The Twist of a Knife

Hawthorne beamed down at her. ‘Don’t worry if you’re finding it hard to follow, Cara. I’ll go through it all again later.’ He turned back. ‘We all know where we are now,’ he concluded. ‘But before I can tell you who killed Harriet, we need to look at the other two deaths: Frank Heywood and Major Philip Alden. Both of those men were connected to Harriet, so you have to ask – did they in some way inform her murder all these years later?

‘Let’s start with Heywood, the drama critic who supposedly died of a heart attack after eating a dodgy lamb curry at a restaurant called the Jai Mahal. He was a close friend of Harriet’s and it may even be that they were having an affair. That’s what Adrian Wells, her editor, believed. He also told us, by the way, that she always got what she wanted, which I think we already knew, but it does make me ask – if she wanted to take over as drama critic, did she also want him dead?

‘I can’t be certain. This all happened years ago and there are no witnesses. The police never suspected foul play, but then why would they even have looked? Both Harriet and Frank were poisoned. The restaurant was well known for its dodgy cuisine. Anyway, Frank died of a heart attack.

‘But one thing we do know. Harriet chose the restaurant. Wells told us that when we met him. She knew it had a bad reputation, so why did she want to go there? And here’s something else to consider. When she was writing her first book, No Regrets, she managed to get close to the main suspect, a man called Dr Robert Thirkell who was eventually arrested for poisoning a series of old ladies using rat poison – active ingredient, arsenic. Is it too far-fetched to suppose that she might have got a couple of doses from him just in case she might need it one day?’

‘Are you saying that my wife might have killed Frank Heywood?’ Arthur Throsby demanded.

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ Hawthorne replied. ‘A big dose for him. A smaller one for her. The curry will disguise the taste. And the restaurant will get the blame. Do you really think it so unlikely?’

Arthur Throsby thought for a moment, then he gave a sniff of laughter. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her!’ he exclaimed. ‘She was capable of anything, my Harriet. If she slept with him, it was only because she wanted something from him.’ He thought back. ‘You know, it’s very strange, but now that I think about it, I remember walking into her bedroom the next day, after she’d been released from hospital. She was sitting up in bed, writing Frank’s obituary for the Argus.’

‘What was so strange about that?’ Olivia asked.

‘He hadn’t died yet.’

There was a shocked silence.

‘So much for Frank Heywood,’ Hawthorne continued. ‘But what about Philip Alden? There’s no mystery about who was responsible for his death, even if the whole truth has never really come out. It was Stephen Longhurst who thought up the trick that killed him because it was Stephen Longhurst who really hated him.’ Hawthorne approached Martin Longhurst. ‘Did you know the truth about your brother, Mr Longhurst? That he was the one in charge, not the other boy?’

‘I only knew what my parents told me.’

‘Your parents, or their lawyers, bribed one of the witnesses. They perverted the course of justice. A poor little kid got the bigger sentence – ten years in jail – when it should have been Stephen who took the rap.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Why did you go back to the school? Why did you pretend you were going to send your own children there?’

‘I can’t answer that, Mr Hawthorne.’ Longhurst bowed his head. ‘All my life, I’ve been haunted by what happened at Moxham Heath Primary School. It tore my family apart. Even if Harriet hadn’t written her book, it would have destroyed us. I just wanted to see where it happened, to try to understand. I couldn’t explain myself to the head teacher, so I made up a story about my own children. I suppose you could say I was trying to lay a ghost to rest.’

‘I’d like you to know, incidentally, that I did write to you,’ I said. I couldn’t resist chipping in, even if no one on the stage had a clue what I was talking about.

Nor did Martin Longhurst. He looked at me blankly. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘The head teacher said you used to read my books. You wrote to me and you didn’t get a reply.’

‘No.’ He scowled. ‘She’s got that wrong. It wasn’t you. It was Michael Morpurgo.’

‘Oh.’ I felt my cheeks burning and twisted in my seat.

Fortunately, Hawthorne had already moved to the front of the stage, working his way towards the final act. ‘Are you still awake, Cara?’ he called out.

‘This had better be good, Hawthorne.’

He turned his back on her.