Close to Death

1

I have never been a huge fan of so-called ‘locked-room’ mysteries.

There’s a very specific subgenre in the murder mystery/crime arena that has its own rules and effectively presents the reader with a seemingly impossible puzzle. It’s not enough for the characters to be isolated (The Mousetrap, Orient Express). Everything has to be so fiendishly arranged that the detective has no chance of solving the puzzle . . . until he or she does.

The first and still the most famous locked-room mystery is said to be The Murders in the Rue Morgue, written in 1841 by Edgar Allan Poe, the man who inspired Sherlock Holmes. Here, a mother and a daughter are brutally murdered in their flat, the daughter stuffed up a chimney, but the door and the shutters are securely fastened from inside and the flat is four floors up from the street, with no way to climb in. The story has a great ending, but one that doesn’t really play fair. I’m not sure a modern writer would get away with it.

The real problem of the locked-room mystery is that the mechanics are often so complicated and even contorted that it’s hard to believe the murderer could go to so much trouble, and the emotions of the story can disappear in a Heath Robinson construction of cogs and wheels, mirrors, sliding doors and body doubles. As much as you may admire the solution, you are forced to suspend disbelief. The killers are so clever that they seem positively inhuman, literally so in Poe’s story. It’s difficult to avoid a sense of contrivance.

Try reading The Hollow Man, written by the ‘king of crime’, John Dickson Carr, in 1935. It’s unquestionably brilliant, often cited as the best locked-room mystery ever written. Here a man is seen entering a professor’s study, a shot rings out and the professor is found dead. There is a window, but the ground outside is covered in snow, there are no footprints and the killer has disappeared. The explanation is interminable and eventually blots out the actual reason for the murder – another crime committed long ago, blackmail and betrayal. The solution relies on chance and coincidence. The clock had broken. The snow wasn’t forecast. It left me cold.

It’s my belief that, these days, the best locked-room mysteries come from Japan. Try Murder in the Crooked House by Soji Shimada, or The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, a true master of the art and the author of almost eighty books. They are both fiendish and elegant. In the first, the entire setting becomes an accomplice to the crime. As for the second, the gurgle of the waterwheel and the music played on the koto (a sort of zither), both integral to the plot, will always stay with me. Sheer genius. But far removed from real life.

I only mention all this to explain why my immediate reaction to the last batch of material I had received had been one of dismay. Hawthorne was insisting that Roderick Browne had not committed suicide and all the ingredients of the locked-room mystery were set out in front of me. Nobody could have got into the garage. There was only one key fob, which Roderick must have used to lock the car doors after he got inside. He couldn’t have been carried there. And he had written a suicide note! It was always possible that Hawthorne was wrong. After all, he had said that the case hadn’t worked out the way he wanted and Alastair Morton, the CEO of Fenchurch International, had also warned me that I shouldn’t write the book because it would show Hawthorne in a bad light.

Of course, that would be even worse. It would mean that Morton was right and that the story wasn’t worth writing. Hawthorne hadn’t solved anything and the killer had simply confessed. The end.

I’d been depressed enough when I left the offices of Fenchurch International. Morton had ruined everything for me by revealing the solution . . . which I’m sure was exactly what he’d intended. And so far, he’d been spot on. Khan had said the case was closed. Roderick Browne had been named as the killer and he had then taken his own life. Where did that leave me? With a very short book, for a start, more a novella than a novel. And I couldn’t see my editor jumping up and down with excitement when the manuscript was delivered.

So, on reflection, I realised that a locked-room mystery might be exactly what I needed. If it turned out that Roderick Browne’s entire garage swivelled round to reveal a hidden staircase which had allowed someone to gain access through an underground passage that connected with the medieval well, I’d just have to grit my teeth and get on with it. At least it would mean that Roderick Browne hadn’t committed suicide after all and that someone had indeed murdered him; presumably the same person who had shot Giles Kenworthy.

But who?

I’d sent Hawthorne the next section (‘Another Death’) and was waiting for him to show up. He was coming to the flat again at eleven o’clock. That gave me thirty minutes to get myself into his mindset. I went to my desk and sat there, thinking about the possibilities, trying to work it out for myself. It should have been simple. After all, there weren’t that many suspects.

Who had killed Giles Kenworthy?

The way I saw it, May Winslow and Phyllis Moore had replaced Sarah Baines as the most likely suspects . . . even if it seemed almost impossible to believe. Isn’t that how it always works? The killer is the last person you expect and these two were ex-nuns with such a hatred of violence that they wouldn’t even stock Jo Nesbø in their ‘cosy crime’ bookshop. I would have been surprised if, at eighty-one and seventy-nine, they even had the strength to lift the crossbow and take aim, but maybe one of them had held it while the other pulled the trigger?

