Of course, that would be even worse. It would mean that Morton was right and that the story wasn’t worth writing. Hawthorne hadn’t solved anything and the killer had simply confessed. The end.
I’d been depressed enough when I left the offices of Fenchurch International. Morton had ruined everything for me by revealing the solution . . . which I’m sure was exactly what he’d intended. And so far, he’d been spot on. Khan had said the case was closed. Roderick Browne had been named as the killer and he had then taken his own life. Where did that leave me? With a very short book, for a start, more a novella than a novel. And I couldn’t see my editor jumping up and down with excitement when the manuscript was delivered.
So, on reflection, I realised that a locked-room mystery might be exactly what I needed. If it turned out that Roderick Browne’s entire garage swivelled round to reveal a hidden staircase which had allowed someone to gain access through an underground passage that connected with the medieval well, I’d just have to grit my teeth and get on with it. At least it would mean that Roderick Browne hadn’t committed suicide after all and that someone had indeed murdered him; presumably the same person who had shot Giles Kenworthy.
But who?
I’d sent Hawthorne the next section (‘Another Death’) and was waiting for him to show up. He was coming to the flat again at eleven o’clock. That gave me thirty minutes to get myself into his mindset. I went to my desk and sat there, thinking about the possibilities, trying to work it out for myself. It should have been simple. After all, there weren’t that many suspects.
Who had killed Giles Kenworthy?
The way I saw it, May Winslow and Phyllis Moore had replaced Sarah Baines as the most likely suspects . . . even if it seemed almost impossible to believe. Isn’t that how it always works? The killer is the last person you expect and these two were ex-nuns with such a hatred of violence that they wouldn’t even stock Jo Nesbø in their ‘cosy crime’ bookshop. I would have been surprised if, at eighty-one and seventy-nine, they even had the strength to lift the crossbow and take aim, but maybe one of them had held it while the other pulled the trigger?
They certainly had a motive. They had been shattered by the death of their dog, and although Sarah Baines was almost certainly responsible, it was Giles Kenworthy who had given the order. They had a key to Roderick’s house. They could have slipped into the garage at any time. That would also have helped them to engineer his death. I wondered how they’d raised the money to buy both their house and the shop in Richmond. That story about the surprise inheritance hadn’t rung true. It’s the sort of thing that only happens in children’s books. And an aunt, of all things!
I reached for a sheet of paper and scribbled their names at the top.
Who next?
Sarah Baines had slipped down to number two. She was an ex-prisoner who had somehow talked her way into Riverview Close, taking advantage of May Winslow’s good nature. She certainly had a reason to kill Giles Kenworthy. He had found her snooping around in his office and had fired her, threatening to report her to the police, which would have been the last thing she needed. There was also an interesting link between her and Roderick Browne. She had called him while he was in the garage with Hawthorne and Dudley. Was it possible that she was sharing something she had found on Kenworthy’s computer? Roderick was certainly an enthusiastic supporter. ‘She’s a fine young woman, very hard-working and always helpful . . .’ – although his untidy garden told a different story. Did she have some hold over him? Why had his phone gone missing at around the same time as his death? Did he know something that had got him killed?
And then there was Dr Tom Beresford and his wife. Hawthorne had described Dr Beresford as an alcoholic, addicted to sleeping pills, stressed and miserable, locked into an endless row with his neighbour about a narrow driveway and who had the right to park there. But it was more likely to have been the death of his patient, Raymond Shaw, that had tipped the balance and turned him into a potential murderer. Was there some link between Shaw and Beresford that I hadn’t yet discovered? Suppose he had stolen the crossbow and Roderick had seen him? That might have been a motive for a second murder . . . although I still had no idea how he could have done it.
Unless he was assisted by his wife!
Gemma Beresford would surely do anything to protect her husband. I opened a drawer and took out one of the photographs that Hawthorne had sent me. It was a printout from her website showing her Rare Poison collection of jewellery: snakes, scorpions, spiders and doll’s eyes (a toxic plant from North America). There was definitely something sinister about her and I wondered how far she would go to keep her family together. Far enough to kill?
She reminded me a bit of Teri Strauss, Adam’s second wife. Of the two of them, I found it easier to imagine Teri creeping around Riverview Close in the middle of the night with a crossbow, and I always felt there was a certain darkness hiding behind her smile, even the fact that she was a blood relative of Strauss’s first wife, Wendy. She had a reason to kill Giles Kenworthy, although not a very good one. It was his children who had smashed her husband’s prize chess set, a gift from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, no less. She was certainly ferocious in her devotion to Adam. She thought he was a genius. She accompanied him to all his chess tournaments. But would she really murder someone on account of a broken chess set? I wasn’t sure.
A chess grandmaster might have the intelligence required to plan a murder – I’ve always thought of chess as a rather cold-blooded game – and it was true that Adam Strauss had always been the spider at the heart of the web that was Riverview Close. One way or another, he was connected to everyone who lived there and he had hosted the meeting that Kenworthy had failed to show up for. It was also his fault that the new family had arrived in the first place. Even so, I could see no serious reason why he would have murdered either of the two men. Roderick Browne was a close friend. When Roderick was at his lowest, it was Adam he had called, and he had certainly been alive when Adam left his home.
Or had Andrew Pennington got that wrong? He was the only witness (he had also seen Tom Beresford sneaking out of his front door at ten o’clock at night). Pennington had accused Giles Kenworthy of racial prejudice, and there was a vague link with the attack on the old lady in Hampton Wick. A leaflet advertising the UK Independence Party had been found at the scene of the crime. And Marsha Clarke had a connection with the Beresford household. Their nanny had been looking after her.
It was all very confusing. The more I thought about it, the more I regretted ever taking on the book. Despite what I’d hoped when I set out, it was much easier following Hawthorne round, writing down what I saw. Trying to piece a solution together from a mountain of information, not all of which might be reliable, was like trying to construct a jigsaw puzzle without ever having been shown the picture it was supposed to form.
The doorbell rang. It had to be Hawthorne with the next batch of documents he had promised to bring.
But when I went downstairs, it was not Hawthorne standing at the door. It took me a few seconds to recognise the pink-faced, plump-cheeked man in the baggy suit, with his untidy hair and apologetic smile.
‘Roland!’ I exclaimed.
Hawthorne’s adoptive brother was carrying a large manila envelope, just as he had the first time we met, although on this occasion he was holding it out for me. ‘I was asked to give you this,’ he said.