you found it?’

‘I can’t,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Had someone taken it?’

‘Let’s just say that I persuaded them to give it back.’

‘Well, I’m very grateful to you, Mr Hawthorne.’ She placed it on an ornamental table in front of her. ‘And I hear you managed to solve what happened in Alderney.’

‘You know about Derek Abbott?’ I asked.

‘I heard he took his own life.’ She shook her head. ‘I know I shouldn’t feel sorry for him, but in a way I do. If he killed two people, then he deserved to be punished, but I don’t think it’s ever anything to be celebrated, someone taking their own life.’

‘Did you actually speak to him in Alderney?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘No. I told you. I saw him at the party, but we didn’t exchange any words.’ Anne clapped her hands together. ‘I’m so sorry! I haven’t offered you tea or coffee. Or perhaps you’d like a glass of sherry? I’ve made a salade niçoise for lunch and there’s plenty enough for three …’

‘I’m all right, thank you,’ Hawthorne said. He smiled. ‘You know, thinking back, there is something I never understood and it does relate to that evening at The Lookout.’ He paused and Anne waited politely for him to continue. ‘Charles le Mesurier talked to you about Derek Abbott. He said that the two of them had had an argument and that he was thinking about firing him. It was certainly true that the two of them had fallen out quite badly. Derek Abbott admitted as much when we spoke to him.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ Anne asked.

‘Only this. You left the party at nine twenty-five. We know the exact time because you asked the girl at the door. What was her name?’

‘Isn’t that awful of me? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten.’

‘It doesn’t matter. The argument must have happened before then. But here’s the thing. Elizabeth Lovell saw the two of them – Abbott and le Mesurier – crossing the garden just half an hour later, at ten to ten, and according to her the two of them seemed to be on perfectly friendly terms. Once they got to the Snuggery, they actually took cocaine together. Abbott denied it, but we found two cardboard tubes in le Mesurier’s pocket, so unless he was using one for each nostril, it looks as if both of them had a quick snort.’ Hawthorne looked genuinely perplexed. ‘It just doesn’t sound like the behaviour of two men who have recently had a falling-out.’

Anne had no answer, but she could see that Hawthorne was waiting for her to speak. ‘Well, I told you what he said to me,’ she said. ‘Derek Abbott wanted money and Charles le Mesurier wasn’t prepared to pay it. I assumed that was the reason why he killed him.’

‘It’s a good reason,’ Hawthorne agreed. ‘But it still doesn’t explain why they were so chummy when they walked over to the Snuggery.’

‘Did you say that Elizabeth Lovell saw them?’ It had taken Anne a few moments to work that out.

‘Oh yes. She was only pretending to be unsighted.’

‘But that’s wicked …’

‘There was a lot of wickedness going on that night, Anne,’ Hawthorne agreed. ‘That wasn’t the worst of it.’

The three of us fell silent. Anne picked up her pen. ‘You shouldn’t have come all this way to give it back to me,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Shall we go down to the kitchen and have some lunch?’

‘There’s something else I wanted to ask you,’ Hawthorne said.

‘You know, really, Mr Hawthorne … I’m not sure I’ve got anything to add.’

‘It’s just that I like to have everything nice and tidy and if Tony here is going to write about this, he needs to know it all too. It’s about the girl at the door.’

‘I don’t know anything about her.’

‘You asked her the time.’

‘Yes.’ Anne was beginning to sound exasperated.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘I already told you. I had an important phone call.’

‘I know. You had to be back at the hotel at ten. But that doesn’t make any sense to me. I’d understand it if you had to leave at a certain time, if you asked someone the time and then hurried to get back to the hotel. But you were already on your way out when you asked. So there was no need to. If you didn’t know what time it was, you wouldn’t have been leaving.’

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, Mr Hawthorne. My agent in Los Angeles had told me she was going to ring …’

‘Although in the end she didn’t.’

‘I wasn’t to know that. I checked my watch and then I double-checked at the door. I also asked the bus driver when the bus was going to leave.’

‘It’s almost as if you wanted everyone to know what time you left the house.’

‘It may seem that way to you, but nothing could have been further from my mind.’ I had no idea where this was going and Anne was beginning to look uncomfortable. She shifted in her chair. ‘It’s almost as if you’re accusing me of killing Mr le Mesurier myself,’ she said. ‘But that’s ridiculous. I hadn’t even met him until last Friday.’

‘You’re absolutely right, Anne. You had no reason at all to kill Charles le Mesurier.’