They certainly had a motive. They had been shattered by the death of their dog, and although Sarah Baines was almost certainly responsible, it was Giles Kenworthy who had given the order. They had a key to Roderick’s house. They could have slipped into the garage at any time. That would also have helped them to engineer his death. I wondered how they’d raised the money to buy both their house and the shop in Richmond. That story about the surprise inheritance hadn’t rung true. It’s the sort of thing that only happens in children’s books. And an aunt, of all things!

I reached for a sheet of paper and scribbled their names at the top.

Who next?

Sarah Baines had slipped down to number two. She was an ex-prisoner who had somehow talked her way into Riverview Close, taking advantage of May Winslow’s good nature. She certainly had a reason to kill Giles Kenworthy. He had found her snooping around in his office and had fired her, threatening to report her to the police, which would have been the last thing she needed. There was also an interesting link between her and Roderick Browne. She had called him while he was in the garage with Hawthorne and Dudley. Was it possible that she was sharing something she had found on Kenworthy’s computer? Roderick was certainly an enthusiastic supporter. ‘She’s a fine young woman, very hard-working and always helpful . . .’ – although his untidy garden told a different story. Did she have some hold over him? Why had his phone gone missing at around the same time as his death? Did he know something that had got him killed?

And then there was Dr Tom Beresford and his wife. Hawthorne had described Dr Beresford as an alcoholic, addicted to sleeping pills, stressed and miserable, locked into an endless row with his neighbour about a narrow driveway and who had the right to park there. But it was more likely to have been the death of his patient, Raymond Shaw, that had tipped the balance and turned him into a potential murderer. Was there some link between Shaw and Beresford that I hadn’t yet discovered? Suppose he had stolen the crossbow and Roderick had seen him? That might have been a motive for a second murder . . . although I still had no idea how he could have done it.

Unless he was assisted by his wife!

Gemma Beresford would surely do anything to protect her husband. I opened a drawer and took out one of the photographs that Hawthorne had sent me. It was a printout from her website showing her Rare Poison collection of jewellery: snakes, scorpions, spiders and doll’s eyes (a toxic plant from North America). There was definitely something sinister about her and I wondered how far she would go to keep her family together. Far enough to kill?

She reminded me a bit of Teri Strauss, Adam’s second wife. Of the two of them, I found it easier to imagine Teri creeping around Riverview Close in the middle of the night with a crossbow, and I always felt there was a certain darkness hiding behind her smile, even the fact that she was a blood relative of Strauss’s first wife, Wendy. She had a reason to kill Giles Kenworthy, although not a very good one. It was his children who had smashed her husband’s prize chess set, a gift from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, no less. She was certainly ferocious in her devotion to Adam. She thought he was a genius. She accompanied him to all his chess tournaments. But would she really murder someone on account of a broken chess set? I wasn’t sure.

A chess grandmaster might have the intelligence required to plan a murder – I’ve always thought of chess as a rather cold-blooded game – and it was true that Adam Strauss had always been the spider at the heart of the web that was Riverview Close. One way or another, he was connected to everyone who lived there and he had hosted the meeting that Kenworthy had failed to show up for. It was also his fault that the new family had arrived in the first place. Even so, I could see no serious reason why he would have murdered either of the two men. Roderick Browne was a close friend. When Roderick was at his lowest, it was Adam he had called, and he had certainly been alive when Adam left his home.

Or had Andrew Pennington got that wrong? He was the only witness (he had also seen Tom Beresford sneaking out of his front door at ten o’clock at night). Pennington had accused Giles Kenworthy of racial prejudice, and there was a vague link with the attack on the old lady in Hampton Wick. A leaflet advertising the UK Independence Party had been found at the scene of the crime. And Marsha Clarke had a connection with the Beresford household. Their nanny had been looking after her.

It was all very confusing. The more I thought about it, the more I regretted ever taking on the book. Despite what I’d hoped when I set out, it was much easier following Hawthorne round, writing down what I saw. Trying to piece a solution together from a mountain of information, not all of which might be reliable, was like trying to construct a jigsaw puzzle without ever having been shown the picture it was supposed to form.

The doorbell rang. It had to be Hawthorne with the next batch of documents he had promised to bring.

But when I went downstairs, it was not Hawthorne standing at the door. It took me a few seconds to recognise the pink-faced, plump-cheeked man in the baggy suit, with his untidy hair and apologetic smile.

‘Roland!’ I exclaimed.

Hawthorne’s adoptive brother was carrying a large manila envelope, just as he had the first time we met, although on this occasion he was holding it out for me. ‘I was asked to give you this,’ he said.

‘By Hawthorne?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was expecting to see him.’

‘He asked me to apologise on his behalf. He’s not able to come.’

This was almost certainly untrue. Hawthorne had never apologised to me in his life. ‘Would you like to come in?’ I asked.

‘No, thank you.’ He thrust the packet into my hands. ‘I’m just passing. I need to be on my way.’

‘Is this more stuff about Richmond?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

He was already turning back towards Farringdon station, but I stopped him. ‘He knows I saw Morton, doesn’t he.’

