18 Moxham Hall

Like Hawthorne, I had managed to download Harriet’s book on Kindle and I skimmed through it on the train to Chippenham. What was I to make of Harriet Throsby’s writing style? It was a mishmash of treacly sentimentalism and sheer venom, worth every penny of the £0.00 that Kindle had attached to it. I had to agree with what Martin Longhurst had said. There was something deeply offensive about turning a tiny incident, a tragedy in an English village, into some sort of Mills & Boon morality tale, and reading it, I felt less bad about her review of Mindgame. It was one thing to trash a play at the theatre, but with Bad Boys she had done the same to people’s lives and almost every sentence demonstrated to me what a thoroughly unpleasant woman she had been. Why should I care what she thought of me? It’s an interesting paradox. The more humane the critics, the more hurtful their opinions.

For a crime reporter, she had an extraordinary knack of muddling up the facts, so that it was almost impossible to work out where her sympathies lay – although by and large she seemed to have a bad opinion of almost everyone involved. So Stephen was the younger boy who had been seduced, led astray by Wayne. He had been abandoned by his unloving parents. But he was still Little Lord Fauntleroy, the rich kid who deserved everything he got. Wayne Howard was his worst enemy, a bad influence, the instigator of all their crimes. And yet he was a victim himself … damaged by his upbringing and social status. Major Alden was a patriot and a war hero, but he was also a stick-in-the-mud, a martinet who should never have been allowed anywhere near a modern primary school. Rosemary Alden, his wife, fussed over the children but never took their side against her husband. And so on.

Hawthorne had brought his iPad with him, but he didn’t read any of the book on the way down. Perhaps he had guessed that he would find nothing of value inside. It was nice, just for once, to be one step ahead of him, but even as I swiped the screen from page to wearisome page, I knew that Bad Boys wasn’t going to help me very much either. Harriet distorted everything. It was a sort of ownership. She made the entire world her own – just as she had done with my play, her marriage to Arthur, the production of Saint Joan, all those first-night parties she had insisted on gatecrashing. I was finally getting the measure of the woman. It was just the identity of her killer that defeated me.

I only hoped that this trip wasn’t going to be a complete waste of time. With the experts still battling away at the Police Forensic Science Laboratory, time was something of which I had very little left.

All along I had assumed that Harriet Throsby’s murder was in some way connected to Mindgame. After all, the knife that had killed her had been stolen from the Vaudeville and there seemed to be no escaping the fact that someone had deliberately tried to frame me. That was still the biggest puzzle, as far as I was concerned. It was easy enough to understand why the killer hated Harriet Throsby. But what on earth could I have done to make them want to harm me? So far, Hawthorne had said very little about this aspect of his investigation. He might have blocked the DNA analysis of my hair, but he hadn’t offered any theory as to how it might have got onto the body in the first place. The same was true of the dagger with my fingerprints, the CCTV images, the Japanese cherry blossom. Perhaps it was because he still suspected me more than anyone else of having committed the crime.

But what he had said outside the accountant’s office was true. It was extremely unlikely that Harriet had been killed because she’d written a bad review. The events at Moxham Heath provided a much more likely explanation. A man had died. Two boys had gone to prison. A family had been destroyed. And Harriet had written about it all. Badly. Maybe someone had decided it was time she paid the price.

We took a taxi from Chippenham station, moving from ring road to motorway to country lane. The driver had been glum at first, reluctant to come out so far, but he’d cheered up when Hawthorne told him that we’d be using him all day. I swear I’ve spent more on taxi fares than I’ve earned from the books I’ve written about Hawthorne, but for once I didn’t complain. We’d just missed the eleven o’clock train from Paddington and we’d had to wait thirty minutes for the next one. This was the slow service, stopping at Reading, Slough, Swindon and another half-dozen stations I’d never heard of. As much as I’d tried to concentrate on the book, I hadn’t been able to keep Cara Grunshaw out of my thoughts. I half expected to see her waiting on the next platform. I felt like a fugitive in a Hitchcock film.

We were travelling down a country lane, through a tunnel of beech trees sporting their new spring leaves and between verges scattered with wild flowers. The light had turned green and there were motes of dust dancing in the sunlight. Ahead of us, a drystone wall twisted into the distance as if beckoning us to follow. I’m always dazzled by the beauty of the English countryside at the start of spring, but Wiltshire has a particular trick of throwing you back in time. At that moment, there was nothing to suggest we were still in the twenty-first century, apart from the car we were sitting in.

