‘That wasn’t the child’s fault.’
‘Your husband may not have felt that way.’
‘Philip didn’t like the parents. Nobody did!’ She had blurted out the words without thinking. She composed herself. ‘It was very unpleasant,’ she continued. ‘There was lots of talk in the newspapers and on television. We even had saboteurs in the village, riding around on their motorbikes and trying to put the hounds off the scent. There were acts of vandalism … graffiti … one of the horses was hurt. And two of the loudest voices calling for a ban belonged to our new residents, Mr and Mrs Longhurst. They had come into this community, but they had absolutely no understanding of our way of life. They were the vipers in the nest. That was what Philip called them.’
‘So you can’t feel very comfortable living here, then,’ Hawthorne said. ‘Just now you told us that the school had been kind to you, letting you live here. But you must know that it was Trevor and Annabel Longhurst who paid.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘You’re not a good liar, Mrs Alden.’
‘How dare you call me that!’
‘Then tell me the truth. The Longhursts bought this house and put it in trust just for you. Of course you knew.’
She drained the glass. ‘I had nowhere else to go.’
Hawthorne waited for her to calm down. When he spoke again, he was more reasonable. ‘Don’t you want to get it off your chest, Mrs Alden?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t that why you let us in? Seventeen years you’ve been sitting here, thinking about it. But that’s the trouble with past crimes. They never let you go. And here you are, talking about dying and worrying that somebody’s going to come and investigate you.’
She held out the glass. ‘Another!’
‘I think you’ve had enough.’ Hawthorne reached out and took the glass from her hand. ‘Let me tell you how I see it. First of all, I think Major Alden was wrong. That business with the library books … tearing out pages and all the rest of it. Stephen Longhurst would never have done that. It’s the one thing we know about him. He loved books. If he and Wayne wanted to hurt your husband, it wasn’t because he wouldn’t let them go to Bath Spa, it was because he’d accused them of something they didn’t do.’
‘You’re being ridiculous. How can you possibly know? And anyway, it was a tiny incident, a long, long time ago.’
‘A tiny incident that led to your husband’s death. Are you denying it?’
‘I’m not saying anything!’
‘Then let me tell you. Because there’s something else I know. Wayne was the older of the two boys and, coming from a council estate, everyone assumed he was the one who instigated the bad behaviour. He was the ringleader. But in fact it was the other way round. Wayne was the innocent one. Stephen was the one in charge.’
‘Why are you telling me this? Why does it matter any more?’
‘Because Wayne got ten years in a secure unit and Stephen only got five.’ Hawthorne paused, fixing her with his gaze. He leaned forward before he spoke again. ‘Did you testify in court, Mrs Alden?’
Rosemary Alden caught her breath. The colour had drained out of her face, leaving her make-up sitting as if on parchment. At last she replied. ‘I gave a statement. Yes.’
‘A false statement. Because the Longhursts’ lawyers got to you, didn’t they? They told you to say that Wayne was the troublemaker, that Stephen didn’t know what he was doing. And this is what you got out of it. This cottage. Somewhere to live. You supported their version of events and this place was your reward.’
‘No!’ Rosemary Alden was sitting bolt upright in her chair. It was as if she had been electrocuted. ‘Get out of here!’ she quavered, her voice catching in her throat.
‘I’ll leave when you’ve told me what I want to know.’
‘Tara … !’
‘Tara’s not here. You sent her away.’
Hawthorne was ferocious. It didn’t bother him that the subject of his interrogation was sick and in her seventies. I was seriously worried Rosemary might have a fatal heart attack or another stroke. Cara Grunshaw would love that. Another death – five minutes after I’d been in the room.
‘Who defaced the library books?’ Hawthorne asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But it wasn’t Stephen or Wayne!’
‘I don’t know who it was!’ She struggled for breath. ‘Nor did Philip …’
And there it was, finally, the admission.
‘Philip knew it wasn’t them,’ she went on. ‘He told me! He couldn’t find the real culprits, so he decided to make them an example.’
‘And the rest of it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean …’
‘The lawyers.’
She nodded. All she wanted was to get Hawthorne out of the room. ‘One of them came to see me before the trial. A smarmy young man with his hair greased back. He didn’t tell me his name. He said that he represented the family and that maybe he could help me if I agreed to help them. I testified that Stephen was a good boy, that he didn’t know what he was doing, that the other boy influenced him. I didn’t lie. It wasn’t my lie. All I had to do was support their version of the truth.’
‘To commit perjury.’
‘You can call it that if you like, but what was I to do? I was desperate. I would have had to move out. I had no job, no income, nowhere to go. Philip was in the cemetery and nobody cared about me.’
A single tear leaked from her good eye.
Hawthorne stood up. ‘We’ll leave you alone now, Mrs Alden. You did the right thing, telling us the truth.’
‘Will I have to leave Glebe Cottage?’
‘No. You can stay here. That wasn’t why we came.’
He began to move towards the door, but she stopped him. ‘Could you do something for me, Mr Hawthorne? If you ever find those two boys, could you tell them that I know what I did was wrong and I am so very sorry? Neither of them should have gone to prison. It was a prank. Can you tell them how sorry I am?’
Hawthorne stopped. ‘I’d say it’s a bit late for that now, love.’
He left the room. I gave her a half-apologetic shrug and followed.
21
The Jai Mahal
I thought we would be going straight back to London, but Hawthorne had called ahead and made one final appointment. Adrian Wells had been chief editor at the Bristol Argus when Harriet had written for it, first as a crime reporter, then as the drama critic. He still lived in Bristol and that was where we were now headed. We would take the train home from there.
I was feeling increasingly uneasy – and not because I was aware of time running out for me. On the contrary, things were happening at whirlwind speed. My play had premiered on Tuesday. Harriet was killed on Wednesday. Hawthorne had shown up on Thursday and today was only Friday. My problem was that although I knew we had achieved a great deal, I couldn’t see how it would help.
We knew the truth about Stephen Longhurst. Contrary to what everybody thought and what the judge had clearly believed, he had not been the innocent that he seemed to be. We had learned of a conspiracy to pervert the cause of justice, with Rosemary Alden bribed by an anonymous London lawyer to perjure herself in court. Major Alden himself had been exposed as a vindictive bully. And then there was the strange behaviour of Martin Longhurst. What had he been doing visiting the school, and why tell a lie about sending his children there?
But what had any of this got to do with the death of Harriet Throsby? Hawthorne had suggested that the reason for Harriet’s death might be found in Moxham Heath, but unless John Lamprey or the major’s wife had travelled to London to take revenge (which seemed unlikely), it felt like a complete waste of time.