Roland and Hawthorne couldn’t have been more different. Whereas Hawthorne would never have let anyone – or anything – stand in his way, his adoptive brother was more diffident, more unwilling to cause offence. Hawthorne, for that matter, would simply have lied. Roland blurted out the truth. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I have to tell you, he’s not happy about it.’

‘Well, tell him I’m sorry.’

His cheeks reddened and I realised that this was probably as angry as he ever got. ‘And you might as well know, I’m not happy either. I’m the one who got the blame. I was foolish enough to trust you when we met at the flat. I told you about the Barracloughs and I’m never going to hear the end of it. You don’t just walk in on a man like Morton! Do you have any idea who he is, what you’re dealing with? You’ve certainly landed me in it.’

‘So tell me!’ I snapped. I was becoming exasperated with the loss of control, of having my own book revealed to me before I’d written it. ‘Who is Morton? And what is Fenchurch International? Why are you so scared of them?’

Roland hesitated. He looked around him, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘They are the biggest security company in the UK and quite possibly the world,’ he said. ‘Cyber security, protection, risk assessment, personal and financial investigation. They provide specialised services to government and to industry. They work in the military. You have no idea how much power they have, how much they know.’

‘You work for them.’

‘I’m nothing.’ He glanced at the package he’d brought with him. ‘A postboy.’

‘Morton told me not to write the book,’ I said.

‘Then if you’ve got any sense, you’ll stop.’ He glanced at me one last time. ‘But you won’t listen to me. You’re like every writer I’ve ever met. You only think of yourself and you don’t care how much damage you might do.’

He stepped round me and walked off. I watched him, feeling guilty. Roland was clearly a decent man and it was true that I’d taken advantage of him. But then what was I to do when Hawthorne was so endlessly uncooperative? I must have stood there for a couple of minutes, the commuters walking past me on both sides of the pavement. Should I be nervous? Could there be someone watching me even now? I went back into my flat, closing the door behind me.

As soon as I reached my office, I sat down and tore open the envelope, leafing through the notes and transcripts that poured onto my desk. What I was looking for wasn’t there. There was no personal note from Hawthorne, no explanation as to why he had cancelled our meeting at the last minute, not even something about Fenchurch International and the mistake I’d made going there. I tried to focus. All I saw was words, thousands more words to add to the tens of thousands I’d already written.

I couldn’t connect with them. Riverview Close, Hawthorne and John Dudley, Khan, the doctor, the dentist, the dog, the dear old ladies . . . they’d all somehow fused into each other. The sun was glaring at me through the window. I was suffocating.

I knew what I had to do.

I got up, left my own locked room behind me and took a train to Richmond.

2

Richmond station was only an hour away, although all the time I’d been writing, it could have been on the other side of the planet. A flight of steps led up from the platform and I realised that this must have been where Adam Strauss had fallen. Or had he been pushed? The steps were quite wide and empty at this time of the day, but I could imagine that in the rush hour they would present a very different prospect. I wondered if Dudley had managed to look at the CCTV camera footage yet. The answer to that question might be sitting on my desk even now.

I emerged into sunlight and looked around me. The station was on the edge of the town and had an attractive façade and, unusually, a clock that worked. I was intending to walk straight down to Riverview Close, but since I was on the High Street and surrounded by shops, it made sense to start with The Tea Cosy, always assuming it was still in business. Five years had passed since the events I have been describing; it was one of the reasons why I’d never made it a priority to come out here. May Winslow and Phyllis Moore could both be dead by now. The other neighbours might well have left. I wasn’t returning to the scene of the crime so much as to a distant memory of it.

I found a Waterstones on a corner and knew I must be getting near. This was where the two ladies had sent any customers looking for books they considered violent or profane. I continued past an incredibly tatty Odeon cinema (‘Fanatical about film’, it said, with the first F falling off) and up the hill. After that, I passed an estate agent, two coffee bars, a fireplace shop and a health centre – but there was no sign of anyone selling golden age crime or humorous tea towels. I retraced my steps and went into what looked like a well-established flower shop. A woman with frizzy fair hair was standing behind a counter, surrounded by an abundance of exotic plants. I asked her about The Tea Cosy.

‘That was two doors away,’ she told me. ‘May Winslow was the owner. I used to see her – and was it her sister? – from time to time. They were quite sweet, although no business sense at all! They didn’t carry any of the new bestsellers.’

‘Do you know where they went?’

‘I heard a rumour they’d gone back north. The story was that they’d spent years in a convent and maybe they went back there.’ She sighed. ‘The rates are too high. It’s just not fair. If they’re not careful, the whole High Street will turn into telephones and tat.’

It was a disappointing start. I’d been looking forward to meeting May and Phyllis, browsing through their bookshelves and finding out if they stocked me. I put all that behind me and set off back down the hill, then followed the road in the direction of Petersham, with a quite extraordinary view of the River Thames and the fields beyond that could have inspired Constable or Turner: a huge azure sky and a ribbon of glinting water twisting all the way to the horizon. The Italian Gothic towers of the Petersham Hotel rose up in front of me – the building had been there since the nineteenth century – and for the first time I understood something of what it must have meant to live in Riverview Close. Richmond was exclusive in the true sense of the word. It excluded much of the worst of modern life.

