The Twist of a Knife

‘What sort of man was your husband, Mrs Alden?’

‘Not an easy one.’ She swirled the whisky in the glass, tempted to finish it. ‘He took a long time to find himself when he came out of the army. He missed the camaraderie. He wanted to come back to Wiltshire because that was where he was born – he grew up in Corsham. His parents had the manor there, but their money had gone long before I met him. We were both poor as church mice. He had his army pension, but that never went very far. We didn’t even have our own home.’

‘You have this one. And you live here rent-free.’

She hesitated. ‘Yes. The school has been very kind to me.’

‘Why did your husband become a teacher?’

‘He needed a job and we needed somewhere to live. I was the one who suggested it. Obviously, if Philip could get a job in a private boarding school, he would get accommodation, which would kill two birds with one stone. He did apply to several prep schools in the area, but they wouldn’t have him, so he did a teacher-training course and after a couple of years in Trowbridge – dreadful place! – he ended up at Moxham Heath Primary School. We rented a home to begin with, but when he was promoted to deputy head we were given Glebe Cottage. I’ve been here ever since.’

‘Was he happy in Moxham Heath?’

‘Oh, yes. He soon found his feet. In fact, he became quite a well-known figure in the village. He liked fishing.’

‘And hunting.’ Hawthorne made the words sound like an accusation.

‘Well, you can see the evidence all around you. Yes. Hunting was his great love, even though he could barely afford it. It may surprise you to know that not everyone who goes out with the hounds is loaded. Philip rode with the Avon Vale Hunt. He hired a horse some of the time, but the master of hounds took a liking to him and often lent him his own chestnut. Philip made a lot of friends who looked after him, and the hunting community always was very generous … a bit like the army.’ She pointed at a black-and-white photograph in a silver frame. It showed a boy, slightly out of focus, resting his hand against a horse. ‘That’s Philip aged twelve. He went hunting with his father in Corsham when he was a boy. He had so many memories. He never stopped talking about them!’ She let out a sigh. ‘He was never happier than when he was out on a frosty morning with all his friends, trotting down a country lane and then hurtling across the countryside, leaping over fences and streams, risking a broken neck every time. That’s when he came alive. That was all he looked forward to.’

‘He can’t have been too fond of Stephen Longhurst, then.’

Rosemary Alden froze. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘His parents were close to the Labour government. They wanted to ban hunting.’

‘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.’