A Line to Kill

‘Now, now!’ Hawthorne warned him. ‘If you’re going to get nasty, the whole world’s going to know about this. I’m not sure what your fans will think when they find out you’ve been ripping them off, but I’ve got a feeling it’s not exactly going to catapult you into the best-seller lists. At the moment, there’s just the four of us who know that your wife is a cold-hearted, manipulative bitch. Maybe it would be a good idea to keep it that way. What do you think?’

There was a silence even more dramatic than the one that had opened the séance.

Elizabeth Lovell was the first to recover. ‘Let me explain something to you,’ she said. She picked up the wine and downed it in one. When she continued, she sounded desperate – and genuine, for perhaps the first time. ‘It wasn’t a lie,’ she insisted. ‘Not completely. Everything I have written about in my books is true, I swear to you, and I’ve been an inspiration to many, many people. I do have diabetes, and in my twenties this resulted in serious damage to my eyesight – proliferative retinopathy. I can show you the certificates. For a while I suffered almost total vision loss. This happened at the same time that I realised I had the abilities which I discussed in my talk—’

‘So how come the miracle recovery?’ Hawthorne interrupted.

‘I had eye surgery to remove scar tissue from the back of my retina and although it was still damaged, some of my sight returned.’

‘Enough to see Derek Abbott and Charles le Mesurier walk to the Snuggery together just before ten o’clock on Saturday night?’

She nodded.

‘But why all this pretence?’ I demanded. I knew Hawthorne didn’t like it when I interrupted, but I couldn’t stop myself.

‘It was Sid’s idea,’ Elizabeth said. ‘The whole thing with Blind Sight.’

‘That’s not true!’ Sid snarled. ‘Don’t you bloody say that.’

‘You suggested it.’

‘All right! All right!’ Sid drew a breath, then turned to us. ‘There are psychics up and down the country,’ he grumbled. ‘Half of them are fake. Not like Liz. She’s the real thing. But that’s not good enough, not these days, when everyone’s looking for something more. How were we going to get her on Good Morning Britain? I told her she needed something special, a trademark. We weren’t telling a lie. We were just embroidering the truth.’

‘But all that rubbish just now …’

I understood exactly what had happened. Elizabeth had been sitting outside The Lookout on the night of the party, smoking a cigarette. She had clearly seen Derek Abbott and Charles le Mesurier walk past her, crossing the garden, but she couldn’t say anything without giving herself away. At the same time, Derek hadn’t realised he’d been spotted. That was why he had been able to deny entering the Snuggery with such confidence. He thought she was blind! As for the charade we had just sat through, Elizabeth could have sent Hawthorne an anonymous message, but she and her husband must have been thinking about the publicity value. A psychic helping the police to solve a double murder! How many books would that sell?

‘What time did you see them leave the house?’ Hawthorne asked.

Elizabeth had no choice. ‘About ten to ten.’

Le Mesurier had been killed about twenty minutes later. Two guests had heard him cry out.

‘Were they talking?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.’

That was probably true. Elizabeth had been sitting over to one side of the house.

‘But you must have been able to tell something from their body language.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Come on, love!’ Hawthorne was irritated. Elizabeth Lovell’s entire act was based on her ability to ‘read’ a room, to pick up innocent cues from people and to turn them into a narrative of her own making. ‘Were they friendly?’

‘I can’t tell you what you want to know, Mr Hawthorne. It was dark. They were a distance away. They had their backs to me. But if it’s any help, they were quite close together, side by side. They weren’t unfriendly. Charles le Mesurier was doing most of the talking. I saw them for less than a minute. Then they went into the building.’

‘Did you see Abbott come out again?’

‘No. Sid came for me a few minutes later. That would have been ten o’clock. We went back into the house and then we took a taxi to the hotel.’

‘Derek Abbott was the last person to see le Mesurier alive,’ Sid said. ‘That’s useful information. Maybe he was the killer and it’s thanks to her that you’ll have cracked the case.’

‘What are you suggesting, Mr Lovell?’

Sid licked his lips nervously. ‘Look, I know we got off to the wrong start, but we can put all that behind us. And maybe we could come to some sort of arrangement. I mean, it would be very useful to us if you could see your way to acknowledging her contribution publicly.’