A Line to Kill Read online

  ‘You’re having the party, Charles. Nobody knows who I am and nobody gives a damn. You can manage without me. Just try not to wake me when you come upstairs.’

  ‘All right. All right.’ He leaned towards me, cupping his hand over his mouth as if he didn’t want her to hear. ‘We’ve been together fifteen years and I don’t know what I’d do without her. Look at her! The face that launched a thousand chips.’ He smiled at his own witticism and weaved away.

  Helen and I were left together and suddenly she relaxed a little. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ she said. ‘Charles is a darling really. But he can be so boring when he’s had a few drinks. There are times when I literally want to kill him.’

  ‘What did he mean?’ I asked. ‘A thousand chips?’

  She laughed. ‘That’s what he always says. It goes back to the time when I used to work for him at Spin-the-wheel.’ I still didn’t get it so she added: ‘Roulette chips.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘God knows why he decided to sponsor a literary festival. He never reads. Maybe he thought it would make him look respectable. I’m sorry. What did you say your name was?’

  I told her.

  ‘And you’re a writer? I’m afraid I haven’t read anything by you, but then I don’t read much either. Well, you’re going to have to forgive me. I really have had a long day. It was nice to meet you. Good night.’

  She disappeared in the direction of the hallway. I saw her turn left, presumably heading for the stairs. I looked at my watch and saw that it was ten past nine. I thought of leaving too.

  Charles le Mesurier must have been waiting for her to go because the moment she was out of sight, he meandered across to the archway leading into the kitchen. He had noticed Kathryn Harris – in her French-maid costume – standing on the other side, helping herself to the last cheese puff on one of the plates. The crowd was beginning to thin out a little – perhaps people didn’t keep late nights in Alderney – so I saw what happened next quite clearly.

  Before Kathryn had managed to eat, le Mesurier sidled up to her, placed his lips very close to her ear and whispered something, then leaned back with a twisted smile. I didn’t need to hear the words to know what he was suggesting. It was virtually a repeat performance of what had happened at The Divers Inn. The girl took a step away from him and now the kitchen wall separated her from me so I couldn’t see her response. But whatever it was, le Mesurier seemed amused. He took another swig of champagne, then lurched into the dining room and another group of guests.

  This time I couldn’t just let it go. Despite my misgivings, I went into the kitchen – ultra-modern, of course, with gleaming surfaces and brand-new equipment – to find Kathryn at the sink, plunging glasses into foamy water. There were twenty or thirty lined up on one side. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’

  She spoke with her back to me. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

  ‘It’s just that I saw what happened …’

  ‘Nothing happened.’ She turned round and I saw at once the tears of indignation pricking at her eyes. ‘Honestly. Thank you for being concerned, but it really doesn’t matter.’

  ‘He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it … behaving that way. I know it’s his house and his party. But even so—’

  ‘Please! Don’t say anything.’ She sounded almost afraid. ‘I don’t want to lose my job. He didn’t actually do anything. He’s just a dirty old man. Like they all are.’ She turned back to the sink. ‘I need to get these glasses done. We stop serving at ten.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry …’

  Feeling very uncomfortable, I walked out of the kitchen and went in search of Hawthorne. I got the sense that the party had developed a stale, sated quality, the sort that comes after two hours of overindulgence. It was time to move on. The Channelers had launched into a jazzed-up version of The Blue Danube, but they were sweating and out of sync. There were plates of half-eaten food everywhere. I looked for Hawthorne in the sun lounge and the living room. Then I went out onto the patio. It was always possible that he had gone out for a smoke.

  The evening was cool and very dark. I could see the lights on either side of the path and, almost lost in the shadows, the solid bulk of the building at the end. What had le Mesurier called it? The Snuggery. There was no sign of Hawthorne, but glancing to one side I noticed a solitary figure sitting on a wooden bench and realised it was Elizabeth Lovell. She was on her own, some distance away, lighting a cigarette, which somehow surprised me. There was no reason why a woman who was blind and psychic shouldn’t be allowed a cigarette, but somehow it felt at odds with her public persona. Her husband wasn’t with her and I was glad to be able to slip back inside without being seen.

