The Sentence Is Death

She couldn’t blame Pryce for her husband’s death in Long Way Hole. It had happened too long ago, he had supported her ever since, and – anyway – Gregory Taylor had accepted the responsibility.

But she and Lockwood were lovers. And what had Pryce’s husband, Stephen Spencer, told us? Pryce had got fed up with her. She was bleeding him dry. Suppose Pryce had finally pulled the financial plug on her, sending her into a murderous rage? She could have talked to Adrian Lockwood, who had his own reasons for wanting Pryce dead. They could have planned it together.

Akira Anno.

She was still my main suspect – after her ex-husband. She was the start of everything that had happened with the threat she had made in the restaurant and she had written a haiku that suggested she had murder in mind, even if she insisted it had been addressed to Adrian Lockwood. I could easily believe that she was vengeful enough to kill Richard Pryce and it wasn’t much of a stretch to see her daubing the number 182 on the wall either. It somehow reminded me of Japanese murals with their attendant calligraphy. It suited her. And yet she had an alibi too.

Dawn Adams.

Two women, both divorced, both with a grudge against the smooth-talking solicitor who had humiliated them. More than that, if Richard had discovered the truth about Mark Belladonna and Doomworld, he could have ruined both of them. Now that I thought about it, there was something quite literary about writing a message, leaving a mark at the scene of the crime. In a way, Dawn and Akira mirrored Adrian and Davina. Two sets of people with similar aims, working together.

Stephen Spencer.

He didn’t look like a murderer to me, but I couldn’t rule him out. He had lied about visiting his mother and he might well have lied about the state of his marriage. The fact was that he was being unfaithful. Richard Pryce knew and had discussed his will with one of the partners at Masefield Pryce Turnbull. If Spencer was about to lose his marriage, the house and the inheritance, he certainly had the most straightforward motive for murder.

Susan Taylor.

Nor had I forgotten Gregory Taylor’s widow. Her husband had died one day before Richard Pryce and she had actually come down to London on the day of the murder. Nobody had asked her to account for her movements but had she really been on her own, just sitting there in a cheap hotel? I remembered the curious glint of cruelty in her eyes as she had spoken: What do you think I did? Was there something about Long Way Hole that she hadn’t told us? Richard, Charles and Gregory – all stuck underground with the water rising. All three were now dead. There had to be a connection.

It had to be one of them.

One in six. But which one?

Jill came into the office and, seeing me deep in thought, slid the partition across, closing off her side. We call it the divorce door. I turned another page and began to think of all the clues that I had noted as I accompanied Hawthorne – from the broken bulrushes next to Pryce’s front door to the book that Gregory Taylor had bought at King’s Cross station to the splash of green paint on Adrian Lockwood’s sleeve. I remembered Hawthorne talking about the number painted on the wall and Richard Pryce’s last words: What are you doing here? It’s a bit late. I wrote them down and drew a circle round them. It didn’t help.

What else was there? Hawthorne had gone on about the shape of the crime. We had been sitting in his flat, talking over that glass of rum and Coke. I went back through my notes and found his exact words.

It’s not like that, Tony. You’ve got to find the shape. That’s all.

But if there was a shape, I couldn’t see it. I was still convinced that the answer must be found in a single clue, something that had been right in front of me but the significance of which I had missed.

I cast my mind back to the visit we had made to Adrian Lockwood’s house: the umbrella by the door, the vitamin pills, the bilberries. I tried to remember why I had written them down in my notes. Why had I mentioned them at all?

That was my eureka moment.

I fired up my computer and went on the internet. What a wonderful device . . . a gift to writers and detectives alike! In seconds I had the answer I needed and at that moment everything came together in a rush and I suddenly saw with blinding clarity exactly who had killed Richard Pryce. It was something I had never thought I would experience. Agatha Christie never described it, nor did any other mystery writer I can think of: that moment when the detective works it out and the truth makes itself known. Why did Poirot never twirl his moustache? Why didn’t Lord Peter Wimsey dance in the air? I would have.