The Word Is Murder(70)

We walked for another fifteen minutes and at some stage Deal turned into Walmer and we arrived at Stonor House, which was where Diana Cowper had lived until the accident that had forced her to move. It was sandwiched between two roads, Liverpool Road at the back and The Beach at the front, a private drive connecting them, with ornate metal gates at each end. From the little that I knew about Diana Cowper, I would have said the house had suited her very well. Certainly, I could imagine her living here. It was pale blue, solid, well maintained, with two floors, several chimneys and a garage. A pair of stone lions stood guard in front of the door. It was surrounded by topiary that had been precisely clipped and semi-tropical plants, equally disciplined, in narrow beds. The whole place was walled off so that it was both prominent and private. Of course, some of these particulars could have been installed by the new owners but I got the feeling that it was more likely they had inherited it the way it was.

‘Are we going to ring the bell?’ I asked. We were standing on the Liverpool Road side. As far as I could see, there was nobody at home.

‘No. There’s no need.’ He took a key out of his pocket and I saw the name of the house on the tag dangling underneath it. For a moment, I was puzzled. Then I realised. He must have taken it from Diana Cowper’s kitchen, although I wasn’t sure when. I didn’t think the police would have allowed him to remove evidence, so they were probably unaware it even existed.

The key was solid and chunky. Not a Yale. I saw now that it couldn’t have fitted the front door. It was much more likely to open the gate. Hawthorne tried it a couple of times, then shook his head. ‘Not this one.’

We walked around to the other side of the house and tried the gate that opened onto The Beach but the key didn’t fit that one either. ‘That’s a pity,’ Hawthorne muttered.

‘Why did she hold on to the key?’ I asked.

‘That’s what I wanted to find out.’

He looked around him and I thought we were going to walk back to Deal – but then he noticed a second gate on the other side of the road. Stonor House had a quite separate, private garden right next to the beach. Smiling to himself, he crossed the road and tried the key a third time. This time, it turned.

We entered a small square area, with bushes on all four sides. It wasn’t exactly a garden; more a courtyard with miniature yew trees and rose beds surrounding a pretty marble fountain and two wooden benches that faced each other. The ground was paved with York stone. The effect was theatrical – like a scene from a children’s story. Even as we walked up to the fountain, which was dry and hadn’t been used for some time, I felt a sense of sadness and had a good idea what we were going to find.

And there it was, carved onto the stone shelf of the fountain: Lawrence Cowper. 3 April 1946 – 22 October 1999. ‘To sleep, perchance to dream.’

‘Her husband,’ I said.

‘Yes. He died of cancer and she built this place as a memorial to him. She couldn’t stay in the house but she always knew she’d want to come back. So she kept a key.’

‘She must have loved him very much,’ I said.

He nodded. Just for once, we were equally uncomfortable, standing there. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

The accident that had changed Diana Cowper’s life had taken place close to the Royal Hotel in the centre of Deal. The Royal was the handsome Georgian building where Mary O’Brien had been staying with Jeremy and Timothy Godwin. The three of them had only been minutes from tea and bed when the car ran them down.

I remembered what Mary had told us. The children had come off the beach, which was behind us, with the pebbles sloping down. The pier was nearby. The road was wider here than at any other point in Deal and subsequently the cars travelled faster, sweeping down from King Street which formed a junction over to the right. There was a shop selling Deal rock and an entertainment arcade on the corner. This was the way Diana Cowper had come. In front of me, there were more shops in a short parade: a pub, a hotel, a chemist – it advertised itself as Pier Pharmacy. Finally, next to it, stood the ice-cream shop with a front made up entirely of plate-glass windows and a bright, striped canopy.

It was all too easy to see how it had happened: the car coming round the corner, moving quickly to avoid the cross traffic. The two children, choosing exactly that moment to slip away from their nanny, running across the pavement and then into the road in their hurry to reach the ice-cream shop in front of them. Nigel Weston might have been right. Even with glasses, Diana Cowper would have been hard-pressed to stop in time. The accident had taken place at exactly this time of the year, almost to the day. The promenade would have been just as empty, the late afternoon light just beginning to dim.

‘Where do we start?’ I asked.

Hawthorne nodded. ‘The ice-cream shop.’

We could see it was open. We crossed the road and went in.

It was called Gail’s Ice-Cream and it was a cheerful place with plastic chairs and a Formica floor. The ice-cream it sold was home-made, stored in a dozen different tubs in a freezer that had seen better days. The cones were stacked up against the window and looked as if they might have been there a while. Gail’s also sold fizzy drinks, chocolate, crisps, and ready-mixed bags of sweets, another seaside staple. A menu on the wall advertised eggs, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and chips: The Big Deal Fry-Up. I’d wondered how long it would be before I saw the obvious pun based on the town’s name.