‘Hold it!’ Hawthorne broke into my reverie, calling out to the driver. ‘Turn right here.’

For a moment, I was puzzled. Then I saw that we had been about to pass an open gate with a faded stone lion standing guard and a wooden sign marked Moxham Hall. We must have arrived at the outskirts of the village. This was the house where Trevor and Annabel Longhurst had been living – at least occasionally – when their ten-year-old son had managed to kill his deputy head.

The driver had reacted too slowly and shot a few metres past the entrance. He muttered to himself as he reversed the car and then turned into a ribbon of neatly laid gravel that led us through the thick woodland purposely designed to hide the house from the road. After about a minute, we emerged into an estate that could have been described as a kingdom in itself. Moxham Hall was a sprawling, nineteenth-century manor surrounded by perfectly striped lawns reaching as far as a low metal railing. Miles of grassland stretched out on the other side, different shades of green rising and falling over hills and continuing as far as the eye could see. As we swung round an improbable white marble fountain – Neptune holding a trident, fighting off an army of cupids and dolphins – my eyes took in rose gardens, ornamental gardens, vegetable gardens and rockeries. And there was the famous helicopter pad, a white H stamped into a circle of mauve asphalt. My first impression was that the house was beautiful, with its patterned brick and limestone façade, the rows of symmetrical windows, the grey tiles and chimneys. But as we drew closer, I noticed the modern additions: the out-of-scale conservatory, the fake portico around the front door, the glass and steel shell surrounding the swimming pool. There was something a little soulless about Moxham Hall. I could imagine it being rented out as a posh wedding venue. It wasn’t somewhere I would want to live.

The taxi stopped. We got out.

‘What are you hoping to find here, Hawthorne?’ I asked.

‘Nothing much, mate. But this is where Harriet’s book opens. And since we were passing, I thought we might as well have a look.’

‘I don’t think anyone’s around.’

And yet someone had to be working here. It was obvious from the lawns and the flower beds, the exaggerated neatness of everything. The house was being looked after – and with all this land, so many rooms, it was going to take more than one visit a week. Feeling very much like a trespasser, I followed Hawthorne to the front entrance and watched him press the doorbell. It made no sound, or at least none that we could hear from outside. We waited. Nobody came.

‘What now?’ I asked, thinking we ought to move on to the village.

I was answered by the sound of footsteps on the gravel and a man appeared from around the side of the house, a groundsman or a gardener by the look of him. He was wearing a jacket, waistcoat, yellow cravat and expensive wellington boots. All that was missing was the shotgun under his arm and the Labrador Retriever. As he drew closer, I saw that he was in his sixties, perhaps even older, beaten about by the seasons. The sun had left a red welt on the bridge of his nose. The cold had scarred his neck with ugly patches of psoriasis. The rain had drawn the colour out of his cheeks and the wind had thrown his hair into permanent disarray. Just looking at his face, I took in a whole year of Wiltshire weather.

‘You looking for someone?’ he asked in a voice that was not exactly friendly.

Hawthorne was not intimidated. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m John Lamprey. I look after the house and the grounds for Mr Golinishchev.’

‘He’s the owner?’

‘Yes. You’re on private land.’

‘Is Mr Golinishchev at home?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not able to give you that information.’

‘It doesn’t look like it. But it doesn’t matter anyway. We’re interested in Trevor Longhurst and his family.’

Lamprey sniffed at that. ‘What are you? Tourists? Or newspapermen? If so, you’re a bit late. That all happened years ago and they’re no longer in the area.’

‘I’m a detective. I’m investigating the death of Harriet Throsby. You may have read about it in the newspapers.’

For the first time, Lamprey looked interested.

‘Yes. I saw that someone had put a knife into her. You got ID?’

‘Do I really need it?’ Hawthorne had a way of judging people and there was something about his response that amused the other man.

‘Maybe not,’ he said.

‘Did you talk to her?’

‘Harriet Throsby? Yes, I met her. Although I wish I hadn’t.’

‘Then you may be able to help us … if you’ll give us ten minutes of your time.’

Lamprey took a few moments to examine us both, then nodded his head slowly. ‘All right. I don’t see why not. You can come inside if you like.’ He opened the front door, which hadn’t actually been locked.

