‘But actually, it became pretty clear to me why Diana Cowper had gone to Cornwallis and Sons. It’s what I told you on the train. You’ve got to think of her state of mind. This is a woman who spends her whole life on her own. She misses her husband so much that she still visits the memorial garden where they used to live. She can’t trust anyone. Raymond Clunes has just ripped her off. Her beloved son has pissed off and gone to America. She’s got so few friends that after she was killed it took two whole days for anyone to notice she was dead and even then it was only the cleaner. It struck me from the start that she must have been pretty bloody miserable. And that’s why she was thinking of doing herself in …’
I took a sharp breath. ‘Committing suicide?’
‘Exactly. You saw what was in her bathroom. Three packets of temazepam. More than enough to kill her.’
‘We saw her doctor!’ I said. ‘She couldn’t sleep.’
‘That’s what she told him. But she wasn’t taking the pills, she was stockpiling them. She’d more or less decided that she’d had enough and then her cat went missing. My guess is that it was Mr Tibbs that pushed her over the edge. She’d already been visited by Alan Godwin and he’d threatened her and, reading the letter he’d sent her, she must have decided that he’d killed the cat. I know the things that are dear to you. Mr Tibbs disappearing was the final straw: that was when she decided to do it. But being the sort of woman she was, all neat and methodical, she wanted everything to be arranged, including her own funeral. So, on the same day, she resigns from the board of the Globe Theatre and goes to Cornwallis and Sons.’
He made it sound so obvious. ‘That’s why she knew she was going to die,’ I said. ‘Because she was about to commit suicide!’
‘Exactly.’
‘She didn’t leave a note.’
‘In a way, she did. You saw her funeral choices. First of all there’s “Eleanor Rigby”. All the lonely people, where do they all come from? That’s a cry for help if ever I heard one. And then there’s that poet, Sylvia Plath, and the composer, Jeremiah Clarke. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that they both topped themselves, do you?’
‘And the psalm?’
‘Psalm 34. Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all. It’s a psalm for suicides. You should have talked to a vicar.’
‘I suppose you did.’
‘Of course.’
‘And what was the first thing Diana Cowper saw when she went to the undertaker’s?’ I asked. ‘You said it was important.’
‘That’s right. It was the marble book in the window. And that had a quote too.’
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. I knew it off by heart.
‘It comes from Hamlet. I don’t know a lot about Shakespeare – I would have thought that was more up your street – but the funny thing is, he’s been everywhere in this case. Diana Cowper had Shakespeare quotes on her fridge and there were all those theatre programmes on her stairs. There was another quote on that fountain we saw in Deal.’
‘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.’