‘Exactly.’

The clock on the mantelpiece pinged as the minute hand passed the twelve. It was an ugly thing, bronze and white marble with an angel holding a spear in one hand and leaning against the casing with the other. Every hour it would draw attention to itself. It was now one o’clock.

‘Except, perhaps, the death of your son.’ Hawthorne paused. ‘I was there when Elizabeth Lovell talked about him at the cinema.’

Anne scowled. ‘That woman was hateful. And everything about her was fake. You just said so yourself.’

‘She knew about Mary Carrington, the woman who had slipped and drowned in the bath. And she knew about you. She’d done her research.’

‘Mr Hawthorne, this is really—’

‘She knew that your son had committed suicide at university.’

‘My son was an addict. I don’t know why you have to bring this up now. It’s really very cruel of you. I was forced to explain myself in front of a hundred complete strangers. He took an overdose and he died.’

‘Was he a drug addict?’ Hawthorne asked.

Anne didn’t reply.

‘That was the natural inference and I think it’s what you wanted us to believe. A drug addict takes a drug overdose and he dies. But there are other sorts of addicts.’

I will never forget the pause that followed. It seemed to stitch itself into the very air.

‘Gambling addicts, for example.’

That was when Anne Cleary knew it was all over.

‘Internet gambling is a horrible thing,’ Hawthorne went on, and for once he sounded genuinely sympathetic. ‘Your son was one of around three hundred thousand addicts in the country. There are about five hundred deaths a year and most of them are young men, university students, kids living alone. And the big online gambling companies … they know what they’re doing with those bright lights and flashing colours, the personalised texts and emails, the free bets. You must have been sickened when you got an invitation to a literary festival sponsored by Spin-the-wheel.com. I assume they were the same people who killed William.’

Everything in the room had changed. It was like an image on a computer screen that had suddenly frozen. It all looked the same, but I was aware that something had gone terribly wrong.

‘He never told me,’ Anne said. ‘William had always been such a happy boy and of course I knew something was wrong. He’d changed. But I thought it was down to the pressure of starting at university. He’d never lived away from home before. And of course he’d had to borrow the money to pay the tuition fees and that was preying on his mind. It was only after he died that the police found all the evidence on his computer. He’d gone through his savings and he’d maxed out all his credit cards. And he’d sold things.’ Until now, Anne had been strangely dispassionate, explaining her past history as if it was unconnected to her. But for the first time her voice cracked. ‘He’d sold the watch we’d given him for his eighteenth birthday and the laptop when he’d started university. He’d sold his clothes. All the time, he was getting more and more desperate, but he kept on playing, spinning the wheel in the hope that he would make everything right. And when it got to be too much, he took an overdose of paracetamol. That was the drug that killed him.’

Hawthorne was accusing Anne Cleary of murder, and I had been witness to two shocking deaths. But I felt only pity for her. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

She stared at me. ‘I don’t want your pity. I made the decision to commit a crime. It was a dreadful thing to do and I always expected to pay the full price.’ Anne turned back to Hawthorne.

‘Two crimes,’ Hawthorne said. ‘You also killed Helen le Mesurier.’

‘Yes.’

Anne Cleary hadn’t even tried to deny it. She was sitting very still. I was aware of the hollow ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. I wanted to get up and silence the wretched thing.

‘When I heard about Derek Abbott, I thought that might be the end of it as far as I was concerned,’ she said. ‘But if you’ve come here to judge me, you’re too late. My judgement has already been made.’

‘It’s not just you, Anne. You weren’t alone.’

That jolted her. ‘Yes, I was.’

‘Do you really think you can lie to me? Even now? You couldn’t have tied Charles le Mesurier to that chair without help, even if you had whacked him with a rock first. You also needed someone to persuade Helen le Mesurier to walk into that cave where you were waiting for her. All of this was carefully planned. And not just by you.’

‘I killed both those people. I will pay for it.’ She looked at him with a growing desperation. ‘What more do you want, Mr Hawthorne?’

‘Colin Matheson asked me that when I was doing my talk in Alderney,’ Hawthorne replied. ‘I told him I wanted the truth, and I suppose that’s close enough. But actually, it’s more than that. I want you to face up to what you did because here you are sitting in this nice house, surrounded by nice things, but you’re not nice, are you? You’re a killer.’

‘You don’t think he deserved it? Charles le Mesurier destroyed my son and made money out of his pain – and the pain of hundreds like him! Go on the website. Look at it.’