I recognised the archway before I saw the road sign that named it and walked through with a sense of unreality, even though this was the first ‘real’ thing I had done. And there I was. Standing in my own book! Well House was on my right. I could see Riverview Lodge in front of me and noticed at once that the swimming pool had not been built after all. I walked forward, taking in the roundabout, which looked neat and tidy with a blaze of bright colours. There was Gardener’s Cottage, where the Beresfords had lived, over to the left. Were they still here? Was anyone? It was only now that I realised how odd it would be to meet some of the characters I had been writing about.

Everything looked very much as I had imagined it, although it was a touch smaller than I had thought, the houses closer together. It was easy to see why too many parked cars would have been an issue. The driveways heading left and right, with the Beresfords’ garage on one side and Roderick Browne’s on the other, were particularly narrow and poorly designed, as if the architects had intended there to be trouble.

I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable, just standing there. It dawned on me that I was effectively trespassing – I wondered how many tourists and ghouls strolled in here every month. After all, this was the site of two unnatural deaths and there are parts of London where murder walks are very much an attraction. Follow in the footsteps of Jack the Ripper or the Kray brothers or Sherlock Holmes. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, so I headed meaningfully for The Stables – as if I was expected and had every right to be there. Adam Strauss was low on my list of suspects, but he would probably know more than anyone else. I rang the front doorbell. There was no answer. I looked through a gap in the net curtains (Hawthorne hadn’t mentioned these) and saw that the room had changed. There were no chessboards, no refectory table. Adam and his wife must have moved.

I glanced across at Gardener’s Cottage, but there was no sign of any movement. Dr Beresford was probably at his surgery, his wife in town, his children – nine years old now – at school. That really only left me with one option. I walked over to Well House and rang the bell. This time I was in luck. The door opened. Andrew Pennington stood in front of me.

‘Yes?’

It was so odd to be seeing him in the flesh that it took me a few moments to find a way to introduce myself. Up until now, he had been little more than a figment of my imagination. When I was writing, I’d felt that I owned him. I’d used the photographs and the transcripts I’d been sent and had tried to be as accurate as possible, but I’d invented lots of things too. Neither Hawthorne nor Dudley had been there, for example, when Ellery was found in the well and I’d had to recreate the entire scene. I didn’t know if he drank gin and tonic. It was almost like meeting a penfriend for the first time. I had formed a picture of him that might turn out to be far from the truth.

Well, at least he looked more or less the same, though he had aged considerably in the last five years. The white edges of his hair were more pronounced than I had described. He looked thinner, too, as if he was recovering from an illness. There was a pinched quality to his face, with its sunken cheeks and hollow eyes. He was dressed in a tracksuit, a pair of spectacles hanging on a chain around his neck. His eyesight must have got worse as I was sure I had never mentioned them.

‘Andrew Pennington,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘I wonder if I could have a word.’ I told him my name. ‘I’m a writer,’ I said.

‘A journalist?’

‘No. Not at all. I’m a children’s author.’ I don’t know why I said that. I suppose it wouldn’t have done me any favours, turning up at a crime scene and announcing I wrote murder mysteries. ‘I think you met a friend of mine once, a while ago. Daniel Hawthorne. He came here when Giles Kenworthy was killed.’

‘Oh, yes.’ His face gave nothing away. ‘He spoke to me a few times.’

‘I’m writing a book about him. Not a children’s book. A sort of biography. I was wondering if I could talk to you about the time you spent with him . . . how it was to meet him.’

Pennington considered. ‘You know my name,’ he said. ‘Did he talk to you about me?’

‘A little.’

‘You know what happened here?’

‘I know some of it.’

He surprised me. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘Let me make you a cup of coffee.’

He led me into the kitchen and, for what it’s worth, I’d got his house exactly right. We chatted about the many attractions of Richmond while he went through the business of grinding the beans, percolating the coffee, warming the milk. He seemed pleased to see me and I guessed that he didn’t have many visitors. At last he came over and sat opposite me.

‘It’s not the same here,’ he said. ‘Almost everyone’s gone. May and Phyllis were the first to leave.’

I had told him about the bookshop that had closed. ‘Did they leave a forwarding address?’ I asked.

‘They didn’t need to. They never received any mail and I don’t think I saw anyone visit them either. They only had each other, and although it saddens me to say it, I’m not sure they were all that close. I got the sense it was more that they needed the company and tolerated each other.’

‘The flower-shop lady said they went back to their convent.’

‘They may well have. They came out of nowhere and that’s where they went. They didn’t even say goodbye. They dropped a note through my door and that was it. The next day, they had gone. We’d been neighbours for fourteen years and we’d been on friendly terms, but perhaps that terrible night when their dog fell into my well changed things. They were never the same after that.’

