The Word Is Murder(60)

This was where Alan Godwin worked, running a company that organised conferences and social events for businesses. His office was on the second floor of a 1960s building that had weathered badly, at the end of a narrow street crowded with unappetising cafés, close to the coach station. It was raining when I arrived – it had been cloudy all day – and with the puddles on the pavements and the coaches spraying water as they rumbled past, I could hardly imagine anywhere I would less like to be. The sign on the door read Dearboy Events and it took me a moment to work out where it had come from. It was a quotation from Harold Macmillan, who had once been asked what politicians should fear. His answer was: ‘Events, dear boy, events.’

I was shown into a small, unevenly shaped reception room and I didn’t need to be a detective to see the way this business was going. The furniture was expensive but it was getting tired and the trade magazines spread out on the table were out of date. The potted plants were wilting. The receptionist was bored and didn’t make any attempt to disguise it. Her telephone wasn’t ringing. There were a few awards on display on a shelf, handed out by organisations I’d never heard of.

Hawthorne was already there, sitting on a sofa with that sense of impatience I was beginning to know so well. It was as if he was addicted to crime and couldn’t wait to begin his next interrogation. ‘You’re late,’ he said.

I looked at my watch. It was five past three. ‘How are you?’ I asked. ‘How was your weekend?’

‘It was all right.’

‘Did you do anything? Did you see a film?’

He looked at me curiously. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Nothing.’ I was thinking about my lunch with Hilda. I sat down opposite him. ‘Did you know that Raymond Clunes has been arrested?’

He nodded. ‘I saw it in the papers. When he took that fifty grand off Diana Cowper, it looks like he was ripping her off.’

‘Maybe she knew something about him. It could have given him a reason to kill her.’

Hawthorne considered my suggestion in a way that told me he had already dismissed it. ‘Is that what you think?’

‘It’s possible.’

A young girl came into the reception area and told us, in a hopeless tone of voice, that Mr Godwin would see us. She led us down a short corridor past two offices – both of them empty, I noticed. There was a door at the end. She opened it. ‘Here are your visitors, Mr Godwin.’

We went in.

I knew Alan Godwin at once. I had seen him at the funeral. He had been the tall man with the straggly hair and the white handkerchief. Now, he was sitting behind a desk with a window behind him and a view of the coach station over his shoulder. He was wearing a sports jacket and a round-necked jersey. He recognised us too as we came in. He knew that we had seen him at the cemetery. His face fell.

There were two seats opposite the desk. We sat down.

‘You’re a police officer?’ He examined Hawthorne nervously.

‘I’m working with the police, that’s right.’

‘I wonder if I could see some sort of identification.’

‘I wonder if you could tell me what you were doing at Brompton Cemetery and for that matter what you did when you left.’ Godwin didn’t say anything, so Hawthorne went on. ‘The police don’t know you were there but I do and, if I tell them, I’m sure they’ll be very interested to talk to you. Frankly, I think you’d find it a lot easier, talking to me.’

Godwin seemed to sink into his chair. Looked at more closely, he was a man weighed down by failure. It was hardly surprising. The accident that had taken one of his sons and cruelly injured the other had been the start of a general unravelling which had seen him lose his home, his marriage and his business. I knew he was going to answer Hawthorne’s questions. He had almost no fight left in him.

‘I didn’t commit any crime going to the funeral,’ he said.

‘That may or may not be the case. You heard that music. “The wheels on the bus …” If memory serves, that one comes under the Burial Laws Amendment Act: riotous, violent or indecent behaviour at a funeral. But I suppose you could equally well put it down to breaking and entering. Someone broke into the coffin and inserted a music box. Do you know anything about that?’

‘No.’

‘But you saw what happened.’

‘Yes. Of course.’

‘Did that song mean anything to you?’

Godwin paused and for a moment I saw two deep pits of despair opening in his eyes. ‘We played it when we buried Timothy,’ he rasped. ‘It was his favourite song.’

Even Hawthorne faltered at that, but only briefly. Straight away he was back on the attack. ‘So why were you there?’ he demanded. ‘Why go to the funeral of a woman you had every reason to hate?’

‘It was because I hated her!’ Godwin’s cheeks had reddened. He had heavy black eyebrows, which accentuated his anger. ‘That woman with her stupidity and her carelessness killed my son, an eight-year-old boy, and turned his brother who was a livewire and who could make anybody laugh – turned him into pretty much a vegetable. She wasn’t wearing her glasses and she destroyed my life. I went to the funeral because I was delighted she was dead and I wanted to see her put in the ground. I thought it would give me closure.’