‘I’ve been on their website. I’ve seen what you saw and I’m sorry about your boy. I really am. But nobody deserves to die, Anne. You know that, even if you’ve persuaded yourself otherwise. That was the mistake you made.’

Silence. The clock ticking. Then …

‘Why don’t you ask your daughter to come down?’

Anne stiffened. ‘She’s not here.’

‘Her car’s parked outside. I’ve had a friend of mine watching the house since you got back. I thought you would have got that by now. You can’t lie to me.’

The door opened and a young woman came in. ‘Mum,’ she said.

‘Don’t—’ Anne began.

‘It’s all right, Mum. He knows.’

Kathryn Harris was wearing jeans and a shirt knotted at the waist. She had taken off the overlarge spectacles that she had used to disguise her face and as she sat down I thought how similar the two women were. But then, from the very start I had said that Anne Cleary reminded me of someone’s mother. I just hadn’t realised whose.

‘How did you know?’ Kathryn asked Hawthorne.

‘That you were related? Well, we could start with your mum’s books. I really did love those books, by the way. Me and my son couldn’t get enough of them. Bill and Kitty Flashbang.’ He glanced at Anne. ‘You told Tony that you’d named the two characters after your own kids. Bill was William, obviously. And Kitty …’

‘… Kathryn,’ I said.

‘Harris is your married name, is that right?’

‘Yes.’ Kathryn nodded, suddenly fearful. I guessed that her husband knew nothing of all this.

‘There were plenty of clues. You look like each other. You’ve got the same-coloured eyes. You’ve obviously lived together for a long time, so you talk in the same way. It’s going to be a hot one. That’s how Kathryn described the summer weather when we met her at breakfast. And Anne, you used exactly the same phrase when you asked if you could leave the hotel. They say it’s going to be a hot one, so I might go for a walk.

‘There were other things, too.’ Hawthorne was still addressing Anne. ‘Marc Bellamy told me that you’d lent Kathryn your pen. That struck me as strange, if it was so precious to you. Right now you were pretending you couldn’t even remember her name. And finally, you’re both vegetarians.’

Anne had told us she was a vegetarian when we interviewed her at the hotel, but I was sure that Kathryn hadn’t provided us with the same information. I thought back. At Southampton Airport she had ordered a cheese salad. At The Divers Inn she had been nibbling a stick of celery. Her breakfast at the hotel had been muesli and yoghurt. Even at The Lookout, after serving steak and kidney puddings, she had helped herself only to a cheese pastry. Never once had I seen her eat any meat or fish.

‘Kathryn never did anything!’ Anne insisted.

‘Let me tell you what you both did,’ Hawthorne cut in. His voice was cold. ‘My guess is that this all started with you, Anne. You were invited to a literary festival in Alderney, probably at the end of last year, and you noticed that it was being sponsored by Spin-the-wheel.com. I can imagine how angry you must have felt, though probably your first instinct was to forget the whole thing. But then you started thinking. Maybe you could use it to your advantage. Maybe it was a chance to get close to the people who were responsible for the death of your son.

‘At about the same time, Kathryn moved in on Marc Bellamy. She happened to be sharing a room with his assistant, who’d just been offered a job on another cookery show. It was a perfect opportunity. Kathryn was a vegetarian; she didn’t like meat. But she persuaded Bellamy to take her on and he was delighted because she was asking for so little money. As soon as she was in there, she contacted Judith Matheson and got Marc invited.’ He looked at Kathryn for the first time. ‘Is that right?’

‘I spoke to his publishers,’ Kathryn said. ‘He had a new book coming out and they thought it was a great idea.’

‘The end result was that you both turned up on the island, but as far as everyone was concerned, you were complete strangers. You’d planned what you were going to do down to the last detail, even bringing the parcel tape with you. You can buy Duck Brand in one shop in Oxford, by the way, just down the road from here. I’m sure the owner will remember you – you being a famous author. If not, there are always credit-card slips.’

‘I think you’ve made your point,’ Anne said.

‘Gambling.’ Hawthorne smiled a little sadly. ‘That’s what this was all about right from the start. I’m surprised you didn’t see that, Tony. What was it you found on Charles le Mesurier’s Mercedes?’

‘A playing card,’ I said.

‘That’s right. And there was another clue on the floor of the Snuggery, after he was killed.’

‘A coin.’

