The Sentence Is Death

‘I never actually met him one-to-one, Mr Hawthorne. He wrote to me. He also wrote about me. He drew a picture of me in court as a woman entirely dependent on the financial acumen of my husband, even though said husband was a drunk and a womaniser who had inherited all his wealth from his equally squalid father. At the time, I’d spent seven years putting all my efforts into building up my own publishing business and perhaps you can imagine how humiliating and offensive that depiction of me was. Or perhaps you can’t.’ She drew a dismissive hand across the air. ‘In any event, I had absolutely nothing to do with his demise, although, as I say, it’s just possible that I raised a glass of Chablis when I heard of it.’

‘Well, that’s not quite true, is it,’ Hawthorne returned. ‘You say you’ve got nothing to do with his “demise”, but you’ve been involved, on the sidelines, from the very start.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You were with Akira Anno at The Delaunay restaurant when she threatened Mr Pryce. And you were with her a second time, as it happens, on the night of the murder. At first, Ms Anno suffered an unfortunate memory loss. She said she was at a cottage in Lyndhurst. But when that was disproved, she was forced to admit she was with you.’

I thought Dawn would fight back, but, ignoring Hawthorne, she turned to me. ‘What exactly are you doing here?’ she asked, quite pleasantly.

‘I’m writing about him,’ I replied. There seemed to be no point lying. Dawn Adams knew who I was. She might as well know what I was doing.

She was surprised. ‘For the newspapers?’

‘For a book.’

‘True crime?’

‘Yes. Well, sort of. I have to move a few things round and change some names, but it’s all basically true.’

She considered for a moment. ‘That’s interesting. Have you got a publisher yet?’

‘I’ve signed a three-book deal with Selina Walker at Penguin Random House.’

She nodded. ‘Selina’s very good. Just don’t let her bully you with deadlines.’ She turned back to Hawthorne. ‘In response to your remarks, first of all, Akira never threatened Richard Pryce. The two of us had been having dinner together at The Delaunay and she saw him on the other side of the room. Inevitably we started talking about him and that was when we discovered that we’d both had similar experiences. It’s possible we’d had a little too much to drink but Akira got it in her head to create a scene. She went over to his table – he was there with his husband. She picked up his glass of wine and poured it over his head. It was a stupid thing to do. I’d be the first to admit it. But at the same time it was deeply satisfying.’

‘She threatened to hit him with a bottle.’

‘No. She said he was lucky that he hadn’t ordered a bottle or she would have used that, by which I assume she meant she would have emptied the entire contents over him.’

‘But it’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think, that just a week or so later he was killed with a wine bottle.’

‘It could be a coincidence, I suppose. Although have you considered the possibility that someone in the restaurant might have overheard her?’

That was a thought that hadn’t occurred to me. Akira Anno could have quite accidentally suggested the murder method to someone who knew Richard and who just happened to be there. They might even have done it deliberately to frame her. I wondered if Hawthorne had checked out the names of all the patrons who had been at The Delaunay that night.

‘As to Akira being at my home on Sunday night,’ Dawn went on, ‘there’s nothing very surprising about that either. We’re old friends.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘At a book festival. In Dubai. A week round the swimming pool at the InterContinental Hotel. It’s a good place to get to know people.’

‘How long was she with you?’

‘Do you really consider this a line of enquiry worth pursuing, Mr Hawthorne? Very well! She came for supper at about six o’clock and once again we had rather too much to drink. You’re going to get the impression that we’re a couple of old soaks but it’s not like that. We weren’t drunk. In fact, we’d been working. But Akira had had two or three glasses with me and I thought it was more sensible if she didn’t drive back so I invited her to stay the night.’

‘You say you were working. What sort of work does she do for you?’

Dawn Adams hesitated just for a moment and I had a feeling that for all her bluster, whatever she was going to say next might not be completely true. ‘She advises me on literary manuscripts,’ she said.

‘You pay her?’

‘Of course.’ Dawn looked at her watch, a very delicate Cartier on a thin gold strap. ‘As I told you on the phone, I’m afraid I can’t give you a great deal of my time.’

Hawthorne ignored this. ‘Why did Akira Anno lie about being with you?’ he asked. ‘Having supper with an old friend, a publisher . . . you’d have thought there was nothing more innocent in the world.’

‘I have no idea. You’ll have to ask her that. Perhaps she found your interview methods offensive and decided to take you for a ride.’