  Hawthorne had left without me. Suddenly, I was glad that this time tomorrow I would be home again. I was missing my wife. There was absolutely no reason for me to be here. An open door led back into the kitchen and from there I continued into the hall, where a pile of books had been set up on a table: Lovely Grub by Marc Bellamy. His photograph, in which he was cradling a mixing bowl with a ladle, was on the cover. It was on sale for £20.

  I picked up a copy and opened it at random. I found myself looking at a recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu, a dish that had revolted me even when I ate it back in the seventies. The ingredients – oil, butter, cheese, cream, breadcrumbs – felt like signposts on the way to a heart attack. I snapped it shut just as Maïssa Lamar appeared, coming downstairs. I don’t know which of the two of us was more surprised. I got the sense that she had hoped not to be seen.

  She came over to the table. I handed her the book. ‘Cookery,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘C’est un livre de cuisine.’

  ‘You speak French?’

  ‘Un petit peu.’

  If I’d been trying to impress her, it hadn’t worked. She tried to push the book back into my hands, but I wanted to keep her talking. ‘I enjoyed your performance this morning,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And I met your friend.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Fair hair. Moustache. He was at the airport.’

  She looked at me blankly. ‘I’m sorry. I have no friend.’ Abruptly, she dropped the book onto the table and went into the living room.

  It was definitely time to go. I walked out of the house and climbed into the first taxi I saw. I had to wait a few minutes until two more guests arrived to fill the other seats, but then we set off. Without realising it, I’d had too much to drink. I wasn’t drunk, but I could feel the self-disgust that alcohol always inspires when it doesn’t make you happy. Ten minutes later, we arrived at the hotel. I grabbed my key and went up to my room. I got undressed, throwing all my clothes onto one of the armchairs. I cleaned my teeth. I went to bed.

  The next thing I knew, it was morning and I was aware that I was no longer alone in the room. Someone had woken me up. I opened my eyes and then closed them again. Hawthorne was standing at the end of my bed. I couldn’t believe he was there. How had he even got into the room?

  ‘Hawthorne …’ I muttered. It was outrageous. I was asleep, unshaven, in my undershorts, in bed.

  ‘Tony, mate, get up and get dressed,’ Hawthorne said. ‘There’s been a murder.’

  8

  The Snuggery

  ‘Who’s been killed?’ I asked. It was the one thing Hawthorne hadn’t told me. Actually, so far he hadn’t told me anything.

  ‘Charles le Mesurier. Who do you think?’

  It was true. Le Mesurier was rich. He was also obnoxious. He had sneered at almost everybody he met. And since we were sitting in the back of a taxi on the way to The Lookout, the victim could only have been him or his wife.

  ‘Who told you?’ I asked.

  ‘Colin Matheson. Helen le Mesurier found the body and called him over to the house. He’s waiting for us there.’

  The driver had been listening to al
l this. He twisted round. ‘There’s never been a murder in Alderney!’ he told us, his voice full of excitement. It was as if he had been waiting for it all his life.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Hawthorne asked.

  ‘It’s Terry.’

  ‘All right, Terry. Do me a favour and keep your eyes on the road.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Whatever you say.’ He stayed silent for about thirty seconds but then he couldn’t stop himself. ‘Did it happen last night? There was a party and I was there! Maybe I gave the killer a lift!’

