The Twist of a Knife

20 Past Crimes

‘Mrs Alden won’t see you!’

The woman who had answered the door at Glebe Cottage was short and ferocious. From her accent, I would say she was Eastern European. She had dark skin colouring, hair tied back, aggressive eyes. She wore a loose-fitting tunic with a watch pinned to her chest, which gave her the look of a nurse although she had introduced herself as a private carer. Hawthorne had told her who we were and what we wanted. She was uninterested.

‘Mrs Alden is having her rest.’

‘We won’t keep her long. It’s important. It’s about her husband, Major Philip Alden.’

‘She doesn’t want to talk about him.’

Glebe Cottage was one of a row of three former almshouses nestling side by side just off the high street. Everything about it was half-sized, like a theatrical set. The roof sloped unevenly. The walls bulged. Shrink it further and you could sell it in a tourist shop, a perfect reproduction of what a Wiltshire cottage should be.

The carer was about to close the perfect oak door in our faces, but just then there was a movement behind her and Rosemary Alden herself made an appearance, supporting herself on a walking stick. ‘Who is it, Tara?’ she queried.

‘They want to talk about Major Alden,’ the carer replied.

‘What about him?’

Hawthorne would clearly have liked to explain for himself, but Tara had imposed herself firmly between him and the hallway. ‘They’re asking questions.’

‘What questions?’

‘I’ve told them to leave.’

‘No. Let them come in.’

The carer hesitated. She wanted to disobey, but there had been something in the old lady’s voice that persuaded her otherwise. I’d heard it too – a steely determination that seemed odd, given that she had no idea who we were. Grudgingly, Tara stepped aside. We went in, through a hallway barely larger than the WELCOME doormat, and into the rather too cosy living room.

Rosemary Alden was already lowering herself into a high-backed chair, carefully resting the walking stick against the arm. She was surrounded by clutter, as if the contents of two or three different properties had been poured into this little space. There were ornaments everywhere: on the mantelpiece, the window sills, on occasional tables that had no purpose other than to display ornaments. Many of them were related to hunting and I remembered how John Lamprey, the caretaker at Moxham Hall, had described the major. ‘A big supporter of the local hunt until the day he died.’ Well, here was the evidence. A silver stirrup cup above the fire. A porcelain fox wearing a bright red jacket. A riding crop pinned to the wall. Cushions with embroidered beagles. Several photographs of Philip Alden on horseback, often surrounded by fellow enthusiasts.

Rosemary’s own life – or what was left of it – was interwoven into all this. She liked books; not modern paperbacks, but miniature volumes in leather bindings that might have been in her family for generations. She collected tiny silver boxes and crystal jars, porcelain animals and glass ballerinas. A bowl of hyacinths had been placed on a table next to where she was sitting. They were the very worst flowers to have in this confined space, their sickly smell permeating the overheated air.

And what of Rosemary herself? She must have been in her seventies, but she could have been ten years older. Age had shrunk her, tightening her arms and her shoulders, making the sinews in her neck stand out. She was not well. She could barely walk and the stroke that she had suffered a year ago had frozen half her face, the eye on that side bulging unpleasantly, like a marble. She was wearing a smart floral dress that came down to her ankles, clip-on earrings and a pearl necklace. Her hair had been groomed, her make-up carefully applied. I assumed all this had been done by Tara. She could have been about to go out – perhaps for tea or bridge – but it was unlikely that this was something she ever did. This was her entire world. She was living the illusion of a life.

‘You can leave now, Tara.’

‘Are you sure, Mrs Alden?’

‘For heaven’s sake, girl, I can look after myself!’

‘I’ve put your supper in the oven.’

‘I know. I know. Thank you, Tara.’ It was not an expression of gratitude. It was a dismissal.

Tara was unhappy, but she knew better than to argue. She snatched a quilted jacket off a chair and went back out through the front door. Nobody spoke until we heard it close. Mrs Alden turned to us, examining us with that obtruding eye.

‘I would like a whisky,’ she announced. ‘There’s a bottle of Dalwhinnie over there in the corner. I’d like two inches with a splash of water, if you don’t mind.’

She had a drinks trolley crowded with different bottles. I found the whisky and poured some into a heavy tumbler, then added water from a jug. I carried it over to her.

‘Tara doesn’t like me to drink. The doctor says it’ll kill me, but he’s a damn fool. I’m seventy-eight years old and look at me! I’m dying inch by inch. What difference do you think it will make?’ Her hand trembled as she raised the glass to her lips. She swallowed with difficulty. ‘You want to talk to me about Philip?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

‘Why? I heard you tell Tara you were a detective. You don’t look like a detective. You look more like an undertaker. Are you investigating me?’

It seemed an odd thing to ask, but Hawthorne didn’t blink. ‘No. We’re looking into a death that took place in London. We believe there may be a connection with what happened here.’

‘Whose death?’

‘A woman called Harriet Throsby.’

