The Word Is Murder(46)

‘Then it must have been someone from outside, hence my question: was the coffin left on its own?’

‘Yes.’ Irene squirmed, hating to admit it. ‘The deceased was laid out at our facility on the Fulham Palace Road. She was brought from there today. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough space at our South Kensington office. We have a chapel close to Hammersmith roundabout, a place of bereavement. Members of the family and close friends would have been able to visit Mrs Cowper if they so wished.’

‘And how many of them so wished?’

‘I can’t tell you now. But we have a visitors’ book and nobody would have been allowed in without some form of identification.’

‘How about here at the cemetery?’ Hawthorne asked. Irene said nothing, so he went on: ‘When we arrived, the coffin was inside the hearse, which was parked around the back. Was there someone there the whole time?’

Irene deflected the question to one of the pall-bearers, who shuffled his feet and looked down. ‘We were there most of the time,’ he muttered. ‘But not all of it.’

‘And who are you?’

‘Alfred Laws. I’m a director of the company.’ He took a breath. ‘Irene is my wife.’

Hawthorne smiled mirthlessly. ‘Keep it all in the family, don’t you! So where were you?’

‘When we first arrived, we parked the vehicle and came in here.’

‘All of you?’

‘Yes.’

And was the hearse locked?’

‘No.’

‘In our experience, nobody has ever tried to remove a dead person,’ Irene remarked, icily.

‘Well, maybe that’s something you should think about in the future.’ Hawthorne closed in her, almost menacing. ‘I’ll need to talk to Mr Cornwallis. Where can I find him?’

‘I’ll give you his address.’ Irene held out a hand and her husband passed her a notebook and a pen. She scribbled a few lines on the first page, then tore it out and handed it to Hawthorne.

‘Thank you.’

‘Wait a minute!’ Meadows had been standing to one side throughout all this and it was as if he had only just realised he hadn’t said anything. At the same time – I saw it in his eyes – he knew he had nothing more to say. ‘I’ll take the alarm clock,’ he muttered, asserting his authority. ‘It shouldn’t have been handled,’ he added, forgetting that he had been the one who had taken it from Irene in the first place. ‘Forensics aren’t going to like that.’

‘I doubt forensics will find very much,’ Hawthorne said.

‘Well, if it was bought on the internet, there’s a good chance we’ll be able to find the identity of the purchaser.’

Hawthorne handed it to him. Meadows made a point of gripping it very carefully, with his thumb and second finger each side of the digital clock.

‘Good luck,’ Hawthorne said.

It was a dismissal.

The wake, if that was what it was, was being held at a gastropub on the corner of Finborough Road, a few minutes’ walk from the cemetery. This was the place that Damian had mentioned before he had stormed off. He wasn’t the only one who had gone straight home: half the mourners had decided to give it a miss too. That left Grace Lovell and about a dozen men and women hitting the Prosecco and miniature sausages, trying to console each other not just on the loss of an old friend but on the terrible farce that her funeral had become.

Hawthorne had said he wanted to talk to Damian Cowper and he had already called through to Robert Cornwallis, leaving a message on his mobile phone. But first of all he wanted to catch up with the other mourners. After all, if they hadn’t known Diana Cowper well, they wouldn’t have come to the funeral and it was his one chance to catch them while they were all together. There was a definite spring in his step as we crossed the Fulham Road and went in. Any sort of mystery energised him – and the more bizarre the better.

We saw Grace straight away. Although she was wearing black, her dress was very short and she had a velvet tuxedo jacket with extravagantly padded shoulders. Leaning against the bar, she could just as easily have come from a film premiere as a funeral. She wasn’t talking to anyone and smiled anxiously as we came over to her.

‘Mr Hawthorne!’ She was clearly glad to see him. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here. I hardly know any of these people.’

‘Who are they?’ Hawthorne asked.

She looked around, then pointed. ‘That’s Raymond Clunes. He’s a theatre producer. Damian was in one of his plays.’

‘We’ve met.’

‘And that’s Diana’s GP.’ She nodded at a man, in his sixties, pigeon-shaped in a dark, three-piece suit. ‘His name’s Dr Butterworth, I think. The woman next to him is his wife. The man standing in the corner is Diana’s lawyer, Charles Kenworthy. He’s dealing with the will. But I don’t know anyone else.’

‘Damian went home.’

‘He was very upset. That song was deliberately chosen to upset him. It was a horrible joke to play.’

‘You know about the song?’

‘Well, yes!’ She hesitated, unsure if she could continue. ‘It goes back to that horrible business with those two children,’ she said. ‘It was Timothy Godwin’s favourite song. They played it when they buried him … in Harrow Weald.’