The Word Is Murder(12)

Being the writer on a set is a strange experience. It’s hard to describe the sense of excitement, walking into something that owes its existence entirely to what happened inside my head. It’s true that I’m completely useless and that no matter where I stand I’m almost certain to be in the way but the crew is unfailingly polite and pleasant to me even if the truth is that we have nothing to say. My work finished weeks ago; theirs is just beginning. So I’ll sit down in a folding chair which never has my name on the back. I’ll watch from the side. I’ll chat to the actors. Maybe a runner will bring me a cup of tea in a styrofoam cup. And as I sit there, I’ll take comfort in the knowledge that this is all mine. I am part of it and it is part of me.

Mrs Cowper’s living room couldn’t have been more different. As I stepped onto the thick-pile carpet with its floral pattern etched out in pink and grey and took in the crystal chandelier, the comfortable, faux-antique furniture, the Country Life and Vanity Fair magazines spread out on the coffee table, the books (modern fiction, hardback, nothing by me) on the built-in shelves, I felt like an intruder. I was on my own, wandering through what might as well have been a museum exhibit as a place where someone had recently lived.

The police investigators had left those yellow numbers on plastic tags that mark out crime scenes but there weren’t very many of them, suggesting that there hadn’t been much to find. A full glass of what looked like water (12) had been left on an antique sideboard and next to it I noticed a credit card (14) with Diana Cowper’s name. Were they clues? It was hard to say, just seeing them there. The room had three windows, each of them with a pair of velvet curtains hanging all the way to the floor. Five of the curtains were tied back with knotted red cords and tassels. The curtain nearest the door (6) was hanging loose and it reminded me that not so long ago, a middle-aged woman had been strangled right where I was standing. It was all too easy to see her in front of me, her eyes staring, her fists pummelling the air. I looked down and noticed a stain on the carpet, marked by two more police numbers. Her bowels had loosened just before she died, the sort of detail I would normally have spared an ITV audience.

Hawthorne came into the room, dressed in the same suit as usual – and that’s one sentence I definitely don’t need to write again. He was eating a sandwich and it took me a moment to realise that he must have made it for himself, in Mrs Cowper’s kitchen, using her food. I stared at him.

‘What is it?’ he asked, with his mouth full.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Have you had breakfast?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

He must have heard the tone in my voice. ‘Shame to waste it,’ he said. ‘And she don’t need it any more.’ He waved the sandwich around the room. ‘So what do you think?’

I wasn’t sure how to respond. The room was very neat. Apart from the flat-screen television – on a stand rather than mounted on the wall – everything in the room belonged to a former age. Diana Cowper had lived an orderly life with the magazines placed just so and the ornaments – glass vases and china figurines – regularly dusted. She had even died tidily. There had been no last-minute struggle, no upturned furniture. The assailant had left just one mark: a muddy half-footprint on the carpet near the door. I could imagine her frowning if she had seen it. She had not been brutally beaten or raped. In many ways this murder had been sedate.

‘She knew the killer,’ Hawthorne said. ‘But he wasn’t a friend. He was a man, at least six feet tall, well built, with poor eyesight. He came here with the specific intention of killing her and he wasn’t here very long. She left him alone for a while and went into the kitchen. She hoped he was going to leave – but that was when he killed her. After he had finished, he searched the house and took a few things but that wasn’t the reason he was here. This was personal.’

‘How can you possibly know all that?’ Even as I spoke the words I was annoyed with myself. I knew it was exactly what he wanted me to ask. I had fallen right into the trap.

‘It was getting dark when he arrived,’ Hawthorne said. ‘There have been quite a few burglaries in the area. A middle-aged woman, living alone in an expensive part of town, wouldn’t open her door to a complete stranger. He was almost certainly a man. I’ve heard of women strangling women but – take it from me – it’s unusual. Diana Cowper was five foot three and it would have been helpful if he’d been taller than her. He fractured her hyoid bone when he killed her, which tells me he was strong, although I admit she was a bit of an old biddy so it might have snapped anyway.

‘How do I know he came here to kill her? Three reasons. He didn’t leave any fingerprints. It was a warm evening but he made sure he was wearing gloves. He didn’t stay here very long. He was only in this room and as you can see there are no coffee cups, no empty glasses of G and T. If he’d been a friend, six o’clock, they’d probably have had a drink together.’

‘He might have been in a hurry,’ I said.

‘Look at the cushions, Tony. He didn’t even sit down.’

I went over to the glass I’d seen and resisted the temptation to pick it up. The police and forensics must have been here and I was more than a little surprised that they’d left it behind. Wouldn’t they have taken it away for immediate analysis? I said as much to Hawthorne.