‘So where are the Golinishchevs, then?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘They’re only here three or four weeks a year,’ Lamprey replied. ‘They usually come in the shooting season … October, November. You think Miss Throsby might have been done in because of that book of hers?’

‘It’s one theory.’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. Everything she wrote was a pack of lies.’

He took us in through the front door, into a hall with gilt mirrors, a modern steel and glass chandelier, Persian rugs … all of them as soulless as the showrooms from which they had come. Too much money had been spent on the house, making it too perfect. The paintings were not just abstract. They were indecipherable. None of the furniture quite matched. Lamprey led us into a kitchen that reminded me of Hawthorne’s except that it was three times bigger. It was too clean and strangely uncomfortable. There was a fireplace, but no evidence that it had ever been used for a fire. If it hadn’t been for the lawns visible on the other side of the windows, we could have been in Belgravia. We could have been anywhere.

‘You live here?’ Hawthorne asked. Perhaps he was thinking the same as me.

‘I have a room in the annexe. There’s a separate kitchen there too, but I thought I’d spare you the walk.’

‘And you worked for the Longhursts.’

Lamprey nodded. ‘I was one of the gardeners back then. After they left, I stayed on to look after the place. It was empty for three years. After that, it was owned by a local family, but it was too big for them and eventually they moved on. Then the Russians came. They completely renovated the house … put all this stuff inside. Spent a fortune! If they didn’t like it, back it went again. Staircases, bathrooms, the lot! And now it is how it is.’ He had made his judgement. There was nothing more to add.

‘Were you here when the teacher, Major Alden, was killed?’

Another slow nod. ‘I used to know the major. The whole village did. He was what you would call a bit of a character. Bald, moustache. Always wore a three-piece suit. A big supporter of the local hunt until the day he died. Not such a bad old stick really, although some of the kids might have thought otherwise.’

‘You said that Harriet Throsby wrote a pack of lies. I’d be interested to know what you meant by that.’

‘You’ve read her book?’

‘Some of it.’

‘She came over here from Bristol. She had a friend in the village – Frank Heywood – and he introduced her to me. That was my mistake. I assumed, because she came recommended, that I could trust her. I sat down and talked to her in this very kitchen … not that it looked like this then. The Hall was already being emptied by the time she arrived. The Longhursts had gone. Anyway, I couldn’t have been more wrong. She took what I said, used the bits she wanted and distorted the rest. I reckon she’d already made up her mind what she wanted to write long before she got here.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I told her about the family. About the boys. I knew Stephen Longhurst, of course, but the other kid, Wayne Howard, was often round here and I got to know him too. The school. The village. Two hours we spoke, and it all went down in that little notebook of hers. Scribble, scribble, scribble. You’re not taking notes?’

‘I don’t need notes, Mr Lamprey. What did she get wrong?’

‘Everything!’ He sniffed, then pinched his nose between finger and thumb. ‘First, Trevor and Annabel weren’t that bad. They were incomers and that was always going to lead to trouble in a place like Moxham. You know the trouble with this part of the world? It’s full of retired bankers and lawyers with too much time on their hands. People who used to be important but now they’ve got nothing to do, so they just get busy blowing everything out of proportion. You know about all those disagreements she put in her book? The way she described them, they could have been the start of a third world war. But they didn’t amount to much at the time.

‘I mean, let’s start with the village fête. If Mr Longhurst didn’t want it on his front lawn just a few months after he’d moved in, that was his business. He’d have come round in time if they’d only sat down and talked about it. And the footpath! You could see right into the swimming pool, and Mrs Longhurst, she liked to go skinny-dipping first thing in the morning. Hardly surprising she wanted to divert the footpath – but she was only asking for it to be moved a few metres. She wasn’t trying to redraw the map! If the two of them had a fault, it was just that they were in too much of a hurry, but then they were Londoners. Everyone does everything at the double in London. You have to slow down if you want to get used to the country way.

‘As for the villagers, you read Throsby’s book, you’d think they’d all banded together with flaming torches and pitchforks and come round here to burn down the house. It wasn’t like that either. There were a few mutterings at The Bridge – the local pub – and at the golf club. The Longhursts weren’t the most popular people in the county. They were rich and they were a bit brash, so of course there were some who were jealous. But I said this to the Throsby woman. You choose any village you want, you’re going to get your moaners. People need something to complain about. But come the weekend, it’s all forgotten. It comes and goes with the wind.’