  There were more cars parked outside The Lookout, but none of them had any police markings. The front door was open and we walked straight into the three rooms, which still hadn’t been reassembled. Someone had cleared away all the plates and glasses but the furniture hadn’t been moved back into place and there was a sense of emptiness, heightened by the fact that the man who had designed and created all this had been permanently taken from it. Colin and Judith Matheson were already there waiting for us, along with a third man who had not been at the party and who was introduced to us as Dr Queripel.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Mr Hawthorne,’ Matheson began. I had never seen a man more out of his depth. It was as if he had no idea why he had been summoned here and, worse than that, no idea what to do. His wife was sitting in an armchair, as white as the pearls around her neck, clutching a ball of tissue in her fist. She didn’t look as if she had been crying, though. If anything, she looked angry.

  ‘I didn’t know if it was right to call you or not, and you may consider it an impertinence – but this couldn’t have happened at a worse time,’ Colin began. ‘There’s no good time for it to have happened, but what I mean is that, unfortunately, two of our constables are on holiday and the third, Sergeant Wilkins, is in bed with a bad back. To be honest, I think this would be beyond his pay grade anyway. We’ve sent for backup from Guernsey and there are two officers on their way, but in the meantime I thought it sensible to get at least some sort of investigation started. Strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.’

  ‘You did exactly the right thing,’ Hawthorne assured him. He turned to the doctor. ‘You examined the body?’

  ‘It’s the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen,’ Dr Queripel replied. He was in his thirties with fair hair that was already thinning and a lean face. He looked thoroughly decent in his old-fashioned suit. I could imagine him walking a dog, smoking a pipe. Perhaps not at the same time.

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Mr le Mesurier has been stabbed with a paperknife. I think the knife belonged to him, by the way.’

  ‘You’d seen him use it?’ Hawthorne asked.

  ‘Yes. I wasn’t actually his GP but I’d come over to the house once or twice. He has an office upstairs and it was on his desk.’ He lowered his voice and took a step closer so that Judith Matheson wouldn’t hear. ‘As far as I can see, there’s a single deep incision at the front of the neck. I imagine the knife will be lodged in the vertebral body and may have penetrated the spinal cord. There’s quite a lot of blood, so it could have nicked the carotid artery too.’

  ‘No chance of suicide?’

  ‘Absolutely not. You can see for yourself.’

  Hawthorne nodded. ‘I should take a look …’

  ‘Of course. We have to go out through the garden.’ Dr Queripel glanced at me, acknowledging my presence for the first time. ‘You’ll go alone?’

  ‘Actually, if you don’t mind, I’ll take Tony with me. I always find him very helpful.’

  ‘I suppose I’d better come too,’ Matheson said with reluctance.

  ‘Well, all right.’

  The four of us went out of the sun lounge and into the garden. I was completely thrown by what Hawthorne had just said. How was I ever helpful? All I ever did was write about him, but of course that was exactly what he was hoping for now. Without realising it, I had stumbled onto – or into – the third book in our three-book contract. For anyone reading this, I suppose it will have been obvious from the start. I wouldn’t have been writing about Alderney if we’d just gone to the island, answered a few questions about books and flown home again.

  But for me, everything had changed. To give one example, most of what I have described up to now has been done from memory because I had no idea I was going to need any of the finer details, but from this point onwards I began to take careful notes. It was strange, really. I had come to Alderney in the hope that I would be introducing Hawthorne to my world: books, lectures and all the rest of it. But instead, I had once again been dragged into his.

  We followed the path that had been illuminated during the party and for the first time I got a proper view of the gun emplacement at the far end of the garden and its relationship to the house. The Lookout, as its name implied, had views of the sea, presumably visible from the upper floors. The garden actually ran from the back of the house to the edge of a cliff, with a beach some distance below. As we drew nearer, I could see the water through the trees.

  In the daylight, the Snuggery presented itself as a grey cement box about the size of a single-car garage with metal doors that swung open like shutters and a modern glass door behind. There was a flat roof that doubled as a viewing platform, with three narrow windows just below. A flight of concrete steps climbed steeply up the side. The whole thing was enclosed by shrubs and wild flowers, as if it was trying to hide away from the modern world. It was actually quite a distance from the main house: with the party in full swing and the jazz band playing, it would have been quite possible for Charles le Mesurier to cry out without being heard.