‘I remember her. She came here a while ago. She wrote a book about what happened at the school. I never read it.’

‘It seems that a great deal of what she wrote was untrue.’

‘Of course it was. She didn’t know anything.’ She smiled to herself, but only half of her mouth moved. ‘Is that why you’ve come here? Because you want to know the truth?’

‘I already know the truth, Mrs Alden, and so do you. I just wanted to hear it …’ he glanced at one of the hunting photographs ‘… from the horse’s mouth.’

She stared at him. At least, one of her eyes did. The other was fixed on something in the middle distance. ‘That sounds very impertinent, Mr …’ Her voice trailed off. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Hawthorne.’

‘Hawthorne! How can you know anything about me? You’ve only just walked in!’

Hawthorne didn’t reply.

Mrs Alden tilted the glass and finished the whisky. She handed it to me. ‘I’ll have another.’

‘Are you sure?’

I didn’t actually say the words, but I must have shown what I was thinking because she glared at me. ‘What do you think I’m going to do?’ she snapped. ‘Get drunk and dance on the table? You can have one yourself, if you like. Perhaps it will make you a little less po-faced.’

When she spoke like that, I glimpsed the woman who had once patrolled the corridors at Moxham Heath Primary School as the deputy headmaster’s wife. I knew exactly what she must have been like. ‘Tuck in your shirt tail! Let’s have a little less noise, please. No running in the corridor!’ We’d had a matron just like that at my prep school. We’d all been terrified of her.

I went back to the trolley and poured a second measure, but I made sure it was smaller than the first. Hawthorne wouldn’t be too pleased if she passed out before she could tell us what he wanted to know. I gave her the glass and she took another swig. It was quite a performance, especially considering it was only four o’clock in the afternoon – but then I suspected that time had no meaning for her. There were no clocks in the room, perhaps deliberately.

‘I’m not frightened of you, Mr Hawthorne.’ She wasn’t quite slurring her words, but the alcohol had certainly had an effect on her speech. It had released her inhibitions, emboldened her. ‘Those two boys deserved everything they got. They crept into Philip’s study and they put that bust on the top of the door and when he walked in, it fell onto his head and broke his skull. He went into a coma and the next day he died.’ It took her a few moments to recover. ‘I always told him to get rid of that stupid thing. He had no interest in Cicero. But he thought it impressed the children.’

‘What sort of man was your husband, Mrs Alden?’

‘Not an easy one.’ She swirled the whisky in the glass, tempted to finish it. ‘He took a long time to find himself when he came out of the army. He missed the camaraderie. He wanted to come back to Wiltshire because that was where he was born – he grew up in Corsham. His parents had the manor there, but their money had gone long before I met him. We were both poor as church mice. He had his army pension, but that never went very far. We didn’t even have our own home.’

‘You have this one. And you live here rent-free.’

She hesitated. ‘Yes. The school has been very kind to me.’

‘Why did your husband become a teacher?’

‘He needed a job and we needed somewhere to live. I was the one who suggested it. Obviously, if Philip could get a job in a private boarding school, he would get accommodation, which would kill two birds with one stone. He did apply to several prep schools in the area, but they wouldn’t have him, so he did a teacher-training course and after a couple of years in Trowbridge – dreadful place! – he ended up at Moxham Heath Primary School. We rented a home to begin with, but when he was promoted to deputy head we were given Glebe Cottage. I’ve been here ever since.’

‘Was he happy in Moxham Heath?’

‘Oh, yes. He soon found his feet. In fact, he became quite a well-known figure in the village. He liked fishing.’

‘And hunting.’ Hawthorne made the words sound like an accusation.

‘Well, you can see the evidence all around you. Yes. Hunting was his great love, even though he could barely afford it. It may surprise you to know that not everyone who goes out with the hounds is loaded. Philip rode with the Avon Vale Hunt. He hired a horse some of the time, but the master of hounds took a liking to him and often lent him his own chestnut. Philip made a lot of friends who looked after him, and the hunting community always was very generous … a bit like the army.’ She pointed at a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame. It showed a boy, slightly out of focus, resting his hand against a horse. ‘That’s Philip aged twelve. He went hunting with his father in Corsham when he was a boy. He had so many memories. He never stopped talking about them!’ She let out a sigh. ‘He was never happier than when he was out on a frosty morning with all his friends, trotting down a country lane and then hurtling across the countryside, leaping over fences and streams, risking a broken neck every time. That’s when he came alive. That was all he looked forward to.’

‘He can’t have been too fond of Stephen Longhurst, then.’

Rosemary Alden froze. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘His parents were close to the Labour government. They wanted to ban hunting.’

‘That wasn’t the child’s fault.’

‘Your husband may not have felt that way.’