‘They blamed you?’

‘No. I obviously had nothing to do with it. But I suppose my house, even its name, had bad associations for them. They didn’t like coming here after that and we drifted apart.’

‘You say the dog fell in. Is that what you believe?’

‘They had it in their heads that the Kenworthys might been involved, but they had absolutely no evidence and I’d prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt.’

‘Who lives at The Gables now?’

‘A retired couple. An artist and his wife. They’re very pleasant, but I don’t see a lot of them. Felicity Browne never came back, by the way. She’s still with her sister in Woking, I believe. It’s ironic because the swimming pool was never built in the end. But there was nothing for her here.’

‘Who else went?’ I asked.

‘Dr Beresford and his wife were the next to go. They left shortly afterwards. It had nothing to do with the murder or anything like that. I don’t think Tom had ever been that comfortable here. It was too far out of London for him. He and Gemma went back to Notting Hill Gate with their girls and they’re all much happier. They send me a Christmas card every year, which is nice. Gemma Beresford is doing very well. There was a piece about her in Vogue magazine. Her new range of jewellery is inspired by bacteria and viruses. According to what she said in the article, they have very beautiful shapes. I can’t see it myself, and I can imagine what my wife would have said. They sold their house to a Bangladeshi family, the Hossains. Three children . . . and cats! That makes a change from Ellery. Is the coffee all right?’

‘It’s fine, thank you.’ It wasn’t. He had made it too strong and I could feel the grounds sticking to my tongue.

‘You wanted to talk to me about Daniel Hawthorne,’ he reminded me. ‘I have to say, I think he’d make an interesting subject for a book. You said he’s a friend of yours?’

‘Yes.’ I wasn’t ready to talk about him yet. ‘What about Adam Strauss and his wife?’ I asked. ‘Have they gone too?’

‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘I can’t say I particularly miss them.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Well, I sometimes think that Adam was responsible for much of what happened. It was he who sold Riverview Lodge, which allowed the Kenworthys to move in. Of course, it’s not fair to blame him – but he did have a way of being in control, of placing himself centre stage, so to speak. And I always thought that he could have done more to help poor Roderick. He was there that last night. I saw them together. He just walked away and a few hours later, Roderick went into the garage and . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Mind you, Adam was just as upset as the rest of us. He wasn’t to know what was going to happen. And anyway, I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’

I had to play back what he had just said. ‘Adam died?’ I asked.

‘Yes. It was a terrible business, especially after everything that had happened. He fell off a hotel balcony in London. The first I heard of it was when I saw it reported in the papers.’

‘When was this?’ I was shocked.

‘I can’t remember exactly. It would have been about six months after the business here . . . a few weeks after he put his house on the market. He and Teri had also planned to move on. They were thinking of moving to Thailand, believe it or not. Quite a change from Richmond upon Thames! There were interested buyers, but the accident happened before a sale could be agreed. I went to his funeral at Mortlake Cemetery. That was the last time I saw Tom and Gemma Beresford. They were there too. None of us could believe it.’

Nor could I.

I remembered that Strauss had been pushed down the stairs at Richmond station just a couple of days before the death of Giles Kenworthy. And now he might have been pushed again – this time with a fatal result. Andrew Pennington had spoken of an accident, but the two incidents had to be related in some way. Could it be that whoever had attacked him the first time had returned to finish the job – and if so, why? Giles Kenworthy was dead. Roderick Browne had taken the blame. What could possibly be gained by murdering the chess grandmaster?

‘Did the police investigate?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes. They were definitely suspicious. But I’m afraid the investigation came to nothing. Adam was alone in his room. Teri had gone out for a walk. Nobody saw anything. The railing was quite low and they assumed that he slipped and fell.’

I wondered if Hawthorne knew about this. He had never mentioned that Adam Strauss was dead and there had been nothing in the pages he’d sent me so far. I would have to ask him when I next saw him.

‘So what happened to Teri?’ I asked.

‘She went through with the sale and left. I’m afraid I don’t have a contact for her.’

All of them, one after another. Giles Kenworthy and Roderick Browne. Felicity Browne, May Winslow and Phyllis Moore. Dr Beresford and his wife. Adam Strauss dead. His widow gone. I remembered the title Morton had given me. Close to Death. That was what this place had become.

‘Mr Pennington, can I ask you something about the death of Giles Kenworthy?’

‘Andrew, please. And of course you can. It’s all far behind me now. Water under Richmond Bridge, you might say.’

‘Do you think Roderick Browne killed him? Hawthorne had his doubts – that’s what he told me, and he wasn’t sure about Mr Browne’s suicide either.’

Andrew Pennington took off his glasses and wiped them with a tissue. Then he put them back on again. He had given himself time to think. ‘My opinion hasn’t changed since I spoke to Mr Hawthorne all those years ago. I am quite sure that Roderick did indeed shoot Giles Kenworthy with the crossbow that he kept in his garage. He would have done anything for Felicity and it may be that she was much stronger than she seemed. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had suggested it to him.

