The Word Is Murder(77)

Alan Godwin nodded slowly, then got to his feet. Mary O’Brien did the same. They moved towards the door but at the last moment Godwin turned back.

‘You’re a clever man, Mr Hawthorne,’ he said. ‘But you have no understanding at all about what we’ve been through. You have no feelings. We made a horrible mistake and we’ve had to live with it every day. But we’re not monsters. We’re not criminals. We were in love.’

But Hawthorne wasn’t having any of it. It seemed to me that his face was paler and his eyes more vengeful than ever. ‘You wanted sex. You were cheating on your wife. And because of that, a child died.’

Alan Godwin stared at him with something close to disgust. Mary had already passed through the door. He spun on his heel and followed her. We were left alone.

‘Did you have to be so hard on them?’ I asked, at length.

Hawthorne shrugged. ‘You feel sorry for them?’

‘I don’t know. Yes. Maybe.’ I tried to gather my thoughts. ‘Alan Godwin didn’t kill Diana Cowper.’

‘That’s right. He doesn’t blame her for the accident in Deal. He blames himself. So he had no reason to kill her. She was just the instrument of what happened, not the cause.’

‘And the driver of the car …’

‘It doesn’t matter who was driving the car. Damian, his mother, the lady next door. It’s got nothing to do with it.’

Cigarette smoke hung in the air. I would have to explain that to my wife later. I was still sitting on the piano stool. My number one theory about the murder had just crashed to the ground.

‘So if the killer wasn’t Alan Godwin, who was it?’ I asked. ‘Where do we go next?’

‘Grace Lovell,’ Hawthorne replied. ‘We’ll see her tomorrow.’





Twenty


An Actor’s Life




Grace Lovell had not returned to the flat in Brick Lane and I can’t say I blamed her. It would take a long time to wipe away all the blood that had been spilled and longer still to erase the memories of so much violence.

She and Ashleigh were staying at her parents’ home in Hounslow, close to Heathrow Airport, where her father worked as a senior commercial manager. Martin Lovell had taken the day off. He was a large, intimidating man, wearing a polo shirt that was too small for him, with shoulders straining at the fabric and butcher’s arms bursting out of the sleeves. He had shaved his head, which made it difficult to guess his age, but he must have been in his late fifties. Grace didn’t look anything like him. He was holding Ashleigh and had to be careful to concentrate on what he was doing. I could easily imagine him accidentally smothering the little girl in his bear-like embrace. As usual, she was showing no interest in what was going on, absorbed in the pages of a rag book.

The house was clean and modern, part of an estate which must have been perfectly aligned with the main runway as we were deafened every few minutes by the roar of the planes taking off. Grace and her father didn’t appear to notice the noise. Ashleigh positively enjoyed it, giggling with pleasure every time a plane went past. Grace had told us that Rosemary Lovell, her mother, was at work, teaching maths at a local secondary school. This left the five of us sitting awkwardly close to each other on sofas and armchairs that were rather too big for the room. Martin had offered us coffee, which we had refused. He sat quietly while Grace did most of the talking. From time to time I noticed him watching us with a strange, smouldering anger in his eyes.

Over the next twenty minutes, Grace described her life with Damian Cowper, how they had met, their relationship, their time in America. She was quite different from how she had been the last few times we had met her, as if Damian’s death had released her from some sort of obligation. As she talked, I realised that she had fallen out of love with him a long time ago and I remembered Hawthorne sarcastically dismissing her as ‘the grieving widow’. Well, he’d been right about that. She’d been the actress all along and this was her moment in the spotlight. I don’t mean to be unkind. I liked her. She was young and charismatic and she had allowed her life to be stolen away from her. Although she never said as much, it was clear that Damian’s death would give her a chance to start again.

This is what she said.

‘I always wanted to be an actress, for as long as I can remember. I loved drama class when I was at school and I went to the theatre whenever I could afford it. I’d go to the National first thing in the morning and queue up for ten-pound seats or I’d get tickets right at the back of the top circle. I worked part-time in a hairdressing salon in the school holidays so I could afford it, and Mum and Dad were brilliant. They always supported me. When I told them I wanted to apply to RADA, they were a hundred per cent behind me.’

‘I tried to talk you out of it!’ Martin Lovell growled.

‘You came into town with me, Daddy. When I had my first audition, you sat in that pub round the corner.’ She turned back to us. ‘I was eighteen years old and I’d just taken my A levels. Dad wanted me to go to university and apply when I finished but I couldn’t wait. I had four auditions and they got more and more difficult. The last one was the worst. There were thirty of us and we were there for the whole day. We had to do a whole lot of classes and all the time we knew we were being watched by all these different people and that at least half of us wouldn’t be coming back. I felt sick with nerves but of course if I’d shown it that would have been the end of me. And then a few days later I got a telephone call from the head of RADA – he actually rings everyone personally – to say that I’d been accepted and it was like “Oh my God! That’s impossible!” It was all my dreams come true.