The Word Is Murder(74)

And then there was Grace Lovell – the actress who had moved in with Damian Cowper. Although she hadn’t said so in as many words, there was clearly no love lost between her and Damian’s mother, whose interest had extended no further than her first grandchild, Ashleigh. The baby had been the end of Grace’s acting career and if the newspaper stories were true, Damian had proved to be a far from ideal partner. Drugs, parties, showgirls … it easily added up to a motive for murder. On the other hand, she had been in America when Diana was killed.

Or had she?

Once again, I scoured through my notes and found exactly what I was looking for, a line spoken by Damian Cowper that hadn’t registered at the time but which, I now saw, was hugely significant. Grace had complained that she didn’t want to go back to Los Angeles. She wanted to spend more time with her parents. And Damian had said to her: You’ve already had a week with them, babe. I felt a glow of satisfaction. I really had missed nothing! It might even be that I was ahead of Hawthorne on this one. A week might be an approximation. Grace could have arrived nine or ten days ahead of Damian. In which case she could easily have been in the country on the day that Diana was killed. That said, we had left her behind at the pub in the Fulham Road after the funeral and remembering how heavy the traffic was, I would have thought it impossible for her to have reached Brick Lane before us.

Who else was there? I had spent a lot of time with Robert Cornwallis – and, for that matter with his cousin, Irene Laws. Either of them could have slipped the music player into the coffin but why would they have? They only met Diana Cowper on the day she died. Neither of them had anything to gain from her death, or that of her son.

I spent the rest of the day working on my notes and hardly noticed the time when, at a quarter to five, the doorbell rang. I work on the fifth floor of the building, with an intercom that connects me to the street, although there are times when I don’t feel connected at all, stuck in my ivory tower. I buzzed the door open, then went downstairs to meet my guest.

‘Nice place,’ Hawthorne said as he walked in. ‘But I don’t think we’ll need the drinks.’

I’d laid out glasses with a choice of mineral water and orange juice as it seemed a polite thing to do. I noticed him examining the living room as I returned them to the fridge. The main floor of my flat is essentially one large space. It has bookshelves – I have about five hundred books in the house but I keep my favourite ones here – a kitchen area, a dining-room table and my mother’s old piano which I try to play every day. There’s a TV area and a couple of sofas around a coffee table. Hawthorne sat down here. He looked completely relaxed.

‘So you know what really happened in Deal,’ I said. ‘Am I about to find out who killed Diana Cowper?’

Hawthorne shook his head. ‘Not right now. But I think you’ll find it interesting. I’ve got some good news, by the way,’ he added.

‘What’s that?’

‘Mr Tibbs has turned up.’

‘Mr Tibbs?’ It took me a few seconds to remember who he was. ‘The cat?’

‘Diana Cowper’s Persian grey.’

‘Where was he?’

‘He’d got into the neighbour’s house – through a skylight. Then he couldn’t get out again. He was found by the owners when they got back from the South of France and they called me.’

‘I suppose that is good news,’ I said, wondering what Diana Cowper’s cat had to do with anything. Then another thought struck me. ‘Wait a minute. There was a lawyer living in the house next door.’

‘Mr Grossman.’

‘Why did he contact you? How did he even know who you were?’

‘I put a note through his door. Actually, I put a note in all the houses in Britannia Road. I wanted to know if the cat had made an appearance.’

‘Why?’

‘Mr Tibbs is the reason everything happened, Tony. If it hadn’t been for him, Mrs Cowper might never have been killed. And nor would her son.’

I was sure he was joking. But he was sitting there with that strange energy of his, that mix of malice and single-mindedness that made him so hard to read, and before I could challenge him the doorbell rang for a second time.

‘Shall I answer it?’ I asked.

Hawthorne waved a hand. ‘It’s your place.’

I went over to the intercom and picked up the telephone. ‘Yes?’

‘This is Alan Godwin.’

I felt a surge of excitement. So that was my first visitor. I told him to come up the three flights of stairs and buzzed him in.

He appeared a short while later, wearing a raincoat that looked a size too large for him, the same coat he had worn at the funeral. He came into the room like a man approaching the scaffold and I was quite certain that, despite what he had said to me on the way to Canterbury, Hawthorne had summoned him here to accuse him of the murders and that everything was about to be revealed to me. Then I remembered that there were two people coming. Could Godwin have had an accomplice?

‘What is it you want?’ he asked, heading straight for Hawthorne. ‘You said there was something you had to tell me. Why couldn’t you just do it over the phone?’ He looked around him, noticing his surroundings for the first time. ‘Do you live here?’

‘No’ Hawthorne pointed in my direction. ‘He does.’