‘It’s also a fact that he threatened to commit the crime. I heard him. So it’s a natural assumption that he took his own life out of guilt and remorse and fear of being arrested. The note he left behind said as much. I hope you’re not trying to reopen old wounds, Anthony. What’s to be gained? I’m still living in Riverview Close. It’s not the place it used to be, but you have to accept change as part of life. At least some sort of peace has returned.’

‘You never thought of leaving?’ I asked.

He smiled sadly. ‘Where would I go? I bought this house with my wife, Iris. We were very happy together and, living here, I still feel close to her. I have friends in Richmond. When everyone else departed, I did think briefly about putting the place on the market, but at the end of the day I couldn’t see any point.’

Andrew Pennington stirred his coffee with a spoon. He had hardly drunk any of it.

‘It’s a strange thing, isn’t it,’ he mused. ‘Living in a place like this, being surrounded by the same people, day in, day out. What are they exactly? They’re your neighbours. They’re not quite your friends, although they’re closer to you than anyone in the world. You live in and out of each other’s pockets and you know everything about them. It was no secret that Adam used to have shouting matches with his first wife or that Gemma Beresford was worried to death about Tom’s drinking. Lynda Kenworthy was cheating on her husband. There were strange men in and out of that house all the time when he was away. May bullied Phyllis and often made her life a misery. And not a single person in the close liked their dog. It really was a terrible nuisance.

‘But that’s human life, isn’t it. We all have our upsets and disagreements, but when we come together as friends and neighbours, they don’t matter so much. It’s a wonderful word . . . a close. Because that was what we all were. Closeness was what we had and I miss it now that it’s gone. I miss the people who lived here. I won’t pretend otherwise.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’m sorry. The older I get, the more maudlin I seem to become. That’s what happens when you live alone. Where are you based?’

‘I’m in a flat. In Clerkenwell.’

‘I couldn’t bear that. You should move to Richmond!’

I had finished as much of my coffee as I could manage. I stood up and we shook hands. ‘Thank you for seeing me.’

‘It was a pleasure. I shall look out for your book.’

He walked with me to the door and I paused for a moment before I went out. ‘I forgot to ask – who bought Riverview Lodge?’ I said.

Pennington looked surprised. ‘Oh. Didn’t I tell you? Lynda Kenworthy and her children are still there! The house is on the market, but she hasn’t managed to sell it yet. She only put it on in the spring. The funny thing is, she’s told me how much she likes Riverview Close. It’s hard to believe, looking back. Maybe it suits her more now that she’s on her own.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘If you’re lucky, you might find her in.’

‘Do you ever talk to her?’

‘Now and then. If we happen to be passing . . .’

We shook hands and he closed the door.

So Lynda Kenworthy was still at Riverview Lodge. I walked up the drive, past The Gables and Woodlands. I rang the bell.

3

I hadn’t written very much about Lynda Kenworthy and that was just as well. She was quite different to the woman I’d described.

She was remarkably attractive . . . much warmer and more welcoming than I’d expected, with a relaxed, easy-going quality that made her easy to like. In my defence, I’d been relying on the descriptions given to me by Hawthorne, who had interrogated her, and her neighbours, who’d disliked her. The police photographers had simply snapped her for the records. It hadn’t been their job to flatter her.

Maybe her changed circumstances, everything that had happened since the death of her husband, had softened her, but she met me at the door and invited me in as if we were old friends. It helped that her children had read my books. ‘Tristram is crazy about Alex Rider,’ she said. ‘He’s seen the film three times and he’ll be furious he missed you – but both the boys are at school. We’re going to have to take a selfie together.’

How could I dislike her after that?

There had been many changes made to the house since the time of the murder. I had written about abstract art, pale carpets and a neatness that was almost oppressive. The artwork had been replaced by original posters in frames – mainly French films by Truffaut and Tati. The carpets were modern and bright (the one in the hall would have had to have been replaced, for obvious reasons) and everywhere I looked I saw evidence of a carefree family life: trainers left by the stairs, jerseys hanging off the bannisters, a basket of laundry on a chair, the dreaded skateboards leaning against the wall by the front door.

‘Are Hugo and Tristram at Eton?’ I asked her.

She laughed. ‘No. Hugo didn’t want to go there, and anyway, it suited me to put them both in the local comprehensive. For someone who spent his whole life dealing with money, Giles left his affairs in a terrible mess and I wasn’t even sure I had enough in the bank to get them through private education. They’re much happier growing up with normal kids. I didn’t want them ending up like their dad.’

That surprised me. I thought she’d adored him.

We were sitting at the far end of the kitchen, which had a conservatory area looking out over the garden. Just round the corner, I could see the famous magnolia tree that Adam Strauss had planted and which Giles had intended to cut down. The blossoms had faded as autumn drew in, but there were still a few hints of dark red and white, memories of its summer glory. I asked her about the swimming pool.