  The metal doors had been pulled back and the glass door was half open too. Colin Matheson stayed where he was, not wanting to go back in, so Hawthorne continued without him, accompanied by Dr Queripel. I hesitated for a moment too. Then I went in.

  From gunnery to snuggery: there was something distasteful about the change of use. Originally built for killing Allied seamen, the concrete box had been turned into something like a Turkish harem, the walls concealed behind heavy velvet curtains, with a thick Persian rug and an ornate coffee table surrounded by cushions on the floor. The curtains on the back wall had been pulled to one side, revealing a second set of metal doors, identical to the ones through which we had entered. It might have been possible to come in this way, climbing up from the beach, but they were bolted from the inside.

  Two low leather banquettes with an arrangement of dark-coloured cushions had been set against the long walls, facing each other, and an elaborate light hung from the ceiling, the wooden shade perforated with tiny triangles, circles and crescent moons. An equally exotic drinks cabinet stood to one side, one door open to reveal a selection of glasses and bottles on mirrored shelves. All that was missing was the hookah and the belly dancers.

  Charles le Mesurier was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair – actually it was more like a throne – facing the garden, with his back to the second door. I’ve described many deaths in the course of my work, in books and on TV, but I’m not sure I’ve ever managed to capture the absolute horror of the real thing. It’s the smell that hits you first, sickening and unmistakable. Dead actors look nothing like dead people. Once the blood has settled and life has drained away, the human body doesn’t look remotely human. Knife wounds are particularly disgusting. And I write about these things for entertainment! Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing.

  The first thing I saw was the knife handle protruding from Charles le Mesurier’s throat. It was slim, silver, ornate; a letter opener, Dr Queripel had said. The silk jacket and trousers he had worn at the party clung to him, glued there by the blood that had fountained down from the wound. There was a dark pool of it around his tasselled suede loafers.

  ‘It’s merciless,’ Dr Queripel muttered.

  It seemed an odd choice of word, but then, with a jolt, I realised what he meant. Before he had been killed, le Mesurier’s wrists and ankles had been tied to the chair with brown parcel tape. At least, three of them had. His righ
t hand had been left free and now lay palm upwards, limp, the fingers curled as if he was asking for money. It was a bizarre detail. What could possibly have been done to him before he was murdered, and what had his one hand been needed for?

  ‘You’ve seen?’ Dr Queripel asked. He was talking to Hawthorne.

  Hawthorne had approached the body, avoiding the blood. He looked carefully at the entrance wound made by the knife, then examined the back of le Mesurier’s head. Finally, his eyes travelled down to the dead man’s hands. ‘Was he left-handed or right-handed?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t really know. Why do you ask?’

  ‘His watch,’ Hawthorne said. ‘He wore a Rolex, but it’s gone.’ It was true. The shirtsleeve, saturated in blood, hung open, revealing a wrist that was bare.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dr Queripel was aghast. ‘I have a feeling he was right-handed. But are you really suggesting that somebody did all this to steal his watch?’

  ‘There’s no sign of any break-in and he’s wearing the same clothes he had on at the party, so it looks as if he came straight here, either alone or with someone. Maybe he’d arranged a meeting. There’s a contusion on the back of his head – I’d say he’s been hit with a blunt object. He was forced into the chair and tied down. One wrist was left free. There has to be a reason.’

  ‘Maybe the killer ran out of tape,’ I said.

  This suggestion was greeted with silence.

  Dr Queripel took a step closer and Hawthorne held up a hand. ‘Please be careful!’

  The doctor stopped and Hawthorne pointed to an area of carpet about halfway between the chair and the door into the garden. The dark red and mauve pattern made it difficult to make out what he had seen, but looking closer, I noticed the shape of a partial footprint. There was a curve where the toecap had come into contact with the blood. It could have been left behind by a man or a woman, but from the size I got the impression that it was someone with small feet.