Hawthorne smiled. ‘My son couldn’t believe I was seeing you today. He’s grown out of your books now, but he’s still a big fan.’
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Hawthorne had taken a book out of his inside pocket. It had a brightly coloured picture of two children and a pirate ship on the cover. A one-eyed pirate was waving a sword. The book was called Flashbang Trouble, the book that he had mentioned at Southampton and which had made his son laugh out loud. He also had a pen.
‘Could you sign it for him?’ he asked.
Anne stared for a moment, then took the book and the pen. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘What’s his name?’
‘As a matter of fact, he’s called William too.’
‘Oh.’
I saw her write a message. To William, with love. Keep reading! Anne Cleary. She handed it back.
‘Thank you,’ Hawthorne said.
‘It’s a pleasure, Mr Hawthorne.’
We left.
24
A Postcard from Alderney
I have to make a confession. All along I’d thought that the real killer of Charles and Helen le Mesurier was Terry, our taxi driver. It was a thought that I’d never articulated – it lurked somewhere in the back of my mind – but he did actually have a motive: he’d mentioned that Charles le Mesurier had been planning to start a new taxi service that would have been enough to put him out of business. And it seemed more than coincidental that he had been present at the times of both murders. He had been outside The Lookout when Charles was killed and, by his own admission, he had driven past when Helen left the next day. I was just glad that I had never mentioned any of this to Hawthorne. I would have looked ridiculous.
In the days that followed our visit to Summertown, I found myself thinking about Anne Cleary a great deal. I’ve often wondered why people become murderers and I was shocked that I had met her years before, when she had been as ordinary as me, before she had allowed her son’s death to destroy her own life. I couldn’t get her out of my head: the ticking clock, the porcelain figures, the candles. She was gentler – and more genteel – than anyone I’d ever met. And yet, in Alderney, she had let loose a torrent of blood.
Was Hawthorne right to make the decision he had made?
He could have remained silent. Charles and Helen le Mesurier, two not very pleasant people, were dead and nothing was going to bring them back to life again. They were responsible for the suicide of Anne’s son and had probably harmed the lives of countless others – not that I’d thought twice before accepting an invitation to a literary festival sponsored by Spin-the-wheel.com. They had conspired to compromise Colin Matheson. A husband selling his wife, a wife cheerfully prostituting herself for her husband. They had blackmailed Colin and probably destroyed his marriage. They would have been happy to see war graves desecrated and an island torn apart – figuratively and literally – by a power line if it made money for them.
As far as the police were concerned, the case was closed. Derek Abbott, another unpleasant man, had been wrongly identified as the killer and he wasn’t going to complain about it any time soon. Anne Cleary was terminally ill. What exactly was there to be gained by dragging her daughter through the courts and putting her in jail?
Hawthorne had chosen to take the moral high ground, which was all very well, but I couldn’t forget the part he had played in all this. Although I hadn’t challenged him, I was almost certain that he had visited Derek Abbott and told him that the police had all the evidence they needed to make an arrest. Abbott had already spent six months in jail and he had told us that he would never go back. I remembered what he had said. He had used almost exactly the same words as he had written on his suicide note. I will never go back to prison. I don’t care what happens to me in my life, but I will never let that happen again. Had Hawthorne actually encouraged him to throw himself off the cliff at Gannet Rock? Whatever had passed between them, he had been complicit in the other man’s death and he was surely in no position to pass judgement on either Anne Cleary or her daughter.
And yet perhaps he was vindicated by what happened next.
I’m writing this a whole year after the events I have described and I can tell you that Anne Cleary did indeed go to the police and made a full confession to both the murders. As a result, both she and her daughter were arrested.
Anne did not stand trial. She suffered a massive heart attack while she was still in remand and died just a month after we had visited her at her Summertown home. That left Kathryn Harris to face justice alone and she duly went on trial, charged with being an accessory to murder. I saw photographs of her outside the courthouse with her husband, Dr Michael Harris. They looked like any other young couple, very much in love, clutching each other as they faced the press pack.
Kathryn Harris was found not guilty. I can’t say I followed the entire case, but I understand it turned on a single issue. In the end, the prosecution was unable to prove that Anne Cleary had informed her daughter that she actually intended to kill Charles and Helen le Mesurier. Kathryn insisted that she had thought her mother had planned only to confront Charles le Mesurier for his part in her brother’s death, but at the last minute (after Kathryn had left the Snuggery) she must have lost control and taken her bloody revenge. Kathryn broke down in court. She said she had been shocked to hear what her mother had done and that she was ashamed to have been a part of it.
I know it sounds improbable as I write it here, but then the law is often hard to fathom. The jury was sympathetic and, most significantly, the main witnesses were dead so in the end they believed her. I thought Hawthorne might have been called to give evidence. Deputy Chief Torode certainly turned up, although by then he was plain Mr Torode. He had been quietly sacked for incompetence.
Kathryn might have been charged with various lesser offences, such as lying to the police or obstructing the course of justice. But there was no real appetite to go after her. The press and the public were also on her side (‘GP’S WIFE TRAPPED BY A MOTHER’S MADNESS’), and anyway, thanks to Hawthorne, she had voluntarily turned herself in just two days after she had left Alderney. The authorities must have decided that pursuing her would only have been seen as vindictive.
Did she get away with murder?
I’m fairly sure that Kathryn was there when Charles le Mesurier died. Maybe she was laughing as the knife went in. Maybe she was the one holding it. And I still don’t fully believe Anne’s account of the murder of Helen le Mesurier. Helen was on her way to an important meeting. She believed that Derek Abbott had been involved in her husband’s death. Would she really have taken a diversion down a disused railway to show Anne the entrance to the cave? It was much more likely that, once again, mother and daughter were working in tandem. Anne could have told Helen that her daughter was inside the cave, that she had taken a fall and was lying there, injured. They could have waylaid her and led her in at knifepoint. They could even have knocked her out and carried her between them.
I think Anne lied to us because she was aware of the difference between the two crimes. The murder of Charles le Mesurier was wicked enough, but the death of his wife was somehow worse. Hawthorne had got it exactly right. Helen was an actress playing a part. Her only crime was that she had never considered the consequences.
But all of this is irrelevant. The point is that Hawthorne had no choice as to whether Kathryn should face trial or not. It was not his decision to make and in the end he achieved exactly the outcome he might have wanted without having to compromise himself. Kathryn was acquitted. Hawthorne was far from straightforward, but he was always honest and I was glad that things worked out the way they did.