‘I couldn’t afford it now if I wanted it,’ she told me. ‘But to be honest with you, I was never that keen. That was another of Giles’s ideas. I like the garden the way it is and looking at the magnolia. Who would want to lose that? I’ll miss it when we go.’

‘I see you’ve taken down the Union Jack.’

‘That came down even before the funeral,’ she replied with a sniff of laughter. ‘I hated it. Giles was always banging on about politics, Brexit . . . that’s why he had the flag.’

I wanted to ask her if he had been a racist but couldn’t find a polite way of putting it. So instead I said: ‘Have you found a buyer for the house yet?’

‘Are you interested?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so.’

She nodded sadly. ‘Even after everything that happened, I’d still like to stay. The boys like it and they’ve got lots of friends in the area. But the house is far too big for the three of us. We had to let Jasmine go. We just have a daily now. She comes in twice a week and she’s not here until tomorrow, so apologies for the mess. It turns out that Giles wasn’t quite as clever with the finances as he thought he was. The banks wrote to me after he died and it was all just one debt after another. He’d even sold his life insurance . . . the prat. He never told me that and it came as quite a shock. I’ll still be all right. This place is on the market for four million and there’s no mortgage or anything. I sold all the art and my jewellery. I don’t need it now.’

‘How do you feel about what happened here?’ I asked her.

‘Well, I’m not overjoyed, if that’s what you mean. You don’t mind if I smoke?’ She reached for a packet of cigarettes and lit one. ‘I did love Giles . . . when we first met. It was a dream, the sort of thing you read about in a book. Not one of yours. You don’t do romance, do you?’

‘I haven’t yet.’

‘I was cabin crew. He was travelling first class. He invited me out and I knew from the very start that we were kindred spirits. We were made for each other. Things only started going wrong when we moved here.’

‘The neighbours, you mean . . .’

‘Not really. They weren’t such a bad lot. I mean, Adam Strauss never really forgave us for moving into his precious home. He didn’t like the fact that we’d taken his place as lord of the manor. And there were all those stupid rows with Dr Beresford . . .’

‘Why did you keep blocking the driveway?’

‘We had to put the cars somewhere! And he only had access. The right of way belonged to us.’ She sighed. ‘I don’t know why I’m still discussing it. Talk about mountains and molehills! We’ve never had a single complaint from the Hossains, and their cats are no trouble either.’

‘Do you like your new neighbours?’

‘They’re fine. There’s nothing special about Riverview Close, you know. I’d say there isn’t a street in England where the neighbours don’t have disputes. I was brought up in Frinton and it was just the same.’

‘People don’t usually get killed.’

‘I think Roderick Browne was ill. He was so worried and upset about his wife, and he was a pervert too . . . Sometimes I saw him staring into my bedroom window. He had a view from his second floor. I made a point of always getting changed for bed round the back.’

‘You’re certain he was the one who murdered your husband?’

‘Detective Superintendent Khan had no doubt at all. I’ve spoken to him a few times since then. He’s a very nice man. He gave me his card and he said I could call him any time I wanted.’

That was something I hadn’t considered. ‘Could you give me his number?’ I asked.

‘No problem. I’ll give it to you before you go.’

‘What about May and Phyllis?’ I asked. ‘You fell out with them pretty badly.’

Her mouth fell. She shook her head. ‘Hand on heart, Giles and I never touched their dog and I never told Sarah to go anywhere near it. Do I look like the sort of person who’d do something like that? I’m the mother of two boys! I’m not a monster.’ She blew a great plume of grey smoke into the air. ‘We argued about Hilary. Was that its name? They should have controlled it. It was always coming into our garden, sniffing around the magnolia and leaving its business on the grass. I used to pick up after it and deliver the bags to their front door. I wasn’t trying to be mean. I could see how old they were. But they never listened to me. What else was I supposed to do?’

‘It must have been awful for you, the whole experience . . .’

‘You have no idea! Nobody should have to go through what I went through. Being questioned by the police – as if I had anything to do with it. And your friend, Mr Hawthorne, he was the worst. Prying into my private life and making jokes about me in that sneery way of his. When I was with British Airways, there were always passengers you knew you had to avoid, the ones who were going to make trouble when you were thirty-five thousand feet up. He was just like them.

‘But it wasn’t only the investigation. Mercifully, that didn’t last very long. It was afterwards! I couldn’t even go shopping without people staring at me. I could hear them whispering behind my back. The children missed weeks of school. Tristram still has nightmares about it and he wasn’t even here when it happened. You write murder stories, don’t you? Well, perhaps you should think a little more about the people who have to live through them and what it does to them. To this day, there are still people who believe I had something to do with what happened. It never goes away.’

‘You suggested that things went wrong between you and Giles when you moved to Richmond.’

