The Word Is Murder(13)
‘They’ve brought it back,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘For me.’ He smiled that bleak little smile of his, then finished the rest of the sandwich.
‘So someone did have a drink,’ I said.
‘It’s only water.’ He chewed and swallowed. ‘My guess is that he asked her for a glass of water before he left. That got her out of the room long enough for him to unhook the curtain and steal the tie. He couldn’t have done that with her watching.’
‘But he didn’t drink it.’
‘He didn’t want to leave his DNA.’
‘What about the credit card?’ I read the name, printed across it: MRS DIANA J. COWPER. It had been issued by Barclays bank. Its expiry date was November. Six months after hers.
‘That’s an interesting one. Why isn’t it in her purse with all the others? Did she take it out to pay for something and is that why she opened the door? There are no fingerprints on it except her own. So you’ve got a possible scenario. Someone asks her for payment. She takes out the credit card and while she’s fiddling around with it, he slips behind her and strangles her. But then, why isn’t it on the floor?’ He shook his head. ‘On the other hand, it may have nothing to do with what happened. We’ll see.’
‘You said the killer had poor eyesight,’ I said.
‘Yes—’
‘That was because he missed the diamond ring on her finger.’ I’d cut in before Hawthorne could explain everything down to the last detail. ‘It must be worth a fortune.’
‘No, no, mate. You’ve got that all wrong. He obviously wasn’t interested in the ring. Whoever did this nicked a few pieces of jewellery and a laptop to make it look like a burglary but he either forgot the ring or he couldn’t get it off her finger and decided not to bother with a pair of secateurs. There was no way he could have missed it. He was right up close when he was strangling her.’
‘Then how do you know his eyesight was bad?’
‘Because he stepped in the puddle outside the door, which is how he left a mark on the carpet. It looks like a man’s shoe, by the way. In every other respect he was careful. That was the one thing he missed. Aren’t you going to write all this down?’
‘I can remember most of it.’ I took out my iPhone. ‘But I’ll take some pictures if that’s OK.’
‘You go ahead.’ He pointed at a black and white photograph of a man in his forties, also on the sideboard. ‘Make sure you get a shot of him.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Her husband, at a guess. Lawrence Cowper.’
‘Divorced?’
He looked at me sadly. ‘If they were divorced, she wouldn’t keep his picture, would she! He died twelve years ago. Cancer.’
I took the picture.
After that, I followed Hawthorne around the house as he went from room to room, photographing everything that he pointed out to me. We started in the kitchen, which had the look of a showroom: expensively stocked but underused. Diana Cowper had enough equipment to cook a Michelin-starred meal for ten but probably went to bed with a boiled egg and two pieces of toast. The fridge was covered with magnets: classical art and famous Shakespearean quotes. A metal tin, merchandise from the Narnia film Prince Caspian, stood on the fridge. Using a cloth to keep his hands from coming into contact with the metal, Hawthorne opened it and looked inside. It was empty apart from a couple of coins.
Everything was in exactly the right place. There were recipe books – Jamie Oliver and Ottolenghi – on the windowsill, notebooks and recent letters in a rack beside the toaster, a blackboard with notes for the week’s shopping. Hawthorne glanced through the letters then returned them. A wooden fish had been mounted on the wall above the counter with five hooks which Diana used to hang keys and he seemed particularly interested in these – there were four sets, each one of them labelled, and I duly took a picture, noting that according to the tags they opened the front door, the back door, the cellar and a second property called Stonor House.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘She used to live there before she moved to London. It’s in Walmer, Kent.’
‘A bit odd that she should keep the key …’
We found a household drawer full of older letters and bills, which Hawthorne glanced through. There was also a brochure for a musical called Moroccan Nights. The front cover showed a picture of a Kalashnikov machine gun with its shoulder strap lying in the shape of a heart. One of the producers, listed on the first page, was Raymond Clunes.
From the kitchen, we went upstairs to the bedroom, passing wallpaper with faint stripes and old theatre programmes in frames: Hamlet, The Tempest, Henry V, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Birthday Party. Damian Cowper had appeared in all of them. Hawthorne bulldozed ahead but I entered the bedroom with a sense of unease that surprised me. Once again I felt as if I was intruding. Only a week ago, a middle-aged woman would have undressed here, standing in front of the full-length mirror, sliding into the queen-sized bed with the copy of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire that was lying on the bedside table. Well, at least Mrs Cowper had been spared the slightly disappointing ending. There were two sets of pillows. I could see the indentation on one of them, made by her head. I could imagine her waking up, warm, perhaps smelling of lavender. Not any more. Death for me had always been little more than a necessity, something that moved the plot on. But standing in the bedroom of a woman who had so recently died, I could feel it right there beside me.