The Word Is Murder(92)

‘To sleep, perchance to dream. That was Hamlet too.’

‘Exactly. It’s Hamlet that’s on her mind when she goes into the funeral parlour – because of what she’d seen in the window – and that was going to play a part later. But what happened first was that Robert Cornwallis recognised her. Obviously she’s got a famous name but my guess is that she boasts about Damian. And Cornwallis goes mental. Actually, he’s been mental all along.

‘You know already that Cornwallis was at RADA with Damian Cowper.’ Hawthorne had settled back in the chair, enjoying this. ‘You remember that ashtray we saw in his office? It was awarded to Robert Daniel Cornwallis, Undertaker of the Year. He took his second name and his first name and he put them backwards and he became Dan Roberts.’

‘He told me. He didn’t want anyone to know his family were all undertakers.’

‘The funny thing is that Grace Lovell thought that Amanda Leigh was the one with the false name. It seems these drama types didn’t care too much what the kids called themselves. Cut forward a few years and it was suddenly quite useful for Cornwallis. He didn’t want us to know that he’d tried and failed to become an actor. He didn’t want us to make the link with RADA.’

But I had, I thought. I had made the connection even if I’d missed its full significance. How different everything would have been if I’d simply picked up the phone and called Hawthorne!

‘When we were at his house, he was careful not to tell us what he’d done in his twenties,’ Hawthorne continued. ‘He said he sowed a few wild oats but you only have to do the maths! He’s in his mid-thirties. He said that he’d been in the funeral business for about ten years. So there were at least five years before he started when he was doing something else. And while we were there, his son, Andrew, announced that he wanted to be an actor. That was what Barbara Cornwallis told us: Acting runs in his blood. She meant that he took after his dad. But when Andrew came downstairs and started talking about himself, his father jumped right in: Let’s not talk about that right now. Andrew knew that his dad had once been to drama school and Cornwallis was scared he’d give it away.’

‘That’s what this was all about,’ I said. It was all falling into place. ‘A production of Hamlet! It was meant to be Robert Cornwallis’s – I mean, Dan Roberts’s – moment in the sun. He’d got the lead part in the end-of-year show and all the main agents were coming. But then Damian stole it from him.’

‘Did he tell you how?’

‘No.’ I thought back. ‘Damian Cowper was going out with Amanda Leigh. But Grace told us that they split up and that just before rehearsals began she saw Amanda in a clinch with Dan.’ Suddenly it all made sense. ‘It wasn’t true!’ I exclaimed. ‘Damian put her up to it!’ I remembered something else. ‘My friend, Liz, said there was a bad case of glandular fever doing the rounds …’

‘Glandular fever is also known as the kissing disease,’ Hawthorne added. ‘Amanda deliberately passed the virus on to Dan. Dan was forced out of the play. Damian got the main part and the rest is history. Except that Robert Cornwallis never forgave them. Four years later, he caught up with Amanda Leigh and killed her.’

‘He chopped her up and put a piece of her in each one of his next seven funerals.’ I remembered what Cornwallis had told me.

Hawthorne nodded. ‘If you want to get rid of a body, I suppose being an undertaker is certainly a help.’

‘I’m surprised his wife never noticed that anything was wrong.’

‘Barbara Cornwallis had the wrong end of the stick,’ Hawthorne said. ‘She told us that he’d seen everything Damian had done. He’d watched the DVDs over and over again. She thought he was a fan. She didn’t realise that he was actually obsessing about him. All he ever thought about was his failed acting career. He’d only ever had one success and he even named his kids after it.’

‘Toby, Sebastian and Andrew. They’re all characters in Twelfth Night.’ Why hadn’t I seen it before?

‘It was the one play he performed in after he left drama school. The poor sod probably dreamed of killing Damian Cowper every day of his life. He blamed him for everything that had gone wrong.’

‘And then Diana Cowper walked into his office.’

‘Exactly. Cornwallis couldn’t reach Damian. He was in America. He was famous. He’d always have an entourage. But at a funeral – that would be the perfect opportunity to do what he wanted, what he’d been dreaming of for years. That’s why he killed the mother. Simply to get Damian in his reach.’

‘He told me that.’

Hawthorne grinned unexpectedly. ‘It had to be somebody on the inside, putting that music player into the coffin. Think about it. They had to know what type of coffin it was, that it was the sort that could be opened in a couple of seconds. They had to know exactly the moment they could reach it and Cornwallis was the one giving the instructions. He could have been alone with it at any time. He knew how much the nursery rhyme would mean to Damian; he’d heard all about it in acting class. He must have been skulking in the cemetery, watching the whole thing. The idea was to get Damian back to the flat and murder him there – and it worked perfectly. You know, when I called Cornwallis after the funeral, he was probably waiting on the terrace. And when Damian arrived on his own, that was it. Psycho time!’ Hawthorne slashed at the air with an invisible knife.