‘Tell us about Stephen Longhurst.’

‘Well, that was the worst of it. Why didn’t she listen to me? I told her the long and the short of it – about him and Wayne – but I was wasting my breath. When I finally saw that book of hers, I couldn’t believe what she’d written, and there was my name on the acknowledgements page at the back, as if I was the one who’d made it all up. I wanted to tell her publishers to take it right out again. My wife told me to forget about it, but I never have. It was a disgrace.’

He drew a breath.

‘She got it completely arse about face. You say you haven’t read the whole book, so I’ll tell you. The way she described it, Stephen was the innocent little kid who was corrupted by Wayne. He didn’t know what he was doing. Of course, that didn’t mean she had to like him. She said he was spoilt. She described that business with Lisa when she got pushed into a barbed-wire fence – although that was really just an accident, not like what she said at all.

‘But the biggest lie she told was that Wayne was the one in charge. You’ve only got to look at this place to know that’s not true. I mean, you tell me! A kid with all the privilege in the world goes over to an estate near Chippenham and ends up hero-worshipping some eleven-year-old whose dad’s been in jail and who lives in three tiny rooms surrounded by unwashed dishes and garbage? Give me a break! It was the other way round! I was here and I saw it. Wayne was just an ordinary kid. He came to this house and he thought he’d died and gone to heaven. The swimming pool. The sauna. The private cinema. Fridges full of food the likes of which he’d never seen before. Horses and dogs …

‘Wayne was the one in awe of Stephen. Stephen was a year younger, but he knew exactly what he was doing. I’m not saying he was bad either. But he was bored and he was angry that his parents had brought him here. He’d spent most of his life in the city and that was where his friends were. What was he meant to do out in the sticks? There are only so many times you can swim in a pool or bounce on a trampoline. If you want my opinion – and this is what I told the Throsby woman – he wanted revenge on his parents and on the world and it was the older boy who provided him with the opportunity. Stephen changed once he got here. I saw it for myself. Trespassing, shoplifting, little acts of vandalism. It was Stephen who decided what they were going to do. Wayne may have agreed to go along with it, but he was always two steps behind.’

‘What about the cruelty to animals?’ I asked. That was something I’d read in the book.

Lamprey dismissed the accusation. ‘The two of them went on the quad bikes and they ran over a sheep. It was an accident! That was just one of a million things she got wrong. Lisa was from Melbourne, not Sydney. This house was built in the nineteenth century. Stephen rode an American Quarter Horse and its name was Bree with two e’s – not like the cheese. And he didn’t fall off it – that was Wayne! Maybe that will tell you something about the two of them. Wayne had never sat on a horse in his life, but Stephen made him do it – and the next thing you know, he’s come off, flat on his face. I remember him sitting over by the fire, blood streaming out of his nose, crying his head off like any other eleven-year-old. He ended up in hospital after that one! He only did it because he didn’t want to lose face, and I’m sure the same thing was true when they did that silly trick with Major Alden. The family managed to persuade the judge that Wayne was the one in control and he ended up with twice the sentence of the other lad. But that wasn’t the case.’

‘Did you tell this to the police at the time?’ Hawthorne asked.

Lamprey shook his head. ‘It wasn’t my place. I was just the gardener. Anyway, nobody asked.’

He’d had enough. When he spoke again, there was a sheen of some distant memory in his eyes.

‘Neither of them were bad boys,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying they were perfect. But they were kids! They needed each other. I used to watch them chasing each other around the garden or sitting together, plotting and scheming, out by the old lion. That was their secret place. And I saw it with my own eyes. They loved each other in the way that only kids can. I was talking to my wife about it once and you know what she said? They were saving each other from themselves. That’s what she said, and she more or less got it right. They were both on their own, both of them abandoned. One of them was rich. One of them was poor. But when they were together, they were happy. I can still hear them laughing and shouting and just being kids.

‘At least, I used to hear them. Not any more. That’s what Harriet Throsby took away with that book of hers. She made them into the bad boys they never were and I’ll never forgive her for that. It was a wicked thing to do.’

He showed us to the door. The taxi was still waiting for us and we set off back down the driveway. As we turned the corner, I looked back and saw John Lamprey still standing there, the great sprawl of the house lifeless and empty behind him.

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