‘Philip didn’t like the parents. Nobody did!’ She had blurted out the words without thinking. She composed herself. ‘It was very unpleasant,’ she continued. ‘There was lots of talk in the newspapers and on television. We even had saboteurs in the village, riding around on their motorbikes and trying to put the hounds off the scent. There were acts of vandalism … graffiti … one of the horses was hurt. And two of the loudest voices calling for a ban belonged to our new residents, Mr and Mrs Longhurst. They had come into this community, but they had absolutely no understanding of our way of life. They were the vipers in the nest. That was what Philip called them.’

‘So you can’t feel very comfortable living here, then,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Just now you told us that the school had been kind to you, letting you live here. But you must know that it was Trevor and Annabel Longhurst who paid.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘You’re not a good liar, Mrs Alden.’

‘How dare you call me that!’

‘Then tell me the truth. The Longhursts bought this house and put it in trust just for you. Of course you knew.’

She drained the glass. ‘I had nowhere else to go.’

Hawthorne waited for her to calm down. When he spoke again, he was more reasonable. ‘Don’t you want to get it off your chest, Mrs Alden?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t that why you let us in? Seventeen years you’ve been sitting here, thinking about it. But that’s the trouble with past crimes. They never let you go. And here you are, talking about dying and worrying that somebody’s going to come and investigate you.’

She held out the glass. ‘Another!’

‘I think you’ve had enough.’ Hawthorne reached out and took the glass from her hand. ‘Let me tell you how I see it. First of all, I think Major Alden was wrong. That business with the library books … tearing out pages and all the rest of it. Stephen Longhurst would never have done that. It’s the one thing we know about him. He loved books. If he and Wayne wanted to hurt your husband, it wasn’t because he wouldn’t let them go to Bath Spa, it was because he’d accused them of something they didn’t do.’

‘You’re being ridiculous. How can you possibly know? And anyway, it was a tiny incident, a long, long time ago.’

‘A tiny incident that led to your husband’s death. Are you denying it?’

‘I’m not saying anything!’

‘Then let me tell you. Because there’s something else I know. Wayne was the older of the two boys and, coming from a council estate, everyone assumed he was the one who instigated the bad behaviour. He was the ringleader. But in fact it was the other way round. Wayne was the innocent one. Stephen was the one in charge.’

‘Why are you telling me this? Why does it matter any more?’

‘Because Wayne got ten years in a secure unit and Stephen only got five.’ Hawthorne paused, fixing her with his gaze. He leaned forward before he spoke again. ‘Did you testify in court, Mrs Alden?’

Rosemary Alden caught her breath. The colour had drained out of her face, leaving her make-up sitting as if on parchment. At last she replied. ‘I gave a statement. Yes.’

‘A false statement. Because the Longhursts’ lawyers got to you, didn’t they? They told you to say that Wayne was the troublemaker, that Stephen didn’t know what he was doing. And this is what you got out of it. This cottage. Somewhere to live. You supported their version of events and this place was your reward.’

‘No!’ Rosemary Alden was sitting bolt upright in her chair. It was as if she had been electrocuted. ‘Get out of here!’ she quavered, her voice catching in her throat.

‘I’ll leave when you’ve told me what I want to know.’

‘Tara … !’

‘Tara’s not here. You sent her away.’

Hawthorne was ferocious. It didn’t bother him that the subject of his interrogation was sick and in her seventies. I was seriously worried Rosemary might have a fatal heart attack or another stroke. Cara Grunshaw would love that. Another death – five minutes after I’d been in the room.

‘Who defaced the library books?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But it wasn’t Stephen or Wayne!’

‘I don’t know who it was!’ She struggled for breath. ‘Nor did Philip …’

And there it was, finally, the admission.

‘Philip knew it wasn’t them,’ she went on. ‘He told me! He couldn’t find the real culprits, so he decided to make them an example.’

‘And the rest of it?’

‘I don’t know what you mean …’

‘The lawyers.’

She nodded. All she wanted was to get Hawthorne out of the room. ‘One of them came to see me before the trial. A smarmy young man with his hair greased back. He didn’t tell me his name. He said that he represented the family and that maybe he could help me if I agreed to help them. I testified that Stephen was a good boy, that he didn’t know what he was doing, that the other boy influenced him. I didn’t lie. It wasn’t my lie. All I had to do was support their version of the truth.’

‘To commit perjury.’

‘You can call it that if you like, but what was I to do? I was desperate. I would have had to move out. I had no job, no income, nowhere to go. Philip was in the cemetery and nobody cared about me.’

A single tear leaked from her good eye.

Hawthorne stood up. ‘We’ll leave you alone now, Mrs Alden. You did the right thing, telling us the truth.’

‘Will I have to leave Glebe Cottage?’

‘No. You can stay here. That wasn’t why we came.’

He began to move towards the door, but she stopped him. ‘Could you do something for me, Mr Hawthorne? If you ever find those two boys, could you tell them that I know what I did was wrong and I am so very sorry? Neither of them should have gone to prison. It was a prank. Can you tell them how sorry I am?’

Hawthorne stopped. ‘I’d say it’s a bit late for that now, love.’

He left the room. I gave her a half-apologetic shrug and followed.