‘Yes. It was such a mistake! We were never meant to live in a cul-de-sac with lawnmowers and Sunday lunches, cocktail parties and school plays. Growing old together! It was the last thing I wanted. This is a big house, but we both felt trapped in it. It’s hardly surprising we grew apart. Giles had his work, his head was always buried in his computers. He had his cars and his clubs. He gambled . . . and he always lost. But he never really cared about me. Not after we were married.’

‘Were you sorry he died?’

I hadn’t meant to be so blunt.

Lynda wasn’t offended. ‘It was horrible, finding him in the hallway. I’ll never forget that for as long as I live. But it’s like I say . . . we weren’t together by the end. I knew he was being unfaithful to me, but I was doing the same to him. Ours was an open marriage and it would have ended sooner or later anyway. I’d have preferred a divorce, but I suppose I can’t complain. This way I got everything.’

We were interrupted by the arrival of a man who must have been in the house the whole time. He strutted in, dressed like a male model in a T-shirt and skinny jeans and looking like one too: perfect teeth and moustache, chest hair and a medallion, chiselled features and dark brown eyes. He was in his mid-thirties and he was surprised to find me there.

‘I did not know you had company,’ he said to Lynda. He spoke with a French accent.

‘This is Jean-François,’ Lynda said. ‘Anthony is asking me about the murder,’ she explained.

‘Why?’

‘He’s writing about it.’

‘I don’t think you should talk about it.’

Jean-François. I remembered the name. ‘You were with Lynda the night her husband was killed,’ I said.

He shrugged . . . Very Gallic. ‘Maybe.’

‘You’re a French teacher.’

‘I was. Not any more.’

‘Jean-François writes about sport for lots of French magazines,’ Lynda told me. ‘He’s an Olympic champion. He won a bronze medal in 2012 – at the London Olympics.’

I was impressed. ‘What sport?’ I asked.

He had already lost interest in me. ‘Tir à l’arc,’ he said.

My French is good, but I didn’t know that one. I looked blank.

‘Archery,’ Lynda said. Smiling, she took hold of his hand.

4

Lynda Kenworthy had given me the telephone number of Detective Superintendent Khan and I rang him on my way back to Richmond station.

I felt depressed after my visit to Riverview Close. Thinking about it, I saw that both Lynda Kenworthy and Andrew Pennington were casualties. It had never occurred to me before, but murder is in many ways like a fatal car crash, a coming together of people from different walks of life who will all be damaged by the experience. At least one of them will die. One or more will take the blame. But none of them will be glad that they were involved.

And what did that make me? I had come to Riverview Close like the worst rubbernecker . . . and a foolish one too. I had arrived far too late to pick up anything very much in the way of debris. I had nothing to take back home.

I didn’t know it then, but both Andrew and Lynda had provided me with clues that, if I’d only been a little more alert, would have taken me to the very heart of what had really happened at Riverview Close. I just wasn’t thinking – or, at least, my thoughts were still focused on Hawthorne and John Dudley.

In one of our earlier meetings, Hawthorne had vigorously praised the assistant who had come before me. ‘I’d never have solved the case without him.’ But even then, he’d been reluctant to tell me very much about John Dudley. He’d been a policeman. He’d been ill. And something had happened to end the relationship between the two men. That was where I had come in. Was it any wonder that I wanted to find out more?

It was the principal reason I was calling DS Khan. Once again, those words of Morton’s were echoing in my head. ‘The story doesn’t end the way you think it’s going to.’ I had to know what he’d meant and I figured that Khan might be the one person who could tell me.

He answered on the third ring.

‘Khan.’

‘Detective Superintendent Khan? I hope you’ll forgive me ringing you on your private number. It was given to me by Lynda Kenworthy.’

‘Who is this speaking?’

I told him my name. There was a pause at the other end.

‘I know who you are,’ he said.

‘I’m working with Hawthorne.’

‘Yes. I’ve read one of your books.’

I waited for him to say he’d enjoyed it. He didn’t.

‘I was wondering if it would be possible to meet you.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m writing about Riverview Close.’

There was a lengthy silence as he considered. ‘That’s all done and dusted,’ he said. ‘It was a long time ago and I’d like to think we’ve moved on. It’s not a good idea.’

‘Meeting you? Or writing about the murder?’

‘Both.’

‘I was hoping you could help me. I’m planning a book about the murder. I know a lot about what happened, but it would be very useful to get your point of view. How you enjoyed working with Hawthorne . . .’

‘I didn’t enjoy it at all. And he was only on the case for two days.’

‘I’m also trying to find John Dudley. Do you have a phone number or an email address for him?’

‘I have neither.’

He was about to hang up. I could hear it in his voice.

‘Detective Superintendent, would you at least consider meeting me for ten or fifteen minutes? I’ll come to anywhere in London. The book is going to be published either way and you’re going to be a central character. Obviously, I’m not going to write anything that will cause you embarrassment.’

‘I hope not.’ That was a warning.

‘The death of Giles Kenworthy and everything that followed is in the public domain. All I’m saying is that I’d like to get your side of the story.’

There was a second, longer silence.

He hung up.