‘Cards and coins. They could have left a bloody roulette wheel if they’d wanted to make it any more obvious. So here’s what was in their heads.’ He was talking directly to me now, ignoring Anne and Kathryn. ‘They’d come to Alderney. Somehow, they’d get le Mesurier on his own. They’d tie him down and they’d make him pay for what he’d done to William. And as it happened, le Mesurier played right into their hands. He took a fancy to Kathryn, which made the whole thing a lot easier. But here’s something else you’ve got to understand, Tony. When they came to Alderney, they only had one target: le Mesurier. We were both there when that changed and – I hate to say this, mate – once again you sort of talked out of turn.’

My heart sank. ‘What did I say this time?’

‘The three of us – you, me and Anne – arrived at The Lookout at about the same time. Anne stopped in the hallway. She’d seen something that had shocked her.’

I remembered. ‘It was Derek Abbott talking to Helen le Mesurier.’

‘That’s right. But it wasn’t Derek that she recognised. It was Helen! You’ve got to remember that Helen wasn’t seen out with her husband very often. They had separate lives. At the same time, she was “the face that launched a thousand chips”. She’d been an actress and he’d employed her to work on his website. If you check it out, you can still see her now. She’s the one spinning the wheel. She’s the one pouting and giving the boys the come-on. All very sexy and sultry, and she was probably William’s pin-up. Anne recognised her at once. And she was shocked.’

‘But she said she’d met Derek in prison!’

‘No, mate. You suggested that she might have met him in prison and she grabbed at that to explain why she was so surprised. I think you’re right. That’s exactly where I met him. Of course, later on, she had to say that maybe, after all, he hadn’t been in one of her reading groups … just in case we asked him and he denied it.

‘Meanwhile, Kathryn had seen what had happened. She had arrived at the house earlier and she had also recognised Helen. That’s why she came rushing over with the drinks and burbled on about the food. She hadn’t been able to warn Anne that Helen would be there. So she came over to rescue her before she gave herself away.’

Mother and daughter were listening to all this in silence. They weren’t looking at each other. They were barely breathing.

‘Anyway, that was when one murder became two murders,’ Hawthorne went on. ‘And let’s see how the rest of the evening plays out.

‘At nine twenty-five, Anne leaves the party. She has a fake conversation with Kathryn which establishes the exact time and also makes it clear that she leaves long before the murder takes place. She does the same thing with the minibus driver, Tom McKinley. She tells him that she’s in a hurry to get back to the hotel. She’s nervous. But that’s ridiculous! The hotel’s only ten minutes away and she’s got thirty-five minutes to get there. She wants him to remember her. She knows that we’ll talk to him.’

‘She said he was standing by the door,’ I said.

‘Yes – but not the door of the minibus. McKinley told you he met her coming out of the house … so it must have been the front door, which gives her a bit more room for manoeuvre. It was too dark to see who was actually on the bus. So all she did was nip out, wait a moment and then slip back into the house again. If anyone had seen her, she could just say that she’d forgotten something. But there were still a hundred people at the party. Who was going to notice one person moving in a crowd?’

It was true. I’d been in the hallway myself at that time. But I’d had my head buried in Marc Bellamy’s cookbook and then I’d been talking to Maïssa Lamar. I hadn’t seen her.

‘Anne Cleary has two people who will swear she’s left the house,’ Hawthorne went on. ‘She tracks back through the kitchen and straight out along the edge of the garden and across to the Snuggery. She knows that Charles le Mesurier is going to be coming there because he’s already arranged a meeting with Kathryn and she’s agreed.’

‘But I spoke to her!’ I said. ‘I went into the kitchen. She was almost in tears.’

‘I think what you saw was an act, Tony. In fact, she couldn’t have been happier. Le Mesurier had played right into her hands.

‘At ten to ten, le Mesurier goes to the Snuggery and Derek Abbott goes with him. They’re still friends. They’re going to take cocaine together. Maybe they notice Elizabeth Lovell in the garden, but neither of them is aware that she can actually see them. It’s only when they’re inside the Snuggery, and perhaps after they’ve had a couple of lines, that Derek demands the £20,000 that he’s owed for his part in blackmailing Colin Matheson. He’d had to pretend to be the bad guy. He was the one with the hidden camera. He was the one who would tell Charles le Mesurier that Colin was having an affair with Helen. Of course, as we now know, all three of them – Charles, Helen and Derek – were in it together.

