The Word Is Murder(23)

‘You had lunch with her the day she died,’ Hawthorne said.

‘At the Café Murano. Yes. I saw her as she came out of the station. She waved to me across the road and I thought it was all going to be fine – but once we sat down, I could tell at once that she wasn’t herself, poor thing. She was worried about her pussy cat, Mr Tibbs. Isn’t that a hilarious name for a cat? He’d gone missing. I said to her not to worry. He’s probably gone off chasing mice or whatever it is cats do. But I could see there was a lot on her mind. She couldn’t stay long. She had a board meeting that afternoon.’

‘You say you were old friends but, as I understand it, you’d fallen out.’

‘Fallen out?’ Clunes sounded surprised.

‘She lost money in a show of yours.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Clunes dismissed the accusation with a flick of his fingers. ‘You’re talking about Moroccan Nights. We didn’t fall out. She was disappointed. Of course she was disappointed. We both were! I lost a great deal more money in that show than she did, I can assure you. But that’s the business. I mean, right now I’ve got money in Spider Man, which is a complete, total disaster between you and me, but at the same time I turned down The Book of Mormon. Sometimes, you just get it wrong. She knew that.’

‘What was Moroccan Nights?’ I asked.

‘A love story. Set in the Kasbah. Two boys: a soldier and a terrorist. It had a wonderful score and it was based on a very successful novel – but the audiences just didn’t take to it. Maybe it was too violent. I don’t know. Did you see it?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘That’s the trouble. Nor did anyone else.’

Bruce came back carrying a tray with three tiny cups of coffee and a plate with four white chocolate truffles arranged in a pyramid.

‘Has anything you’ve ever done been successful?’ Hawthorne asked.

Clunes was offended. ‘Look around you, Detective Inspector. Do you think I’d have a house like this if I hadn’t backed a few winners in my time? I was one of the first investors in Cats, if you really want to know, and I’ve invested in every one of Andrew’s musicals since then. Billy Elliot, Shrek, Daniel Radcliffe in Equus … I think I can say I’ve had more than my fair share of success. Moroccan Nights should have worked but you can never tell. That’s what being in musical theatre is all about. I can assure you of one thing, though, and that is – Diana Cowper had no bad feelings towards me when we had to put up the notices. She knew what she was getting into and at the end of the day the money she invested was hardly substantial.’

‘Fifty grand?’

‘That may be a great deal to you, Mr Hawthorne. It would be to a lot of people. But Diana could afford it. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have gone ahead.’

There was a brief silence and I saw Hawthorne examining the other man with those bright, unforgiving eyes. I was expecting him to say something offensive but in fact his voice was measured as he asked: ‘Did she tell you where she’d been that morning?’

‘Before lunch?’ Clunes blinked. ‘No.’

‘She went to an undertaker’s in South Kensington. She arranged her own funeral.’

Clunes had picked up one of the coffee cups and was holding it delicately in front of his face. He set it back down again. ‘Really? You do surprise me.’

‘She didn’t mention it at the Café Murano?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Of course she didn’t mention it. If she’d mentioned it, I would have told you straight away. It’s not something you’d forget, something like that.’

‘You say she had a lot on her mind. Did she talk to you about anything that was worrying her?’

‘Well, yes. There was one thing she mentioned.’ Clunes thought back for a moment. ‘We were talking about money and she mentioned that there was someone pestering her. It was all to do with that accident she had when she was living in Kent. That was just after we met.’

‘She ran over two children,’ I said.

‘That’s right.’ Clunes nodded at me. He picked up the coffee cup again and took a single sip, emptying it. ‘It was ten years ago. She was living on her own after she had lost her husband to cancer … terribly sad. He was a dentist. He had a great many celebrity clients and they had a lovely house, right on the sea. She was living down there and as it happened Damian was with her when the accident took place. As I recall, he was between tours or maybe he was doing that thing for the BBC. I really can’t remember.

‘Anyway, it absolutely wasn’t her fault. There were two children. They were with their nanny but they ran across the road to get an ice-cream just as she was coming round the corner. She couldn’t stop in time – but that didn’t stop the family blaming her. I actually had a long chat with the judge and he was quite clear that Diana wasn’t in any way responsible. Of course she was terribly upset by the whole thing. She moved back to London shortly after that – and as far as I know she never got behind the wheel of a car again. Well, you can’t blame her, can you? The whole thing was a horrible experience.’

‘Did she tell you who had been pestering her?’ Hawthorne asked.

‘Yes, she did. It was Alan Godwin, the father of the two boys. He’d been round to see her, making all sorts of demands.’