The Word Is Murder(73)

‘Did you know her?’

‘Of course I knew her. She often came into the hotel for lunch or for dinner. She was charming – and she had a famous son. Deal is quite well known for its celebrities. Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton are the best known but Norman Wisdom also came here. And Charles Hawtrey used to like sitting at the bar. He moved to Deal after he retired.’

Charles Hawtrey. I still remembered him: the skinny actor with dark wavy hair and round glasses. He was the gay, friendless, drunken star of the Carry On films, British humour at its most dysfunctional. I had watched him in black and white films when I was nine years old, at boarding school. They used to screen them in the gymnasium: Carry on Nurse, Carry on Teacher, Carry on Constable. It was the one big treat of the week, a break from the beatings, bad food and bullying that made up the rest of my time there. For some children, growing up begins the moment they discover that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. For me, it was realising Charles Hawtrey wasn’t and never had been funny. And he had sat here, in this hotel, sipping his gin and watching the boys go by.

Suddenly I didn’t want to be here either. And I was glad when Hawthorne thanked the woman and said he had no more questions and the two of us left.





Nineteen


Mr Tibbs




I wasn’t expecting to see Hawthorne the next day, so I was surprised to get a telephone call from him shortly after breakfast.

‘Are you doing anything this evening?’

‘I’m working,’ I said.

‘I need to come round.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Hawthorne had never been to my London flat before and I was happy to keep it that way. I was the one trying to insinuate myself into his life, not the other way round. And so far, he hadn’t even told me his address. In fact, he had deliberately misled me. He had said his home was in Gants Hill when he actually had a flat in River Court, Blackfriars, on the other side of the river. I didn’t like the idea of him casting his detective’s eye over my home, my possessions, and perhaps coming to conclusions that he might later use against me.

He must have sensed the hesitation at the other end of the line. ‘I need to set up a meeting,’ he explained. ‘I want it to be somewhere neutral.’

‘What’s wrong with your place?’

‘That wouldn’t be appropriate.’ He paused. ‘I’ve worked out what really happened in Deal,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll agree that it’s relevant to our investigation.’

‘Who are you meeting?’

‘You’ll know who they both are when they get here.’ He tried one last plea. ‘It’s important.’

As it happened, I was on my own that evening. And it occurred to me that if I allowed Hawthorne to see where I lived, perhaps I might be able to persuade him to do the same. I was still keen to find out how he could possibly afford a flat overlooking the river and although Meadows had said he didn’t own it I was curious to see inside.

‘What time?’ I asked.

‘Five o’clock.’

‘All right,’ I said, already regretting it. ‘You can come here for an hour – but that’s it.’

‘That’s great.’ He rang off.

I spent the rest of the morning typing up my notes from the investigation so far: Britannia Road, Cornwallis and Sons, the South Acton Estate. I had made several hours’ worth of recordings on my iPhone and I connected it to my computer, listening to Hawthorne’s flat, wheedling voice through a set of headphones. I’d also taken dozens of photographs and I flicked through them, reminding myself of what I’d seen. I already had far more material than I needed and I was sure that ninety per cent of it was irrelevant. For example, Andrea Kluvánek had talked at length about her childhood in the Banská ?tiavnica district of Slovakia and how happy she had been until the death of her father in an agricultural accident. But even as she had gone on, I’d been doubtful that any of it would make the first draft.

I had never worked this way before. Normally, when I’m planning a novel or a TV script, I know exactly what I need and don’t waste time with extraneous details. But without knowing what was going on inside Hawthorne’s head, how could I tell what was relevant and what wasn’t? It was exactly what he had warned me about when he’d read my first chapter. A spring bell mechanism on a door or its absence could make all the difference to the conclusion and leaving something out could be just as damaging as making it up. As a result, I was having to write down everything I saw in every room I visited – whether it was the Stieg Larsson in Diana Cowper’s bedroom, the fish-shaped key hook in her kitchen or the Post-it notes in Judith Godwin’s kitchen – and the rapidly growing pile of information was driving me mad.

I was still convinced that Alan Godwin was the killer. If it wasn’t him, who else could it have been? That was the question I asked myself as I sat at my desk, surrounded by what felt like a devastation of white A4.

Well, there was Judith Godwin, for one. She had exactly the same motivation. I thought back to what Hawthorne had said about the killer when we were at the scene of the crime, then rifled through the pages until I found it. He was almost certainly a man. I’ve heard of women strangling women but – take it from me – it’s unusual. Those were his exact words, recorded and written down. As a result, I hadn’t considered any of the women I had met. But almost certainly was not one hundred per cent definite and unusual was not impossible. It could have been Judith. It could have been Mary O’Brien – so devoted to the family that she had stayed working with them for the whole ten years. And what about Jeremy Godwin? It was always possible that he wasn’t quite as helpless as everyone supposed.