‘Anyway, Derek wants his £20,000, which is actually going to be his pay-off. Le Mesurier fires him, and Anne hears the entire conversation, hiding behind one of those velvet curtains. Why would Charles le Mesurier have told her anything about Abbott at the party? That never made any sense. But it’s a gift as far as she’s concerned. When she tells us that le Mesurier complained about Abbott earlier in the evening, it’s as if she’s looking into the future, using her knowledge of what happened at ten o’clock to point the finger at a known criminal and a man who’s hated across the whole island.

‘In fact, le Mesurier is very much alive when Derek leaves the Snuggery. At that moment, Helen le Mesurier looks out of her bedroom window and later on she’ll assume that since he was there just before her husband died, he must be the one who killed him. That’s why she sends Derek a text. And that’s what will eventually get her killed.

‘So now everything is set up. Charles le Mesurier is on his own in the Snuggery, high on cocaine, waiting for his new girlfriend to arrive. But the moment Kathryn appears, Anne steps out from her hiding place and stuns him with a rock or a brick or whatever she’s picked up from the garden. Together, the two women drag him into the chair and tie him down with the parcel tape. But they leave one hand free.’

‘Why?’ I couldn’t help myself. ‘Why did they do that?’

‘I’ve told you, mate. This is all about gambling. So what they did at the very end was give Charles le Mesurier a taste of his own medicine. Think about it! He’s tied to a chair. His head’s been cracked open. He’s frightened and in pain and worse than that, he’s got two loony women facing him and one of them has got the paperknife that she’s nicked from his study. Kathryn could have done that any time during the day. But they want the punishment to fit the crime, so they give him one chance. Just like William Cleary, they’re going to let him gamble for his life.’

Suddenly I saw it. ‘Heads or tails,’ I said.

‘They’d nicked a coin from Maïssa’s handbag in the hall. It’s got a tree on one side and a map of Europe on the other, so it’s not exactly heads or tails, but it makes sense to use a foreign coin, one that can’t be connected to them, and they also wipe it clean to make sure it didn’t have their fingerprints.’ For the first time in a while, he looked at Anne. ‘Am I right?’

‘I wanted him to know what it felt like … to gamble for his life,’ Anne said. ‘I left his hand free so that he could toss the coin. I told him to call and that if he got it right, I would let him go.’

‘And would you have?’

‘Of course not. But it didn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t do it.’

Right then, I saw the whole dreadful scene. Charles le Mesurier, tied to the chair, sitting in his Snuggery, still half stunned from the blow he had received. Kathryn with the knife at his throat. Anne balancing the two-euro coin on his thumb, forcing him to toss it and call. Screaming at him: ‘Heads or tails? Heads or tails?’ Terrified. But Charles finally doing what he was told, trying to get the coin to spin, hoping to save his own life.

‘He dropped it,’ Anne said. ‘He tried to toss the coin but it fell onto the carpet and we couldn’t find it.’

‘And then you killed him.’

‘Yes, Mr Hawthorne. I killed him. Not Kathryn. She had left by then.’

‘We’ll get back to that later, shall we?’ Hawthorne continued his explanation. ‘It was Helen’s turn next. Luck was still with you because Helen had seen Derek Abbott out of the bedroom window and arranged to meet him. You’d never have been able to get back into the house with all the police around, but you decided to watch the house in the hope that she’d step out for a breath of fresh air. When she set off for Quesnard Cottage, you followed her.’

‘How did they get her into the cave?’ I asked.

‘That’s a good question,’ Hawthorne said.

‘You’ve got this part of it wrong, Mr Hawthorne,’ Anne replied, quite calmly. ‘Kathryn wasn’t with me on the Sunday. You’re right that I followed Mrs le Mesurier. I caught up with her before she reached the quarry and the railway line and we walked together, chatting quite normally. She mentioned the cave and I asked her to show it to me. It was a little out of her way, but I said I was nervous to go in on my own, so she took me to the entrance. That was where I hit her. I then carried her inside and finished the job inside.’

Was she telling the truth? I’m not sure that Anne Cleary would have been strong enough to carry Helen le Mesurier all the way down the dark passage that led into the rock face. But Hawthorne didn’t challenge her. ‘Did she deserve to die too?’ he asked.

‘She was just as guilty as him,’ Anne said. But I thought she sounded less sure.

‘She was an actress, playing a part.’

‘My son died. It destroyed my marriage. I have never had a moment’s peace ever since.’

‘They were horrible people,’ Kathryn agreed.

‘I don’t want you to say anything, Kitty! It’s very important that you understand that, now and moving forward.’ Her mother had drawn herself up in her seat. She knew exactly what she was going to say. Even as Hawthorne had been speaking, she had rehearsed it. ‘Could you please get the letter off the sideboard?’ she asked.

