The Word Is Murder(22)
‘Mrs Cowper have a cat. Is a big grey cat.’ She held out her hands, showing us its size. ‘She call me on Thursday. She tell me not to come in. She very upset and she say that Mr Tibbs has gone.’
‘Why did you take the letter?’ I asked.
Andrea looked at Hawthorne as if asking his permission to ignore me.
Hawthorne nodded. He folded the letter back up and slipped it into his pocket. The two of us left.
‘She took the letter because she thought she could make money out of it,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Maybe she knows the man who visited Diana Cowper, the man with the umbrella. Or maybe she thought she could find him. But she’s an opportunist. She knew there was going to be a murder investigation and this was something she thought she could use.’
We were sitting together in another taxi, on our way back into town. We had one meeting left – with Raymond Clunes, the theatre producer who’d had lunch with Diana Cowper on the day she’d died. I was even more convinced now that this was a waste of time. Surely Hawthorne had the identity of the killer in his pocket. You are going to pay. What could have been clearer than that? But he said nothing more about the interview with Andrea Kluvánek. He was deep in thought. In fact it was more than that. He was totally absorbed. This was something I would learn about Hawthorne. He was someone who was only fully alive when he was working on a case. He needed there to have been a murder or some other violent crime. It was his entire raison d’être – another posh phrase which I am sure he would have hated.
Clunes lived in rather different circumstances to Andrea Kluvánek. His home was behind Marble Arch, close to Connaught Square, and I wasn’t at all surprised that this was the home of a theatre producer. The building itself was like a stage set, made of red brick and almost improbably two-dimensional with an imposing front door and brightly painted windows set in perfect symmetry. Everything was pristine, even the dustbins standing in a neat line on the other side of the metal railings. A flight of steps led down to a basement with its own separate entrance. There were four more floors rising above. I guessed I was looking at around five bedrooms and at least thirty million pounds’ worth of central London property.
Hawthorne wasn’t impressed. He jabbed at the doorbell as if he had some personal animosity against it. There was nobody else in the street and I got the feeling that most of the houses here would be empty, owned by foreign businessmen. Didn’t Tony Blair live somewhere close by? As central as it was, I’d never actually been to this particular area. It didn’t feel like London at all.
The door was opened by that standby of every whodunnit; something I had never expected to encounter in the twenty-first century. Clunes had a butler, the real thing, in pinstriped suit, waistcoat and gloves. He was a man of about my age with swept-back dark hair and a look of dignity that he must have nailed into place each day.
‘Good afternoon, sir. Please come in.’ He didn’t need to ask our names. We were expected.
We went into a large hallway between two reception rooms, the floors fabulously carpeted, the ceilings triple height. It didn’t look at all like someone’s home. It was more like a hotel, though one without paying guests. As we climbed the stairs, I noticed a Hockney pool painting with a boy just disappearing beneath the surface, followed by a Francis Bacon triptych. We reached a landing with a huge Robert Mapplethorpe nude although it showed only a part of the subject’s anatomy. It was a black and white photograph: the background white, the buttocks and erect penis black. Just to one side stood a classical sculpture of a naked shepherd boy. Hawthorne looked uncomfortable as we walked past this blatant homoerotic art. Not just his lips but his entire body curled in distaste.
A cavernous archway led into the upper living room, which ran the full length of the house, with furniture, lamps, mirrors and further artwork dotted around as far as the eye could see. Everything was expensive but I was more struck by how impersonal it was. It was all brand new, in perfect taste. I looked in vain for a discarded newspaper or a pair of muddy shoes that might suggest somebody actually lived there. It was somehow too silent for the centre of London. The whole place reminded me of a sarcophagus, as if the owner had deliberately filled it with the riches of a life he had left behind.
And yet, when Raymond Clunes finally appeared, he was surprisingly ordinary. He was about fifty years old, dressed in a blue velvet jacket with a roll-neck jersey, poised with his legs crossed, so exactly in the centre of an oversized sofa that I wondered if the butler had taken out a tape measure before we arrived and marked out where he should sit. He was well built, with a shock of silver hair and humorous, pale blue eyes. He seemed pleased to see us.
‘Do sit down.’ He made a theatrical gesture, directing us to the seat opposite. ‘Will you have some coffee?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Bruce, let’s have some coffee for our guests. And bring up those truffles.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The butler backed away.
We sat down.
‘You’re here about poor Diana.’ He hadn’t waited for Hawthorne to ask a question. ‘I can’t tell you how shocked I am by what’s happened. I knew her through the Globe. That was where we first met. And of course I’ve worked with her son, Damian, a very, very talented young boy. He was in my production of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Haymarket. It was a huge success. I always knew he’d go far. When the police told me what had happened, I couldn’t believe it. Nobody in the world would have wanted to hurt Diana. She was one of those people who only brought goodness and kindness to everyone she met.’