‘Mum …’

‘Please, dear.’

Kathryn wasn’t happy, but she got up and did as she was told. She handed her mother an envelope.

‘This may not make a great deal of difference to what you decide to do, Mr Hawthorne,’ Anne said. ‘For what it’s worth, I accept your conclusion. What I did was wrong and I expect to pay. Except that it seems I am paying already.’

She held out the letter. Hawthorne took it, a single typed page. I saw the NHS logo at the top.

‘You have heart disease,’ he said.

‘Left ventricular systolic dysfunction, to be precise,’ Anne told him. ‘I’m taking various medications … enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers. But my prognosis is not good. I have weeks, maybe months. It could just be days.’

I knew she was telling the truth. I remembered her breathlessness and the so-called antibiotics she had mentioned. On the morning after the murder, she’d said she had to leave the island for a doctor’s appointment and that was probably true.

‘This isn’t a payment,’ Hawthorne said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘If you’re suggesting to me that you were sent this heart condition as a punishment for what you intended to do, that makes as much sense as Elizabeth Lovell and her stupid ghosts.’

‘Does it matter what I call it? The point I am making, and the only point that should be of interest to you, is that I am going to die very soon.’ She half smiled. ‘Funnily enough, what I told you about my deal with Disney was true. It just arrived a little too late to be of any use to me.’

‘Go on.’

‘I won’t stand trial. I certainly won’t go to prison. I knew that long before I went to Alderney.’

‘It was part of the reason why you went.’

‘Yes. When the doctor told me that my time was limited, I thought a lot about William and how I might make amends. And then, when I was asked to come to Alderney and I saw Spin-the-wheel on the invitation, it felt like it was meant. I had been given an opportunity, in the last days of my life, to take some sort of action … Punishment, retribution. Call it what you like.’

Hawthorne briefly considered what he had just been told. ‘So what are you suggesting, Anne?’

‘I killed Charles le Mesurier. I also killed Helen le Mesurier. Kathryn wasn’t even there when the second crime took place.’

‘You say …’

‘I will confess to both murders. That was always my intention.’

‘Until Derek Abbott threw himself off a cliff.’

‘Well, can you really blame me for allowing that to change my mind?’

‘I don’t blame you for that, Anne. I blame you for the vicious, premeditated murders of two people.’

‘You’re right. I planned them. I arranged them. I took the knife and the coin. It was all exactly as you described. But Kathryn—’

‘—was an accessory to murder. That still carries a life sentence.’

‘You don’t need to tell anyone about her. Kathryn lost a brother she loved. She hardly sees her father and she’s about to lose her mother. Hasn’t she suffered enough? She’s married to a good man, a GP. She wants to start a family. What good will it do, putting her behind bars? Please. I’m begging you. Show a little mercy. As far as I can tell, the police have closed the file following the death of Derek Abbott.’ She reached out and took her daughter’s hand. ‘Why can’t you just leave us alone?’

Hawthorne didn’t need to think about what she had just said, not even for a minute. He stood up.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t do that. You’re asking me to judge you, but that’s not my job. My job was to find the truth and that’s what I’ve done. What happens next isn’t up to me.’ He looked around him one last time. ‘You have to go to the police and tell them what you did. Maybe you’ll be able to persuade them that Kathryn had nothing – or very little – to do with it. I’ll be honest and tell you I don’t really care what happens. But it’s like I’ve said. It’s not my decision.’

Anne nodded slowly. ‘I understand. How long can you give me?’

‘The sooner you do it, the easier it will be.’

‘Yes. That’s probably true.’

‘There is one last thing …’

‘What’s that, Mr Hawthorne?’

Hawthorne smiled. ‘My son couldn’t believe I was seeing you today. He’s grown out of your books now, but he’s still a big fan.’

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Hawthorne had taken a book out of his inside pocket. It had a brightly coloured picture of two children and a pirate ship on the cover. A one-eyed pirate was waving a sword. The book was called Flashbang Trouble, the book that he had mentioned at Southampton and which had made his son laugh out loud. He also had a pen.

‘Could you sign it for him?’ he asked.

Anne stared for a moment, then took the book and the pen. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘What’s his name?’

‘As a matter of fact, he’s called William too.’

‘Oh.’

I saw her write a message. To William, with love. Keep reading! Anne Cleary. She handed it back.

‘Thank you,’ Hawthorne said.

‘It’s a pleasure, Mr Hawthorne.’

We left.